Star Trek TNG - Season 3 - Episode 20
Star Trek TNG - 3x20 - Tin Man
Originally Aired: 1990-4-23
Synopsis:
The crew faces off against the Romulans. [DVD]
Problems
None
Factoids
None
Remarkable Scenes
- Telepath guy speaking other people's thoughts.
- Seeing Tin Man.
- The Romulans decloaking and attacking.
- Telepath guy working with Data.
- Tin Man destroying the first Romulan ship.
- The revelation that Tin Man the last of his species.
- Picard questioning telepath guy's judgement.
- The second Romulan encounter.
- Telepath guy finding peace with Tin Man.
My Review
A psychotic telepath prodigy first contact specialist and an organic ship creature pursued by both the Enterprise and the Romulans. A truly fascinating premise by which to begin the episode. Telepath guy so well describes his pain. "Getting it all at once." One can only imagine having one's mind constantly bombarded with other people's thoughts. Seems only natural that adept telepaths might go insane from other people's unchecked thinking. I love the resolution in this episode. Two wayward souls find peace by joining together. One of those truly happy warm and fuzzy endings.
The following are comments submitted by my readers.
The writers didn't do their math for this episode:
- The maximum range for safe transport is 40,000 kilometers. In this episode, Data and Tam beam over to Tin Man when the Enterprise is 18 minutes away by impulse. Traveling at full impulse is traveling just under the speed of light. The speed of light is just under 300,000 kilometers per second. In other words, Data and Tam beamed a distance of almost 324,000,000 kilometers. This is well above the maximum transporter range.
- Wesley tells Picard that the repulser wave from Tin Man threw them 3.8 billion kilometers. However, only 50 seconds elapse from the time the repulser wave hits the Enterprise until Picard witnesses the supernova of the dying star on the main viewscreen. As noted above, light travels just under 300,000 kilometers per second. If the Enterprise was thrown 3.8 billion kilometers from the dying sun, it would take about 12,667 seconds for the light of the explosion to reach the Enterprise. That figure equals 3.5 hours. It is not possible for the light produced by a supernova to reach a distance of 3.8 billion kilometers in 50 seconds.
Solid all around. Math problems aside, this episode features an interesting premise, Romulan intrigue, and a solidly written and acted guest of the week.
You know what, I thoroughly enjoyed this one, much more than most people it seems. For one thing, this is very much a psychological episode, almost a psychological profile of "Telepath guy," and a rather believable one at that. (Maybe it's the fact that I have some personal experience with intense, almost overwhelming empathy, and the resultant anti-social tendencies that almost automatically come with it...)
I just love this tortured soul, unable to shield himself from other people's thoughts, "loves, hates, desires... needs," drawn to thoroughly non-human, "restful" sentience like Data's, Tin Man's, and other non-humanoid life.
The connection with Data is another thing that makes this episode rather grand, because this also manages to be very much about Data... Data is used brilliantly here, both as a contrast to the crew (from a telepath's POV), and as a parallel to both Tin Man and Telepath Guy, as a unique lifeform trying to make sense of himself and his role in the universe.
The whole episode is considerably more layered than I first described it - it's much more than a simple psychological profile of a single character. It's about "Telepath guy," Tin Man, and Data, all three rather fascinating beings, all three struggling to find meaning and a suitable place in the universe...
And they all succeed in the end!
So, quite excellent, on the whole. Makes great use of a number of elements and concepts: nearly crippling telepathic ability, a living ship, Data... all tied together into something surprisingly coherent and compelling.