Least Favorite Deus Ex Machina From Star Trek: TNG.

Cafe Society
1

I must say, I personally think Star Trek: the Next Generation was the best series of the entire set. Like TOS, it was cutting edge. But it was 20 years later, so they could deal with issues the first series never could deal with. Plus it was very well-written, and put together too, I think.

Anyways, that is not to say it was not without certain flaws. It had the occasion to insert a Deus ex machina plot twist, if the show went on too long, or they didn’t know how to end it. In case you don’t know, that means “a god from a machine”. And it basically means an unlikely ending, to a complex plot.

I know I can at least think of two episodes, where this happened. In The Game, which aired October 28, 1991, Riker and the rest of the crew are succumbing to the deliberate mind-control aspects of an addictive game. Then Data appears from nowhere, and shines a strobe light beacon on them, freeing them all of their addiction. A strobe light? It is an alien highly-addictive, psychotropic apparatus. And all they needed to counteract it was a strobe? A strobe?? Anyways, I have another example, if you didn’t like that one.

In Frame of Mind, which aired May 3, 1993, Commander Riker is having trouble distinguishing reality from what seems to be insanity, as he finds himself in an alien mental ward. Even when (what seems to be) the final rescue scene comes, it is only another hallucination, basically. Then he wakes up, and finds himself on the operating table. He somehow realizes this is real, grabs a knife to defend himself, grabs his emergency communicator (which just happens to be there too??), and demands the Enterprise beam him up at once.

Now wait a minute. He couldn’t tell reality from fantasy. And yet at that one moment, just as the episode was to end, he suddenly could? And his weapon and communicator. The hospital staff kept it by him always. So it even was on the table, as they were about to operate on him? There’s another thing too. Why did the Enterprise wait till then to beam him up? Didn’t they realize he was already in trouble? When he didn’t go to the prearranged beam-up site?

Anyways, those are the two I can remember. Can any of you remember any better ones? And don’t restrict yourself to TNG. What about the other series in the franchise. The original series, Voyager, and even Deep Space Nine. I’d be interested to see what you come up with.

:):):slight_smile:

2

Also, you know, I was just thinking when I originally wrote this. What is your favorite deus ex machina from Sci-Fi in general? I don’t watch much Sci-Fi except Star Trek. But I would still love to see what you all come up with.

Give good descriptions, if you can.

:slight_smile:

3

Well, with Voyager, I’d properly have to start with a baseline that all technical solutions were clumsy Deus Ex Machinas, and winnow down to the ones that were clever or well done.*

With DS9, I’d probably be able to settle for plain plot points that served to cover for Ron Moore running out of time to figure out how to end something he’d started.

*My favorite? In the prologue to Dark Frontier, Voyager defeats a small Borg ship by simply Transporting an armed Photon Torpedo onto it, while it’s shields were down. Since the scene is filmed entirely from the point of view of the Borg, we don’t even see the Voyager crew technobabbling on how to do it. A later scene reveals that Harry Kim thought it up himself, on the fly.

Smart, simple, succinct, quality storytelling, showing off an underutilized character. “Lord Almighty.”

4

My favorite is NuBSG…LITERALLY God from the machine. (Also machines from the God…sorta)

5

The reflector dish. They may as well have just said the reflector dish was a weapon that fires deusexmachinite particles and skipped the endless scenes of technobabble between Data and Geordi.

6

nitpick
except that it’s not a reflector dish, it’s a deflector dish. It is an emitting device, used to generate a field that moves small particles out of the path of the ship generally and when necessary, to emit a beam also to move larger objects out of the path of the ship while moving at warp and relativistic speeds.

That being said, the first time the front end of the warp nacelles were described as “collectors” and something something reverse the flow and make them emit ionized something particles to solve the deadly unsolvable by normal means problem.
I wish I could remember the episode and more details from that scene, but that particular tidbit has always remained with me.

7

Bussard collectors. You are probably thinking of the episode Night Terrors.

8

YES bussard ram scoop collectors thats right! And you’re probably right about the episode too

and to nitpick my own nitpick
in TOS the main sensor dish is what became the deflector dish in TNG

9

Neither The Game nor Frame of Mind used Deus Ex Machina at all. To say that, you either don’t understand the episode or you don’t understand what deus ex actually means. Those were episodes about outwitting a villain which was not intrinsically powerful, rather than an overwhelming threat being suddenly overcome easily.

Almost all their “save the day with technobabble” resolutions are genuine deus ex, no matter how much they dress it up. In addition, the early TNG episode Code of Honor features an absurd series of sudden, contrived plot fixes out of nowhere before it mercifully ends. None of these are remotely hinted at or even make logical sense on their own. This is also why I don’t really agree with the high praise most casual viewers give TNG, as they’ve ignored the very large number of truly awful episodes.

Arsenal of Freedom isn’t a terrible episode (just subpar). It’s resolution is almost literally a deus ex, or at least a mercator ex machina. After facing all kinds of increasingly deadly robotic foes, the Enterprise crew… flicks the off switch, more or less. It’s the simplest thing, but it immediately begs so many questions and comes out of nowhere.

That said, Trek also has some good examples of using this - deus ex is not intrinsically bad, just often misused. In The Defector, the TNG crew resolve a major crisis by cleverly pulling superior firepower out of nowhere. I won’t spoil it, and the episode does contain clues to what’s going on, but it’s both a deus ex machina and yet a well-done plot resolution.