Ditto on the Calvin and Hobbes. Great choice.

And how. The DS9 writers were big into calling the Dominion War saga "Shakespearean," if memory serves. Maybe Rom was supposed to be the Nym to Quark's Pistol (without the hanging death - um, Henry V spoiler). You know, theirs were the bits that happened in between the important people doing the meaningful stuff.

In retrospect, maybe we were all looking for something to believe in after The Phantom Menace. I remember how devastated I was by how terrible that movie was after the Star Wars movies were such a big part of my childhood.

I forgot those were all released in such short order. The Matrix was around then, too. I pretty sure I thought it was some kind of golden age of film. Oops.

Yes— while it apparently didn't affect me quite as much as it did you, littlealex, I recall being a supporter of the "Best Picture" nod at the time. I was expecting to recapture the magic when I re-watched recently and, well, it seemed pretty dreary, rote and self-indulgent. The experience really made me question my…

American Beauty
I saw this movie in the throes of the general cultural anomie of the late 1990s. It really "spoke to me" for some reason, despite the fact that I didn't grow up in a traditional suburb and didn't necessarily share the characters' more dire existential crises.

Hazards of Love was towering live. The studio album can be difficult to swallow, however.

He's just an example of a character that perhaps sounds good on paper ("nerdy Ferengi makes good!"), but his storyline never really developed into anything interesting. That would've been fine on TNG— you'd end up with a mediocre B-plot in a single episode, and life would go on— but because the DS9 universe was so…

Haha true, phodreaw. You point out why character consistency was both a boon and a bane to DS9. On the one hand, dilemmas (like the one discussed above) would be played out over multiple episodes and seasons, adding unprecedented character depth. On the other, it's really hard to have those quintessentially "Star…

Fair enough, Zack and Hercules— and I do recall Q setting the parameters of the alternative timeline as such. But, even given that conceit, *Picard* was not responsible for the deaths of thousands in the alternative timeline (even if they died anyway). It was his Q-manufactured replacement. That must make some…

A Metaphysical Question…
A truly classic episode, to be sure. One of my top ten. But, while the episode suggests that Picard's ultimate decision to restore his original past was the *good* kind of selfish— consequences be damned, it's the life he chose and he deserves to preserve what he had, warts and all— wasn't a…