Headscratchers / Star Trek: The Next Generation S5E5 "Disaster"

• The danger to Picard and the kids in the turbo lift is that the lift will fall like an elevator when the emergency brakes fail. Exactly where will it fall to? The “bottom” of the ship?
  • No matter how bad off the ship is, artificial gravity never seems to be affected. So yeah, the turbolift will fall in the direction towards anything that is being pulled by artificial gravity.
• Picard decides to stay and die on the turbo lift because he doesn't want to "slow down" the kids by trying to climb with his broken ankle. After they convince him to go along with them, he forms a rope team with the kids, ensuring that if he falls because of his broken ankle, he'll take all three kids with him. That's a pretty sizable jump in confidence about his climbing ability!
  • Once they got out of the turbolift, and at the point where we saw them using the cabling, they were climbing on a ladder. Picard had two strong arms and one strong leg meaning he had no reason to assume he wouldn't be able to hold on once he got to that stage. His broken ankle slowed him down but it didn't mean the risk was serious that he'd fall off and drop the kids, at least compared to the risk that the kids might either fall off on their own or fall behind if he didn't have them tied together.