Title: 11001001
Airdate: 2/1/88
Plot Summary
The Enterprise docks at the local Starbase for some much needed computer upgrades. They have enlisted the help of the Bynars, a race of beings who have so totally integrated into their computer, they would die without it. When a star goes nova in their system and sends an EMP, they have to shut it down and store the data somewhere else. The Enterprise has the only computer that can do it so they make a ruse to steal the Enterprise unbeknownst to the crew, kidnapping Riker and Picard in the process.
Make It So
Picard is a third wheel but at least he knows it. Riker doesn’t seem to, weirdly. He’s on the holodeck with Riker and Minuet when the Enterprise is stolen.
Number 1
Riker has the line of show when he mentions that there is a paper in Data’s painting. “A blind man teaching an android to paint? There’s got to be a paper in there somewhere.” Of course he’s completely smitten by Minuet and is genuinely heartbroken, though stoic about it, when she’s disappears along with the Bynar’s computer information. We’ll see that it will affect him more than we thought later.
Fully Functional
Data is superb in this. He starts out with what would become a staple with Data, his painting. Then when things go wrong and Riker and Picard are missing, he takes command and makes excellent decisions. He “feels” completely guilty about painting when he could actually be on the bridge 24 hours a day. He has nothing to be ashamed of. He took charge as well as any officer.
Data acted quite a bit different in Season 2 on than he did in Season 1. However here he acted more like what he would become later on. Of course the reason is because Brent Spiner had to get a hold of the character. But in my head-canon, this near loss of the Enterprise affected him even after everything was ok and he would tone down his attempts to be human while he was on-duty. Of course there are some episodes that contradict this but it’s still fun to think about.
Today Is A Good Day To Die
Worf is part of the team playing Parrises squares. He takes it way too seriously but when Riker tells him to dial it back, he replies “If winning isn’t important, why keep score?” Well… he’s not wrong. Worf realizes that Picard and Riker are still on the Enterprise.
Phase Inducers
Geordi is less than amused by Riker’s joke. He and Data figure out what’s going on with the possible warp core breach and send it on auto-pilot out of the Starbase.
Counselor Cleavage
Troi is absent in this one.
Dancing Doctor
Crusher is very excited about seeing professor Awesomepants or whatever his name is. She re-appears to look worried in the Starbase control room.
Security Chief Dead Meat
Yar puts together the team of Parrises squares with Worf and two unnamed crewmen. She also tells Riker that Worf is probably not nearly as intense as he lets on, he actually has a sense of humor. 6 more seasons and 4 seasons of DS9 would prove otherwise.
She also takes worry-duty.
Shut Up, Wesley
Wesley keeps an eye on the Bynars and tell Data and LaForge when he notices something is up. Thankfully, he is as much in the dark about everything as everyone else.
Canon Maker
The updates to the holodeck are due to issues they had in the past, specifically referencing The Big Goodbye. While the return of Q was a call back to Encounter At Farpoint, this episode really laid the seeds that The Next Generation would build on the past and reference a lot more than TOS did. This would be turned up to 11 in DS9. There was also mentions in a previous episode that they were overdue for computer upgrades, we see the result of that here.
Speaking of which, Minuet would be brought back again in season 4, in a way.
There is a weapons room which lends credibility to my assertion that it was ridiculous to have phasers in the kitchen in Star Trek VI.
Canon Breaker
The Bynars didn’t know Picard was going to be there. So why did they require that there needed to be two people to work the terminals? I know that’s their normal way of doing things but then with all the planning they did, it was clear they only had their sights set on Riker. Granted, they had to hurry as there was an unexpected time crunch but still, their whole planet was saved because Minuet was on the ball enough to keep Picard a little longer.
Maybe they programmed Minuet to know everything enough to help. Hard to tell.
Picard just barges into the holodeck when Riker is dancing and having a fairly intimate moment with Minuet. This habit of just entering other people’s holodeck programs is worse than going through another person’s browser history.
A Little Bloody Nose
No one dies. Well the Bynars did but got better.
Technobabble
The holodeck is really too real in this. I’m still mystified on how it’s so much different than what we saw on The Big Goodbye but I can’t call this a canon breaker just because its not apparent to me. Later on we’ll see a lot more holodeck programs become sentient and other characters that just act like NPC’s.
The Enterprise was able to evacuate quickly, with several transporter rooms running and people exiting through the docking tunnel.
Picard asks the computer to explain the red alert. The ensuing conversation will be similarly replicated in various episodes when a lone crewman has only the computer to talk to.
We see the self-destruct process. It requires both the Captain and the First Officer to be in agreement and only has a 5 minute countdown. The set it in Engineering but I don’t believe that’s required, you can do it on the bridge as well. It does require to be on the bridge to disable it.
Library Computer
The special effects shot of the starbase is the same one used in Star Trek III when the Enterprise makes it’s way to Spacedock.
I Know That Guy:
Gene Dynarski had previously appeared as Ben Childress in Star Trek: The Original Series episode “Mudd’s Women” and Krodak in “The Mark of Gideon“. He’s the commander of the starbase. One of a very few who appeared in both TOS and TNG.
Carolyn McCormick as Minuet. She was probably most known for playing a psychologist on a pile of episodes of Law & Order in the 90s and early 2000’s.
What It Means To Be Human – Review
This is an excellent episode in an otherwise mess of a season. It really feels like a later season episode. We have the Bynars which are a really imaginative idea. I also wonder if they are the flip side of the borg. Integration into technology but not in an invasive way. They are so locked into their computer that they need their central computer to survive.
BTW, we aren’t far from that. All our apps and technology requires massive servers in the cloud, if our central datacenters were taken out, we’d be FUKKKKED.
The addition of Minuet shouldn’t work but it does. Partly because of McCormick’s performance, she does a great job in making the whole thing believable, going from a sultry jazz girl to an all business exposition machine.
The idea is very TOS, it seems like they are taken over by a hostile force but in actuality, it’s a mercy mission. It’s very believable that the Bynars as they are presented would have a binary way of thinking. Why didn’t they just ask for help? Because the Federation might have said no. If the risk is even 1% that they would, they couldn’t take the chance. It was their entire world.
I love the little things, like when they disable the self destruct, there’s 56 seconds left. None of that manufactured tension of waiting until 2 seconds left. The Bynars simply offering themselves for punishment shows they have a lot of decency and are willing to take accountability.
It’s just an overall great episode, and not just by season one standards, I genuinely love it. We get holodeck shenanigans, some Data growth, some unknown alien stuff, it’s all there and put together beautifully. Hell I even enjoy seeing the Enterprise go into space dock.
Just wonderful.
