History Headscratchers / StarTrekTheNextGenerationS6E16StarshipMine

** As I recall, the Baryon sweep was noted to be ''lethal'' but not necessarily ''destructive''. For all we know there's a couple of perfectly preserved corpses lying around at the end of the episode.

*** That would also explain why it doesn't also dissolve the tactical console and various other wooden furniture around the ship -- which background material suggests ''is'' real wood.

** It's also possible that Picard figured out that for Kelsey's plan to fully work, she would need someone on the inside down on Arkaria base. Picard probably figured out that the administrator likely couldn't be trusted with giving away his location if he contacted the base directly.

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* It's hardly the worst example of an IdiotPlot in the franchise, but why bother taking hostages on the surface at all? Were it not Picard, wouldn't the bad guys have stolen their payload from the ''Enterprise'' and warped safely away long before anyone realized that they were there?

** Maybe it's only living, unaltered organic material. Sheepskin and leather go through a lot of processing and chemical treatments, so they're hardly organic anymore.

* Saddles are usually made of leather; Picard's appears to also have sheepskin. Both of these are organic substances. Assuming Picard's saddle is not some synthetic material (and why would it be, considering he makes such a laborious point about its authenticity), shouldn't it have been destroyed by the baryon sweep?

*** The bad guys on the ship have no excuse. They should have just shot Picard. Instead, they waste time and personnel trying to capture, guard, and recapture him. Their refusal to just shoot him leads to the failure of their heist and all their deaths. The leader would much rather shoot her own people who are trying to help her.

* Why didn't Picard tell the computer to cancel its planned shutdown instead of frantically trying to use the transporter?

*** The bad guys on the ship have no excuse. They should have just shot Picard. Instead, they waste time and personnel trying to capture, guard, and recapture him. Their refusal to just shoot him leads to the failure if their heist and all their deaths. The leader would much rather shoot her own people who are trying to help her.

** Taking hostages on the surface was never the plan. Troi makes a point of noting Orton's emotional state, and deduces that his part in the heist has gone off the rails. Whatever Orton's original purpose for having some hidden weapons in the reception hall had been, it was out the window the moment [=LaForge=] noticed them. Shooting [=LaForge=] and Hutchinson was a reaction of blind panic, and after that there was no going back. Taking the rest of the crew hostage was a Plan B that was thought up in the spur of the moment. Orton didn't have any idea what to do next other than just keep everyone under control and wait for the getaway ship.

* It's hardly the worst example of an IdiotPlot in the franchise, but why bother taking hostages on the surface at all? Were it not Picard, wouldn't the bad guys have stolen their payload from the ''Enterprise'' and warped safely away long before anyone realized that they were there?

** It could be that Picard simply didn't know he could with the type of communicator Kelsey's crew was using. He only started trying to raise the Arkaria base out of sheer desperation when the sweep caught up with him; he probably wasn't sure if it would work.

* At the end of the episode, Picard calls the Arkaria base in his comm badge and asks them to turn off the baryon sweep. If he could contact them, why didn't he attemp to do so earlier?

* A more interesting question is just how much byproduct the ''Enterprise'' warp core produces, that they thought they could steal a sizeable amount and not have anyone notice; presumably removing the trilithium waste is also a regular maintenance procedure, and there's probably a reasonable expectation of the amount of product to expect. Maybe they figured they'd be long gone by the time anyone figured it out, so it didn't matter.

** It's not just a question of availability; it's a question of volume. The ''Enterprise'' is a massive, top-of-the-line Federation vessel. The amount of trilithium resin they could harvest in one go would make it worth the effort. A smaller civilian engine would produce far less byproduct, and the resin is so unstable that just squirreling it away until you hoard enough to sell would be impractical and dangerous. It was a "Big Score" opportunity that Kelsey couldn't pass up.