This fixes all kinds of problems related to missing params,
like broken timestamps (due to `integer_datetimes`).
This solution is not ideal, but it will help. Meanwhile,
I'm going to dedicate some time to improving connection machinery.
Note that this **does not** fix problems with passing certain parameters
in a reverse direction, i.e. **from client to compute**. This is a
separate matter and will be dealt with in an upcoming PR.
