Star Trek TNG - 11001001

Originally aired: February 1st 1988


In case anyone wants some useless trivia about this one before we start, the title appears to be the decimal number 201, C9 in hex or the letter É when converted back to Unicode characters.

The Enterprise arrives at a Starbase

The opening of these is usually the slowest moving plot part so I'll spend less time on it this time around. The Enterprise arrives at a Starbase for maintenance and upgrades. Especially to the holodeck due to the problems they've had with it. If only you knew, Picard. If only. Geordi's still at the helm. That's weird. It doesn't feel right unless he's the head of Engineering. A maintenance crew come aboard by airlock. It makes sense you'd use them when docked, but I somehow still thought that people would beam on and off the ship. They do love that transporter. But I guess they have to be concious of energy wastage. Just cos you have a matter / antimatter reactor is no reason to piss all that energy away.

01 and 10. Or was it 10 and 01? Whatever.

The maintenance crew include two purple aliens called Bynars who - based on their expressions - seem to be sharing a private joke. The Commander in charge of the crew explains that they are neither male nor female, but a unified pair who are always together. He introduces them as 01 and 10. Really? That would leave room for 4 names in Bynar society. When you take into account that they're always in pairs, you could still only name a handful of Bynar pairs uniquely. I think the writers pushed the binary angle too hard here, or perhaps the Bynars simply dumbed down their real name conventions for the solitary human mind to deal with.


The Bynars seem to be happy to work on the Enterprise, having just upgraded another ship's computers. Pushing the paired entity thing further, they finish each other's sentences. What I do like though, its in order to help the sense of them being alien is the clever casting trick. They apparently cast women to play the Bynars and you can see that in their movements. But they pitch-altered their voices down to sound male, and their speech mannerisms are very male. Helps sell them as non-human despite them being humans in makeup. They get annoyed that they only have 48 hours to work on the ship but agree to the time limit a little too quickly.


Picard and Riker are planning to stay on board, but it seems that the rest of the crew may be headed to the the Starbase for R&R. After leaving the Bynars Picard expositions for the viewer that the Bynars have all become interdependent with the master computer on their homeworld, to the point that their language and thought patterns have become close to binary machine code. That's an interesting idea and one that has some small parallels with our society. 


The Bynars removed the barriers between themselves and their technology. We haven't but they still slowly erode away. Today, 23 years after this episode aired, we live in a world where nearly everyone carries a pocket computer and thinks of it as just a phone. Those same devices are quite often responsible for remembering things for us - appointments, birthdays, shopping lists, contact details etc. In a small way, we have placed part of our minds outside our bodies in these devices. There are still hard barriers between our brains and technology but our minds already exist outside our skulls.


As Riker and Picard arrive on the Bridge, Wesley is there watching four Bynars work. Apparently, just because they're docked at Starbase it's okay to leave an acting-officer with no actual commission to watch four aliens who are computer experts as they work on the ship's primary systems. This lapse in security can't possible go wrong somehow, can it? All the same, Riker does seem to pick up on shifty behaviour from them as Wes and he talk to them. Wes points out quite sensibly that a whole new species so different to humanity may just behave differently and have different behavioural mannerism, but Riker isn't convinced. He asks Wes to stay on the Bridge and watch the Bynars.


Riker does get annoyed when power turns off in his section, despite the perfectly rational explanation the compute gives him about shutting down sections of the computer itself for the upgrade. He's acting paranoid, which in TV means he's almost certainly right to be worried. In the meantime, he chats with the security officers as they head off to play some future sport, and then visits Geordi and Data as Data practices painting, trying to see if an android can be creative. Riker tells them to keep notes as some academic may be interested in future. After all, who wouldn't be interested in a blind man teaching an android to paint?

The holo-version of the Bourbon St. Bar is
 probably a lot cleaner than the real one.

Riker's tour takes him to Doctor Crusher. She's packing her medical notes to go meet some famous cybernetics medical researcher, hoping to impress him with her research. She geeks out a bit and leaves him. So he wanders back to the Bynars working at the holodeck. They tell him that they've patched the previous glitch and enhanced the system a little. And finally the plot can get moving. Riker decides to spend a little time testing the new holodeck. He chooses a Jazz club in New Orleans, 1958. The doors open and there's a damn convincing set on a sound stage looking just like a Jazz club from the time. The holodeck gives him a band and an audience, which he trims down to a single chick in a dress.


Where it seems obvious to me that the Bynars are messing with him, or that the Bynars have really enhanced the computer a shitload, is that he doesn't really order any of this out loud from the computer like they usually do. Instead of speaking clear, more or less unambiguous orders to the computer, he sort of thinks out loud and the holodeck gives him what he wants. That should have been a blatant clue to him that it was probably the Bynars who were interpreting for him and the holodeck wasn't really as good as advertised. As he walks in to the bar, the Bynars go back to tinkering with the system. Riker starts chatting up the virutal hotty and already she seems like she's been written to appeal specifically to him. That ought to have been warning sign number 2. Poor deluded Will, letting little Will do all his thinking.


On the Bridge, Wes asks some questions of the maintenance Commander and the Bynars. They explain that the noise they make is their language as they share information at high speed. They discuss that mixing their society with computers so thoroughly has plenty of advantages and a few disadvantages. Picard stops by and decides to join Riker on the holodeck.

Minuet, Riker's holo-floozy.

Back down there, Riker is playing Jazz for his audience of one. He's obviously really liking the new holodeck system. I don't know if Johnathan Frakes can actually play the trombone but he sells it really well. It did look like he was playing the music we hear. Riker's really impressed by the realism of the holodeck charactersm and I have to admit he's right. Most Trek holodeck situations have hyper-real main characters and cardboard cut-out background characters. Even the nameless Jazz musicians here behave like proper people. The Bynars know how to program a holodeck all right. Riker agrees to a dance with his holo-chick before he leaves. She explains that she's learning to dance with him on-the-fly by anticipating his lead. I always find it amusing when holodeck characters are aware of their nature. It usually makes for better stories that when they don't know and discover what they really are. But maybe I'm biased due to the atrocity that was Voyager's Fairhaven.


Riker gets so caught up in the simulation while dancing with Minuet. I always thought that the Starfleet crews we see must be the most driven and dedicated of their society as the average human of the future would pretty much live in their holodecks if they could. If that were true, then with Bynars programming holodecks, perhaps none of humanity would ever make out the door. As if to prove that, Picard arrives to get sucked into the program too. Straight away he's impressed by the simulation too. He apologises for intruding and starts to leave but Riker invites him to stay. Minuet hooks Picard straight away by greeting him in French and briefly discussing Paris with him. She drags both the boys back to the bar for a drink, and proceeds to trap him in the conversation as quickly as possible.


Picard can't help but indulge in some exposition though. He does so love to do that. He points out that the holodeck characters are never as intriguing as Minuet, especially since she's so adaptive to new people. She points out that she simply heard his name and looked up how to speak French. It seems simple to me - given her self awareness of her holographic nature, why wouldn't she be able to use the computer to adapt? Why wouldn't the entire knowledge base of the ship be at her command?


Outside the holodeck, Wesley notifies Geordi and Data of possible problems with antimatter containment in Engineering. They head there to sort it out, telling Wes not to notify the Captain or Riker until they check it out. I guess it might make sense not to bother them based on the worries of an acting Ensign, but on the other hand - an antimatter containment failure while docked at Starbase? Could kill millions. I'd have probably told him straight away myself. The boys get to Engineering to see that there's no one there and they are getting strange reading from containment systems as it appears to be failing. Data goes to Red Alert and Geordi tries to call the Captain. I guess policy in  these cases is an emergency undocking and moving off from the Starbase as fast as possible. They can't contact the Captain and can't save the containment field. The computer tells them they have a little over four minutes until failure - and it does so in a strange male voice I might add. I know they have a potential explosion to worry about, but has no-one thought that the computer is acting odd at all?


Data orders an automated undocking from the Starbase as well as ordering all hands to abandon ship. Upon hearing the order, people in the corridors do what humanity has always done during evacuations and head off in different directions - presumably to get their stuff before fleeing the danger. The crew and their familes all head for shuttles, transporters and airlocks to get off the ship. For the most part they're all pretty organised. On the Starbase the ship's officers watch the evacuation happen as Data and Geordi are on the Bridge plotting the automated departure course before evacuating. They query the location of Riker and Picard and the computer lies to them saying that all decks are empty. That's clearly a lie as Geordi and Data are aboard, but whatever. Data seems surprised that Picard wasn't last to leave but they have to go as they have 40 seconds. Can the ship even undock in 40 seconds? I bet it could get clear of the station in that time, but first it would have to undock and turn around. The guys take a turbolift to get to the transporters. Really? With only 40 seconds left? Why wouldn't they just request a beam out from the Starbase transporters? Data says that he hopes they're the last off - the computer just told you that you were. Don't you trust it Data? :)


Upon arrival on the Starbase, they discover that Picard and Riker aren't aboard and also receive notification that the Enterprise's antimatter containment is regenerating miraculously. But the Enterprise is already almost clear of it's dock. By the way? It's been 40 seconds already. Maybe that was the deadline until automated undocking and not until the explosion. The ship reverses out of the Starbase, wheels around and jumps to warp speed.


Back on the holodeck, Picard and Riker are still chatting to Minuet and apparently have heard nothing about the Red Alert. Picard can't help but marvel how intuitive Minuet is. He thinks it must be because she's programmed to take in far more of the data humans are constantly broadcasting in body language, tone of voice, etc, etc. Yes, Picard. That's a large part of what intuition and empathy is. Riker thinks that she's real enough to fall in love with and Picard, the old French romantic that he is, says that love always starts that way - with the illusion more real than the woman herself. I guess Jean Luc's got a bit of a cynical side. As Minuet and Riker get a little more physical with each other, Picard decide to leave but Minuet moves to stop him. Riker tries to get him to stay as well, but he says that this is Riker's R&R, not his. Mineut gets a little more desperate to stop him leaving and even these two can't help but realise she's up to something.


Picard calls for the exit and he and Riker leave to see the Red Alerts alarms blaring and can't get a response from the Bridge. They are told that the ship has been evacuated and why by the computer. They discover that they are at high warp speed headed for the Bynar homeworld. Wondering why the Bynars have stolen the ship, they turn to Minuet for answers who admits she's in on the plan. She says that they saw Riker's response to her and reprogrammed her to keep him there. Picard asks about him and she says that he was just luck.

PLOT HOLE ALERT!!!
But we'll come back to that.

She suddenly clams up, claiming she's not programmed to tell them any more. So they hit the road and head for the Bridge. Back on the Starbase, the senior crew plan how to catch up to the Enterprise, and only now realise that the Bynars didn't evacuate with them. These people are not ace detectives. Data correctly intuits that the Enterprise is headed for Bynus and requests sending a ship there to intercept the Enterprise.


On the Enterprise, Picard and Riker hit the armoury and gear up. Apparently, all he has to say to get in is "Picard, access". Any teenager with a PADD could fake that. Where's the security codes that they always use? It turns out that when gearing up to retake the ship, Riker and Picard only took a hand phaser each. Weak sauce. Why not phaser rifles? Some kind of stun grenades or something? Lame. Picard wants to go the Engineering and verify antimatter containment and start the self destruct timer. They exposition that they have to start the timer but it's fixed for 5 minutes. That gives them time to get to the bridge, regain control and turn off the timer, but it'll be tight. I'm sure that in future we get to see command staff specify the timer on the self-destruct. Maybe that feature was added because of the events of this episode. The timer gets going so Picard and Riker head off. They do take the time to note that apparently the ship's computer has received and stored a shitload of data.


They find themselves locked out of the bridge, and they decide to beam into the bridge to separate locations so at least one of them will probably get the drop on the Bynars. Back on the Starbase, Data feels guilty for taking R&R since he is capable of serving 24 / 7. As a sapient entity, I think even Data might crack under the strain of working non-stop. Anyway, the point of this scene is apparently that it'll still be 18 hours until one of the ships docked in the station will be ready to pursue the Enterprise.


Picard and Riker beam into the Bridge and find some barely concious Bynars behind Riker. If they had been awake and armed, Riker was toast. And given that they outnumbered Picard 4 to 1, he was probably dead as well. Picard manages to get them to tell him that they require help from Picard. The ship pulls into orbit around Bynus and Picard and Riker shut off the self destruct. Picard scans Bynus and finds that the computer and all related systems - including the population - are shutting down. Picard checks the ship's computer and finds that it's completely full of information - it looks like a core dump from the Bynus main computer. Wondering what they need to do, the guys go back to Minuet.


She tells them a star in the star system went Nova, and the Bynars miscalculated. Hah! What are the odd that the homeworld of the Bynars is a binary star system! We get it writer people! This is a binary race - everything comes in pairs for them. Including stars it seems. Well, up until now anyway. The EM pulse from the Nova was going to take out the main computer. So they dumped the data to the Enterprise and shut down until the pulse had gone. They need it rebooted and the data copied back. But the nova happened early and the plan wasn't in place so the computer is still off and they're dying. And the Enterprise was late arriving at the Starbase. So this race is all dying cos the Enterprise can't stick to schedule. :) Minuet tells them to reboot the master computer and copy the data back. She begs them to help quickly.


So they get back to the Bridge and call the Starbase for help. He asks Data to help them to work out how to get at the data. He suggests that the password would be something easy to guess if they wanted Picard to access it, and it would be in binary. So he tries to get the computer to try all 8 digit binary numbers and it finds the file. But they can't open it. Picard theorises that since Bynars work in pairs he needs to use the adjacent Science Station to access the file simultaneously. That works.


And there's our plot hole. If the Bynar plan required two people to access the data simultaneously, why was Minuet solely programmed to trap Riker? Why did she say that it was pure luck that they got Picard too? I guess that they thought maybe Riker could work both stations himself. It would be awkward but not impossible. Picard gets at the data and initiates the reboot and download. He's amazed at the complexity of their computer. Moments after the reboot the Bynars on the ship awake. They thank Picard for saving them and volunteer to return to Starbase 74 for punishment. Picard inquires why they simply didn't ask for help. They confer, and reply that Starfleet might have said no. Riker points out that they probably would have said yes, but the Bynars reason that the risk was too high to take the risk. 


They explain that they lured Riker to the holodeck to be the backup plan in case they were not concious upon arrival at Bynar.Why they bother going over this with Riker I don't know as Minuet already explained that.


Picard explains that they planet Bynus is safe, the ship is back in Starfleet control and no-one was hurt so he seems to think the situation was resolved satisfactorily. I bet the Bynars will be facing some kind of sanction from the Federation though. Picard takes the conn and lays in a course for the Starbase 74, and the ship sets off. They dock at the Starbase once more and take the crew and civilians back on board. Picard orders a ship-wide systems check and hands the Bynars over to Security so there can be a hearing.

WHY? Why would her face change?
It makes no sense. :(

Finally, Riker heads back to the holodeck to see Minuet. He's shocked when she turns her head and it's not her though. I get that they wanted to hammer home quickly to the viewer that without the Bynar programming, Minuet is just another holodeck character and not at all real. But why would her physical appearance change? That's just weird, even if it is effective visual shorthand for the message they want to convey. As if to further emphasise the point, "Minuet" stares at him blankly as he talks about her since what he's saying presumably falls outside the parameters of her apparently limited programming. If Riker loved her for her mind, he's in trouble because this version of her seems to be a totally unresponsive airhead.


Back on the Bridge, Riker sadly informs Picard that Minuet is gone and he couldn't get her back despite tinkering with the program. Picard concludes that she was part of the Bynar's program. He consoles Riker with the fact that not all relationships can be made to work. True that - I imagine it'd be a strain on the relationship that she can't leave the holodeck and Riker could have switched her on and off at will. :) Riker says she'll be difficult to forget and takes his station. With that, the Enterprise resumes her mission.


Overall, an okay episode. Some nice sci-fi ideas with the Bynars but they were only sort of put out there for consideration and not really explored meaningfully at all. Some bonding between Riker and Picard which was cool - it does help show how well they work together as a command team. Everyone else in the episode got sidelined for those two though, perhaps excepting Data and his brief moment of command and subsequent second guessing of his own command. Sign of things to come I feel - with a large-ish cast, Trek episodes quite often had to focus on a small few characters and sideline the rest. It does work better when the plot focus is not spread too thin though.


Next: Too Short a Season, a rather forgettable episode but not a bad one.