I enjoyed the episode, and Bailee Madison is a little champ as young Snow. But I think the episode's biggest failure was not bringing in Richard Schiff to reprise the King for at least two scenes. First would be any scene with the queen, since it would help to see them together to really reinforce what Snow lost. And…

So, maybe the show wasn't clear enough about how magic worked in the so-called real world, but I thought it was limited to the boundaries of Storybrooke. So Hook's ship would no longer be cloaked once it left the Storybrooke border. Or is the lack of magic only limited to people using it, or cursed people for that…

Judge him on his rehearsal skill too. His gaffe rate was higher than usual and he came off like an amateur, which isn't good when a viewer is watching thinking "who is this guy and why is he hosting? Did he win a contest?" That is all

Kevin Hart's energy was fine, but what about the several times he had trouble reading the cue cards or teleprompter and had to start his bit over?

I thought it sounded off, but enough like Pardo that I didn't think too much that it wouldn't be him.

I think the show is trying to say Jake's a good writer, but the muse was kind of like a drug that got his creative juices flowing.

Because Sisko kind of was the ship's engineer. He helped design it, and it was established that he was into engineering before his career hit a hitch when his wife died and he was basically exiled to DS9 so Starfleet could give him something to do. (I think Leyton tells him this in Homefront).

I'm surprised there was no mention of the only moderately decent aspect to the Jake storyline, which is the revelation that the book the muse was inspiring him to write was Anslem, the novel that older Jake was famous for writing back in "The Visitor." Maybe it's a little too on the nose in a "the statue is hidden…

I'm not wrong, dude. Just trying to reduce it to its simplest terms. Sure, characters can be MacGuffins, which is common  (the Bond films do it a lot, R2D2 in Star Wars to a degree, etc.)

I didn't say the U.S. didn't give him power. I said the film misstated what happened. It says the U.S. installed him as Shah, when he was already Shah. The film stated the prime minister was elected by the people, when he was chosen by the parliament, which is not exactly the same thing. Close enough to simplify the…

"This film’s grappling with American history comes at the start, when it
examines the various ways the United States contributed to the rise of
the Iranian theocracy, in storyboard form."

That doesn't make Data a MacGuffin, just the main character in the story.

And don't you love how a discussion about DS9's Hard Time has morphed into an analysis of TNG's The Measure of a Man? Gotta love a vibrant fan-based message board

I guess I should clarify that I wasn't saying Data was the only character of note in Measure of a Man, but that we learn a lot about him. His sense of self worth and assumption of his uniqueness motivates him to refuse the procedure, which drives the story forward and brings Picard into it. So I think it's a little…

Well, Measure of a Man is more an episode about who Data is, and the plot is driven by the fact that the characters are who they are. Thus, character driven.

How is The Inner Light character driven? It's a high-concept sci-fi premise about a man living a virtual life in 20 minutes. Nothing Picard does within that life reflects particularly on Picard, nor are any actions driven by him since it's a preset program. (Not meaning to bash on Inner Light, it's a great episode ……

Yeah, but I also like how it gives a better context to the rest of the episode, mostly that Sisko knows Worf was "guilty" the whole time he was defending him, but that's his guy and he's gonna save his ass. And it also shows how immersed Sisko is in the greater politics of it all. He knows even if Worf were completely…

As opposed to those early episodes of Voyager where Janeway would brush aside her subordinates and do everything herself. Seemed to take her awhile to trust others to do their job

The thing I always think of with Rules of Engagement is that in 2000 a movie with Sam Jackson and Tommy Lee Jones came out called Rules of Engagement with almost the exact same basic plot of the episode: U.S. Marine is court-martialed for allegedly firing on civilians during a battle in Yemen, and a prosecution with…

I love how Hard Time starts where Inner Light basically ends (figuratively, of course). It's so typical of the way DS9 is more concerned with its characters and situations than just presenting the sci-fi story of the week that TNG and the other Trek shows would do.