I'm a Voyager fan, but yeah, they were really bad about this kind of stuff.  One of the most unintentionally hilarious lines was in a later episode when, after many seasons of shuttles crashing, exploding, or otherwise being lost pretty indiscriminately, Chakotay objects to the plan to build the 'Delta Flyer' (which,…

Well, by 'early episodes' I meant particularly season 1.  As I said, though there's a lot of stuff I love in season 2, it's already getting a bit soapy for me at that point.

@avclub-bf5d232e6c54a84b97769a91adb1642f:disqus Actually, Bakshi's film was a financial success.  Part 2 was cancelled by some addle-brained executive even before part 1 was released.

K. Thrace - I don't follow.  These so-called 'Hobbit' movies have nothing whatsoever to do with the Silmarillion (if they did, that would be illegal)*.  All the bombastic inanity of them is coming straight from Jackson and his co-writers.

See, the way I see it, even in these early episodes Michael isn't ever really cruel just for the sake of being cruel.  Even in his fake firing of Pam in the pilot, which even I agree is a bit much, he sees it as a fun prank, and he has the misguided notion that this kind of thing encourages a jovial, relaxed…

They look like normal people, which was one of the things I really liked about the show initially.

I'm still trying to come to terms with the fact that the premier of another TVClub '(Classic)', Deep Space Nine, was twenty years ago. 

I was just surprised by some of the comments to the effect that the harshness and severity of the early episodes, like 'Diversity Day', needed to be tempered and would have been too much over a long run, which is not the way I see it at all.  I mean, I don't particularly care whether Jim gets together with Pam; I'd…

Am I the only one who likes these early episodes better than seasons 3+?  I've seen only scattered episodes from later seasons, so my opinion might change when I watch them sequentially, but I think I prefer the more realistic look and the more workplace-based humour to the relationship-based stuff that became more…

@avclub-c1dca267ceb83aba3bc0572d73200c8b:disqus  Yes, but the point is that it makes no sense to refer to sugar as 'Texas tea'.  Hence he adds the 'sweetener'.

@mem359:disqus Ah, my mistake.  Carry on, then.

I suppose I'd memorize the whole corpus of the Silmarillion material by Tolkien - or, if I weren't able to manage all of it, then at least the 'Narn i Chin Hurin' in its entirety.

Hwæt! We Gardena   in geardagum
þeodcyninga,   þrym gefrunon,
hu þa æþelingas   ellen fremedon.

@avclub-146bc30c345d31f3468fec764a1970e1:disqus  I'm rather a fan of the Robot/Foundation sequels, but I do think that trying to tie The End of Eternity into it as well was going a bit too far.

The way I see it, the problem with the episode is that the moral dilemma depends entirely on a misunderstanding of the way time works (namely, that such a thing as 'changing the timeline' makes any sense).

@mem359:disqus  I'm pretty sure it would still have been a terrible, terrible episode even without interference from censors and studio executives.

Actually, you certainly wouldn't be able to hit all the notes, since a tuba is monophonic (it can only play one note at a time).

I could have sworn it was.

"What's he doing in the basket?"
"Well, not much."

You are a hideous orangutan.