The Original Series said “where no man has gone before.” Huzzah for slowly getting less sexist!
The TNG episode is actually called “Where No One Have Gone Before.” Boo for terrible grammar!
We begin this episode with a puzzle. A scientist, one Kosinski, is going to visit the Enterprise for some propulsion tests. Naturally, he sent his specs ahead of time. Also naturally, the Enterprise crew simulated them on the computer. In the simulation, nothing happened. Yet Starfleet reports excellent results from their tests. What gives?
First: most complex systems do in fact have a computer model for testing purposes. They are often extremely valuable for cheaply figuring out whether a given change might be good or bad. Kudos to the writers for attention to detail.
Second: this is also an accurate depiction of how science works. Studies often mysteriously disagree, fail to replicate, or outright contradict one another. There’s always an underlying reason (or twelve) and a tremendous amount of effort goes into trying to disentangle true results from confounders.
Kosinski and his mysterious assistant beam aboard, and Kosinski immediately earns our ire by being rude and impatient at the crew. He practically oozes condescension.
Narcissistic prick at three o’clock, Captain.
After agreeing with Riker that Kosinski is a jerk (and you know you’re an asshole if the counselor doesn’t like you), Troi remarks that Kosinski’s assistant is strangely unreadable to her empathy. Our first clue that something is up with him.
In Engineering, Kosinski explains the failed model by saying… “you did it wrong.” And he, of course, is far too busy to explain how it actually works. They wouldn’t understand, you see.
Riker and the chief engineer are unimpressed. Riker tells Kosinski he’d better try explaining anyway, and Kosinski reluctantly begins.
KOSINSKI: “…view with me if you will this screen as we consider the following. Now, is this merely mechanics, or is it nature that we deal with in all of this…and what else than nature are the elementals of space and time? You are trained in the system…you go in a straight line, confident, yes, perhaps even innovative, in a minimalist sort of way, but what I do here is not the end of the process. It is the beginning.”
Aside: I really love this Kosinski sequence, as much as it makes me cringe. It illustrates one of the main difficulties of discerning between science and pseudoscience. Kosinski’s speech sounds really impressive. But if you break it down, he never actually says much of anything at all. To a layperson, advanced science can often sound like bunk, and vice versa. And some science requires an awful lot of background context just to understand. The tendency towards jargon and using big words for their own sake makes this even worse. Pseudoscience has the advantage, in this regard; fakers aren’t limited by having to say only true things about the world. Or, for that matter, by using error bars.
As Kosinski is confidently spouting nonsense with the air of a used car salesman, his assistant enters his settings into the ship’s computer. Wesley, looking over the assistant’s shoulder, comments on the settings…why this one? Shouldn’t these be connected? After letting Wesley fiddle with the settings for a bit, the assistant gets a look of wonder that suggests Wesley really knows his stuff.
In the end, the chief engineer says we might as well let Kosinski try his test, since what he’s saying is meaningless anyway. For some reason, this irritates Kosinski.
Aside: In real life, it is really dangerous to let someone fiddle with the settings of a complex high-energy system if they don’t know what they’re doing. Can you imagine this happening at a nuclear power plant? I think the main reason the crew allow this is that it’s required for the plot. I will, however, strongly credit the Enterprise crew for avoiding the old “well, Starfleet Management has already approved this…” trick, and actually forcing Kosinski to explain himself.
Not in Space Kansas Anymore
Kosinski runs his first test. The warp drive starts to freak out, expressed to the viewers with urgently flashing lights and desperate, high-pitched squeaking from the console. Kosinski’s assistant, concentrating deeply over at the warp drive console, starts to…fade in and out of reality, as it were. Only Wesley notices this. The Enterprise starts going faster…and faster… and faster…
Aside: Star Trek is sometimes inconsistent about warp speeds. I’ve heard the scale is supposed to be exponential-ish. In Voyager, apparently, they say Warp 10 is “infinite speed” and all actual speeds are some asymptotic fraction thereof. In this TNG episode, they pass Warp 10 and keep going. I’m gonna assume that the warp scale makes sense in-universe. As viewers, all we really need to know is that High Numbers Go Fast.
After pulling out of warp and taking bearings, the Enterprise crew realize they’ve traveled 2.3 million light years in a matter of seconds, and ended up in an entirely different galaxy. And at maximum warp it would take them 300 years to get home. (!!!)
Ironically, as distance-between-galaxies goes, this is unrealistically small. In real life, it is 2.5 million light years from our galaxy to the closest galaxy of comparable size, Andromeda. Space is big, yo.
It’s not clear whether Wesley’s tweaks cause the initial spike in power, or whether it’s just the Enterprise’s new engine design. It is clear that the “assistant” did all the real work here.
On the bridge, Kosinski spouts some more pseudoscientific gibberish, which the crew are more inclined to take seriously since they just leapfrogged a galaxy.
I note with some amusement that Kosinski’s various speeches sound a lot like normal science and engineering in Star Trek, which often runs on Applied Phlebotinum. If Kosinski were played by a worse actor, we might think this was just more Star Trek logic being applied, instead of Kosinski being a confident quack. As it is, he does a lovely impression of someone who thinks he knows what he’s talking about, but is clearly wrong. The skepticism of the crew helps, too. Good acting makes a world of difference, doesn’t it?
Anyway, back to the plot. In Engineering, Kosinski’s assistant looks exhausted, and Wesley asks him about what just happened. The “assistant” says that he means no harm, but needs to rest. He also remarks that Kosinski understands “some small part” of what he’s doing…
WESLEY: “That space, and time, and thought…aren’t the separate things they appear to be? …”
THE TRAVELER: “Boy, don’t ever say that again. Especially not at your age, in a world that’s not ready for such…such dangerous nonsense.”
Firstly: From a few glimpsed formulas, Wesley just intuited an advanced physical law. This is Einstein-level genius and deserves to be recognized as such.
Secondly: It’s bunk, of course. Unless we all live in a simulated universe (which is not impossible, I’ll grant), space and time are very different from thought. If someone uttered a sentence like this in real life, I would be quick to accuse them of quackery. It’s kind of like saying, “maybe silicon and Super Mario Brothers aren’t the separate things we thought they were!” There is a sense in which it’s true – they’re both vaguely related to computers if you squint. But that doesn’t mean we can build a computer by jumping on a pile of sand and yelling “Let’s-a go!”
The way that real-world scientists impose their thoughts on spacetime is by building cool machines that do stuff. Like, say, spaceships or supercolliders. In real science, insights like “Everything is connected!” might be kinda true, but they aren’t narrow enough to be useful.
I can’t hold this against Star Trek, though; we already know that stranger facts are true about the Star Trek universe.
And oh boy, is this a doozy of a revelation for the Star Trek universe! If thoughts can manipulate spacetime directly, this actually explains a lot of weird phenomena that we see in Star Trek. It would explain why so many different species have similar mental architecture and feel similar emotions. It might be a clue to how psychic communication and Troi’s empathy work. Even the seemingly godlike Q might just be beings that have figured out how to directly impose their thoughts on the universe. This is my new headcanon for the series: thoughts directly affect reality in more than just this episode.
No wonder the “assistant” was so spooked when Wesley figured it out.
Think of What We Could Learn!
On the bridge, Kosinski’s smug sense of accomplishment clashes with Picard’s worry for the crew. Kosinski assures Picard he can get them home (spoiler: he can’t) and heads off to Engineering to prepare.
Picard deliberates about what to do. One by one, officers weigh in. Troi confirms that Kosinski believes he can help. Worf objects to letting him make another mistake. La Forge observes that they don’t really have a better idea. And Data suggests staying awhile to study a nearby proto-star – this is a unique opportunity, after all.
I adore how the crew and captain project smooth and seamless teamwork, here. Everyone chimes in with a legitimate concern or productive suggestion, and Picard listens patiently to each of them before making a call. Ultimately, he decides that the crew’s safety comes first. If they can reproduce this impressive form of warp travel, they can always come back later.
Wesley attempts to inform Riker of his suspicions about Kosinski, but Riker, distracted by the impending test, brushes him off. This is a little out of character for Riker, and I’m disappointed that the writers couldn’t come up with a better way of advancing the plot than handing Riker the Idiot Ball. But it does set up a wonderful moment later, so I guess I can’t complain too much.
They try again, but the exhausted “assistant” struggles. This time, Riker notices what Wesley did before: the “assistant” is fading in and out of view as the warp drive sputters, eventually passing out from the strain. On the bridge, instruments say they never exceed Warp 1.5, which is the Star Trek equivalent of putt-putt-putt-cough-wheeze. But when they stop…
I really don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.
In another bit of kind-of-silly Star Trek logic, the show tells us they’re “a billion lightyears” from their home universe. How do they know this, one wonders. What, are they navigating by the nonexistent stars? And this looks way more like an alternate dimension than another part of the universe. Why not say that?
I guess the writers were insufficiently creative. There’s a strange thought.
Be Careful What You Dream For
Speaking of strange thoughts…even stranger things start happening aboard the Enterprise. A spiky pig-creature materializes on the bridge, and Worf, shocked, joyfully identifies it as his childhood pet. (This is adorable.) A cat materializes in front of Yar. Picard tries to step off the turbolift and finds himself dangling over empty space.
Thoughts are becoming real.
This reminded me of a scene in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis. Of the many islands visited in that book, there was one which makes dreams become real. At the risk of bringing in an entirely different genre, I’m going to quote the whole sequence here:
“Fly! Fly! About with your ship and fly! Row, row, row for your lives away from this accursed shore. This is the Island where Dreams come true.”
“That’s the island I’ve been looking for this long time,” said one of the sailors. “I reckon I’d find I was married to Nancy if we landed here.”
“And I’d find Tom alive again,” said another.
“Fools!” said the man, stamping his foot with rage. “That is the sort of talk that brought me here, and I’d better have been drowned or never born. Do you hear what I say? This is where dreams–dreams, do you understand–come to life, come real. Not daydreams: dreams.”
There was about half a minute’s silence and then, with a great clatter of armor, the whole crew were tumbling down the main hatch as quick as they could and flinging themselves on the oars to row as they had never rowed before; and Drinian was swinging round the tiller, and the boatswain was giving out the quickest stroke that had ever been heard at sea. For it had taken everyone just that half-minute to remember certain dreams they had had–dreams that make you afraid of going to sleep again–and to realize what it would mean to land on a country where dreams come true.
If this doesn’t send a chill down your spine, I don’t know what would.
I read Chronicles of Narnia as a child, and I remember this scene more vividly than any other. Possibly, this is because even as a child, I could tell that random dreams and nightmares becoming real would be Very Very Bad. I wasn’t especially plagued by nightmares, as a kid; but it only takes one nightmare made flesh to make one wish they’d never been born.
On the Enterprise, things continue to escalate. Yar finds herself momentarily back on the colony where she grew up, ragged and hiding from rape gangs. A redshirt is playing in a violin quartet with nonexistent people. (Are these figments sentient, too?!?) Picard encounters a terrified couple fleeing from…nothing. A crewmember is ballet dancing to nonexistent music.
And then Picard meets his mother. His dead mother.
(Sniffle. Sob. I don’ wanna talk about it.)
Mama says a couple enigmatic things about the end of the universe. Picard, mind ever on his mission, asks if she can tell him where they’ve ended up. Before she answers, Riker interrupts – and as with the other figments, no one else notices what Picard saw.
Picard, instantly realizing the implications of what he has seen, calls Red Alert to get the whole crew’s attention, then explains over comm that thoughts are becoming real. He asks everyone to try to control their thoughts and promises more information when it becomes available.
This isn’t much, but it’s a damn sight more competence than most other stories allow their protagonists to display. I may harp on this a lot, but I love that mysterious phenomena, and not stupidity or interpersonal drama, drive most of the plot in Star Trek. The protagonists are flawed and frequently confused by the weirdness they encounter, but they are also trained, intelligent, competent people who react wisely even when confronted with the strange and unknown.
Most of the time, anyway. (grumble mutter Prime Directive…)
As if to further drive home my point, the very next scene is a glorious example of protagonists behaving like sane adults, and knowing when to admit a mistake. Behold.
PICARD, to Kosinski: “What did you do?”
RIKER: “It wasn’t him. It never was. It was his assistant.”
PICARD: “What are you talking ab-“
RIKER: “Kosinski wasn’t the one controlling the warp experiment.”
KOSINSKI: “It was me!”
RIKER: “The equations he punched in were nonsense. Just as we thought.”
KOSINSKI, after a pause: “I-I honestly thought it…was me. I thought somehow…somehow I was operating on his level.”
CHIEF ENGINEER ARGYLE: “It was also my fault, Captain. I should’ve realized it wasn’t Kosinski.”
PICARD, reassuringly: “How could you? How could any of us?”
RIKER: “…Wesley did.”
PICARD, to Wesley: “If you knew something, why didn’t you say so?”
RIKER: “He tried. Twice. I didn’t listen.”
Time for this blog to live up to its subtitle. Let’s break this scene down.
- First, Kosinski, who until this point had displayed an almost cartoonish amount of narcissism and confidence, accepts the evidence and immediately realizes how badly wrong he was. To his immense credit, he backs down the instant he realizes this, and reverts to simple honesty.
- Then, Chief Engineer Argyle steps in to take responsibility for his own error.
- On the heels of Argyle’s admission, Captain Picard, rather than berate his crewmembers or accuse the eminently-at-fault Kosinski, remains calm and reassuring to his at-fault officers.
- Belatedly, Riker realizes the importance of Wesley’s warnings and accepts full culpability for ignoring them. In the same breath, he vindicates Wesley and absolves the junior officer of blame. This is all the more revealing of Riker’s character, because we know that as a senior officer he could have covered up his failure.
- Finally, Wesley, who has every right to gloat or whine at Riker for ignoring him, instead waits patiently through this whole thing and starts volunteering useful information as soon as it becomes relevant. This is impressively mature for a fifteen-year-old, and Picard is swift to acknowledge and reward him when the immediate crisis has passed.
Respect.
I choose to highlight a few of these moments, but Star Trek: TNG is full of them. I have yet to see a TV show whose main characters are not just “Hollywood smart,” but so consistently wise.
Kosinski, while very badly mistaken and blinded by his pride, is not the villain here. There is no villain. In Star Trek: TNG, there rarely is. (Except you, Q. You’re a dick.) In most of TNG, there are just people trying their best to solve a problem, and quite often succeeding, not through luck or mystical fate, but through competence, right thinking, and teamwork.
Forget cartoons; show your kids Star Trek, if you want them to grow up heroes.
(Maybe skip the episodes with “Naked” in the title.)
Thinking Up a Solution
Desperate to find a solution before they all dissolve into thoughtstuff, the crew wake Kosinski’s assistant. Picard and company ask a few…questionably relevant questions, mostly providing plot exposition for the viewers and telling us the Traveler didn’t mean any harm. But they do eventually elicit from the self-named Traveler a possible solution. If everyone on the ship thinks really hard while he works, he may be able to bring the Enterprise home.
Don’t look at me like that. This world runs on Star Trek physics, remember?
Aside: Science In Action
Admittedly, the conversation between the Traveler and the Enterprise crew has a bit of New Age woo going on. But – importantly – even though the Traveler’s words seem a lot more like “magic” than “technology”, the evidence bears him out.
TRAVELER: “Thought is the essence of where you are now. You do understand the danger, don’t you?”
PICARD: “Chaos. What we think is what happens.”
They get it. The actual experiences of the Enterprise crew are consistent with “thoughts -> stuff happening” and so they believe the Traveler. This act – this process, of changing our minds and beliefs based on evidence – is science. This is how it works.
The conclusions may be different, in different universes, but that’s not a bug, it’s a feature. If, for example, we live in a universe where faster-than-light travel is possible, we want to know that faster-than-light travel is possible. And if it isn’t, we want to know that too. The same is true for each and every belief we hold.
If we ever encounter in our minds a belief that we would expect to be true regardless of the evidence we encounter, regardless of the universe we find ourselves in, that would be a time to panic. That kind of a belief is a monster scarier than any nightmare, because it’s a monster that we, all to often, fight to keep.
The crew of the Enterprise, largely, don’t make this mistake. They go out into the wide and mysterious universe, they encounter strange things, they form guesses about the causes and effects thereof, and they test those guesses, to whatever extent they can.
And, in true human tradition, when granted root access to the universe’s mainframe, they proceed to try and hack it.
Which leads us to the plan: do the same as we did before, but with everyone on board concentrating on the Traveler and the wellbeing of him, the crew, and the ship. This is actually a really plausible plan, given what the crew know about how the Traveler’s abilities function.
It works. (Of course it does. This is television.) It’s a pretty heartwarming sequence, too.
Exhausted from the effort to get them home, the Traveler fades out of…this existence, at least.
The episode concludes with yet another absolutely brilliant scene, in which Picard welcomes a nervous Wesley onto the bridge, giving him a path to fulfill his dream of…you know what, just go watch the scene, it’s awesome.
Riker, of course, is proud of his captain for making the right call. They grow up so fast.
Cool that smirk, Riker, he didn’t make you an ensign.
Science Is Hard
So, what did we learn about science today?
Well, we learned that real science can sound like fake science and vice versa; that Star Trek science is sometimes real and sometimes fake; that Star Trek science can sound like real science or fake science; that real Star Trek science can sound like fake real-world science; and that fake Star Trek science can sound like real Star Trek science or fake real-world science or (rarely) real real-world science.
Whew.
The real lesson here? Science is hard. And we have to keep learning if we want to stay ahead of the quacks. If we don’t know how something is supposed to work (like Wesley does), then we’ll always be vulnerable to being Kosinski’d by whatever pseudoscientific fad hits the news this year. Like crystals, miracle diets, spirit mediums, political pundits, or hedge funds.
But if we do pay enough attention to figure out how the world works, and neither dismiss ideas for being “silly” or “unscientific” nor accept them on insufficient evidence…
Well, the sky’s not even the limit anymore. We passed that one years ago.
But we can go a long, long way. And hopefully, come back home again.
Bonus: The Mea Culpa and the Art of Science
Shortly before the final journey, the Traveler takes Picard aside to tell him that Wesley is a uniquely gifted boy, who Picard should “encourage without interfering.”
It’s good advice. We wouldn’t want Wesley getting too caught up in his own genius, and unable to recognize mistakes. Just look at poor Kosinski.
But the genius, too, is important. To convey his message, the Traveler compares Wesley to Mozart:
TRAVELER: “Such musical geniuses I saw in your ship’s libraries…one called Mozart, who as a small child wrote astonishing symphonies. A genius who made music not only to be heard, but seen and felt beyond the understanding, the ability of others. Wesley is such a person, not with music, but with the equally lovely intricacies of time, energy, propulsion, and the instruments of this vessel which allow all that to be played.“
And that, dear readers, is a strange and beautiful thought. I leave it with you, to see where in the universe it takes you.