#Ralph Offenhouse

[yoshimickster]

Riker: You see in our time, the Federation has evolved beyond the need to accumulating wealth.

Ralph: Oh...I see...well I guess I'm worthl-

Riker: But the FERENGI alliance,they are all a-BOUT money!

Ralph: OH thank God, if there wasn't any capitalism I'd DIE.

Riker: Granted the Ferengi are highly misogynistic and don't believe in labor unions.

Ralph: I'm a stock broker.

Riker: RIGHT, don't know why I bothered bringing that up .

[joklhops]

adhd in star trek times

i keep thinking about that episode of next generation where they pick up a bunch of frozen people from the 20th century and the rich business obsessed guy is baffled at what you do in a world where all basic needs are met.

Captain Jean-Luc Picard: This is the 24th century. Material needs no longer exist. Ralph Offenhouse: Then what's the challenge? Captain Jean-Luc Picard: The challenge, Mr. Offenhouse, is to improve yourself. To enrich yourself. Enjoy it.

i feel like adhd people would have no problem figuring out what to do in that world. i'd crush the shit out of enrichment.

[filmjunky-99]

s t a r t r e k t h e n e x t g e n e r a t i o n created by gene roddenberry The Neutral Zone [s1ep26]

[oldschoolsciencefiction]

According to the 1988 Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “The Neutral Zone,” these three have been in cryonic suspension in a satellite since 1994.

[kwebtv]

TV Guide  -  February 3 - 9, 1962

Peter Mark Richman (born Marvin Jack Richman; April 16, 1927 – January 14, 2021) Film and television actor, who was for many years credited as Mark Richman. He appeared in about 30 films and 130 television series from the 1950s before his retirement in 2011.

He played Nicholas “Nick” Cain in the 1961 films The Murder Men and The Crimebusters. He reprised his role as Nicholas Cain in the television series Cain’s Hundred. Richman’s other TV roles were on the soap opera Santa Barbara as Channing Creighton ‘C.C.’ Capwell (1984), Longstreet as Duke Paige, on the soap opera Dynasty as Andrew Laird (1981–1984), and a recurring role on Three’s Company (1978–1979) as Chrissy’s father, Rev. Luther Snow. He guest-starred on Beverly Hills, 90210.

His other television credits include Hawaii Five O, Justice, The Fall Guy, The DuPont Show with June Allyson, Stoney Burke, Breaking Point, The Fugitive, The Outer Limits, Blue Light, The Invaders, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., The Wild Wild West, Bonanza, Daniel Boone, The Silent Force, Get Christie Love!, The Bionic Woman, Knight Rider, The Incredible Hulk, Three’s Company, and Matlock. He was often seen on Mission: Impossible and Combat!, as well as other shows of that era. He appeared as Ralph Offenhouse in Star Trek: The Next Generation’s first season episode “The Neutral Zone”. Richman starred in the penultimate filmed episode of The Twilight Zone, titled “The Fear”. He voiced The Phantom in the animated series Defenders of the Earth.  (Wikipedia)

[spockvarietyhour]

The F.B.I. “The Animal” (original airdate 17.02.1974)

This 1974 ep of The F.B.I.  is chock full of Trek and Genre actors including: - Majel Barrett - Gary Lockwood (Gary Mitchell on TOS’ WNMHGB and Frank Poole in 2001: A Space Odyssey) - Meg Foster (Onaya in DS9′s The Muse, other credits like They Live, Quantum Leap and Masters of the Universe.) - Peter Mark Richman, (Ralph Offenhouse in TNG’s The Neutral Zone)

[jimintomystery]

TNG: “The Neutral Zone”

While Captain Picard receives orders to take his ship to the Romulan Neutral Zone for a show of force, the Enterprise discovers a derelict space module, containing cryonically frozen humans from the 20th century.

Cryonics has never made sense to me.  In order to avoid death, you have yourself frozen shortly after you die.  It sounds a bit like paying an annual fee to get free shipping.  The big idea is that if you stay preserved long enough, you can be thawed out once the medical community develops miraculous treatments for your present-day maladies.  Nobody ever seems to mention just one little catch: Your future doctors not only have to cure your disease, they have to cure your death as well.

Star Trek seems to lend itself to this fantasy, particularly in the first season of The Next Generation, which is curiously fixated on eradicating 20th century ailments and reviving dead people.  (This is one of three episodes in the season where Doctor Crusher pronounces someone dead before attempting medical resuscitation.)  However, this episode pokes a hole in the cryonics fantasy, by illustrating the dilemma of waiting 370 years for a medical miracle just to be stranded in an unrecognizabe society.

Pitting cutthroat financier Ralph Offenhouse against Captain Picard allows Star Trek to make its most direct anti-capitalist statement up to this point.  All Offenhouse cares about is recovering his estate, so he can resume amassing power.  Picard could easily shut him down by pointing out that, hey, civilization nearly collapsed circa 2053, and then somebody invented the replicator, so the institutions you’re so worried about have ceased to exist.  Instead, he cuts to the chase: Nobody cares about finance anymore, not just because it’s moot but because humanity has realized it was always a waste of our efforts.  It would’ve been more satisfying to watch Ralph discover precisely how his life’s work was annihilated, but Picard’s focus on what he should do going forward is a better moral for the story.

The Romulan plot is all but drowned out by the cryonics plot, which is a shame.  This episode establishes a lot of the key elements of future Romulan stories--Worf’s intense hatred of the entire race, Riker’s curiously similar hostility, the delicate game of feints that keeps things tense along the border, and the air of mystery surrounding the Neutral Zone.  This episode only hints at the unrevealed menace attacking Federation and Romulan outposts, but it’s obvious that this mutual enemy benefits from the absence of both powers within the Zone.  A lot of questions about these attacks are never answered in the series, but the biggest one will be covered in Season 2...

[phantom-le6]

Episode Reviews - Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 1 (6 of 6)

At last, we’re at the end of season 1 of Star Trek TNG, with only two episodes to warp through before we get on to the hopefully better performance of season 2 and beyond.  So, without further ado, let’s look at those last couple of episodes…

Episode 25: Conspiracy

Plot (as adapted from Wikipedia):

While the Enterprise is en route to Pacifica on a scientific mission, Captain Picard receives a highly confidential message from an old friend, Captain Walker Keel of the USS Horatio. Keel refuses to discuss his concerns, even though the frequency he is using is supposed to be a secure channel, and insists on a face-to-face meeting. Once they arrive at Dytallix B for this secret meeting, the crew discover the Horatio and two other Federation ships already present. Picard beams alone to the surface and is met by Captain Keel and the other captains. Keel reports strange orders from Starfleet headquarters and what he implies are suspicious deaths of Starfleet officers, and expresses concern of a conspiracy. Picard refuses to accept this without proof, but Keel warns him to remain wary.

 When the captain returns to the Enterprise, he confides only in Counsellor Troi, who questions whether he should really his contact with Keel secret. Picard is sceptical about the conspiracy, but says that he trusts his old friend completely. The Enterprise resumes its previous journey. Picard has Lt. Commander Data review all orders issued by Starfleet Command in the past six months. While the ship is still on its way to Pacifica, a disturbance is detected in nearby space. Upon investigating this, the Enterprise discovers a mass of debris that surely must be the shattered remains of the Horatio. Data completes his study and finds several strange orders from the senior levels of Starfleet. Picard informs his senior staff of the conspiracy theory, and orders the Enterprise to Earth.

 As it approaches Earth, the Enterprise receives no response from Starfleet Command. Eventually, a transmission is received from a trio of Starfleet admirals: Savar, Arron and Quinn, an old friend of Picard's who recently made an inspection of the Enterprise (in "Coming of Age"). They are surprised by the Enterprise's presence, but invite Captain Picard and Commander Riker to dinner. Quinn requests to beam aboard the Enterprise for a tour. Captain Picard recalls being warned by Quinn about some kind of threat to Starfleet when the admiral was last aboard. Upon Quinn's arrival, Picard discusses matters with him and Quinn seems strangely evasive; Picard comes to believe that he is an impostor, or under some sort of alien influence. After warning Riker of his concerns and asking him to watch Quinn, the captain beams down to Starfleet headquarters to attend the dinner. On arrival, Picard is greeted by the other two Admirals who are accompanied by Lt. Commander Remmick.

 Meanwhile, Riker visits Quinn's quarters on the Enterprise and questions him about what he has in the small box he brought with him. Quinn tells Riker of a superior life form within the box. Riker attempts to leave but Quinn throws Riker across the room. A security team arrives to subdue Quinn, who is able to withstand a great amount of phaser-fire before he collapses. The ship's chief medical officer, Dr Crusher, finds a small protrusion on the back of his neck. She discovers that a bug-like parasite has wrapped its tendrils around the stem of Quinn's brain and is controlling him. Dr Crusher warns Picard of this incident when he contacts the ship in private. He is advised that the infected person can only be stopped by a phaser set to 'kill'; the captain points out that he is unarmed. He then has no choice but to go in to dinner with his three superiors.

 A bowl of living larvae is served at the meal, to Picard's disgust. He attempts to leave, only to find Riker blocking his way. The commander appears to be controlled by the parasite Quinn brought to the Enterprise. When the others see a prosthetic protrusion on the back of Riker's neck, he is accepted as one of them and allowed to dine. They reveal that the parasites are seeking to take over Starfleet, using humanoids as hosts. When he is about to put a handful of the larvae in his mouth, Riker suddenly produces a phaser and fires on one of the Admirals. Picard picks up a fallen weapon and the two Enterprise officers subdue the infected, causing parasites to leave the hosts and flee. One of the parasites scurries under a closed door and Picard and Riker follow it. They find Remmick ingesting the parasite to join several others inside him. Picard and Riker fire upon Remmick, destroying his body but freeing a giant parasite; the two continue to fire until it is destroyed.

 Later, Dr Crusher reports that the other parasites, including the one inside Quinn, have shrivelled up and died, as they were unable to survive without the mother-creature that had been inhabiting Remmick. As they help to settle matters with Starfleet headquarters, they find that before the mother creature was killed, it had sent a signal to a distant quadrant of the galaxy. The signal is thought to be a homing beacon.

Review:

This episode is notable in the show’s first season on two counts.  First, it’s about the first time we’ve seen the show display any real sense of a multi-episode arc beyond Wesley becoming an acting Ensign or Worf taking over as acting security chief and tactical officer following the death of Tasha Yar. Second, this episode was apparently quite controversial due to the fairly graphic nature of the scene in which a parasite-infested Remmick is blown apart to reveal the parasite mother-creature within.  According to Wikipedia, the show carried a warning message when aired in Canada to forewarn audiences of the graphic scene, while original British broadcasts simply didn’t happen; it was only shown in repeats of the show on BBC 2, and only in an edited format.

 Frankly, I felt that the conspiracy falls flat when revealed because the ultimate motivations of the parasites are never explored.  There’s no look into why they have this need to take over humanity and control the Federation, and subsequent Trek episodes never pick up the plot thread either. According to the Trek wiki website Memory Alpha, the parasites are only explored in tie-in media such as novels and comics, and as someone who is very selective about their Trek, I don’t think that’s good enough.  To really pay off the ominous ending, there should have been a follow-up episode down the line so it could be explored with the canon of the originating show itself. Without that follow up, the lack of exposition falls flat; you just get a bland attempt at horror and mystery. Considering how good Coming of Age was, I’m quite disappointed by this follow-up, and give it only 5 out of 10.

Episode 26: The Neutral Zone

Plot (as adapted from Wikipedia):

While Captain Picard is away at an emergency Federation conference, the Enterprise crew discovers an ancient space capsule from Earth. Inside they find three humans in cryonic chambers. Lt. Commander Data asks to move the chambers to the Enterprise and Commander Riker agrees. Picard returns and orders the Enterprise to the Neutral Zone, as several Federation outposts near the edges of the zone have not responded to communications. He explains that the conference was about the potential threat of the Romulans, who have not been seen for decades. As Data and Chief Medical Officer Dr Crusher work to thaw the cryonically preserved humans, Picard admonishes Data for bringing them aboard during a crucial time, and puts Riker in charge of looking after them.

The survivors consist of Claire Raymond (a housewife), Ralph Offenhouse (a financier) and L. Q. "Sonny" Clemmons (a musician), all of whom are from the late 20th century. All died of incurable illnesses at the time and were placed in cryonic suspension after their deaths in the hope that cures might be found in the future. Dr Crusher, in reviving them, easily cures them of their illnesses. They have to cope with the culture shock of awakening in a distant future with the realization that everything and everyone they knew is now gone. Of the three, Clemmons seems to fare the best at adapting to life in the future and befriends Data. Claire is distraught at the thought of having lost everyone she ever knew, particularly her children, so Counsellor Troi suggests searching for Claire's descendants. Offenhouse is irritated by the lack of access to news or other information, and uses the comm unit to disturb Picard on the bridge. Picard comes down to assure everyone that all questions will be answered, but that the ship's mission requires Picard's full attention.

The Enterprise reaches the Neutral Zone and confirms that the outposts have been destroyed. They are soon met by a Romulan Warbird and Commander Tebok questions why the Enterprise has approached the zone. As Picard tries to explain his actions, Offenhouse arrives on the bridge and threatens to disrupt the tense situation, though he correctly ascertains that the Romulans are also seeking answers. Picard and the Romulans agree to pool their resources to discover the culprit. Picard later comments that while the encounter went favourably, the Romulans may be a significant threat in future engagements. Picard arranges to transport the 20th-century humans to another ship that will take them to Earth. Troi locates one of Claire's descendants on Earth, and while Claire is unsure of her place in her new reality, Troi suggests that family is a good starting point. Clemmons expresses enthusiasm for the future, and Picard explains to Offenhouse that in this time, the challenge is that of improving himself rather than attempting to accumulate wealth and power.

Review:

As a season finale, this episode leaves much to be desired.  The title plot is ok, but doesn’t have room to really be fleshed out or explored in the way it should be, and as such, the impact of the Romulans finally appearing is somewhat lessened.  The lack of room results from a waste of time b-plot in which we get some very bad stereotypes of 20th century humanity thawed out and given a horrendous morality lecture that falls flat due to being so incredibly condescending in tone. Frankly, later episodes in the franchise like the season 2 opening episode of Voyager, The 37s, handle this kind of plot much better, and we’d have been much better sticking to just having more time spent focused on the re-introduction of the Romulans. Really, the episode’s only redeeming feature is a good guest appearance by future DS9 actor of note Marc Alaimo, better known to fans of the DS9 Trek series as Cardassian villain Gul Dukat. All in all, this episode pulls in only a meagre 3 out of 10 from me.

[kwebtv]

Peter Mark Richman (born Marvin Jack Richman; April 16, 1927 – January 14, 2021) Film and television actor, who was for many years credited as Mark Richman. He appeared in about 30 films and 130 television series from the 1950s before his retirement in 2011.

He played Nicholas "Nick" Cain in the 1961 films The Murder Men and The Crimebusters. He reprised his role as Nicholas Cain in the television series Cain's Hundred. Richman's other TV roles were on the soap opera Santa Barbara as Channing Creighton 'C.C.' Capwell (1984), Longstreet as Duke Paige, on the soap opera Dynasty as Andrew Laird (1981–1984), and a recurring role on Three's Company (1978–1979) as Chrissy's father, Rev. Luther Snow. He guest-starred on Beverly Hills, 90210. 

His other television credits include Hawaii Five O, Justice, The Fall Guy, The DuPont Show with June Allyson, Stoney Burke, Breaking Point, The Fugitive, The Outer Limits, Blue Light, The Invaders, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., The Wild Wild West, Bonanza, Daniel Boone, The Silent Force, Get Christie Love!, The Bionic Woman, Knight Rider, The Incredible Hulk, Three's Company, and Matlock. He was often seen on Mission: Impossible and Combat!, as well as other shows of that era. He appeared as Ralph Offenhouse in Star Trek: The Next Generation's first season episode "The Neutral Zone". Richman starred in the penultimate filmed episode of The Twilight Zone, titled "The Fear". He voiced The Phantom in the animated series Defenders of the Earth.  (Wikipedia)

[tngbabe]

This was a good episode to end season one with.

This was the season one finale I'm pretty sure. The lack of security on the ship really bothered me in this episode.

The fact that Ralph offenhouse got to the bridge was disturbing but it just occurred to me the people in the 24th century have restraint and order so ordinarily it wouldn't be needed I guess.

Access to the computer was another thing. I guess oh shit point is I think good episode.