Lynch's Spoiler Review: "Realm of Fear"
Timothy W. Lynch
this week's TNG offering, "Realm of Fear". Those afraid of spoilers should
either get over their fears or skip over this post.
Much better. Not top-drawer, but much more enjoyable.
If they'd just tone down on that bloody technobabble...but I jump ahead.
Hark, 'tis a synopsis!
The Enterprise locates the derelict science vessel USS Yosemite, which had
been observing a set of "plasma streamers." The only safe way to travel
between ships is to link up the two ships' transporter systems, which is
done. However, Lt. Reg Barclay abandons the mission temporarily out of a
sense of extreme terror over using the transporters. After some quick
counseling from Troi (who recommends a relaxation technique), however, he
manages to transport over and begins to work.
The team finds four crewmembers unaccounted for, and the rest all dead. All
signs point to an explosion in the transporter console, yet the transporter
works perfectly. One of the bodies and a shattered sample container are
beamed back to the Enterprise for study, and the away team returns. However,
while Barclay is in transport, he sees what appears to be a wormlike creature
*in the matter stream* with him, which then approaches and touches his left
arm. When he arrives on board the Enterprise, he is decidedly shaken.
While Barclay and Geordi try (and fail) to reconstitute the Yosemite's
scrambled logs, Barclay hints at what he saw in the transporter, leaving the
story vague on specifics. Geordi and O'Brien check out the transporter in
question, but find no problems whatsoever. Further, Geordi and O'Brien both
reemphasize to Reg how safe transporting really is as a mode of travel.
Meanwhile, Beverly's examination of the corpse results in a sudden,
short-lived heartbeat, and similar occurrences in the brain and lungs.
Later, Barclay is relaxing in Ten-Forward when his arm suddenly flares with
pain and begins to glow. Panicking, he covers it as it fades and hurries out
of the lounge to his quarters. There, he listens to a description of the old
disease "transporter psychosis" and becomes convinced that he's a victim of
it.
After Beverly gives her report on the Yosemite crewmember (residual
ionization in the body caused those sporadic occurrences), the suggestion is
made that the ship might have tried to beam aboard a piece of a plasma
streamer for study, and that an explosion of that nature might have caused
all the damage they've seen. Geordi, Data, and a very jittery Barclay check
the container and find the same ionization traces. They decide to repeat the
same experiment under better-controlled circumstances. However, Geordi,
tipped off by Data as to Barclay's odd behavior, calls in Troi to help calm
him down. Troi then, based on her observations, relieves Barclay of duty.
Barclay tries to relax in his quarters and fails. Then, trying to sleep, he
once again sees his arm begin to glow. This time, he goes to the transporter
room and orders O'Brien to beam him to the Yosemite and back again, this time
manually re-creating an ionic fluctuation that occurred during his original
beam-back. When O'Brien does so, Barclay *again* sees the wormlike creature
in the matter stream, and this time has the senior staff awakened for a
briefing. Picard orders that one transporter disassembled for analysis
initially, and Beverly finds with a microcellular scan of Barclay's arm that
the same ionization patterns as in the dead Yosemite crewman are now in his
body. This time, all transporters are taken offline, as Barclay returns to
Engineering to carry out the experiment previously arranged.
The streamer is beamed aboard inside a container, and the container is
further enclosed in a containment field. However, during a resonance scan
the container explodes; the field, however, remains intact, and Geordi spots
patterns indicative of *life* in the streamer. That excitement fades,
however, when he finds that Reg is now unconscious, with much of his *body*
glowing the way his arm was earlier...
When Barclay revives, he's told the news; there are small, "quasi-energy"
microbes inhabiting the streamer, and he must have seen one of them caught in
the pattern buffer, grossly distorted in size. Sadly, the microbes are also
infesting his body, and slowly killing him. The only possible way to remove
them would be to hold his body in transporter stasis and try to pick out a
pattern that the biofilter could recognize. It might work, but it also runs
the risk of pattern degradation; Barclay might never emerge from transport.
Barclay, with little option, accepts the risk, and as the suspension begins,
he once again encounters the lifeform in the matter stream. As Geordi,
O'Brien and Beverly work frantically to screen out the microbes, the lifeform
approaches Barclay. They discover the right patterns just in the nick of
time, but as the beam-in commences, Barclay spies a *second* lifeform and
grabs onto the first, playing a hunch. He rematerializes intact on board the
Enterprise, holding on to *one of the missing four Yosemite crewmembers*.
Apparently, they had also been infected with the microbes, but the limits
were pushed too far in the same attempt to cure them, thus losing them to the
pattern buffer. Worf and a security team, using the same technique, manage
to recover the other three missing crewmembers; and having returned the
microbes to their proper homes, the Enterprise moves on.
There we are; that wasn't so bad, was it? Now, on to commentary.
The show's biggest *drawback*, as you may have gathered from my synopsis, was
that it was very tech-heavy. I realize that some may not consider that a
drawback; I have acquaintances who, for example, consider one of ST6's
shining moments to be seeing the Constitution-class blueprints Scotty was
reading. I, however, tend to prefer the technology as an underlying
*background* to a story, not the overriding reason for the story's very
existence. This show centered, as I see it, primarily on the transporter and
its operations, not on Barclay or any other crewmember; and that hurts it.
However, Barclay was a very prominent *subordinate* focus to the show, and
that earns it back a lot of the mileage it had lost. Dwight Schultz did his
usual good job with TNG's Token Neurotic, and he's still remarkably
entertaining to watch in the role. It's interesting how one character's
presence or absence can make or break a story; if "Realm of Fear" had put,
say, Geordi or Riker in the role of transporter-"victim" rather than Barclay,
I suspect it could have been a mighty boring show. Fortunately, this managed
not to be.
Aside from the technobabble-heavy nature of the story, the plotting itself
had good points and bad points. A few below, bad first:
First of all, I do have a minor problem with the plausibility of the whole
setup. Let's see: sensors can't penetrate the plasma stream well enough to
even check for life signs, yet somehow the Enterprise can *confidently*
manipulate the Yosemite's transporter system well enough to link it to the
Enterprise's own? Reg had a point; I wouldn't have trusted that linkup to
speak my weight. Along similar lines, if they had computer control good
enough to engage the Yosemite's transporters, why couldn't they just power up
the engines and get it out of the stream by itself, *then* beam over safely?
("Because then there wouldn't be a story; c'mon, Tim." "Shh.")
The tech-heavy nature of the thing also made the plot *itself* plod along
rather ponderously on occasion. The big example in my mind is the
Geordi/Reg/O'Brien scene discussing transporter safety and transporter
theory. It's not often that I'm in a situation where I actually check my
watch to wonder how soon a scene will end, but this was one of them. (The
only exception there was Reg's comment about his professor referring to the
"billlllyuns and billllyuns" of particles the body is broken into during
transport, but that's more a Cornell-specific thing, I suspect. :-) )
On the other hand, I very much *liked* the ending; having the crawly turn out
to be a disguised Yosemite crewman was a major surprise for me, but one that
in retrospect turns out to be a well-founded, head-slapping "of *course*!"
surprise following in the footsteps of "The Defector". I had completely and
utterly forgotten about the four missing crewmembers until then; the setup
for that resolution was very subtly and quietly done. That kind of plotting
I like a great deal; let's see more of it.
Character-wise, there was also some good and bad. Again, bad first:
There were at least two situations that suggested the crew were rather less
swift than they usually appear, and that's not so good. First off, I find it
unlikely that Riker would make a sweeping statement about seeing no traces of
*anyone* on board, when in fact all but four crewmembers are there, one of
them close enough that Bev virtually tripped over it. That felt like an
editing glitch to me. Second, the whole idea of "hey, they tried this
experiment and it killed everybody; why don't we try to repeat it ourselves?"
is a plotting idea that usually rankles with me, and here wasn't much of an
exception. Granted, I think the idea was that they'd be able to do it on the
Enterprise more safely than they could on the Yosemite, but there's nothing
to really make that plain...and I've seen enough examples of "oh, it couldn't
cause *us* problems" to be suspicious.
On the other hand, several character bits were treated very well, most of
them again centering on Barclay. His counseling session with Troi, although
a little slow-paced, made *sense* to me given both characters, and provided
not a few smiles to boot. Even his reactions to hearing the symptoms of
transporter psychosis worked for me; it's one of the oldest gags in the book,
but it's close enough to realistic that when played well it can work.
Two lines in particular from Barclay really worked for me, incidentally:
"...I get a certain feeling. I guess you could call it...*mortal terror*.
<<thud>>"
and "I just don't get to see these decks very often. Look, there's stellar
cartography! I thought that was deck eleven!" :-)
I've no idea why; just something about the delivery really got me smiling.
There really isn't *that* much else I have to say, really. A few short
points:
--There were several occasions that invited the MST3K treatment. The most
flagrant of those had to be when Beverly's patient...er...corpse suddenly
started having a heartbeat. She quickly acted and his heart *stopped*
beating. "Well, that takes care of that. Damn corpses, trying to come back
to life and make more work for us..." :-) (Another had to be Geordi's crack
about Reg looking pale, however. Er...Geordi, pardon me for asking, but
isn't it a *wee* bit difficult for you to tell?)
--On a very worried note, I saw absolutely no sign here that the events of
"The Inner Light" are being used to influence Picard at all. Granted, he had
a minor part, but it's cause for concern. We need something soon...
--All 3 of the final Yosemite crewmembers are brought back at once. Excuse
me, but I *do* seem to recall the point being made that there was only
bandwidth enough to beam one person around at a time here. What gives?
There, now I've babbled enough. This had a few holes, but on the whole I
enjoyed myself a lot more during this one than I did during "Time's Arrow,
Part II". That may bode well; I hope so.
So, then, those numerical things:
Plot: 8. 'Twas running a 5-6 for all the difficulties, but the sheer
cleverness of the ending saves it a lot.
Plot Handling: 5. Slooooooow; Cliff Bole's done a lot better.
Characterization: 9. This, on the other hand, was a lot more worth
watching, which is nice, since that's my main interest.
TOTAL: 8, rounding up a bit for decent music and terrific FX. "Darmok" it
isn't, but it beats the opener all hollow.
NEXT WEEK:
Troi ages quickly and becomes either domineering, possessed, or both. Pardon
the jumping to conclusions, but I *really* hope this is better than it looks.
Tim Lynch (Harvard-Westlake School, Science Dept.)
BITNET: tlynch@citjulie
INTERNET: tly...@juliet.caltech.edu
UUCP: ...!ucbvax!tlynch%juliet.ca...@hamlet.caltech.edu
"You know, I think this is the first time we've talked outside the
transporter room."
"Well, to be honest, I've always avoided you."
--
Copyright 1992, Timothy W. Lynch. All rights reserved, but feel free to ask...
Jim Winters
Tim> however. Er...Geordi, pardon me for asking, but isn't it a *wee*
Tim> bit difficult for you to tell?)
This happens so much with Geordi that I've come to suspect that they
are doing it on purpose. Geordi is always saying "I see." or "See you
later." or "It looks like..." or else someone is saying these things
to him. I know that's just standard usage, so much so that we usually
don't notice it, but since I noticed it the first few times it seems
like it happens a lot.
Not exactly what you meant, I know, but I wanted to put my $.02. :-)
--
--
Jim Winters ji...@ssd.csd.harris.com
]O See through science part of a backdoor. A door made up of doors...
Vidiot
<WARNING: The following post contains particularly frightening spoilers for
<this week's TNG offering, "Realm of Fear". Those afraid of spoilers should
<either get over their fears or skip over this post.
<flagrant of those had to be when Beverly's patient...er...corpse suddenly
<started having a heartbeat. She quickly acted and his heart *stopped*
<beating. "Well, that takes care of that. Damn corpses, trying to come back
<to life and make more work for us..." :-) (Another had to be Geordi's crack
<about Reg looking pale, however. Er...Geordi, pardon me for asking, but
<isn't it a *wee* bit difficult for you to tell?)
By being a little pale, wouldn't it show up as a temperature variation?
Therefore Geordi could see it.
<--All 3 of the final Yosemite crewmembers are brought back at once. Excuse
<me, but I *do* seem to recall the point being made that there was only
<bandwidth enough to beam one person around at a time here. What gives?
The bandwidth was to transport to the other ship. They didn't transport
anywhere. It was a local disassembly.
Tim, I'm surprised that you missed that point.
--
harvard\ spool.cs.wisc.edu!astroatc!vidiot!brown
Vidiot ucbvax!uwvax..........!astroatc!vidiot!brown
rutgers/ INTERNET:vidiot!brown%astroa...@spool.cs.wisc.edu
br...@wi.extrel.com
David Wright
this week's TNG offering, "Realm of Fear". Those afraid of spoilers should
either get over their fears or skip over this post.
|
|"...I get a certain feeling. I guess you could call it...*mortal terror*.
|<<thud>>"
|
|and "I just don't get to see these decks very often. Look, there's stellar
|cartography! I thought that was deck eleven!" :-)
|
|I've no idea why; just something about the delivery really got me smiling.
I think it points out a falure of TNG: that the whole set up seems to
big, too complicated, for human beings to endure without stress,
fustrations, and so forth. TOS had McCoy, TNG is all too user
friendly. You don't hear anyone swearing with fustration, or getting
stressed out, unless of course it is some life or death situation. And
--
|^^^^^^| _______________________________________________________
| | |"There is nothing in the marginal conditions that |
| | | distinguish a mountain from a mole hill" |
| (o)(o) O Kenneth Boulding |
@ _) o|_____________________________________________________|
| ____\ o o
| /
/ \ All comments are mine---(David Wright)
Sam Drake
>this week's TNG offering, "Realm of Fear". Those afraid of spoilers should
>either get over their fears or skip over this post.
>Much better. Not top-drawer, but much more enjoyable.
>flagrant of those had to be when Beverly's patient...er...corpse suddenly
>started having a heartbeat.
Funny you should mention it ... the Friday PM showing of MST3K was, in fact,
some awful piece (no!) involving corpses waking up in the graveyard. As it
turns out, I watched the MST3K, then immediately watches Realm of Fear.
I almost fell over laughing when TNG turned into MST right in front of
my eyes.
Sam Drake / IBM Almaden Research Center
Internet: dr...@almaden.ibm.com BITNET: DRAKE at ALMADEN
Thorongil
I have a question as to the timeline in Realm of Fear. On the other
ship, the one in the plasma stream, what was the occurences of events?
For example, they beam the plasma out, it explodes when they try to scan it.
So they put the four crew members in the transport and lose them in the
pattern buffer. What killed everyone else on the ship? The explosion
of the plasma? How then did the four get in the teleport chamber? If the
plasma explosion only infected the four, then what killed everyone else?
___ ____
/__) / ^ __| ^ |\ /| ______________________________
/ . \_/ . /-\(__|/-\| V | (__ pa...@erc.msstate.edu
_______________________________________)
Engineering Research Center For Computational Field Simulation
Tom Frauenhofer
>this week's TNG offering, "Realm of Fear". Those afraid of spoilers should
>either get over their fears or skip over this post.
couple of points:
>First of all, I do have a minor problem with the plausibility of the whole
>setup. Let's see: sensors can't penetrate the plasma stream well enough to
>even check for life signs, yet somehow the Enterprise can *confidently*
>manipulate the Yosemite's transporter system well enough to link it to the
>Enterprise's own? Reg had a point; I wouldn't have trusted that linkup to
>speak my weight. Along similar lines, if they had computer control good
>enough to engage the Yosemite's transporters, why couldn't they just power up
>the engines and get it out of the stream by itself, *then* beam over safely?
>("Because then there wouldn't be a story; c'mon, Tim." "Shh.")
I had no problem with not detecting life forms. Perhaps they didn't
have the darn sensor set to look for life forms. And if they said
that the engines were still working I didn't hear.
The biggest problem I had was that four people went into the
transporter (Riker, Worf, Geordi, and Barclay) and only Barclay was
(1) infected and (2) the only one to notice the "worms". And if he
claims to have seen something during the beaming why couldn't they
either try beaming someone else to check or build a probe to monitor
what happens during transport? They still could have had a story,
maybe a better one, that's arguable.
>--All 3 of the final Yosemite crewmembers are brought back at once. Excuse
>me, but I *do* seem to recall the point being made that there was only
>bandwidth enough to beam one person around at a time here. What gives?
They weren't transporting to the other ship, which is the reason I
thought that they were restricted to one at a time. They weren't
going to the Yosemite for that transport. Seemed reasonable enough to
me.
>TOTAL: 8, rounding up a bit for decent music and terrific FX. "Darmok" it
>isn't, but it beats the opener all hollow.
I agree with this.
>Tim Lynch (Harvard-Westlake School, Science Dept.)
>BITNET: tlynch@citjulie
>INTERNET: tly...@juliet.caltech.edu
>UUCP: ...!ucbvax!tlynch%juliet.ca...@hamlet.caltech.edu
>"You know, I think this is the first time we've talked outside the
>transporter room."
>"Well, to be honest, I've always avoided you."
>--
>Copyright 1992, Timothy W. Lynch. All rights reserved, but feel free to ask...
--
Thomas V. Frauenhofer, WA2YYW
t...@cci.com, ...!uunet!uupsi!cci632!tvf, t...@cs.rit.edu
Mandlebratwurst: The Meal that Eats Itself!
I have a cunning plan...
is this enough room?
>
>I had no problem with not detecting life forms. Perhaps they didn't
>have the darn sensor set to look for life forms. And if they said
>that the engines were still working I didn't hear.
>
>The biggest problem I had was that four people went into the
>transporter (Riker, Worf, Geordi, and Barclay) and only Barclay was
>(1) infected and (2) the only one to notice the "worms". And if he
>claims to have seen something during the beaming why couldn't they
>either try beaming someone else to check or build a probe to monitor
>what happens during transport? They still could have had a story,
>maybe a better one, that's arguable.
I believe that the only reason Barclay was affected is that he was the
only person who went through the transporter when there was that fluctuation
in the transporter beam. If you remember, just before one of the other
members of the away team beams over, O'Brian tells him to hold a moment
because of a fluctuation. Then he beams him over. The rest of the away
team have no problem.
Also in both instances of transporting, Barclay is the *last* person to
transport over. This might not make much sense :-) but is it possible
that the transporter beam became unstable during the transportations
and that Barclay was affected because he was the last to go through?
just an idea.:-)
ROBERT HAMI BALLANTINE
Remember the episode where Data was on trial to determine if
he was a life force. A conversation between Data and Picard
revealed that Geordi's vision is highly superior to a normal
human's vision. I would then assume that he could tell if
someone is pale just as he can differentiate between the colors
on them damn computer control panels. :-]
Rob
rhba...@eos.ncsu.edu
Forgive me for my ignorance, but, who is Timothy Lynch?
Lipton Ann Meredith
>
>
>|> Tim> (Another had to be Geordi's crack about Reg looking pale,
>|> Tim> however. Er...Geordi, pardon me for asking, but isn't it a *wee*
>|> Tim> bit difficult for you to tell?)
>|>
>|> This happens so much with Geordi that I've come to suspect that they
>|> are doing it on purpose. Geordi is always saying "I see." or "See you
>|> later." or "It looks like..." or else someone is saying these things
>|> to him. I know that's just standard usage, so much so that we usually
>|> don't notice it, but since I noticed it the first few times it seems
>|> like it happens a lot.
>|>
>
>Remember the episode where Data was on trial to determine if
>he was a life force. A conversation between Data and Picard
>revealed that Geordi's vision is highly superior to a normal
>human's vision. I would then assume that he could tell if
>someone is pale just as he can differentiate between the colors
>on them damn computer control panels. :-]
>
>Rob
And he might not have to see paleness in terms of colour -- he might just
see a lack of blood flow or a lack of heat or something, and call it "pale".
Firestar
--
I don't bite, you know. | Find me and turn thy | It is better to have loved
Unless it's called for. | back on heaven. | and lost than to have your
-- Audrey Hepburn, Charade | -- R. W. Emerson | finger caught in a blender.
*******************************************************************************
bar...@wkuvx1.bitnet
>>|> are doing it on purpose. Geordi is always saying "I see." or "See you
>>|> later." or "It looks like..." or else someone is saying these things
>>|> to him. I know that's just standard usage, so much so that we usually
>>|> don't notice it, but since I noticed it the first few times it seems
>>|> like it happens a lot.
This reminds me of one time when a blind friend of mine got up to make
opening announcements at church and said, "It's good to see everyone
here tonight." :+)
************************************************************************
Jeff Barnes "Mike, if my father were alive today, you
Western Kentucky University know what he'd say?"
Bar...@WKUVX1.BITNET "'Help, help, get me out of this coffin'?"
The few, the proud, the LNH! -SPIDER-MAN 2099 #1
My opinions are not necessarily those of WKU, but they should be! :+)
************************************************************************
Ted Beers
dr...@drake.almaden.ibm.com (Sam Drake) writes:
>> --There were several occasions that invited the MST3K treatment. The most
>> flagrant of those had to be when Beverly's patient...er...corpse suddenly
>> started having a heartbeat.
> Funny you should mention it ... the Friday PM showing of MST3K was, in fact,
> some awful piece (no!) involving corpses waking up in the graveyard. As it
> turns out, I watched the MST3K, then immediately watches Realm of Fear.
> I almost fell over laughing when TNG turned into MST right in front of
> my eyes.
I give up! Please tell me what "MST3K" or "MST" stands for.
Ted Beers
Carlos A. Pero
>In article <1992Oct5.1...@cci632.cci.com>, t...@cci632.cci.com (Tom Frauenhofer) writes...
>>In article <1aldh0...@gap.caltech.edu> tly...@cco.caltech.edu (Timothy W. Lynch) writes:
>>>SPOILER
>is this enough room?
[stuff deleted]>>
>>
>>The biggest problem I had was that four people went into the
>>transporter (Riker, Worf, Geordi, and Barclay) and only Barclay was
>>(1) infected and (2) the only one to notice the "worms". And if he
>>claims to have seen something during the beaming why couldn't they
>>either try beaming someone else to check or build a probe to monitor
>>what happens during transport? They still could have had a story,
>>maybe a better one, that's arguable.
>I believe that the only reason Barclay was affected is that he was the
>only person who went through the transporter when there was that fluctuation
>in the transporter beam. If you remember, just before one of the other
>members of the away team beams over, O'Brian tells him to hold a moment
>because of a fluctuation. Then he beams him over. The rest of the away
>team have no problem.
This is true. There was no fluctuation on Barclay's way over to the
other ship, but there was a fluctuation on the way back to the Big E.
Here is where he saw the worms and one of them touched him.
Later, Barclay asks O'Brien to check the transporter log for fluctuations.
There was one, and O'Brien is able to re-create it. Here, Barclay sees the
worms again and warns the senior staff.
So you see, no one else saw the worms because there was no fluctuation, nor
would there be if they put a monitor or someone else through the transporter.
--
______________________________________________________
\ Carlos A. Pero - University of Illinois at U-C \
\ Email to: cap3...@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu \
\_____________________________________________________\
Charles Lin
>
> Forgive me for my ignorance, but, who is Timothy Lynch?
>
I think he's related to David Lynch.
Seriously though, he's one of those r.a.s.c. gods who post a
review each week on the episodes. First B.A. in astronomy at
Cornell, one of many physics grads at CalTech, as the old
signature says. My guess is that he's probably atop the heap
of reviewers in that if you asked most people who is the
person most closely associated with this group, they would point
to Lynch. Or perhaps Atsushi.
I think more people like his review since he's a little
more positive about Trek than some of the other reviewers
(say, Atsushi, though despite his mostly negative reviews,
they are usually quite informative). Among the other reviewers
I've seen -- Michael Rawdon, Jason Snell, Roger Tang (he's not
reviwed in a while), one or both of the Jose's, wasn't there
also an Uncle Mikey review? Also there was the Shabang
spoilerless reviews, which have also disappeared.
Eventually folks get tired of the reviewing business.
Tim mentioned that he was going to be awfully busy and
was going to post his reviews late as well as not get as
involved in various debates. Rawdon said a while back that
he was stopping his reviews (if I recall), but he's back.
Now who am I? Hmmm, you'll have to read rec.sport.tennis.
--
Charles Lin
cl...@eng.umd.edu
an...@fatboy.manassas.ibm.com
MST3K = Mystery Science Theatre 3000
--
Brenda J. Molina
---------------------------------------------------
ANNIE at MANVMD1 or an...@whoville.manassas.ibm.com
---------------------------------------------------
"What do I have to do to convince you people that I'm human?"
"Die."
Matthew Gertz
>
>Forgive me for my ignorance, but, who is Timothy Lynch?
We made him up. Various folk on the net contribute to the "Timothy Lynch"
persona (surely you didn't think that one person *alone* could generate all
those posts and synopses? And the idea of having a cat named Pandora?
C'mon...).
:-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) x 1000...
--
Matt Gertz, mwge...@cs.cmu.edu
Dept. of ECE, The Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University.
Michael Rawdon
>In article <1992Oct5.1...@ncsu.edu>, rhba...@eos.ncsu.edu writes:
>> Forgive me for my ignorance, but, who is Timothy Lynch?
> Seriously though, he's one of those r.a.s.c. gods who post a
>review each week on the episodes. First B.A. in astronomy at
>Cornell, one of many physics grads at CalTech, as the old
>signature says. My guess is that he's probably atop the heap
>of reviewers in that if you asked most people who is the
>person most closely associated with this group, they would point
>to Lynch. Or perhaps Atsushi.
Gee, how quickly they forget. :-)
> I think more people like his review since he's a little
>more positive about Trek than some of the other reviewers
>(say, Atsushi, though despite his mostly negative reviews,
>they are usually quite informative). Among the other reviewers
>I've seen -- Michael Rawdon, Jason Snell, Roger Tang (he's not
>reviwed in a while), one or both of the Jose's, wasn't there
>also an Uncle Mikey review? Also there was the Shabang
>spoilerless reviews, which have also disappeared.
Tim Lynch and Mike Shappe, as I understand it, did the first regular TNG
reviews on r.a.s. I think that Roger Tang and I came next (I'm not sure
in what order), though Shabang may have popped up before us. (My first
review was of "The Best Of Both Worlds". I think Roger must have done one
before me, since I think he did one for "Hollow Pursuits".)
At any rate, I think that I can reasonably claim credit for introducing
"negativity" (more accurately, a distaste for TNG, a willingness to say so
in no uncertain or apologetic terms, and an unwillingness to go away when
told :-) into rec.arts.startrek. (When I first showed up here, the only
serious dissention I saw about TNG was about Wesley.)
> Eventually folks get tired of the reviewing business.
>Tim mentioned that he was going to be awfully busy and
>was going to post his reviews late as well as not get as
>involved in various debates. Rawdon said a while back that
>he was stopping his reviews (if I recall), but he's back.
Yup. :-) I got tired of the reviewing biz, tired of the fourth season, and
too busy (among other things) to devote the time regularly to writing
reviews in something resembling a timely manner. But, things seem more
conducive this season to reviewing, so I'm back, and back discussing some
things, too!
(And, I may have some Trek fanfic to post sometime in the near future...
though as you might guess, it's not TNG. :-)
--
Michael Rawdon raw...@colby.cs.wisc.edu
University of Wisconsin Computer Sciences Department, Madison, WI
"Can this world not do better than you for a champion?"
"Probably. I just do the best I can."
- The Brigadier
Doctor Who, "Battlefield"
[Probably misquoted]
CXMP000
>I have a question as to the timeline in Realm of Fear. On the other
>ship, the one in the plasma stream, what was the occurences of events?
>So they put the four crew members in the transport and lose them in the
>pattern buffer. What killed everyone else on the ship? The explosion
>of the plasma? How then did the four get in the teleport chamber? If the
>plasma explosion only infected the four, then what killed everyone else?
The ship had a total of five crewmembers, four in stasis, one dead.
We don't know how the four crewmembers became infected. We do know that
the explosion must have occured while they were in stasis because the
four crewmembers did not appear burned. The dead crewmember must have
been the one operating the transporter. He never had a chance to
retrieve them. (It isn't clear why the explosion happened just then
either.)
What puzzled me was the fact that the first crewmember to be removed
from stasis didn't seem the least bit disorientated by the fact that
he was "somehow" on a different ship. I guess the officier in question
was just putting the lives of his fellow crewmembers ahead of what
would have been his understandable concerns.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
! Address as above or use
Martin Phipps ! LO...@hep.physics.mcgill.ca or simply
! MUHEP::LOULA if you're on a VAX
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Terminal freeze, duplicate posts, lost posts and email-come-posts,
these are a few of my least favorite things.
Robert A Seace
>In article <1992Oct5.1...@ncsu.edu> rhba...@eos.ncsu.edu writes:
>>
>>Forgive me for my ignorance, but, who is Timothy Lynch?
>
>We made him up. Various folk on the net contribute to the "Timothy Lynch"
>persona (surely you didn't think that one person *alone* could generate all
>those posts and synopses? And the idea of having a cat named Pandora?
>C'mon...).
Yep. He's sort of like the Usenet Oracle, except for the r.a.s.*
groups...
>:-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) x 1000...
(-; (-; (-; (-; (-; (-; (-; (-; (-; ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-)
||======================================================================||
|| Robert A. Seace || Senior at UNH || E-mail: r...@kepler.unh.edu ||
|| AKA: Agrajag || CS major || ||
||======================================================================||
"Life is like a grapefruit." - So Long, and Thanks For All the Fish
Mark Lindsay
tly...@juliet.caltech.edu (Tim Lynch) says:
|Two lines in particular from Barclay really worked for me, incidentally:
|"...I get a certain feeling. I guess you could call it...*mortal terror*.
|<<thud>>"
I enjoyed that one myself, but on to other stuff.
|There really isn't *that* much else I have to say, really. A few short
|points:
|(Another had to be Geordi's crack
|about Reg looking pale, however. Er...Geordi, pardon me for asking, but
|isn't it a *wee* bit difficult for you to tell?)
Remember "Up the Long Ladder"? Geordi talks about seeing variations
in eye dialation, heart and skin. He's probably learned how to do
this.
One of the points I liked was when Troi relieved Reg. Nice to see her
using some of that authority. She should do it more often.
We saw this episode a few hours after the downlink at the Nimoy visit
to Georgia (someone at the con decided to tape it and show everyone
there). One of the people I went with brought the house down when
Barclay was all blue in engineering. She said a bit too loudly: "He's
turning into a SMURF!" Boy, was she embarassed when people turned
and cracked up at her.
* SLMR 2.1a * I doubt any God who inflicts pain for his own pleasure.
Timothy W. Lynch
I can't resist the constant clarion call of my name. (Good heavens, maybe I
*am* turning into Peter David. Nah, I haven't automatically responded to
threads with "Sex" or "Nudity" in the title yet. :-) )
raw...@colby.cs.wisc.edu (Michael Rawdon) writes:
>In <1992Oct06.0...@eng.umd.edu> cl...@eng.umd.edu (Charles Lin) writes:
>>In article <1992Oct5.1...@ncsu.edu>, rhba...@eos.ncsu.edu writes:
>>> Forgive me for my ignorance, but, who is Timothy Lynch?
As I said in private, I'm me. Who else? :-)
I'm nobody in particular; just someone who in a weak moment decided to start
writing reviews and has kept at it for the four years since. Any added
"attention" you see paid to my reviews over others is entirely the choice of
those giving it that attention and not due to any special "position" I'm in.
(I am quite gratified and a wee bit amused, however, to note that this thread
has surfaced after I've been all but net.silent.running for two months. :-) )
>> I think he's related to David Lynch.
This keeps being raised. I'll still never tell. ;-)
>> Seriously though, he's one of those r.a.s.c. gods who post a
>>review each week on the episodes. First B.A. in astronomy at
>>Cornell, one of many physics grads at CalTech, as the old
>>signature says.
Actually, it just said I was a grad student, and it quite properly spelt
Caltech without the InterCaps. :-) At any rate, it's also old news.
>Tim Lynch and Mike Shappe, as I understand it, did the first regular TNG
>reviews on r.a.s.
Half right. I believe Mike's was the first to arise; certainly, given that
they started about halfway through the first season, they couldn't have had too
much preceding them.
Mine didn't arrive on the scene until "The Outrageous Okona", at the end of
1988. They've just never left. :-)
>I think that Roger Tang and I came next (I'm not sure
>in what order), though Shabang may have popped up before us.
Indeed she did. To the best of my memory, Hack-man and the all-seeing Shabang
followed rather quickly on my heels [rassenfrassen coat-tail riders...:-) ],
then followed by Roger. You weren't until quite a bit later, as you point
out.
>(My first
>review was of "The Best Of Both Worlds". I think Roger must have done one
>before me, since I think he did one for "Hollow Pursuits".)
Quite a bit; I recall him being around at least sporadically for most of the
third season. And I'd like to go on record as strongly regretting his absence;
even if I don't agree, his perspective is always decidedly enlightening.
>At any rate, I think that I can reasonably claim credit for introducing
>"negativity" (more accurately, a distaste for TNG, a willingness to say so
>in no uncertain or apologetic terms, and an unwillingness to go away when
>told :-) into rec.arts.startrek.
Assuming "credit" is really the word you want to use :-), I would differ only
slightly. Points made slamming individual *episodes* of TNG were around long
before you were and will probably be around long since after. One need only
to recall my old review of "The Royale" to check that. (Incidentally, if the
only serious dissension you saw was about Wes at that point, you weren't paying
attention; the Troi-bashing contingent has been around just as long.)
I believe you could reasonably be called the first person to take pride in a
consistently negative outlook who *stayed around*, however. What the net
effect of this has been is not something I'll comment on, aside from saying
it's had its share of both benefits and drawbacks, like most things.
>> Eventually folks get tired of the reviewing business.
>>Tim mentioned that he was going to be awfully busy and
>>was going to post his reviews late as well as not get as
>>involved in various debates.
Aye. It's not so much getting tired of the reviewing business as it is a
complete and utter lack of spare time. This week will be an exception; thanks
to me and my students having Yom Kippur off tomorrow, my review of "Man of
the People" will be around shortly, even in time to make Joseph Reiss's
"S.O.S" summary.
And that's the way it is...:-)
Tim Lynch (Harvard-Westlake School, Science Dept.)
BITNET: tlynch@citjuliet
INTERNET: tly...@juliet.caltech.edu
UUCP: ...!ucbvax!tlynch%juliet.ca...@hamlet.caltech.edu
"Science is the only self-correcting human institution, but it also is a
process that progresses only by showing itself to be wrong."
--Allan Sandage
Mark Lindsay
mwge...@cs.cmu.edu (Matthew Gertz) says:
|In article <1992Oct5.1...@ncsu.edu> rhba...@eos.ncsu.edu writes:
|>
|>Forgive me for my ignorance, but, who is Timothy Lynch?
|We made him up. Various folk on the net contribute to the "Timothy Lynch"
|persona (surely you didn't think that one person *alone* could generate all
|those posts and synopses? And the idea of having a cat named Pandora?
|C'mon...).
Okay, I admit it, I write the Act II synopsis each week. :-)
Tom Thatcher
review of 'Realm of Fear' because I didn't check the net before my host
server deleted it. Where can I get it?\\
Thanks
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
^ Q: "What must I do to convince you people?" ^ Tom Thatcher
^ WORF: "Die." ^ University of Rochester
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Tom Frauenhofer
If I had seen something in the transporter, and I could repeat it by
having O'Brien re-create what happened, wouldn't a more logical flow be:
Barclay: I am seeing something in the transporter, Chief.
O'Brien: Let me have a look, sir. I'll set up the transporter so all
you have to do is just start it up, send me over, pull me
back.
Barclay: I-I don't know
O'Brien: (Smiling) Then I'll have it do it automatically, you just
watch.
(or)
O'Brien: We'll just transport a camcorder to the ship and back and
videotape the buggers.
My point was that it seemed to me that there were better approaches to
handling the situation than were presented. Maybe the Barclay
character was paranoid, but he's also a member of the crew, and if
they believed him enough to let him summon all the chief officers of
the crew then they would have also tried to reproduce the experiment.
If not O'Brien, the Geordi or Data would have thought of it, perhaps
in consultation with O'Brien.
And it seems to me that whenever there's a transporter problem all
they do is tear it apart, put it back together, and run computer
diagnostics on it (Car Trek: Adventures of Car Junkies in the 24th
Century!). I have a friend who used to run his own garage complain
that that's what most of the car dealers do these days. He'll get an
estimate based on their computer analysis, he'll ask them "Did you
check out if that $150 part is broken?", they'll come back with "The
computer sez..." ( :-) ) Did Gene Roddenberry think that we'd breed
out greedy businessmen but keep the car mechanics? ( :-) )
>--
>______________________________________________________
> \ Carlos A. Pero - University of Illinois at U-C \
> \ Email to: cap3...@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu \
> \_____________________________________________________\
--
Alan_McNeely
>This happens so much with Geordi that I've come to suspect that they
>are doing it on purpose. Geordi is always saying "I see." or "See you
>later." or "It looks like..." or else someone is saying these things
>to him. I know that's just standard usage, so much so that we usually
>don't notice it, but since I noticed it the first few times it seems
>like it happens a lot.
Yep, this is standard usage, even in the 20th Century. Blind persons (who
I spend a lot of time with) use these expressions all the time, because:
"I see" = "I Understand"
"See you later" = "Goodbye, looking foward to being with you again"
"It looks like" = "The facts suggest that"
You notice it a lot because everybody uses these expressions all the time,
whether they can see or not! Blind people don't think of the "vision" aspect
of these expressions any more than you do when you use them. I doubt writers
are doing it on purpose.
Alan
P.S. Wow, I've "lurked" in this group for three years. What an odd thing
to finally post about!
Scott Forbes
>mwge...@cs.cmu.edu (Matthew Gertz) writes:
>>rhba...@eos.ncsu.edu writes:
>>>Forgive me for my ignorance, but, who is Timothy Lynch?
>>
>>We made him up. Various folk on the net contribute to the "Timothy Lynch"
>>persona (surely you didn't think that one person *alone* could generate all
>>those posts and synopses? And the idea of having a cat named Pandora?
>>C'mon...).
>
>Yep. He's sort of like the Usenet Oracle, except for the r.a.s.* groups...
This gets better and better. Actually Tim Lynch *is* the Usenet Oracle
(think about it -- have you ever seen the two of them together?), and
Tim's wife Lisa is... well...
:-P :-P :-P :-P :-P :-P :-P :-P :-P :-P :-P :-P :-P :-P :-P
Charles Lin
> In <1992Oct06.0...@eng.umd.edu> cl...@eng.umd.edu (Charles Lin) writes:
> >In article <1992Oct5.1...@ncsu.edu>, rhba...@eos.ncsu.edu writes:
> >> Forgive me for my ignorance, but, who is Timothy Lynch?
> > I think he's related to David Lynch.
>
> > Seriously though, he's one of those r.a.s.c. gods who post a
> >review each week on the episodes. First B.A. in astronomy at
> >Cornell, one of many physics grads at CalTech, as the old
> >signature says. My guess is that he's probably atop the heap
> >of reviewers in that if you asked most people who is the
> >person most closely associated with this group, they would point
> >to Lynch. Or perhaps Atsushi.
>
> Gee, how quickly they forget. :-)
>
Hey, I didn't forget. You just weren't posting for a while.
Maybe we should followup on who Michael Rawdon is :).
Lessee, all I recall about you is that you were at Tulane, and
now you're at Wisconsin, and a CS major. When I first read
this group (and now it's terribly sporadic) you and Tim seemed
to be the one at odds. There was one other person who
I can't recall that was out of Cornell (not Schappe) who
used to respond to the reviews but not post a review himself.
I have no idea how you and Tim were able to spend time
in this group and in alt.sex and have free time Those two groups
have to have the heaviest posting volume.
Oh yes, it was "nn", right? Let's you skip through lots
of articles.
Anyway, I'm straying from my usual newsgroups, so I'll head
back.
--
Charles Lin
cl...@eng.umd.edu
Richard Carlson
> >I believe that the only reason Barclay was affected is that he was the
> >only person who went through the transporter when there was that fluctuation
> >in the transporter beam. If you remember, just before one of the other
> >members of the away team beams over, O'Brian tells him to hold a moment
> >because of a fluctuation. Then he beams him over. The rest of the away
> >team have no problem.
>
> This is true. There was no fluctuation on Barclay's way over to the
> other ship, but there was a fluctuation on the way back to the Big E.
> Here is where he saw the worms and one of them touched him.
I think there was a minor mistake in the dialog which may contribute to
the confusion on this point: I remember Barclay telling O'Brian that
he's checked the transporter logs, and there was an ionic fluctuation
(or whatever) when he was beaming *over* to the science ship. Nope, it
was when he was beaming back. But in any case, that fluctuation is
clearly what makes the fish visible, and only happens to Barclay.
-- Richard
Roger Tang
>In article <1992Oct5.1...@ncsu.edu>, rhba...@eos.ncsu.edu writes:
>> Forgive me for my ignorance, but, who is Timothy Lynch?
Mid-level net.deity, who is NOT, repeat, NOT, the net.oracle.
>Spoilers
> I think he's related to David Lynch.
That, too.
>
> I think more people like his review since he's a little
>more positive about Trek than some of the other reviewers
>(say, Atsushi, though despite his mostly negative reviews,
>they are usually quite informative). Among the other reviewers
>I've seen -- Michael Rawdon, Jason Snell, Roger Tang (he's not
>reviwed in a while),
Nice to be remembered....
> Eventually folks get tired of the reviewing business.
>Tim mentioned that he was going to be awfully busy and
Hmmm.....there's is a thing called getting a life....(as in
off pursuing young starlets, not so young starlets and....)
--
Roger Tang, gwan...@u.washington.edu
Producer Emeritus, Asian Theatre at the UW
Roger Tang
>Tim Lynch and Mike Shappe, as I understand it, did the first regular TNG
>reviews on r.a.s. I think that Roger Tang and I came next (I'm not sure
>in what order), though Shabang may have popped up before us. (My first
>review was of "The Best Of Both Worlds". I think Roger must have done one
>before me, since I think he did one for "Hollow Pursuits".)
I recall doing one for MEASURE OF A MAN, fershure....
>(And, I may have some Trek fanfic to post sometime in the near future...
>though as you might guess, it's not TNG. :-)
Oh, come now! Look at it as a challenge to your writing skills to
take these characters and make them WORK!