| The Next Generation | |
| 130 | |
| Relics | |
| 46125.3 | |
Picard is trying to get a gold star next to his name in the big Starfleet picture book for "finding the most missing ships". True to form he has managed to increase his tally once again - the Jenolan, missing for 75 years! Strangely however it hasn't crashed onto a planet or been left derelict, it's crashed onto the only known example of a Dyson sphere - something like an M&M with a sun in the middle.
Our trusty away teams beams over without a sign a protective gear, and once again the air is breathable. There are no life-signs, but the transporter still seems to be on line, and locked into a diagnostic mode. Lets reach out and touch somebody - energise! It's Scotty - who else could have rigged an impossible configuration of the transporters!
He was on his way to retirement when the ship crashed into the sphere, and he locked himself in to save himself. Pretty clever thinking that. I bet it never happens again though. Unfortunately the intervening 75 years seem to have locked him into a diagnostic mode where he can do nothing but prattle about the old days. Geordi is impressed for a while, but having grandad at work finally drives him nuts.
Scotty decides that his place is in engineering, but seeing how he is almost a century out of date, he isn't much use. He screams "Ya canna change the laws of physics", to which Geordi just smirks. He knows they've done it repeatedly wherever the plot is lagging. Now would be a good time.
The venerable Captain Scott (was there anyone on the original Enterprise who didn't make captain?) finally finds himself with a bottle of scotch at the entrance to the holodeck. He wants a simulation of the bridge of his Enterprise. Which one asks the computer. "No bloody A, B, C or D" he moans, "it's G, O, G, G, O!". The doors part to all the quaint noises he is used to.
Nursing a hangover, Scotty and a reluctant Geordi beam down to the Jenolan to try and restore its data banks. With the episode going nowhere, Data spices up the action by finding a portal on the sphere. Worf presses the bell marked "Welcome" in big friendly letters, and tractor beams reach out and drag the Enterprise inside. The beams also killed the engines, leaving them to fall into the star in the middle. Bummer.
In an amazing bout of impossible (but entirely appropriate) TrekTech™, Scotty manages to jump start the Jenolan using nothing more than half a bar of soap and a piece of hairy string and tracks the Enterprise to the portal. Geordi works out where the Enterprise must have gone, but the question is how to get them back. Scotty has the obvious answer, jam the Jenolan in the portal. What next, self immolation?
Of course it works, and the shields hold up long enough for the Enterprise to magically regain power and head for the exit. The problem is there isn't enough room for both ships. They will have to destroy the Jenolan to escape. It has its shields up, so they won't be able to beam the engineers back, unless... we conveniently forget that limitation for the moment. There, nobody noticed anyway did they?
The Enterprise does a Millennium Falcon roll through the closing portal and escapes just in time. As a mark of respect, the crew give Scotty a shuttle and leave him in the depths of cold space. Maybe they should have waited until he was dead...
