Lower Decks

Do Troi and Riker really have to do evaluations on the entire crew? I mean, they know each of the several hundred officers on the ship well enough to judge them? Surely it would be more sensible for each officer's direct superior to evaluate them? This is how it's done where I work, and I'm told it's what happens in the present day military. And even if we assume that they actually do the evaluations, surely the department heads should at least have input? They spend a chunk of the episode trying to pick a new night watch operations manager, but at no point does anybody ask Data - the Chief of Operations - for any input into this decision.

Ben sure is an incredible bluffer. In the junior officer's poker game he has a king, jack, ten and eight. Lavelle has two sixes and two sevens. It is impossible for Ben to win, no matter what his hole card is. Yet Lavelle folds in the face of Ben's self confidence.

Riker suggests to Sito that she let the phaser locking relay "float" whilst the ship maneuvers so that she doesn't have to re-lock them after the maneuver. He notes that they don't teach that trick at the academy, "but it works". So... if it works, why don't they teach it at the academy?

Sito says that the events she was involved in at the academy, as seen in "The First Duty", took place three years ago. In actuality, it was two years ago.

A stellar display of phaser safety here - Geordi asks Taurik to fire a phaser rifle on the shuttle - on a setting high enough to significantly damage the metal skin, no less - whilst Geordi himself stands almost directly in front of the phaser, perhaps four feet to one side of the aim point. Yikes!

On that subject, Geordi claims that they are firing phasers at the shuttle to evaluate "hull resiliency". In other words, to see how much damage the phaser does to the hull. Taurik then suggests that he could reconfigure the phaser to fire a low intensity burst that would not harm the shuttle's hull... and states that the test procedure would not be affected. If the point of the test is to establish how well the shuttle hull resists phaser damage, how can it possibly be true that turning the phaser setting down to the point where it won't damage it will not affect the test?! That's like having a test to see how well a car door panel resists a hammer, then claiming that if you use a foam hammer instead it will not affect the test!

Okay, not to harp on about this test, but... Geordi asks Taurik to fire a burst of "about four seconds". Yet when Taurik actually fires, the burst he fires is maybe half a second to a second at most.

One, Sito, at the hands of the Cardassians.