If we're hoping for "habitable satellites" they might as well be gas giants. In which case, why get excited about super-earths?

Would "super-Earths" even be technically "habitable" to humans due to their higher gravity?

Well I should have said, "run into it as a particularly common fear, the way BSG had them fearing that Cylons were under every rock"

Earth's atmosphere is an oxygen-nitrogen mix; 78% nitrogen, 21 % oxygen, 1% all other gases (including CO2). Atmospheric nitrogen is essential for plants to live; that's why you need nitrogen-fixing bacteria and legumes and such to complete the nitrogen cycle. This is high school science class stuff people....which…

Another think I loved was the fantasy ethnic slurs: they've established that humans call Casthithans "Haints" (southern American English for "ghosts"; I'm from New York and "haint" is rarely heard outside the South, but I've read it used in books like To Kill A Mockingbird). So in this episode, they have the…

My running guess is that the "golden knot" "key" device is the master-key for activating a crashed Votan ship; they did say it was a "key to the Kaziri", which I think must be a Votan ship which arrived at Earth early and crashed in the 1800's (as seen in a previous episode; also it took the Votans 5,000 years to…

This was the best episode this series has produced yet. It was genuinely surprising, but at the same time, all of the past reveals were set up beforehand (to an extent; i.e. they set up that the Indogenes had surgically altered infiltrators). I wonder if EEM's old accomplice Birch was himself an Indogene?

"• Defiance, I’m willing for forgive a lot of fuzzy science in this show, but not the science of the smells of a decomposing corpse behind thin drywall for seven years."

You've given voice to a lot of my own thoughts and feelings on the show, Charlie Jane; it's "uneven" but always interesting enough and with just enough creativity and quality that I stick around. And in spite of myself, I came to honestly like it on its own terms.

The Eshveni are actively waging a genocidal campaign of extermination against humanity; how could the Volm possibly be worse?

I've been dreading this for a long time. Now he's a relic of a bygone age.

Blasto from Mass Effect? He might count, as he *started* as a one-line joke, but it turned into a full 10 minute long audio-drama. It's basically a ripoff of Dirty Harry and Lethal Weapon, but it sort of works. I mean, I would pay *real* money to have a spinoff animated movie about Blasto on a routine mission,…

I fully understand and think there is nothing controversial that Jim Carrey was so horrified about the Newtown massacre that he can no longer in good conscience support being in movies with gun violence - even if, as the creator and director pointed out, the entire theme of "Kick-Ass" is that real-life gun violence…

Barclay is kind of interesting, actually; he's NOT Mr. Perfect Mary Sue Wesley Crusher; it was refreshing to show a 24th century person who basically is an introvert with internet addiction....he's a nice guy, he's just kind of shy and withdrew into fantasy; and as the show progresses we DO see him grow and get better…

Yes, it's either "These are the Voyages" or "A Night in Sickbay"

That wasn't an offensively bad episode; yeah some of the Riza laughs were cheap, but it was still solidly entertaining, Worf had some good scenes particularly when he recalls how he accidentally snapped a human kid's neck when he headbutted him in soccer as a child and tragically realized how frail humans were…

Is it bad because it wasn't written well, or bad because it was borderline racist?

Actually, I honestly thought that episode was interesting and entertaining.

Insurrection isn't that great, and its odd that its own cast says its boring.

Each series has to be judged on its own terms, thus I don't think there can be a single "worst" or even "best" episode of the entire franchise, but there can be a "worst" and "best" episode for each individual series. Or at least, that would narrow it down, then we'd debate between the five.