Star Trek Ruminations

 The Visual Evidence When Geordi is transformed into one of the creatures from Tarchannen III he discards his VISOR in favor of his new, alien eyes. But what happened to the neural implants embedded in his temples? We don't see the characteristic red LED lights in any shot of him after his transformation. But as recovers in sickbay the neural implants are present again... Were the neural implants just enveloped by his alien physiology and then re-emerged as his human DNA reasserted itself? Did Doctor Crusher need to repair the neural implants to interface with his VISOR once again? The episode doesn't make that clear. The omission is strange, because the script gives special attention to the matter of Geordi's VISOR. It specifies that Geordi is "wearing a slightly different, earlier version of his VISOR" in the recordings from five years earlier. And eagle-eyed viewers can note distinct differences between the old and new VISOR. But nothing in the dialogue or visu...

To update an older discussion - I came across one more glimpse of Utopia Planitia that predates the Voyager episode "Relativity." In the seventh season TNG episode, "Parallels" there is an image of Utopia Planitia taken by the Argus Array (see the image in the lower right of the display). Admittedly this is the Utopia Planitia from a parallel universe, but "our" Worf didn't identify any major discrepancy between this Utopia Planitia and the "real" one. While the visual evidence is not entirely clear, it looks to me like this is not an orbital facility, but rather something on the surface of Mars. The display seems to make a distinction between orbital stations on the left and planetary locations on the right. It also appears that all of the structures are built between the craters. An orbital station would visually overlap at least some of the craters on the ground. On the other hand, even if it is an orbital facility it still looks marked...