The Enterprise arrives and docks at Starbase 74 for maintenance. The technicians on the maintenance team include two pairs of Bynars, an alien race from the planet Bynaus, who communicate with the ship computer much quicker than any human or (my guess) perhaps even Data.
Though the Bynars have a secret mission to steal the Enterprise and save their home world.
I thought "11001001" (Episode 14, Season 1, Air Date 01/01/88, Star-date 41365.9) was a perfect example of an episode's maximum use of the Star Trek world -- it contains an interesting new race, it motivates the new race with exciting SF possibilities that sound reasonable, and it fully embeds its holodeck scenes into the Star Trek world. It doesn't use the holodeck just to escape from the world of Star Trek ('The Big Goodbye'); it uses it to expand on interesting tech-no concepts.
The Bynars work in teams of two (for customary reasons), but they have developed mental capacities as close to the binary language as is possible for biochemical organisms. The binary language is a language of ones and zeros, which are like on and off switches on a circuit board or similar to yes and no responses from a human.
Computers translate all high level graphics and words we see on a computer monitor into the binary language of ones and zeros, so we might expect the Bynars to best communicate with computers since they naturally speak the same language (or very close to it).
The advantages are clear: the Bynars speed up their communications with computers, and they can use buffers to store temporary information to allow them to handle massive amounts of information. The episode tries to get us to believe that the Bynars would have tremendous disadvantages too.
Though the episode almost flies off its hinges of sanity when it has the Bynars mysteriously collapse and stop working. Apparently the Bynars stop functioning whenever their master computer (on Bynaus) stops functioning.
This is a logical error of the largest sort since it ignores the individual nature of minds, even near-binary minds. Computers don't fail to function just because they lose Internet connections, for example. They just lose access to the wealth of information on the larger network. It would be similar to humans collapsing into a seizure after their central government decided to end its universal mandates and allow people to make their own choices!
Perhaps the master computer on Bynaus powers the Bynars through some sort of power source left unexplained in the episode. But it would seem to me that they would get their power through eating food!
In any case, the episode poses some of the most interesting sets of questions of season 1 so far.
We learn that the Bynars made many enhancements to the holodeck. They mention this to Riker in the hopes of getting him to try out their enhancements (for reasons important to their plan, on which I'll keep quiet to avoid spoiling it).
Riker decides to relax in the holodeck with a Jazz club program. He asks for an audience and eventually gets a beautiful women by the name of Minuet. As he and Picard study her, they find her all-too-human. (Picard walked in on Riker and her kissing.) She has dense human responses and characteristics that you don't normally find in holograms. She adapts to her environment and seems intuitive. Picard smartly points out that humans send out many subtle signs giving away their emotions and thoughts. Minuet seems to pick up on these, allowing her to have empathy with Riker and Picard.
But sometimes she stares oddly off into space, so perhaps she's not quite there yet.
The Bynars enhanced the holodeck and created Minuet. Her presence raises the question of whether computer programmers could realistically simulate human complexity. Can computer programming in ones and zeros give rise to complex behaviors? Could such computations combine to produce holograms that seem to have emotions, intuition, and intelligence?
Minuet is even more advanced than Data in her humanity, so perhaps the Bynars are so highly advanced in their use of the binary language, they can program intelligent holograms and human complexity. (Most computers of today fail the 'Turing test' miserably, but Minuet seems apt to easily pass it in this episode.)
Though Picard wonders whether Riker is falling in love with the illusion of Minuet more so than he would a real woman -- the illusion is sometimes more compelling than the person! This idea is just like the decision of Cypher in 'The Matrix' (1999) to choose simulated reality over the 'real world'. Though perhaps we also fall in love with our illusions of a person more so than the actual person all the time -- perhaps our minds are like a virtual reality environment, like a holodeck, in which we fall in love with 'virtual' illusions of things all the time.
Analogously the episode poses similar questions to Data (and even Geordi with his tech-no visor). Could we tell the difference between the creativity of Data and the creativity of humans? Could a machine have creativity at all?
We watch Data trying to learn to paint as an experiment in the possibility of android creativity (with Geordi encouraging him). But I'm not sure Data's neural net is quite as advanced as the Bynar near-binary minds. Probably not, for otherwise Data could just do the maintenance and prevent the Enterprise from stopping at Starbase 74.
The Star Trek world comes to a high point in this episode. The holodeck is used to its SF fullest and all the tech-no elements in the series come together nicely -- the holodeck, Data, Geordi's visor, and the Bynars all contribute to thought provoking questions. Now I know why I became interested in Star Trek!
Though the Bynars have a secret mission to steal the Enterprise and save their home world.
I thought "11001001" (Episode 14, Season 1, Air Date 01/01/88, Star-date 41365.9) was a perfect example of an episode's maximum use of the Star Trek world -- it contains an interesting new race, it motivates the new race with exciting SF possibilities that sound reasonable, and it fully embeds its holodeck scenes into the Star Trek world. It doesn't use the holodeck just to escape from the world of Star Trek ('The Big Goodbye'); it uses it to expand on interesting tech-no concepts.
The Bynars work in teams of two (for customary reasons), but they have developed mental capacities as close to the binary language as is possible for biochemical organisms. The binary language is a language of ones and zeros, which are like on and off switches on a circuit board or similar to yes and no responses from a human.
Computers translate all high level graphics and words we see on a computer monitor into the binary language of ones and zeros, so we might expect the Bynars to best communicate with computers since they naturally speak the same language (or very close to it).
The advantages are clear: the Bynars speed up their communications with computers, and they can use buffers to store temporary information to allow them to handle massive amounts of information. The episode tries to get us to believe that the Bynars would have tremendous disadvantages too.
Though the episode almost flies off its hinges of sanity when it has the Bynars mysteriously collapse and stop working. Apparently the Bynars stop functioning whenever their master computer (on Bynaus) stops functioning.
This is a logical error of the largest sort since it ignores the individual nature of minds, even near-binary minds. Computers don't fail to function just because they lose Internet connections, for example. They just lose access to the wealth of information on the larger network. It would be similar to humans collapsing into a seizure after their central government decided to end its universal mandates and allow people to make their own choices!
Perhaps the master computer on Bynaus powers the Bynars through some sort of power source left unexplained in the episode. But it would seem to me that they would get their power through eating food!
In any case, the episode poses some of the most interesting sets of questions of season 1 so far.
We learn that the Bynars made many enhancements to the holodeck. They mention this to Riker in the hopes of getting him to try out their enhancements (for reasons important to their plan, on which I'll keep quiet to avoid spoiling it).
Riker decides to relax in the holodeck with a Jazz club program. He asks for an audience and eventually gets a beautiful women by the name of Minuet. As he and Picard study her, they find her all-too-human. (Picard walked in on Riker and her kissing.) She has dense human responses and characteristics that you don't normally find in holograms. She adapts to her environment and seems intuitive. Picard smartly points out that humans send out many subtle signs giving away their emotions and thoughts. Minuet seems to pick up on these, allowing her to have empathy with Riker and Picard.
But sometimes she stares oddly off into space, so perhaps she's not quite there yet.
The Bynars enhanced the holodeck and created Minuet. Her presence raises the question of whether computer programmers could realistically simulate human complexity. Can computer programming in ones and zeros give rise to complex behaviors? Could such computations combine to produce holograms that seem to have emotions, intuition, and intelligence?
Minuet is even more advanced than Data in her humanity, so perhaps the Bynars are so highly advanced in their use of the binary language, they can program intelligent holograms and human complexity. (Most computers of today fail the 'Turing test' miserably, but Minuet seems apt to easily pass it in this episode.)
Though Picard wonders whether Riker is falling in love with the illusion of Minuet more so than he would a real woman -- the illusion is sometimes more compelling than the person! This idea is just like the decision of Cypher in 'The Matrix' (1999) to choose simulated reality over the 'real world'. Though perhaps we also fall in love with our illusions of a person more so than the actual person all the time -- perhaps our minds are like a virtual reality environment, like a holodeck, in which we fall in love with 'virtual' illusions of things all the time.
Analogously the episode poses similar questions to Data (and even Geordi with his tech-no visor). Could we tell the difference between the creativity of Data and the creativity of humans? Could a machine have creativity at all?
We watch Data trying to learn to paint as an experiment in the possibility of android creativity (with Geordi encouraging him). But I'm not sure Data's neural net is quite as advanced as the Bynar near-binary minds. Probably not, for otherwise Data could just do the maintenance and prevent the Enterprise from stopping at Starbase 74.
The Star Trek world comes to a high point in this episode. The holodeck is used to its SF fullest and all the tech-no elements in the series come together nicely -- the holodeck, Data, Geordi's visor, and the Bynars all contribute to thought provoking questions. Now I know why I became interested in Star Trek!