He also didn't get 10 seasons like Bobby Hill. Now that would be a surreal experience, to be talking about King of the Hill being unfairly cut after 2 seasons while Jon Lovitz is negotiating for the 12 season of the Critic.

I can understand the reasoning, but I disagree that it's queasy for a few reasons. The first is that Franklin is a purely privileged person, and has been all his life. It may be sad that he's losing (or has lost) his mind, but it's not like he's stuck in a terrible asylum or on the street. He is, at least, comfortably…

Right after I read your comment, the little box on the right suggests I read the review for Ganymede Elegy….

Part of me wishes he had a lot to say about TNG and DS9, but at the same time, he's probably been interviewed a lot about it by now, and that's not the intent of Random Roles. Plus I find it interesting that he's not a big science fiction fan, so that tidbit alone is neat to ponder.

It's kind of like having Mott the barber on board. There's no reason they couldn't have some kind of computerized hair cutting station, but having a live barber is a sign of how important the flag ship is.

Heh, good point, I hadn't thought about that aspect of DS9. But Richelieu and Media Enthusiast are right, it's not fair to criticize "Lower Decks" for not getting a perfect landing with this material when it couldn't really lay the groundwork for it.

I'll agree the execution is a bit lacking for Lower Decks, but to me it's just because they hadn't been developing these characters as background characters over a season or two. It's the sort of thing they couldn't have gone back and fixed, and it could have easily blown up in their faces if they'd had regular…

God, yes. I kept looking at other browser windows when it started, wondering where it was coming from.

Would this be the link you wanted to include with your post, sir?

Well, somebody has to play the heel for the match to work.

I like to think that one of the parallel universes we didn't see was Masked Wrestling Star Trek, where all personnel disputes are settled in the ring.

I think Zach nailed it on Riker's interactions. He's trying to respect the chain of command even in the present here, but now he knows it's a bad idea, and it's only because of the consequences of the Romulans getting a phased cloaking device that works that he goes along without spilling the beans to Picard. However,…

Man, Serova is the kind of environmentalist that makes you want to buy a Hummer, run the engine all day, and use hairspray on your dog just because. "You don't believe my theories, huh?!? Let's see what you think when I kill myself and make the problem so much worse than it needed to be!" Oh, wait, YOU'RE DEAD. No…

I was not aware of this, as (thankfully) I have never seen someone drown, or almost drown, in real life. But that does make the scene easier to understand, especially if she was underwater for longer than they realized when they tried to pull her out.

I was always bothered by the ending of "Dark Page" because it feels like there wasn't a clear explanation of why Kestra died. I know she drowned, but it seems like they lost track of her for 10 seconds, then watched in horror instead of trying to get her out of the water. But it's possible I'm just not clear on this…

To be fair, part of the "Has seen better days" perspective was caused by internal strife over being at peace when their society and industry had been so balanced around being at war. So in that sense, you could see them trying to reassert themselves (and heal internal divisions) through both the war with the…

"It's the small of his back, man! Lower! LOWER!"

The problem is that they only have 2 ways to stop unruly crewmembers without killing them: stun phasers and off-button hyposprays. And Data is immune to both. They didn't promote him on his merits, they just didn't know how to stop him.

Damn, Jimmy James, you have got my ass beat when it comes to replies.

Man, you'd think there would be some kind of "this is psychosis" line of code in Data's brain, to head off things like stabbing people because he thinks he sees a bug in their head. Then again, it's not like Data's a repeatable product, considering how Lore turned out.