Character Insight No. 301: Ghosts in Star Trek

Welcome back to Character Insight!  This week, to celebrate Halloween being upon us, we review the role ghosts have had in the history of Star Trek.

https://archive.org/details/CharacterInsightEp301  

Ghosts and spirits are often referred to in Star Trek as a way to describe new life forms encountered that do not conform to normal, understandable ways.  This is similar to the episode Oasis covered on last week's main show, where it turns out there are no ghosts haunting a stranded ship once the Enterprise crew learns the real story behind the Kantare colonists on board.  Another example is the TNG episode The Loss, where Will Riker refers to two-dimensional life forms as ghosts before later discovering their true nature.

It makes sense that ghosts and ghost stories are shared more to help understand cultures in the context of Star Trek.  Indeed, we find out about many of our main races and cultures by the spirit stories they tell from homeworld religions and the like, including Klingons with the jat'yln, Bajorans with pagh, and Ocampa with comra.  But these ghosts and spritis rarely actually invade the space of our favorite starships and crews.

There are some notable exceptions.  In Enterprise, a disembodied transporter signal from a man named Quinn Erickson is found to haunt ships that entered The Barrens in the episode Daedalus.  This is the episode where we learn all about transporter inventor Emory Erickson and his quest to recapture Quinn, his son lost in the reduction to practice of the working transporter.  Although not technically a dead person's spirit, the long-lost transporter signal of a person does share many of the same qualities we would associate with a ghost, so perhaps this is how we can make ghosts become real in the future.

In Voyager's Barge of the Dead, B'Elanna Torres dies in a shuttle accident and ends up on a Klingon barge of the dead, which is kind of like a ghost ship serving as purgatory on the way to hell for dishonored Klingons.  B'Elanna interacts with other dead folks in this episode, making this as close to a Klingon ghost story as we would get.  Thankfully, Kahless did not appear as a force projection in this episode.

And then there's Sub Rosa, the episode that trumps all other bad episodes in TNG.  While anaphasic lifeforms are not technically a ghost, the females in Doctor Crusher's family were host to such a lifeform that decided to pose as the ghost of a 17th Century Scotsman named Ronin, based on the similarities in how that lifeform appears non-corporeal at most times.  If you want to be truly horrified in more ways than one this Halloween, I can think of nothing more scary to put on your television than Sub Rosa.

So enjoy your Halloween candy and spooky movies and shows, and don't forget to include Sub Rosa in your weekend viewing enjoyment.  Or don't, and enjoy it more.

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Character Insight No. 300: Best of Will Riker

Welcome back to Character Insight! This week, we celebrate our 300th installment of this segment with the best moments of my favorite first officer.  No, not Spock as we've done on many prior anniversary segments, but William T. Riker from TNG.

https://archive.org/details/CharacterInsightEp300 

Will Riker often presented himself as a daring and fun character in his role as Number One on Picard's ship, but we do not get to see him fully embrace such a personality until the episode A Matter of Honor.  In this episode, Riker serves in an exchange officer program with the Klingons and has to be a daring tough guy to survive as a Klingon crew member.

QUOTE (from A Matter of Honor, S2):

""A Klingon is his work, not his family; that is the way of things!"
"He's your father!"
"Klingons do not express... ...feeling the way you do!"
"Perhaps you should."
"We would not know how!"
"Yesterday, I did not know how... to eat gagh!" "

Later in season 7's The Pegasus, we see Riker's first commanding officer come on board the Enterprise to search for the vessel they served on many years ago.  The mystery of this Pegasus ship reveals interesting character development for Riker as the mistakes of the past come out into the open when he reveals his former commander had broken a treaty with the Romulans about cloaking technology.  This is much like Riker's version of the Wesley Crusher episode The First Duty, a view of how mistakes and flaws in the past can help you develop into a better officer later.

QUOTE (from The Pegasus, S7):

"Now that doesn't sound like the same man who grabbed a phaser and defended his captain twelve years ago."
"I've had twelve years to think about it. And if I had it to do over again, I would've grabbed the phaser and pointed it at you instead of them."
"So, on reflection, you'd rather be a traitor than a hero."
"I wasn't a hero, and neither were you! What you did was wrong, and I was wrong to support you, but I was too young and too stupid to realize it! You were the captain; I was the ensign. I was just following orders.""

Like some other characters, one of Riker's best episodes was one in which he thinks he is going crazy and has to overcome the challenge.  In this episode entitled Frame of Mind, Riker is actually phase shifting between an alien hospital and the Enterprise, where he is rehearsing for a role in a play as a crazy man, ironically.

QUOTE (from Frame of Mind, S6):

""Commander, I must congratulate you on your performance this evening."
"Oh?"
"Your unexpected choice to improvise was an effective method of drawing the audience into the plight of your character. You gave a truly realistic interpretation of multi-infarct dementia." "

Finally, in what might be a surprising choice to some, my pick for best Riker episode is the two-parter Best of Both Worlds.  Sure, Picard is assimilated by the Borg and all, but the first episode focuses more on Riker being in conflict with another commander who wants his job and questioning his career choices, while the second episode features Riker taking command of the ship to overcome the Borg while personally dealing with grief over the apparent loss of his mentor and captain.  This is really the key Riker story of the series.  Nobody can forget this cliffhanger line, as well, when Riker decides to take on the Borg led by Locutus.

QUOTE (from Best of Both Worlds, S3-4):

"Mr. Worf...fire."

Other episodes of note include A Matter of Perspective from season 3, Future Imperfect from season 4, and Second Chances from season 6.  Riker was a well-developed right hand man for Captain Picard, and without him and his iconic beard after season 1, TNG would not have been as good and successful as it turned out to be.

Commander Riker was played by Jonathan Frakes, who is still active in Hollywood today with recent directing roles on The Librarians, The Orville, and of course, Star Trek Discovery.

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Contact me with segment suggestions @BuckeyeFitzy on Twitter! Thanks!

Character Insight No. 299: Isaac Newton

Welcome back to Character Insight!  This week, we cover Sir Isaac Newton, the human scientist from Earth's history who surprisingly appears multiple times in Star Trek.

https://archive.org/details/CharacterInsightEp299 

Isaac Newton is of course known for his series of great discoveries in the fields of science and mathematics.  In addition to inventing calculus, he set the foundation for our understanding of physics by coming up with three fundamental laws of motion and mechanics.  Of course, such an important figure of history would be referenced numerous times in a show like Star Trek, but perhaps more surprisingly, this character appears twice in live form as well.

The first appearance for Newton is a holodeck recreation in the TNG episode Descent.  In this episode, Data wishes to see how three of Earth's greatest scientists would interact with one another in the great equalizing game of poker.  Thus, we see Newton flipping cards with Stephen Hawking and Albert Einstein in this fun diversion from the main plot of that episode.  At one point, Data even offends Newton.

QUOTE

That would not be the last we would see the writers of Trek mess with that story of the apple and Newton.  In the Voyager episode Death Wish, Newton again appears as part of a panel, but this time, it's the real Newton who has been dragged through time by Q to testify about another continuum member Quinn's important assistance provided to humans through history.  Newton appears alongside a famous Woodstock musician and Will Riker.

According to Q, Quinn had met Newton under the tree on the day of that fateful apple falling, and Quinn had jostled the tree when he got up from the conversation, which led the apple to fall on Newton's head and the first law of motion to be developed.  Furthermore, Q indicates that had Quinn not interacted with Newton that day, the famous scientist would have instead died in a debtor's prison for being a suspect in several prostitute murders.  And who knows where humanity and the Federation would be in that timeline?

When Newton is not appearing onscreen to rewrite our understanding of his history, we see references to him come up in many other episodes.  This includes a monument unveiling in the Voyager episode Future's End, a key piece of dialogue in a Dixon Hill holodeck mystery in the TNG episode The Big Goodbye, and multiple references to needing the guidance of a man like Newton by Archer's Enterprise crew in episodes Anomaly and The Forge.  So while his onscreen appearances might have been a bit silly, his contributions to the foundations of what made space travel possible are always there in the background being honored in Star Trek.

Isaac Newton was played by John Neville in TNG and by Peter Dennis in Voyager.  Neville's acting career exploded in late life, after starring in The Adventures of Baron Munchausen in 1988 at the age of 63.  He can be seen in the Fifth Element and The X Files movie.  Dennis appeared in movies like Shrek and Sideways in recent years.  Both these men died about 10 years ago, so if Newton is to hit the screen again, it will be yet a third actor to do so.

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Contact me with segment suggestions @BuckeyeFitzy on Twitter! Thanks!