"Demon"
Air Date: May 6, 1998
Star Date: Supplemental
PLEASE NOTE: This file is frozen. I think we've done all we're going to do on it! You're welcome to send addition nits but they will be filed for future reference instead of uploaded.
5/11/98 Update
5/18/98 Update
5/25/98 Update
6/1/98 Update
Desperate for deuterium, Voyager limps to a "demon" planet--acidic atmosphere, high temperatures, all-around-nastiness--where Paris and Kim travel to the surface in a shuttle to mine heavy concentrations of the needed element. When the pair don't return, Janeway lands the ship and a rescue team soon finds Paris and Kim walking around without their environmental suits. Only later--when the real Paris and Kim are located--does the crew realize that the deuterium on this planet is actually part of a biological "silver blood" with memetic qualities. Once in contact with Paris and Kim, it has duplicated the pair and achieved a sudden sentience. Now it desires to duplicate more of the crew. Since the effect apparently didn't harm Paris and Kim, Janeway agrees to let willing crewmembers be duplicate (presumably in exchange for enough deuterium to solve Voyager's energy problems for some time to come).
Brash Reflections
Hmmm. Well, hard for me to judge this episode. We had a thunderstorm here in Springfield and my reception was much worse than usual. In fact, I was pretty much watching radio the whole time so I'm going to leave it with you, fellow Nitpickers, as far as the actual nitpicking goes. Personally, I wasn't terribly impressed with what I heard of the episode but maybe that was just because I had no pictures to go along with it!
Reflections from the Guild
(Note from Phil: I haven't verified these reflections but they sounded good to me!)
Johnson Lai: When the liquid duplicated Tom and Harry, how did they duplicate their uniform? Were they wearing them under the environmental suits? (Note from Phil: "Starfleet Uniforms, don't leave home without them.")
Corey Hines: Paris uses a lot of 20th century terms in this episode. Out of gas, barbeque, and bicycle. Never seen a 24th century bicycle in Star Trek before.
I was wondering why Neelix was arguing about where to stay with Holo-Doc when he could have simply de-activated the EMH. Everyone else has no problem doing it when feel like it.
Did they really need to make 7o9's environmental suit pants as tight as her regular outfit.(Not that I'm complaining but change the character a bit once in a while.)
I would like to say that other natives aren't as arrogant as Chakotey is. You don't need to be a Indian scout to notice obvious footprints.
Metallic liquid that can become anything. Terminator 2 rip-off maybe?
Robert J. Woolley: The silver fluid reads the DNA, and duplicates the body from that? Well, OK, but I've got a few questions. How do the replicants have the memories of the replicated people? Memories are not DNA-based. How do they have the uniforms, the hair styles, the same body weight, etc? Did the replicants have the same scars as Tom and Harry? Why wasn't Belanna's entire body replicated, since the DNA in the fingertip is the same as that everywhere else?
Laurel Iverson: The way that Neelix had those other crewmembers mutely following him around sick bay (havta pay more if they get a line, doncha know), I expected him to say, "Hi, I'm Neelix. This is my brother Darryl, and this is my other brother Darryl." (and my sister, Darlene, I guess.)
Vicki: The Demon Planet population will sure have an unusual Creation mythology. I wonder if the Seven of Nine duplicate looked like Seven exactly, or like Seven would have looked if she had never been assimilated. My son Eric wanted to add a comment of his own. Paris and Kim were inside the environmental suits, but their tricorders were not. If the suits degrade from the environmental gases and the temperature of 500 Kelvin,should the tricorders still function? Not to be left out, my other son Adam wanted to know if you thought Tasha Yar was going to pop out of the slime? (Note from Phil: Hadn't thought of that but now that you mention it . . . ;-)
Chris Booton: Not bad, not the best this season but definity not bad. Saw some nits including a 47 or possibly two.
I saw one 47 and another possible one, the first one was at the beginning, seven tells the transporter chief to set the confinement beam to 4.7 terrahertz
The second is when she opens the box to take a sample of the goo. Three vials are in the box each has a number on it that appears to be random, however if you add up every digit (In other words 18 becomes 1+8 , 407 becomes 4+0+7 and so forth) on each vial I believe you get a 47 (not positive but it wouldn't surprise me)
When the goo replicates someone's body why does it also replicate clothing? I don't remember hearing anything about clothes being organic.
The alarm bell for the blue alert is the same bell used for intruder alert, doesn't seem like a good idea to use the same bell for two different events, in fact it seems darn right foolish.
The cave they find the 'duplicated' Tom and harry in should have been the cave that the 'real' tom and harry were in, yet they detect no life signs and see no signs of the 'real' tom and harry until much latter.
Once again we see someone get zapped by a console, but fortunately he survived it, unlike so many others.
Reid: Good idea to send your flesh-and-blood nurse on another dangerous mission (i.e. Paris on Demon Planet)
Chakotay said 500 Kelvins (correct), but Paris said 500 *degrees* Kelvins (wrong)...
New term: Tomandkim, for eps with big Paris and Kim scenes (eps like "Chute" and "Non Sequitur")
Er..why would the Doc listen to Puccini during an energy crisis? Isn't that a non-essential program? Tuvok wouldn't even let Neelix take a *book* with him to his new quarters... (Note from Phil: Yeah, I thought the book thing was definitely pushing it. Tuvok won't let Neelix take a book and he could stick under his pillow and take up absolutely no more room than he already would by the simple act of laying down?! Huh?!)
It seems that "code blue" and "intruder alert" are the same sound....
...just sometimes, Neelix know exactly when to be annoying (as opposed to before, when he was just annoying in general)
..an implicit KMYF? ("...we just looked at each other...it was exhilarating")
VORICK!! VORICK!! He's still alive!
WIVRON: The movie "The Abyss" and TNG's "Aquiel" (The scene in the lab with B'Ellana -- very "Aquiel"...magic goo touches humanoid female..then become body part associated with hand)
"It's Ensign Kim...the one on the surface." Tuvok is become the less-attractive Troi of Voyager (Janeway was in sickbay..with the other unconscious Kim)
Wait a minute...have humans changed enough to allow CLONES of themselves to be left alive on a demon planet... weird.
Byefornowgen (German for "departing experience")
Don Ferguson: I missed the first few seconds but I doubt there would have been enough time to explain this anyway. Just how long did they know they were running out of deuterium? they have been out in the boondocks for 4 years now and all of a sudden they realize they are short on a critical element to run the ship and have to start bottling up all the resources?
the suits can handle the atmosphere but a probe would incinerate in seconds?
after Tom and Harry didn’t come back, Chuckles asks to go down and the captain balks, saying she wouldn’t risk him too, so they take the ship down instead and then what? chuckles goes out anyway.... tell me, what difference would it have made if chuckles went down in a shuttle or if he left the ship after the ship landed.
those suits act funny, when Tom and B'lanna were trapped out in space in he suits I dot remember the suits paging them by name to tell them their oxygen was running low. Also, it sure took a while before the suit informed Tom that he had a leak.
They make this out to be such a supper deadly planet and they said that a person would be dead in minutes due to the atmosphere. funny.. but wouldn’t a person be dead in *seconds* on a planet like Venus? and isn’t A planet like Venus a bit more common? so what is so special about these Y class planets then?
they atmosphere is so corrosive yet the inside of the shuttle and sickbay were exposed to these gasses for extended periods of time and they seem fine.
tom and Harry's suits seem fine too after being on that planet for so long, didn’t they say the suits would have dissolved by the time 7 and Chuckles beamed down? and they didn’t have any oxygen all that time either. I dont buy that backup systems keeping them alive thing. the suits had leaks in them..they would’ve been breathing in those deadly gasses.
Janeway and crew dont seem to have any problems with being Cloned huh? not just Janeway but it seems like the entire crew go along with this. funny that Picard and the crew of the enterprise all seemed to balk at being cloned.
I wonder what the freshly cloned crew thought when they saw themselves taking off. remember the Tom and harry duplicates thought they were the real things and had almost not awareness of what they really were, only harry put the pieces together in he very end, so imagine the thoughts of the crew duplicates as they find out that they cant go back where they all consider home (Alfa quad) and instead, they have to stay stranded on the planet. wouldn’t the Real janeway have been surprised if Dupe Janeway decided *they* should be the ones to go back and took over the ship, filled it with the gasses from the planet and took off.
Brian Straight: A pretty interesting, and good, episode altogether. Next weeks looks equaly as good too. But it wasn't without it's nits.
So the space suits have back-ups? Where these installed recently by the Voyager crew? Because they didn't seem to have them the last few times we've seen the suits used.
I can buy the metalic-aliens reproducing alien DNA, but did they replicate themselves some new clothes? Out of a material to withstand the temps of the planet?
What happened to the metaphasic sheilding? If it can withstand the corona of a star, a few hundred Kelvin should be cake.
The show starts with Voyager reserving power by shutting off some lights. In all subsqeutial shots of the ship, the lights are back on.
Wow, now we have a backup Voyager crew! Just in case we lose the first one I guess. Did the aliens produce another ship as well?
Kim and Harry leave the back door of the shuttle open. Wouldn't this let all of the heat of the planet, and the toxic gases, inside? Thus making a trip back to the ship dangerous?
Did they take the shuttle back, or leave it behind? If so, they lost another one. Infact I read somehwhere that Ron Morre ( I think that name is right ) admits that Voyager goes through alot of shuttles, but they're probably easy to make. He invisions a room full of shuttle parts, including warp-coils stacked up like tires in a auto-shop.
Shane Tourtellotte: Demon, n.: 1. A Class Y planet, intensely hostile to human life. 2. A "Voyager" episode with more nits than a troop of Jane Goodall's chimpanzees. Examples:
It occurs to me that if Voyager is so hard up for deuterium, they should have traded for that with the Vaskans last episode("Living Witness"), rather than getting dilithium from them.
Is Voyager's crew really so hard up for space that Neelix can't bring along a book?
Supposedly, Voyager only has enough deuterium to support a speed of one-quarter impulse for a week. That works out to about 0.005 light-years of distance, yet they reach a planetoid 0.4 light-years away without difficulty.
47 of the night: 7o9 ordering the annular confinement beam powered to 0.47 terahertz.
Apparently, a 0.47 terahertz ACB will allow you to beam through your own shields. Voyager gets jolted while trying to beam deuterium aboard, and Tuvok reports their shields are weakening.
Tuvok tells Harry there is no more dangerous environment for humans than a Demon Class planet. I can think of several: open space, the atmosphere of a gas giant, the chromosphere of a star, the Mess Hall during Neelix's Liola Root Pot Luck Night, ...
How is it Harry remembers helping to defeat the Hirogen? It never happened in our timeline!
Once again, the crew forgets that the shuttles have emergency transporters they could use to try to beam up deuterium, or for Tom and Harry to contact and use when they're asphyxiating on the surface.
Instead of Blue Alert, Janeway calls Code Blue to land the ship. Code Blue is a medical term, used for a patient whose heart has stopped. She has a pretty pessimistic view of their current situation. :-)
Why would Tom and Harry have left the shuttle door wide open, so the corrosive atmosphere could get in and melt the controls, or at least discolor the chairs? Of course, neither of these things happens. The same can also be said when part of Sickbay is exposed to the corrosive atmosphere.
Okay, Chakotay walks from the shuttle, picks up the away team's footprints, and follows them to the pool. He continues to follow them in the same direction, going away from the shuttle. My question is, why was Tom dragging Harry to supposed safety in the *opposite* direction of the shuttlecraft?
And by the way, what is with the Christmas lights on Chakotay's and 7o9's suits?
Life support is limited to two decks, but they have power for transporters? And can't they use antimatter reations to power ship's systems, instead of deuterium?
How stupid can you be? They find Tom and Harry breathing the Demon World's atmosphere, then beam them aboard blithely assuming they can still breathe ours. I was the only one not surprised -- apart from every other nitpicker on Earth, and any other planets watching. :-)
As her ship is sinking beneath her, as Tuvok is preparing to fire phasers in a last-ditch effort to save them, Janeway leaves the Bridge to check up on her crew in Sickbay. Yeah. Sure. Very professional.
I merely note in passing that Voyager's crew seems to have none of the duplication-phobia that Riker and company had in TNG's "Up The Long Ladder".
Trevor Ruppe: WIVRON: TNG--"Skin of Evil" (crewman falls into living alien slime), TNG--"Lonely Among Us" (crewman possessed by alien and wants to return home to environment it was "kidnapped" from), TNG--"Emergence" (ship is responsible for creating a new sentient life form), and, of course, the famous science fiction novel "Solaris" (written by Stanislaw Lem in 1961), in which a sentient alien ocean produces humanoid lookalikes of the human scientists visiting the planet.
Okay, I admit not everyone has read "Solaris" or seen the 1972 film, but would it really hurt the Creators to have one of the characters say, "hey, this sounds like an old sci-fi novel I read..." We're finally getting to see Janeway and the others so used to these plots that they can figure out what's going on as quickly as the audience does. Why can't they recognize sci-fi cliches as well?
What's next? Will Voyager visit a desert planet full of huge worms and valuable Spice Melange? (I bet they'd even call the episode "Sand.")
I'm not even going to bother with the obvious nits for this episode: a planet with an atmosphere so acidic "it would be suicide to even enter orbit" but it's apparently okay to park on the surface for a few days; an atmosphere so dangerous that probes can't be modified to land on the surface without "corroding in seconds" yet shuttles and EVA suits *CAN* be modified to last several days without even the tiniest bit of corrosion...
Brian O'Marra: Interesting episode. Certainly an opportunity for the computer graphics dept. to go into overdrive!
Some observations...this lifeform which mimics the DNA it comes in contact with can not only go through skin, but spacesuits, and Voyager's hull. The doctor diagnosed Kim and Paris and concluded that this liquid metal lifefrom mutated their bloodstream. I guess that means that touching this thing is not a good idea. And yet what does Torres do with the sample in the lab? Allow it to come in contact with her thumb.
Interesting though how it just simple slides off of it back on to the sacnner. Why didn't it enter her blood stream and mimic her? Instead, all it does is make a copy of her thumb. Why? So Torres and Janeway can conclude that it mimics DNA. How nice of it to cooperate for them!
When a volunteer is asked for to join Chakotay and Seven, Kim suggests that Paris remain in the sickbay for further studies, he'll go to the surface. Yes these are Kim2 and Paris2. However until they were told that they were duplicates, Paris2 thought he was the real one. So how can an ensign give an order to a lieutenant? Remember both wanted nothing more than to return to the planet. I expected a little argument from Paris.
This "silver blood" supposedly experienced sentience when it came in contact with Kim and Paris. before it only experienced instinct. However species with instinct are sentient. They have a built in intelligence, are aware, can reproduce. And since it seems that this silver blood only mimics life forms not nonliving materials, are we to believe that this encounter is a first?
5/11/98 Update (Note from Phil: A quick reminder. It is not my intention to upload every message that I receive on an episode. I will always upload comments--i.e. "I enjoyed the episode." "I felt like the episode lacked . . ."--but if a nit has already been picked, it's picked . . . unless I decide to list it twice because it's repicked in a funny way or I just wasn't certain it had already been picked and I was bombing through my mail and I let it pass just in case! Let's remember that this nitpicking thing should be done with light-heartedness and good cheer!)
Joshua Truax: Another cool episode -- figuratively speaking, of course. It's also
another indication of Voyager's strong performance in the homestretch of
its fourth season. Not only are the stories more daring than before,
but now so are their settings. The Demon-class world is the first
really alien environment we've seen in any Star Trek series in quite
some time; even TNG never had anything quite like it. All in all,
another well-done episode ...but still not quite perfect. That, of
course, is where we nitpickers come in.
When Seven of Nine discovers the Demon-class planet, she tells Chakotay
that it is 0.4 light-years away. Roll the main title sequence and go to
commercial break, and when we come back, voila! Voyager is in orbit
around this planet. But wait: Without warp drive, Voyager can travel at
no more than full impulse, which is equivalent to 0.25c (i.e. one-fourth
the speed of light). Therefore, the minimum amount of time it would
take Voyager to reach the planet is 0.4 light-years divided by 0.25c,
which is (drum roll, please)... 1.6 years! That, of course, is
considerably more time than Paris said it would take for Voyager to run
out of gas...
It's nice to see that Ensign Vorik is apparently finally back in
Torres's good graces after their little, shall we say, experience in
last season's "Blood Fever"...
When Chakotay and Seven go to the surface to look for Paris and Kim,
they find the empty shuttle -- with the main hatchway wide open! Why
would Paris and Kim have left the hatch open, thus exposing the interior
to the atmosphere? Remember, the atmosphere of this planet is
purportedly so vile that it would eventually corrode Voyager's hull.
Can you imagine what it would to to the inside of a shuttle?
The planet's atmosphere was also purportedly foul enough to damage an
environment suit after prolonged exposure. Presumably this means it
would eat through a regular Starfleet uniform much more quickly. In
other words, Chuckles and Seven should have become suspicious
immediately when they found Paris and Kim wearing only their perfectly
intact uniforms...!
Before Janeway discovered the truth about what happened to Paris and
Kim, Doc believed the two had been "bioformed" to adapt to the planet's
environment. He said that if he could not reverse the process, the only
way to keep Paris and Kim alive would be to abandon them on the planet.
Assuming, as Doc did, that Paris and Kim were still human, abandoning
them on the planet would actually have made matters worse. Instead of a
relatively quick death by suffocation, they would have died slowly -- of
starvation. Think about it. What was there on that planet for two
humans to eat?
Next week: Voyager really does become the "Seven of Nine Show"...
Steve Oostrom, Oshawa, ON: These are my impressions of "Demon," which
was, needless to say, a very strange episode. Unfortunately, it was
hard to get into it since I had read spoilers and so knew exactly what
was going to happen. Maybe I should stop reading spoilers. On the
other hand, if I already knew the story, I could sit there and find
nits, most of which are likely picked up by other contributors, but here
goes.
When the pseudo-Paris and Kim came on board and were put into sickbay,
the doctor was immediately able to vent in some of the planet's
atmosphere into the isolated area of sickbay. This seems like an
unusual function for a starship sickbay, since most of the time, all
that can be drawn in is vacuum.
Going to a class-Y "demon" planet seems like an unusual extreme to
retrieve deuterium. Afterall, that is nothing more than hydrogen with a
neutron in the nucleus, and so deuterium should be available as an
isotope of hydrogen wherever hydrogen is found, such as a typical gas
giant planet. If deuterium is the fuel of a ship like Voyager, then
logically the designers should have put in place systems that would
allow the ship to collect it in all the usual places. On the other
hand, in astrometrics, the graphic showed what could have been a star
system with just the one planet, and without warp drive, Voyager might
not have had much choice.
Chakotay was just a little too casual when he ran into the unsuited
Paris inside the cave. Afterall, the sensors showed that the atmosphere
was not breathable, and the temperature was described as "five hundred
kelvins," which is around two hundred and thirty degrees Celsius. Even
if Paris was breathing, he should have been cooking too. Chakotay
should have been a lot more surprised and a lot more concerned.
When the ship went to "gray status," all non-essential systems were shut
down, including the holodecks, which, according to the first season, ran
on a non-compatible energy source. I guess the creators must have
realized how ridiculous that idea was and so quietly dropped it. Now,
the holodecks and all other systems run on the same power source, which
is more realistic.
How convenient that the environmental suits had backup life support
systems that we never heard about but could keep them alive for
prolonged periods until the unconscious bodies were found. Those backup
systems would have come in handy for Paris in B'Elanna in "Day of
Honor."
The ending was rushed. It seemed that in return for the metallic
lifeform taking the DNA samples from all the crew, the metallic lifeform
should have provided all the deuterium that Voyager needs, but this can
only be assumed. Speaking of the ending (I always like scenes when the
ship takes off and heads for the skies, but it was so short), I wonder
if anybody would do a screen grab and count the number of Voyager
crewmember duplicates left behind, since it would give a minimum crew
size for the ship. Once more, Voyager leaves something of itself behind
in the Delta Quadrant (last week, the doctor's backup module, this week,
replicas of themselves), so will these metallic aliens reproduce and
develop a sophisticated, technological culture. Is this how the
Changelings evolved? This episode left lots of questions.
Speaking of assumptions, I will assume they recovered the shuttlecraft.
They can't afford to lose another one, can they?
I see that B'Elanna has come back, and she did not look pregnant
anymore, but the jacket is still there. Perhaps it is there to stay.
Craig Sapp: "Demon" is the best Voyager episode in a long time, possibly this season
(IMHO). I couldn’t believe it, two great episodes in two consecutive weeks.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if this was the start of a trend?
The characters have acquired personalities – maybe some of last week’s
simulation rubbed off on them. Kim is still the designated victim, but he
actually asserted himself and even explained the reason for this change.
Before Torres’ absence, I was starting to get tired of the way her character
was developing but I was glad to see her back and working in Engineering.
Vorik was also there, it’s nice to see reoccurring characters. And with all
the extras, Voyager almost looked like it actually had a crew. And the group
shot of the alien duplicates on the planet’s surface was terrific – All of the
special effects were.
I was having such a good time, I must have missed the nits or either they
haven’t dawned on me yet. I’m not going to mention the ones that I suspect
because they were so insignificant and have explanations that are just so
downright obvious and plausible (atleast to me). I can always find fault with
an episode’s plot, but I’m not going to with this one. It was wonderful the
way it was and I really, really enjoyed it from start to finish.
"One" looks very promising, can’t wait till next week. Don’t the previews
seem to have gotten better lately? I just wonder were they got all of the
suspension tubes (between 100 and 150) – boy those replicators must have been
working overtime. Maybe their using the shuttlecraft production facility:-)
Brian Henley: I have two words to describe this episode, and both of them are "so".
Yep, it was a so-so episode. I liked the landing of the ship (again), and
the special effects were nice enough. The interplay betwixt the Doc and
Neelix is always fun and refreshing, and I REALLY liked the fact that
Harry is beginning to get a backbone. My bet is that the creators were
getting a little ill of seeing this charachter who started out as
such a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at the beginning of the series
consistantly turning to jelly in every episode, particularly around 7,
although that wasn't addressed in this episode.
B'lanna, aparently, has resurfaced. I'm glad. It's not that big a ship,
and she was running out of places to hide!
On the down side, I thought they were REALLY stretching it with these
mercury-looking aliens. The story realy seemed to drag along at times.
And there were nits .... Oh, yes, there were nits.
In the Prolouge, they mention shutting down the holodecks. HUH? I thought
they were on a seperate system? Isn't that the whole reason why we have
holodeck shows while the ship is barely chugging along?
Tom says "We'll be out of gas in .....(some period of time)" doesn't this
fall into the anachronisms catagory such as the toaster referance in "The
Measure Of A Man?" (Note from Phil: Unless it's hydrogen gas! And, he did just finish building the car on the holodeck.)
Outta gas, no power, batteries dying. In Star Trek IV, the captian of the
USS Yorktown was under the same situation. He mentioned that his chief
engineer was attempting to rig up a solar sail or panel as an emergency
energy device. Why didn't Voyager think of this? True, the Captian of the
Yorktown seemed to indicate that the power generated wouldn't be that
much ("sufficient to keep us alive") but it might have been worth a shot.
While were on the topic, that solar sail sounds like the guys on the
Yorktown were going to be using electric power. If that's true, what other
alt-energy sources can you power a starship with? Can you replicate a
nuclear reactor? Maybe a little uranium ? Prob'ly not.
Is it just me, or in the shot that opened Act 1 & Act 2, the one with
Voyager orbiting the planet, did Voyager look a little longer and sleeker
then usual?
Once on the planet, Tom give the temperature in degrees Kelvin. I could be
wrong, but I believe that the Kelvin scale does not use the word "degrees"
after the numeral. The numeral is sufficient.
I was going to bring up why our two heroes began to faint when they still
had a few breaths of air left. They shouldn't begin suffering brain
asphyxia until they've been breathing CO2 for a while. But then I guess
that the fatigue can be chalked up to having your body invaded by a
gel-like alien. Possesions look like tireing experiences.
Janeway thinks that sending Chakotay down on a rescue mission is a bad
idea. After all, he might loose the shuttle. So what does she do? She
brings down the WHOLE SHIP. ???????
Never heard of a Blue Alert before. Is this brand new? From context I
guess it means that the ships about to land. Am I right? (Note from Phil: "Blue Alert" first showed us in "The 37s" and does mean that the ship is about to land.)
I liked Harry's taking the initiative, but in some instances today it
seemed like he was giving orders to Tom. Tom's a Lieutenant. Harry's just
an Ensign.
Next week everyone's going ino suspended animation. So I guess this fuel
problem is going to be a hassle until for a while.
Tony H Forbes: So how crucial is this substance deterium or whatever that we haven't
had problems with it before?
Kim's list of "adventures" is a little lacking. He forgets the
alternate timeline ("Non Sequiter") and he's come back from the dead
multiple times. He has also had his DNA scrambled multiple times.
The way that Kim delivers his "Lame" line was very 20th century.
Ah, the return of Code Blue! It seems after "The 47's" they hadn't used
it.
Here's a good one. The Starfleet suits are obviously going to add some
extra weight, so why don't they supply extra physical power to the
wearers? (I know, then 7/9 wouldn't need any help from Tom to haul
Chakotay out)
At the beginning, everyone's worried about the
corrosive gasses, yet we send down a bunch of people in suits, then send
the ship down, and let some of the gas in areas of the ship, etc., etc.
David T. Shaw, Hamilton Ontario, Canada: Just saw "Demon." I have nits (Boy,do I have nits).
First- I know I am beating a dead horse here- but what is it with the
completely uninspired, article-free single-word titles? "Demon" wasn't even
a particularly descriptive title, but 'nuff said.
So a "Y" class planet is a killer- with temperatures measured in the
hundreds of Kelvins. I am not impressed- that only amounts to about 250
degrees Celsius- not a very high temperature- we have seen ships fly nearby
suns for example, and I believe that the temperature readings in those cases
were measured in thousands (if not tens of thousands) of degrees. I can
imagine it causing problems for the environmental suits, but not for the
ship or shuttle.
When Borg-babe told the transporter guy to confine the beam, she used a
measurement of Hertz. I found that very odd, unless the transporter uses
some sort of multi-band carrier wave, and that was what she was referring to.
The atmosphere was supposed to be highly corrosive- crew members repeatedly
mentioned that the suits would corrode over time- yet Tom and Harry left the
shuttle door open, so all that sensitive electronic equipment inside could
be eaten away (but there were no obvious ill effects...) When the doctor
pumped in the atmosphere into sick bay, again there were no ill-effects on
his bio-beds (and the air was mysteriously clear). And Tom's and Harry's
suits seemed to last quite sometime after Borg-babe said that the suits
would be compromised. It mustn't have been all that corrosive.
And a good thing too- the suit's integrity was broken. The computer kept
on talking about oxygen depletion- if those suits have air say for four
hours, that must have been quite a leak- big enough to find and patch (they
could have at least tried). And I would have been far more worried about
what was coming in as opposed to what was going out.
On the ship, Janeway ordered for Tuvoc to look for infra-red signatures.
Right- looking for two signatures that would be about 310 K in a background
of 500 K. No wonder Tuvoc couldn't find them- you can't spot a point sized
absence of heat.
The transporter system blew out. The shuttles have transporters- why not
try one of them?
The ship was caught in an "electromagnetic field." I have two words:
Reverse polarity (hey, if it was good enough for Scotty...). If the ship
was magnetically or electrically charged the same as the metallic liquid,
the liquid would have repelled ship. Why didn't anybody think of that? A
Lost Dramatic Moment- they charge the ship, it is working, and the liquid
reverses polarity and sucks them down even faster...
Borg-babe went to get a sample, scooping it with a cup like it was a
Christmas Punch- certainly they must have some technology to prevent the
suit from encountering an unknown substance- a ladle would have been
enough!
I can't imagine a suit that wouldn't have an emergency beacon on it so it
can be easily found- I guess Star Fleet figures if people are stupid enough
to get into trouble in an isolated location, they are too stupid to bother
saving... But then, this is the same suit that says "Oxygen depletion in 30
seconds" and then somehow manages to keep the occupants healthy for at least
an hour (I'd actually vote for over a day- it would take awhile for Janeway
to get antsy- after all, you know the shuttle will be out of contact for
awhile, and then the ship has to land, etc- my point being that by any
logical turn of plot, Tom and Harry are dead).
Janeway and B'Lanna were surprised to find a protein molecule in the
liquid- correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't they extract that liquid from
Tom and Harry? Lots of protein molecules there to contaminate the sample
(maybe it was from the stuff they brought back as fuel, but I might be wrong).
The Harry and Kim dopplegangers can walk around an atmosphere that is
highly corrosive, is over a hundred degrees Celsius over the boiling point
of water, and the doctor can find no differences except that they can breath
the atmosphere? And did anyone think of examining the uniforms to see why
they showed no signs of wear and tear?
The doctor was awfully quick to abandon Tom and Harry on the planet- there
might only be one key gas in the atmosphere that they needed to survive (for
example, we can function quite well without Nitrogen, as long as it is
replaced with something harmless).
Last nit, I hate this idea in science fiction that DNA carries memories
with it- with Tom and Harry, that isn't a problem, after all the liquid
might have done a thorough analysis prior to duplicating them, but the rest
of the crew just gave cell samples- must be a lot of over-grown babies on
that planet now..
Two comments: When the planet was under-fire, I thought that the
Harry-doppleganger shimmered like a changeling for a moment- perhaps this
was their home environment before they achieved intelligence? (It would
explain why no other similar types of life have ever been found- Starfleet
is too chicken to investigate "Demon planets").
And, the writers missed a chance to show Seven of Nine completely sans Borg
implants- a clone would have been implant free.
Sorry- two many silly things. Maybe next week will be better.
John Latchem: WIVRON:
TNG Skin of Evil-Pools that suck in people
VOY Threshold-Crewmen stop breathing oxygen, Doctor sets up forcefield.
TNG Aquiel-Coalescent Organisms
Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back- Harry is shocked to see his face in other
body
Titanic-Ship is sinking. I couldn't resist.
TNG Up the Long Ladder- Crew is asked for DNA so a society can thrive.
The ship needs deuterium? I never bought this concept. Deuterium is heavy
hydrogen. The Bussard collectors collect this stuff. What's wrong with the
Bussard collectors?
Why don't the leather seats of the shuttle or the uniforms corrode in the
atmosphere and heat?
It seems the amnesia from "Unforgettable" has wiped other memories. Janeway
asks the Doctor why he sets up a forcefield. Shouldn't she know what he is
doing from what happened in "Threshold?" Similarly, Doc reacts with surprise
when Janeway says the alien is mimetic. Shouldn't the Doc know about
coalescent organisms?
The alien learned thought from Harry Kim?
A response to a previous post. Ron Moore doesn't talk about Voyager because
he doesn't work on the show. He works on DS9. Brannon Braga works on
Voyager.
Brian Lombard: After Voyager lands on the planet, every exterior shot of the ship
shows the warp nacelles lit up like a Christmas tree. If they're
supposed to be so hard up for energy, why don't they shut down the
engines?
I'd be a little concerned about the Kim they left on the planet.
Our Kim is a copy of the original (Remember "Deadlock"?) The Kim on
the planet is a copy of a copy. Remember what Dr. Pulaski had to say
about that in "Up The Long Ladder"?
So the surface of the planet is so hot that humans would incinerate
without environmental suits. Obviously tricorders are made of stronger
stuff, because both away teams use them just fine!
Richie Vest: What is this Grey Mode? Dont they mean Reduced Power Mode as mentioned in
the Trek Tech Manuel.
Now some anti-nits:
1. Shane Tourtellote says that the battles with the Hirogen did not happen in
Voyager's timeline. Uh, that was the Villians of "Year of Hell" and not the
Hirogen.
2. Now correct me if i am wrong. I think in a scene in the turbolift, I
think the lift was moving slower than normal. If this is so One must give
credit to the creators.
Jonathan Klein: Someone on the floor in my dorm made this observation. When he saw Voyager
sinking in the silver goo, he said "Wow, Mercury Rising!"
With regards to Shane Tourtellotte's observation of [Voyager having only enough deuterium to support a speed of
one-quarter impulse for a week but reaching a planetoid 0.4 light-years away without
difficulty,]
Sir Isaac Newton. At sublight speed, Voyager need only fire the impulse
engines for a few seconds to get up to speed. An object in motion tends to
remain n motion until acted on by an outside force. Then they could power
down, conserving energy for life support. Thus they could easily make it to
the planet.
Joe Buss: Most obvious flaw in Demon. They can't find Dueterium? Deuterium is simply
hydrogen, the most common element inthe universe. They could find it in any
nebula, gas giant or planet they come across that has water, ammonia or
methane inthe atmosphere.
And doesn't allowing a planet to move from pre-animate materials up to real
life a violation of the Prime Directive? I mean, it is the equivlent to
letting them jump a billion years on the evolutionary scale. Hey, let them
figure out this opposable thumb thing on their own.
Shon Libby: This has got to be one of the most nitpickable episodes of Voyager in
recent memory. I could be wrong about this, but the correct way to refer
to a temperature on the Kelvin scale is, for example, 500 Kelvin. Not
Kelvins, not degrees Kelvin. Just Kelvin. I think this is because Kelvin
is a scale of absolute temperature, not a unit (like ampere or joule).
So the "microscope" in sickbay has high enough resolution to allow Janeway
to see and identify a protein? i.e. it can resolve details at a level on
the order of 1-10 angstroms? And that's only, what, 20X?? (I think that's
what she said).
So if the putative proteins in this liquid substance can read DNA (how
would this have evolved on a lifeless planet? ), it still would not be
able to duplicate the person's memory, personality, and especially not
his clothing!
If atmosphere of the planet was as hot as 500 Kelvin, you'd think that
seeing Tom and Harry (no Dick?) hiking around without breaking into a
sweat would make you wonder just a bit. Also, the other crewmembers in
their special suits should have been drenched in sweat as well.
If my chemistry holds up, deuterium is just hydrogen with an extra proton.
Why couldn't the crew recreate a lab on the holodeck to synthesize it from
hydrogen?
Based on this episode alone, I think the writers desperately need to take
a crash course in basic biology and chemistry!
Michael Guwitz: When Tom2 and Harry2 return to Voyager, they immediately gasp
for breath because their bodies have been "bioformed" and thus need
the planet's gases to survive. BUT, if they were bioformed to exist on
the planet, then wouldn't they also need a 500 kelvin atmosphere in
which to survive, instead of Voyager's, what, 68 degrees farenheit? So
they not only should have been gasping, but freezing to death as well. In
fact, they should have died instantly, if you extrapolate what would
happen to a normal person if his environmental temperature suddenly
plummeted precipitously.
Jason Krietsch: Part of shutting non essencials down is turning off lights, but
1. the turbolift shaft lights are on high (but we need to know its moving.)
2. The doctor can turn on sickbays lights on full to disturb neelix.
no head cooler than 7's? what about security and tactical Mr. Vulcan? or the
engeneering vulcan with his "illogical" phrase.
And in the end, voyager just lifts off without explaining to the clones
anything, why aren't the clones running and screaming at janeway to come back? (Note from Phil: The explanation must have happened when we weren't looking!)
For that matter, did the enterprise-d get all the people who frowned on
cloning? Riker shot his clone, and the senior staff Did NOT want to be cloned.
So how could Janeway convince the crew to fork up dna?
Ross F.: It looks like fans aren't the only ones who don't like Nelix. When he
was in sickbay, the doors started to close on him. Does the computer,
which controls the doors, not like him? I can see it now "Computer,
deck 11" "That destination can not be reached because I don't like
you." I hope they make up before Nelix needs a lifepod.
When the decks with power are mentioned, is the deck with the mess hall
inclusive? If not, how is Nelix supposed to cook? Granted Nelix rarely
whips out cavier, but isn't something better than nothing. Do I sense a
conspiracy between Janeway and the computer?
Chakotay joked about shutting down the EMH. Is this a good idea? With
the doctor shut down and Paris dancing outside the ship, who's
monitoring the band-aids?
We finally see the effects of minimal supplies. The only other time we
saw it was a glimpse in Resistance, and there was no tension
whatsoever. How come we suddenly have a desperate need for supplies and
why have we not seen it before (in such detail). Doesn't the "it
happened off camera" bit go only so far?
Seven disobeyed a direct order and didn't even get a slap on the wrist?
But then again, these things happen. This is the fifth(?) time she has
put the ship at risk and not gotten in trouble?
And let's talk about those aliens. When Harry and Tom were in contact,
they were wearing encounter suits. But it reproduced a perfect copy of
Tom and Harry. Yet, B'elanna appears to say that the stuff needs to be
in physical contact with the skin. So how did it get on Tom and Harry?
The only way is if there is an on/off switch inside the suit. This does
not seem like a good thing to have unless you know you will be in
suitable air. The only explanation would be for Tom and Harry to
accidentally turn off their suits or for the stuff to get INSIDE the
suits. If it's the latter, how did they get past quality control as the
liquid look fairly thick.
Why did ALt-Tom and Alt-Harry appear in uniform? Is the uniform itself
organic? Or did the creators want to keep the show rated TV-PG?
Nelix prepares to sing some Klingon opera. Granted he could have
learned this on his spare time, but does he remember this trait from
"The Killing Game Part II"? The Doctor tells Seven that she will not
remember anything about the scinerio.
About next week...well, about Seven in general, why haven't Janeway and
Co. removed all borg technology like they did with Picard. From what I
can gater, Crusher just sucked the stuff right out of him. Phil,
correct me if I'm wrong, but can't they just pull a HoloCrucher up and
turn Seven into Aneka (Of course, they would die next week, but...) (Note from Phil: Well, supposedly Seven needs the implants because she's had them for so long.)
Andrew Kibelbek: This episode had an interesting premise, but the science was awful.
This isn't one of the scientific problems, but it's still a nit. I
have a hard time believing Voyager just
suddenly had a power loss. They had to have known they were losing
power, and only after they
lose warp does Janeway begin thinking of ways to conserve power. Does
this seem right? I'd think
you'd want to prepare a sandbag wall before there's a foot of floodwater
in your house.
Also about the power loss, they say they can only travel on quarter
impulse for a week.. It's
amazing that there would even be a planet in the range that they could
travel at a quarter impulse in a
week, even if they were already inside that solar system. And yet, when
the "Demon Planet" seems
too inhospitable to send a team down to excavate the deuridium (I think
that's what it was), Janeway's prepared to move on! In a week at quarter
impulse (one sixteenth of the speed of light) you could only travel
7,030,800,000 miles. Now, while that seems to be quite a good distance
terrestrially, astronomically speaking, that won't get you from earth
out of the solar system (5,865,696,000,000 miles makes a light year,
which is about the diameter of the solar system). So what was Janeway
intending to do? (Besides, couldn't they send out shuttles and probes to
search for deuridium while the ship stayed in one place?) (Note from Phil: Wait a minute: I agree in principle with the idea that traveling at sub-light speeds will mean there's virtually no chance Voyager would be able to get to a planet if they weren't in the system to begin with but I don't believe that our solar system has a diameter of a light-year. From my recollection, it takes the sun's light approximately thirty minutes to get to Pluto.)
What's this Tuvok's talking about with thermeonic (I think)
eruptions? Is this another case of
"Something-doesn't-work-because-it's-too-hot" syndrome? (At least they
didn't just say thermal
eruptions, but thermeonic [or whatever they were saying] just sounded
goofy.)
After Tom pulls Harry out of the goop, the computer bleeps and tells
him that a valve in his suit
has been compromised and he has thirty seconds of oxygen left. Doesn't
this mean that there's a
rupture in the suit? Doesn't that mean that not only is the oxygen
escaping, but the outside
atmosphere is leaking in? (Even if we say that the outside atmospheric
pressure may be
extremely low, it would fill in eventually, and besides, there's still a
huge temperature difference.) I
guess there is a possible explanation for this. Maybe the oxygen tank
itself ruptured, and a
handy-dandy little valve squeaked shut to prevent atmosphere, but he's
still losing oxygen. But, as
that would mean he still would have the oxygen that's inside his suit,
there wouldn't be a tense
count-down. It seems that there is a rupture in the suit itself. After
all, it shows a little hole popping
through on Paris's arm, which makes sense because the liquid is drilling
through to get to his DNA.
And, when the oxygen is spurting out of their atmospheric suits, why
are they talking? That just
uses up more oxygen!
It's very convenient that the back-up systems on the atmospheric
suits can keep them alive despite the fact that poisonous gases that are
500 degrees Kelvin are seeping in.
When the duplicate Paris finds Chakotay and Seven, he tells them to
take their helmets off to see
if they can breath the atmosphere. Isn't this a little bit foolhardy? He
has no idea how he became
immune to the atmosphere. Does he really think that the air is just
hunky-dory fine for anyone?
This liquid is pretty amazing stuff. It's been sitting on this
planet for who knows how long, not
having contacted any other form of life. Yet it magically has the
ability to read an organism's DNA
and transform itself into a duplicate of that organism. (Does kinda
sound like the coalescent life-form
in "Aquiel" [TNG], doesn't it?) I guess we can allow that it might be
able to do that, but there are
more problems. Still, duplicating DNA isn’t enough. You need to have
proteins, lipids, cytoplasm,
enzymes, and whole lot more just to make a single cell. Then you need to
make cells that have
different functions, such as neurons, muscle cells, skin cells, etc.
Then you need to organize them into
muscle tissue, nerves, skin, tendons, bones, organs, and a working
brain. That all has to come from
somewhere. Since it didn’t absorb either Harry or Tom, and there isn’t
any animal life on the planet,
where did this all come from? Even if the liquid had the molecules it
needed, how did it bond them
together?
During the episode, they're consistently referring to the
temperature of the planet in Kelvins. Yet,
when Harry is scanning the pool of liquid, he describes it as being
"only twelve degrees." Twelve
degrees? If he's still using the Kelvin system, I'll say it's sure
"only." The Kelvin temperature system is the Celsius system with zero
being absolute zero. Absolute zero (-273.15 C.) is the coldest anything
can get. If that stuff's twelve Kelvins, it's -261.15 degrees Celsius.
The air is 500 Kelvins, or 226.85 degrees Celsius. That's a difference
of 488 degrees! Yet somehow, Harry's and Tom's suitssurvived
contact with this stuff! Nothing can withstand an abrupt temperature
change that big. Atmospheric
suit durability aside, how could this stuff be that cold? It takes
state-of-the-art equipment to allow
scientists to chill something to this temperature on good, cool, old
planet earth. This planet is more
like Venus.
And how are the duplicates "connected" to the rest of the liquid?
Is there some sort of collective consciousness? Why then would the Tom
and Harry duplicates keep saying they have no idea what happened to
them? Wouldn’t they be experiencing the memories of the rest of this
liquid? Also,
wouldn’t the liquid be experiencing sentience as well? If it was, why
would it need new crew
members? If not, why was it sinking Voyager? Was this instinct? And was
it instinct when they
stayed there even after being hit by the pulse, and was it instinct to
leave after Janeway made the
agreement with the duplicate Harry? Besides, how is it moving? It’s
liquid! It doesn’t have muscles.
It could run downhill, sure, but that’s it. It’s fine for Changelings,
because they could solidify little
tendrils to pull them along. There’s nothing to indicate that this stuff
has that property. Only that
they can duplicate DNA.
This episode has another case of "just - modify -something - or -
other - to - send - out - a - high - tech - burst - and - everything -
will - be - absolutely - fine" syndrome. Is there an acronym in the
nitpickers’ glossary for this? If not, I nominate Bursts of Energy
Always Solve Trouble (BEAST).
At the end of the episode, the Harry duplicate is saying that
Janeway has to allow the liquid
to engulf them so they can be duplicated. He refers to the liquid as
"silver blood". "Silver blood"?
Since when has Harry been calling the liquid "silver blood"? He still
has the memories and
personality of Harry Kim. Why wouldn’t he call it "the metallic liquid"
or something scientific
like that? Why is he talking cryptically all of the sudden?
David D. Porter: How did the deuterium supply reach such critical levels? V-ger should
refuel every possible chance. Is it that hard to find?
Has 7/9 followed even *one* order since she came aboard? Dollars to
donuts she suffers no punitive action for this one, either.
*All* the transporters went down?
Class Y is more hostile to human life than naked vacuum? Or a
star's corona?
Seems to me it would be wise for the shuttle crew to be suited up
during the descent, just in case of a leak or other problem.
Isn't there a rule about not splitting up, in case somebody needs
help?
If there's a power shortage, H-Doc shouldn't be listening to Puccini.
7/9 is incorrect when the says the planet is unoccupied--there are
four humans present.
Since the life support systems control air and temperature within
V-ger, Vorik *is* giving the weather report, in a sense.
Guess Cap'n J wasn't worried about beaming Class Y atmosphere into the
transporter room. For instance, some was present in Tom's and Harry's
lungs.
Okay, Tom and Harry can breathe the atmosphere. How can they hold up
to 500-degree Kelvin (=225 Centigrade =435 Farenheit) temperatures?
Even though B'Elanna scraped off the sample, she should still go to
sickbay. She may have absorbed some of it through her skin.
Brian Henley: If you decide to post my nits on Demon on Monday, could you please
apologise for my typeos? My brain was kinda Swiss cheesed last night.
Mike Bucca: Okay, first off, lemme say this episode was not good. I thought this was
horrible, and a certain crash since last weeks fantastic episode.
Okay, first off, was it my eyes or did they change the film used to tape the
show. Maybe it was the Voyager lighting, I dont know, but the way the
characters moved, it seemes that they used a diffrent frame rate. (I know, I
know, its not a nit, just something I wanted to point out.)
I think the designers of Voyager (or at least its captain) have no common
sense. They have to shut down all the lights on the ship to conserve power,
yet they can blow all that power for those lousy blue alert lights. Flashing
them on and off is more important than bridge lighting?
Those Starfleet uniforms are durable. They said that the enviromental suits
will barely hold the conditions of the planet. Well the Starfleet uniforms had
no problem with it! They just walked around with them and they didnt corrode
or anything.
More power consumption problems: we are in the middle of a crisis, and they
still have TURBOLIFTS and TRANSPORTERS going? Those systems gobble energy.
I think that Torres isnt pregnant anymore, this episode she looked fine.
Joshua Truax: Chief... Someone wondered why this Y-class planet is so nasty compared
with a planet like Venus. For starters, there are no pools of liquid
deuterium on Venus. More to the point, Venus's atmosphere isn't so
volatile that it would be unsafe even to orbit, as this planet is; nor
does Venus's atmosphere corrode everything it touches. (It just *cooks*
everything it touches instead!)
Murray Leeder: There was a pretty good point made about the Doctor being a strain on
resources when he's not working. Too bad it went nowhere.
Would it have hurt to include one line about the silver blood people
providing Voyager with deuterium? And how could they, anyway? Since
they're composed of deuterium, wouldn't that require breaking up
themselves?
[From Someone Identified Only As MR2000: I was struck by personalized suits in this episode. Whats the point in saying the name of the person wearing it (How does the suit know-is it
related to the computer on the ship (same voice)??
Nick Angeloni: I think I remember hearing something about using the Bussard Collectors to
collect hydrogen to be used as deuterium. So why doesn't Voyager try this?
Or is it too energy intensive? If so, why even bother having it?
Sarah Meland: I liked this episode, but it wasn't perfect...
1) When the Holodoc complains about Neelix & Co. wanting to move into
sickbay for awhile, Chakotay tells him, "Well, that's fine, we can just
deactivate you for the time being, we need to save the energy anyway,"
(or something to that effect). Why DON'T they deactivate him until he's
needed? There aren't any patients in sickbay until Tom & Harry get
there.
2)And another thing, at the beginning of the show, in order to save
energy they shut down, among other things, the holodecks. I thought the
holodecks ran off of a separate power source than other parts of the
ship, and that's why they are able to utilize them as often as they do.
3)Not a nit, just an observation: it's nice to see B'Elanna again...
Lars Ormberg, Rimbey, Alberta: Ah, Demon. Where oh where to start? So with only a week to go, the crew finally gets the bright idea to start power conservation? "Well, Captain,
there's only 8 days left of power left. So are we going to turn off the
light now, or what?
Tuvok must be in a bad mood. You can't take a book with you to your
temporary home in a cargo bay? The bedding I can understand, but that other
stuff? And how is it saving power to have people going down to sickbay to
get treatments *replicated* for minor ailments that are best handled by good
old fashioned preventative medicine?
I'm concerned about this whole Class Y planet thing. It's harmful to sit in
orbit? Because of the atmosphere? I think I know now why Voyager is having
so much trouble getting home...they think being in orbit means being in the
atmosphere. We see a confirmation, later, when Chakotay is landing Voyager
(or is it Tom landing the shuttle?) where we hear Voyager is around 150
kilometres above the surface. Standard orbit, though not actually
mentioned, would probably be around the 15000-20000 kilometres that puts it
around the middle range of the transporter. If Voyager orbits at that
distance, surely they can avoid those nasty atmospheres.
I would like to report a design flaw with those environmental suits. They
are probably designed for use in space. Here they are used inside a dark
cave. Yet in both cases, the vision of the owner would be seriously
hampered by the lights shining onto their face. I know it's so we can see
the actors faces, but try going into a dark room with two flashlights. Hold
one on your face, and the other in the direction you want to look. Look
there. As you squint to try and see something, pretend you are with
Starfleet. (Somebody should make that into a party game)
You're the captain of a starship. You're ship is out of power, with bare
hours of life support left. You're trapped on the surface of an
inhospitable planet, and your ship is sinking into a mysterious pool of
silver blood. What do you do? (Answer:Leave the bridge and go to check on
your crewmembers in sickbay, rather than merely asking the doctor for a
status report over the intercom).
Chakotay was a lousy guy to send around looking to save power. Astrometrics
is on and using power, yet he has to plead with a junior officer to turn it
off. Then he discovers a holographic doctor with no patients who's
hampering the crew's power saving efforts, muses about turning him off until
needed, and then doesn't (or at least switch to the mobile emitter). Just
out of curiousity, COMMANDER, did you actually save any power?
Would de-activating turbolifts help save power?
Tom and Harry are having a good fun time as the shuttle careens towards the
surface of the galaxy's worst planet with the possibility of a crash. Now
that's a good time for practical jokes.
Good of Tom to question Harry's complete change of character. Too bad he's
only a little late. Harry's character quit being the naive young ensign
some two seasons ago.
Janeway's bridge was pretty lax this week. Tom spends a good two minutes
(or so it seemed) setting up an elaborate "backstab my friend" joke, while
Chakotay slips in a crack about Tom when taking the conn. Perhaps the good
captain is being rather laisez-faire with her crew since she knows the power
loss was heightened by her decision to make the Omega Particle situation
worse and lose the stable Omega.
How did the alien manage to get Tom and Harry's bodies duplicated in such a
way that their vitals still officially register on tricorders, yet (along
with Starfleet materials) can survive in toxic gases, bizzare radiation
surges, and 200 degree Celcius temperatures? Impressive.
How did this corrosive and dangerous gas manage to travel from outside the
ship to sickbay/transporter room within seconds of being ordered up? Are
there no computer failsafes on this? "You have selected to transport a
corrosive substance through the ship's ventilation system that has shown
itself capable of spreading alien cheese germs...do you wish to continue?"
I must, however, thank the creators to have the courage to mention
everything that poor Harry has gone through. But from his point-of-view, he
wouldn't have considered himself "back from the dead". Although from his
point of view this is twice now that he has briefly encountered a duplicate
of himself.
I'm sure the Borg feel bad about never assimilating any Indian Scouts. If a
spacefaring race like the Kazon are considered "too primitive", I'm sure
they can handle space without the benefit of an outdoors guide. Though the
image of Chakotay pressing his ear against a bulkhead listening for incoming
ships and chuckwagons comes to mind...and will likely come up in an episode
someday.
Finally, I think the doctor's program needs some tweaking. I don't care how
much he enjoys getting Neelix out of sickbay, there should be some "don't
smile and be happy about getting casualties" subroutine. I wouldn't want my
doctor treating my condition like a news anchor would. He encountered
another one of his own kind, and still managed to surpass that with concern
for his friends (B'Elanna and the mad hologram).
Scott McClenny: Just wondering,but when they started talking about deuterium was I the only one who
started thinking Lost In Space?It seems like a lot of the first season episodes(I got most
of the tapes that Columbia Video put into their Collectors Edition of LIS' first season)on
Lost In Space they were either mining for deuterium or looking for deterium deposits. Also
do you think Chuckles had his tattoo cloned? This is the second time that the crew has been
duplicated.If anyone has bothered to count. And remember Harry,he's the DUPLICATE from the
last time they got duplicated.(That's what it says in the Marvel comic adaption of
Voyager.)So in other words the duplicate is actually a duplicate of a duplicate because the
REAL Harry got blown out of that hole. The motto for this episode ought to have been "Is It
Real,Or Is It Memorex?"
Jeff Winkle: One of the bad things about living in Western Washington is that
sometimes UPN gets pre-empted by local sports events...such as that
embarrassing Sonic game Wednesday night. So now I have to wait until
Saturday night to catch the "encore presentation", of course, by then
all the worthwhile nits will have been spotted by everyone else. Of
course, I can always nitpick the Sonics game (oh did that stink)...
Jeff Carpenter: It's a shame that your reception was bad the night you saw "Demon."
I think that the planet sets are a hundred times better then when
TNG started out. They've even improved since just the last year or
so on Voyager. They've done a great job.
Vivian Gladden: Chakotay volunteers to take a shuttle down after Tom and Harry. Janeway
says "We can't risk losing another crew member". So what does she do.
She lands the whole dang ship and all its crew. If we are going to lose
one, we might as well lose everyone.
So, silver blood--sientient shining goo. Could we perhaps have here the
"origin of the Dominion Shape Shifters". I know, I know, its out of time
and space, but it is a thought. What if the Dominion were Voyager's crew
run amuck.
Timothy Smith: Awful episode. One of the worst of the season. There are really too many
nits to get into, and many have already been addressed. One question
though... (not really a nit, per se)
Does it really seem like a good idea to provide an alien species with
the entire knowledge, experience, and memories of an entire Starfleet
crew, and then leave them in the Delta Quad? Does this not seem like a
serious security risk and completely contrary to the purpose of the
Prime Directive. The "silver blood" has gone from lyin' around in pools
on the planet's surface to having the knowledge and skills capable of
starting their own mini-Federation.
Travis McCord: Some more nits I saw:
The writers need to settle the question of what 7 learned from the
SF guys she helped assimilate ... how is it she knew about the
Omega directive--which supposedly only captains know--but doesn't
recognize the term "demon world", which a lot more people would
know?
Later, 7 tells some anonymous tech to set that containment field
to 0.47... and then instantly tells the bridge she's ready!
The poor tech doesn't even have a chance to confirm the setting, or
even go "Whoa! Hold it! 0 point what? My fingers don't move that fast!"
On the surface, they say they're searching for infrared signatures
from Tom and Harry ... how would IR be any good on a world with an
ambient temp of 500 K? (If I recall correctly, human body temp is
about 33 C, or 306 K.)
Also, the area where the shuttle landed looks like a fairly rocky area ...
so, how did they find a Voyager-sized plain within walking distance?
Chris Kintz: So, let me get this straight. Torres and Janeway are running scan on this
"SuperGoo" that, as far as they know, got into Kim and Paris' bloodstream
and remade them at a cellular level. For all intents and purposes, all
Torres and Janeway know is that if you get effected by this "SuperGoo", you
have to stay on this planet for the rest of your life.
This is pretty dangerous stuff. Does Torres use a Containment Field? A
Isolation Chamber? A lousy latex glove? Nope.. she's playing with the
stuff with her bare hands! Pretty stupid, really.
She must have a lot of faith in The Doctor.
Paul MacEachern, Hudson, MA: I have a few problems with "Demon". Not that we need an episode to
set the precedence that cloning is a loss of the individuals identity,
but TNG "Up The Long Ladder" did address this as an affront to
everything humans hold sacred. We would think Janeway would
be a little reluctant to offer her and her crew's DNA up for cloning.
Also, the only thing missing from the cloned crew on the demon
planet was them waving goodbye! Who wants to place bets that
this little duplication won't come back to haunt Voyager?
By the way, did they get their fuel??? I find it amazing that
Voyager sets out to do a mission, gets sidetracked with the
problem of the week, and the original mission gets lost.
Why doesn't Voyager always take steps to conserve energy?
At least eliminate the non-non essentials like holodecks,
regulate the replicators. I think getting rid of the other
Borg chambers might help too.
Mark Schieber: I just watched the episode of "Voyager" entitled "Demon". While I
thought it was a fantastic episode (for real), I had to wonder the
obvious question: How did the liquid metal aliens replicate their
clothes? I mean, they said they replicated Tom & Harry by their DNA, but
they had clothes on. And if they did replicate clothes (through whatever
means they had to do so, maybe thinking that it was part of them) why not
replicate their environmental suits as well?
Another minor nit (if you consider life and death minor) just how DID Tom
and Harry survive the environment with no oxygen? They must have laid
there for 12 hours at least and no explanation was given as to how they
survived. (Note from Phil: I believe holodoc mentioned something about a back-up system on their space suits.)
Steve: I wrote them all down this time, sorry I posted this a bit late.
Now the nits:
500 kelvins shouldn't pose much of a threat to Voyager, if it can go through a
class-m atmosphere, it can certainly go through that, it's only 440.33
Farenheit. Seven says "Effeciency is relative." It usually is relative, but I
can think of some ways where it could be absolute. Shouldn't a deuterium
planet only 4 LY away have already been detected. 1/4 impulse, I don't even
think it would be worth going that slow! Harry isn't all that special, on star
trek we come back from the dead all the time. That didn't seem like a very
smooth shuttle landing to me. The Demon planet seems amazingly Mars-like, even
though they say it's horrible. Is the little pond of goo 12 kelvins, or 12
degrees Celsius? If it's kelvins it should probably be rock hard. That goo
also must not conduct heat very well if it's that cold. And they say its
viscous, eh? Looks pretty runny to me. Don't Tom and Hairy ever excersise?
While Voyager is making it's airplane-like landing, they report they're 150 km
above the surface, that's about half of low orbit, they're still really high.
If the atmosphere is so horrible, and it would even corrode their suits (but
doesn't) how could they get out of the shuttle (well, without transporters?)
It seems they just open the door and walk right out. Seven says the borg have
not yet assimilated Indians. That seems ok, but the borg probably have
assimilated enough historians to know a lot about the indians. They collect 20
kg of deuterium, in those little cups that look they could hold a mL or two?
Deuterium isn't very dense (I think.) and 20 kg is 44.0924 pounds, quite a
lot, don't you think? How kind of them, just turn off life support on
everywhere but the bridge and whatever other deck it was. Oh, that's good,
Voyager is only 2 km away, too bad that in those bulky suits walking 1.2427424
miles will take a while. They beam other-Tom and other-Harry to sickbay, along
with the planet's atmosphere, the atmosphere seemed dusty and hazy on the
planet, so why wasn't it in sickbay? And if they can transport their air,
can't they replicate it, but they say they can't, how odd. Their is a very
nice looking scene, where it shows Voyager sitting on the Demon planet, very
fascinating scene, kind of let's you see how big the ship really is, but the
landing struts are in the engineering hull, which makes Voyager look top- and
front-heavy, and like it's going to collapse any minute. After 4-5 minutes Tom
and Hairy should be dead, but I would guess maybe an hour passed. How did
Harry hail Voyager, don't you need another ship for that? Oh, and, has anyone
counted the crew, make sure there really are 150 give or take 5 crew members?
Matthew McLauchlin: Throughout this episodes there's beaming through shields, beaming
through shields, beaming through shields... oy!
Tuvok says that there is no environment less hospitable to human life
than a class Y planet. Evidently this is another case of the famed
Tuvokian sweeping generalization phenomenon (first experienced in "The
Gift", where he tells Kes that there is nothing beyond the subatomic.) I
can think of lots more environments more hostile to human life, if being
on a Class Y planet kills you in minutes. Try at the bottom of the
ocean, where you'd be immediately crushed to death. Or on the surface of
a star. Or in deep space, where you'd asphyxiate in seconds. Or...you
get the idea.
I'm surprised that Tuvok didn't charge Kim with insubordination. (I
wouldn't have, but still, I'm surprised that Tuvok didn't. This is
*Tuvok*, after all.)
Kim says he's never voiced his opinions before. Um, "Prime Factors",
"Resistance"...
I think that this is the first time that a shuttle has landed on a
planet and *not* *crashed*! Did they retrieve it?
Great confusion surrounds the chemical composition
of the silver blood. Initially, Kim says that it's liquid deuterium, but
later Janeway and Torres say that it's mostly hydrogen with hydrogen
sulphate and some other stuff. If it's deuterium, though, it must be
VERY cold... meaning that Tom probably couldn't stick his hand into it,
Torres shouldn't have been able to touch it, etc.
Non-nit: I originally thought, why would there have been bubbles coming
up from Harry in the pool of silver blood, but then I remembered that
the suit probably expels CO2 to the exterior.
The "time to oxygen depletion" now issues a beep to mark the time (which
was correctly counted off, btw - yay!) This is a new one; computer
countdowns such as the autodestruct sequences haven't had it in the
past. CBC listeners such as myself will be reminded of - "The National
Research Council official time signal. The beginning of the long dash
following 10 seconds of silence, indicates exactly one p.m., Eastern
Daylight Time... beep beep beep beep beep... beeeeeeep." (Never mind :)
If oxygen was seeping out, that means the suit was breached... which
meant that they should have been exposed to the VERY HOT atmosphere...
which meant that they should have been incinerated!
Why vent the plasma when landing? Isn't that wasteful? Why couldn't it
have been drawn back into the warp system?
Why not go to the holodecks for sleeping accomodations? They are, after
all, a *separate power source!* (For that matter, why does Chak suggest
shutting down the Doc to save power?)
Tuvok makes two syntactical errors in this episode. First, he says he
could recite a litany of damage reports. Actually, what he is reciting
is a list; a litany is a statement of belief. Secondly, he says that the
ship is submerging. I'm fairly sure that "submerge" is a transitive
verb. The verb he wants is "sinking".
WHY are there so many lights on?! Power use is very inconsistent
throughout the episode.
Why does Chak suggest that Paris and Kim found shelter? Shelter's no
good if you're suffocating.
Is sickbay on Deck 5? And what about the transporter rooms, the cargo
bay, the airlock, and engineering? I ask because life support was shut
down to all decks except 1 and 5. (Also, where would the crew go if the
mess hall (which is on Deck 2) was evacuated due to life support going
down?)
Wait a minute. Voyager was on terra firma (if calida), then suddenly
this pool of silver blood appeared under them... then it brought the
land back again at the end of the episode!! How could Voy be sinking
then? Is the whole planet's surface morphed silver blood? No, that can't
be it. Something is weird.
Janeway tells Tuvok to reconfigure the phasers to emit a nadion burst. I
thought a phaser blast *was* a nadion burst!
If the silverblood replicated Kim and Paris from their DNA, then where
did their uniform come from? And why do they look the same age, with the
same body shape? Something is not right here.
Sara Greenblatt: I liked it! It had its nits, of course, even big ones, but it just
*felt* like Star Trek to me. The camaraderie, jokes, pairing up of
characters. This is why I like Voyager so much, even if I find fault
with many of the episodes: I like the characters and their
interactions. While NextGen was certainly a "better" show, I really
only liked 2 of the main cast -- Data and Geordi. And I actively
diskliked Picard, Riker, Deanna, Beverly and Worf. On Voyager, I
basically like everyone (except Neelix and 7/9 -- and I loved Kes),
and find it enjoyable when they put any group of characters together.
To me, Voyager seems more like Classic Trek -- which still can't be
beat for its "family feeling" -- than any other series. (Forget about
DS9, whose characters I find boring at best, and onboxious at worst.
While its [no apostrophe, please!] stories may sometimes be good
drama, it doesn't have any of the Star Trek "magnetism" that made me a
fan more than 30 years ago).
The "New and Improved" Harry was great, although long overdue (as is a
promotion!) Harry, Harry, Harry .... you made it IN to the Academy,
you graduated FROM the Academy, and you were assigned to a starship
for your first mission -- of course your opinion is valuable!!
But it was cute seeing him volunteer his "older brother" Tom, and not
have anyone pick on the rank difference. (The only thing I liked
about "Living Witness" was that Harry was a lieuteant, too.)
While I'm used to TPTB playing fast and loose with science, I'm more
disppointed when the episode was written by one of their science
consultants (Andre Bormanis). On the other hand, I *like* episodes
with a strong scienctific plot -- it IS called Science Fiction, after
all!
[Sigh] Only 2 more new eps to go, and then no more for several
months.
Rob Levandowski: Woah, man, was this a *bad* episode. Nits abound.
When the transporter overloads, Seven and Chakotay dash out the door...
followed by a billowing cloud of supposedly supertoxic atmosphere.
However, neither seem bothered in the least by it.
The replicant Tom and Harry should've been naked. Or does Starfleet use
organic uniforms, whose DNA encodes the shape, size, color, etc. of the
uniform? The same goes for the communicator pin, which the ST:TNG Tech
Manual establish as nonorganic. (Too bad they didn't have some
crewmember named Richard beam down with them...)
The extreme temperature of the planet is mentioned repeatedly. One
figure bandied about was 500 Kelvin. That translates to 440 degrees
Farenheit. To put it into perspective, the planet Mercury reaches
temperatores of 800 deg. F. I guess it wasn't such a hot planet after
all...
If the planet was so corrosive, couldn't Seven have adapted her Borg
personal shield technology to protect the crew? (Then again, First
Contact showed that the Borg aren't very good at dealing with
corrosion... an unfortunate failing in a cyborg race.)
Holodoc should've known Chakotay was bluffing about turning the Doctor
off to save power. After all, he's got his own power supply that's
incompatible with the rest of the ship... unless that's no longer true
thanks to the Hirogen, in which case they should've long since turned on
their Energy Star Doctor Saver feature... and if Doc is just a program,
does he really need to manifest his physical presence to go on thinking?
Couldn't the computer just run his program without activating the
projectors? Couldn't he run in a "virtual sickbay" within the computer,
without needing the projection?
It's a good thing that the "silver blood" was so good at keeping cool.
Deuterium would be gaseous at 500 Kelvin -- it's an isotope of hydrogen,
after all, and has pretty much the same physical properties. To keep
deuterium in a "slush" liquid state, it has to be stored at 13.8 Kelvin,
according to the Tech Manual.
What will the replicant crew eat on the Demon planet? If they're based
on human DNA, they will need to eat...
And then, of course, there's the mother of all nits...
They ran out of *DEUTERIUM?!?!*
This is the lamest concept that Voyager has ever put forth. The idea of
the starship running out of deuterium is so farfetched that it boggles
the mind. Deuterium is nothing more than an isotope of hydrogen. It
occurs in nature. And in the Star Trek canon, it's easy to find.
Consider the following passage from the ST:TNG Technical Manual. It's
written regarding the Enterprise-D, but it's applicable to Voyager as
well.
"Slush deuterium is created by standard electro-centrifugal fractioning
of a variety of materials, including seawater, outer planet satellite
snows and ices, and cometary nuclei, and chilling down the fractionated
liquid. Each will result in different proportions of deuterium and
tailings, but can be handled by the same Starfleet hardware...." --
ST:TNG Technical Manual, p. 69, (c) 1991 Paramount Pictures
Deuterium is *hydrogen*. On our own planet, deuterium can be found in
noticeable quantities in ordinary seawater -- water that incorporates a
deuterium isotope as one of the two hydrogen atoms is called "heavy
water," and it is well known to present-day science. It is reasonable to
say that Voyager could've tanked up anyplace they found a large body of
water exposed to normal cosmic radiation. By Trek's own rules, they
could've tanked up from any number of handy places.
What if they somehow managed to plot a course that took them away from
any source of water at all for a long enough time to exhaust their cruise
capacity? (Keep in mind that the Galaxy class starship has 9.3 metric
tonnes of liquid deuterium storage capacity; Voyager's capacity would be
less but still quite large! The Enterprise-D could run at Warp 6 for
seven years before running out of fuel, according to page 2 of the ST:TNG
TM.)
Well, the Starfleet engineers thought of this one, too. They borrowed an
idea from a real physicist, Robert W. Bussard, who came up with the idea
in 1960. The red cones on the front of each warp nacelle are Bussard
Ramscoops, devices which emit electromagnetic fields to capture the
minute amounts of hydrogen in interstellar space. The ramscoops can
slowly replenish deuterium supplies, extending a ship's range especially
at high warp. (See page 70 of the ST:TNG TM.)
Okay, so we've established that the very premise is silly. Now to add
insult to injury: This episode was originally written by Andre
Bormanis... Trek's science advisor, a physicist.
If they had used antideuterium, it would've been a whole different story.
Antideuterium is incredibly rare, and Starfleet vessels store far less
of it. It's rare because it self-annihilates when it comes into contact
with deuterium. It can't be easily collected or manufactured. A
Starfleet vessel would run out of antideuterium long before the deuterium
ran out.
That massive, glaring, obvious nit spoiled the episode entirely for me.
It's so obviously wrong given Star Trek lore and basic modern-day physics
that it prevents all suspension of disbelief.
Andrew Moller: Doesn't it seem a little odd that the "Silver Blood" knows how to clone
everything that it comes in contact with? Why would it have that
feature, especially since we don't hear of any other creatures on the
planet that it could use this ability on.
Clay: Why would they need to shutdown the holodeck seeing as the episode Parallax
says that the holodeck energy system is incompatible with the rest of the
ship? It also seems to me that they are trying to change the characters
personalities and that may be why those who don't like this episode, don't
like it.
5/18/98 Update
Paul MacEachern: I have a few problems with "Demon". Not that we need an episode to
set the precedence that cloning is a loss of the individuals identity,
but TNG "Up The Long Ladder" did address this as an affront to
everything humans hold sacred. We would think Janeway would
be a little reluctant to offer her and her crew's DNA up for cloning.
Also, the only thing missing from the cloned crew on the demon
planet was them waving goodbye! Who wants to place bets that
this little duplication won't come back to haunt Voyager?
By the way, did they get their fuel??? I find it amazing that
Voyager sets out to do a mission, gets sidetracked with the
problem of the week, and the original mission gets lost.
Why doesn't Voyager always take steps to conserve energy?
At least eliminate the non-non essentials like holodecks,
regulate the replicators. I think getting rid of the other
Borg chambers might help too.
Jim Cadwell: Wouldn't it be a good idea to send the Doctor to the Planet? He wouldn't
be damaged or have to worry about air or anything.
Joe Griffin: Silver Blood Harry and Silver Blood Tom couldn't breathe in sickbay
until Holodoc introduced atmosphere from the planet. Why didn't they
also freeze to death?
Mike F., New York: A nit I don't think is mentioned here - No one notices that, even if
"Harry" and "Tom" can breathe the atmosphere, the temperature hasn't toasted them?
Also - "out of gas?" ugh.
So power's short, huh? Gee, Kathy, go fire up your Da Vinci program
some more.
Why does Holodoc need light to see?
Jason Krietsch: I might have not heard this right, but when the Doctor kicks neelix out,
neelix says, or at least soulds like he said. "you heard the captain! Move!
Move!!" captain? Janeways on the bridge. you wer tolking to the doctor!
Ray Andrade: The episode has been picked clean already but I wonder why
Voyager didn't use their Bussard ram-scoops to harvest deuterium in
space. Call me crazy but I think the Enterprise was able to do this.
Joe Griffin: [Concerning the fact that H-Doc shouldn't be listening to Puccini.] Not at all. Mozart perhaps, although certainly not Wagner. Too much
energy. Bartok would be good--"Bluebeard's Castle" might just well be
minimalist enough, if heard in mono.
Paganini is right out.
[Concerning the reason Voyager doesn't use it's Bussard Collectors to collect hydrogen,] I seem to recall that the original concept of the Bussard Ramjet (an
idea proposed for interstellar travel about forty years ago) was that it
could only work well once high velocity had been reached, since hydrogen
molecules are so spread out in open space. In sketches I've seen, the
collector scoop is about five times the width of the ship as well. Speed
and size of the scoop must combine to collect the same amount of H as is
being consumed by the ship. It's possible V'ger couldn't get going that
fast, being so suddenly out of Deuterium. So I guess the Bussard
Collectors are a good idea, but not for this application. However, had
they been using them, this situation would not have arisen, as they'd be
constantly refreshing their supply as they travelled. (See Rob
Levandowski's post on this from 5/11 for a better explanation.)
Anne Magee: Something I haven't seen mentioned yet: When the helmsman is lost on the
planet and Janeway decides to land Voyager, who drives? The first
officer. With both helmsman and first officer unavailable, and Voyager
needs to get off the planet in a hurry, who drives? The captain. And who
feeds her the information she needs? The security officer. Does this
seem strange to anyone else? There are lots of people whose only
function is to walk around the halls; they ought to consider training
some of them to be helmspeople and science types. Or maybe landing party
types.
Brian: [Concerning the size of the solar system,] Well, there's an area of space just beyond our solar sustem called the Oort
Cloud, made up of comets, more asteroids, and probably a good number of other
things, and it is a good 7 trillion kilometers away from our sun ( about 4.3
trillion miles ) not exactly a light year, but astrometicly speaking close
enough.
Francis Lalumiere: Since Voyager is shown three days later in Canada (compared to the
USA), the nits are usually all taken before I even see the episode. But
I believe I've got one this time! ;)
When the "duplicate" Tom and Harry are beamed back to Voyager, the start
suffocating.
This is understandable, given that the atmosphere on the planet is
completely different from the gazes found on Voyager. But Tom and Harry
should also have given signs that they were *really* cold, because
Voyager's "room temperature" is a LOT lower than what was found on the
Y-class planet.
Jason Krietsch: During the prologue, Belana looks surprised at the fact that engeneering is
shutting down. Wouldn't the head engineer know that the power is going off,
isn't pulling the power plug something to warn people about and have people
moved BEFORE power is going off?
So if main sensors wouldn't find dense pockets of deuterium, as 7 says, how
would the expect to find any?
Doesn't away teams consist of The chief of security (tuvok) and the first
officer (chacotay) and some other random people. not two people, not just kim
and paris.
David: One last comment on "Demon." When Harry and Tom mentioned that the liquid
was at 12 degrees, I immediately though of a passage from "Gaia" by
Lovelock. He mentioned that to detect life, one should seek localized areas
of decreased Entropy. And Harry and Tom find something much cooler than the
environment- they should have immediately suspected life.... (Note from Phil: I certainly did! ;-)
Shane Tourtellotte: A mea culp on "Demon": I admit it; I was wrong. I confused the Hirogen with the Krenim, and chastised Kim for remembering a species he did indeed remember fighting.
My fault, all my fault.
But admit it, it wouldn't *really* have surprised you if the writers had
him recall the Krenim, would it?
Lisa Solinas: Sigh. Started out great but sort of sank.
When B'Elanna's finger was duplicated, who else thought of "Aquiel"?
Where did the holes in Tom and Harry's spacesuits come from?
I was looking forward to seeing Seven in something other than that
TIGHT CATSUIT! Then I discovered that she has a specially tailored
suit THAT REVEALED EVERY CURVE. If you put Seven and Chuckles
in a dark room with their faces blotted out you could tell which one was
she. Or her. Whatever.
If the goo can duplicate uniforms, wouldn't Voyager sinking into it also
duplicate the ship.
The atmosphere of the planet is yellowish-gold, yet the same
atmosphere in sickbay is clear.
I just loved Neelix in his war'o'wills with the Doctor.
Chuckles seems to be big on watching people suffer. He tells Kim to put
up with Seven's nagging in "Omega Directive" and here he threatens
the holodoc.
Wouldn't turning the Holodoc off constitute abuse, if he's supposed to be
a sentient being?
All the people on board Voyager have little pieces of DNA thrown into
the muck so duplicates can be made. It's essentially the same thing as
cloning, and many religions are anti-cloning. Does this mean that in the
enlightened future, people don't care if they have a twin with their
memories?
Best line: Vorik talking about not "losing our cool."
Brilliant minds think alike! My sisters were yakking during Tom's joke
about the bike, so I didn't hear it. Two minutes later I ask, "Hey, why
don't they stick a few bikes in engineering and have some burly ensigns
generate some power?"
Note: the uniforms were shown to be synthetic in "Distant Origin". Hee
hee!
Jack B.: I can't believe nobody mentioned this before (or maybe I'm just wrong). On
the surface of the planet Alt-Tom and Alt-Harry here Seven and Chakotay, as
well as vice versa. I thought the environmental suits were sealed. That's
why the crew uses radios (or whatever) to communicate while in the suits. So
how come the sound waves from Alt-Tom/Harry reached Seven/Chakotay?
5/25/98 Update
Radwell: How the conversation between Harry & Tom should have gone:
Harry: "Do you remember when I first came on Voyager? How green I was?
Tom: "Harry, I don't remember because that wasn't you. You're not "our" Harry
Kim, remember? He and the baby were killed and your Janeway sent you and the
baby to "our" Voyager as replacements, saying it was only fair since they
were killed trying to help them."
In other words, Harry did not "come back from the dead". He and the newborrn
were killed in "Nom Sequitor" and replaced. Harry even says that he really
isn't "their" Harry Kim to Janeway at the end of the episode.
John Latchem: I know the file for Demon is frozen but I have to correct Radwell. Harry
technically returned from the dead in "Eminations."
And he died in "Deadlock."
And he still has as much claim to being the original Harry Kim as the one who
died. They only diverged during that episode. All the experience before were
the same. All the experiences after were the same. Just a few minutes of
difference.
PLEASE NOTE: This file is frozen. I think we've done all we're going to do on it! You're welcome to send addition nits but they will be filed for future reference instead of uploaded.
If you would like to add some comments,
drop
me a note at chief@nitcentral.com with the Subject line "Demon". Please include your real name, city and state (or province
and county as the case may be) in the body of the e-mail so I can give you
credit if you are the first person to bring up a particular nit. (Remember
the legalese: Everything you submit becomes mine and you grant me the right
to use yourname in any future publication by me. I will do my best to give
you credit if you are the first person to submit a particular nit but I make
no guarantees. And finally, due to the volume of mail received at Nitpicker
Central, your submission may or may not be acknowledged but that entry will make you a part of the Nitpickers Guide if you aren't one already!)
Copyright 1998 by Phil Farrand. All Rights Reserved.