Beautifully played, Chico.

It would have been great if, as the mini-photon hit the Jem'Hadar, they had cut to that shot of the bird of prey exploding they used in ST VI and re-used in Generations.

Hey now, leave him be. He made some great points. And I totally agree with him: First Ro, then Beverly, then Troi.

Very interesting.

Interesting.

I just realized that I never actually knew what Data's job was on the ship. And I guess I still don't. I suppose I just figured it was Android 1st Class.

Did mini-Guinan have eyebrows? Back when I watched this episode, I was concentrating too hard on trying to make her burst into flames for being a supercilious twit to notice.

I thought the same thing. And what made it cooler — if you don't mind stretching the definition of that word to its absolute breaking point — is that they never explicitly mentioned that, instead just leaving it up to the audience to figure out what was going on.

They can when they're melted down and smoked with a pinch of PCP.

I love that blog. Best bit I've found so far: In that one episode where Crusher and Troi are inexplicably doing stretch exercises in space-leotards, the blog calls the move they do when they're sitting with legs spread facing each other "slammin' baskets."

Yeah, it would have made a lot more sense to do a montage type of thing. But maybe they were running out of time/budget on the episode and just couldn't get to it.

Man, Jeffrey Combs. Whenever you want to inject some life into your genre project, just add Combs and it gets five times better. He's one of those guys who should be way more famous than he is.

Frakes as an individual commenter is a relatively new thing — it goes back maybe half a dozen episodes. Before that, though, various commenters would start a Frakes "quote" thread for almost every episode.

@Danonymous, I always just assumed that weird orb-chair was some kind of Klingon (or just Future!-in-general) sex apparatus.

Dang. That's great point. If you wanted to attempt a fan-wank, though, I suppose you could argue that the Continuum only strips a Q of their powers if they've transgressed in the eyes of the Continuum itself. Otherwise, it's taboo to cripple one of their own like that.

The explanation is clear: THE HOLODECK IS IN ON IT.

That's true, Todd — it's been a while since I've seen this one, so I forgot about how weather control would have made a tornado nearly impossible. But Picard only figures it out it's not what it seems because he knows the Q are involved. Back on Earth, the authorities probably chalked it up to a random accident, given…

I'm guessing it's a reference to her being Vincent D'Onofrio's evil genius nemesis on Law and Order: The One with Vincent D'Onofrio.

The tornado
I always figured they weren't actually killed by the tornado — that was just some smoke and mirrors the continuum threw up to disguise the actual murdering, which was presumably accomplished by more god-like means.

"This face seats five!"