Headscratchers / Star Trek The Next Generation S 7 E 12 Homeward

• No one seems to mourn the mysterious disappearance of Vorin the chronicler. If the village chronicle is so important, you'd think we'd see some concern about him from the other villagers.
  • It's mentioned in passing that he went "missing" during the journey.
• Nicolai allows Worf to take the village's chronicle as a souvenir, which effectively erases the village's memory of its history. With the village reduced to only a handful of people starting over in a new land, you'd think the chronicle would be more important than ever to give the village a link to its past and continue that culture that was so important to preserve.
  • I figured that Worf made a copy of it with the replicator.
• Nicolai gives all credit to the village's salvation to Worf, a mysterious "seer" who emerged in the village's time of need and then vanished. It's seems quite likely that Worf will be worshipped in future generations as a magical savior figure, making the effect on Boralaan culture (and the breach of the Prime Directive) larger than the crew admits. With Nicolai as the new chronicler, he will hopefully leave Worf out of the records, though his contemporaries would likely find that very strange. Vorin was putting Nicolai and Worf in his version of the chronicle.
• Nicolai's half-human child is going to look deformed to the Boralaans. Also, no one really acknowledges that if the Boralaans actually survive into a prosperous civilization again, human DNA is going to be a fairly large part of their gene pool.
  • That depends on how the genetics play out; based on past experience with alien hybrids, Spock and K'Ehleyr looked very much like their alien rather than their human parents even if B'Elanna is very obviously not pure Klingon, as an example.
• Given that no one seems to think that it's a problem, we have to assume that Boralaans can rebuild a genetically viable population from a much smaller population bottleneck than humans can.
  • It's not a given that all humanoid races share this issue with inbreeding and genetic diversity. We see their small community is very diverse so it's entirely possible their genetics work differently from ours.
• Why didn't they just sedate the Boralaans in some manner for part or all of the trip instead of using the holodeck?
  • This is addressed in the episode: it's mentioned that the stars and constellations may look different at their destination. Having a long journey and showing this gradual change would help convince the Boralaans that the change was natural.
• Why did they spill all the beans to Vorin when he escaped the holodeck? Why not quickly knock him over the head and put him back in the holodeck and tell him he had a very strange dream?
  • Dr. Crusher mentions they are not familiar with physiology of this species. They can't be sure if stunning the man is safe for him.

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