Counting to Fix Things

In Star Trek: TNG, they fix most problems by carefully tuning some techno-babble device:

“The frequency is 7.5”

“Almost there! Can we go lower?”

“7.3… 7.1… Fixed!”

So basically, everyone stands around, hanging on the words of a person counting out numbers.

Essentially, the climax of every TNG episode is a Sesame Street sketch with the Count, and they take turns being the Count.

It’s so simple and pure. It’s the platonic ideal of handling tension and stakes in a TV show… just count down until the resolution.

I love it so much.


I still really struggle, like all the time, with understanding how something as perfect and wonderful as Star Trek: TNG can exist… and how, given that it exists, the world that produced it constantly fails to live up to it.

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