@avclub-beddc9f9e1c9b438dc4246e494644ce4:disqus David Mack tweeted about "killing off a beloved TNG character" when he wrote that scene. I actually fav'd it so when I read the book, I'd remember. I actually thought I might've missed something, because it still feels odd to call a book-only Trek character, "beloved."

They could've done the same trick they used with the Cylons on BSG and made liberal use of out-of-focus stand-ins with the right build, clothes, and hair. Have whichever actors you could get join in with the holosuite or get a few lines at Dax's party, and have appropriately-styled extras mixed into the party and…

…an episode where they're in a runabout and crash on a planet and have to fight a horga-beast together and it's symbolic of their problems.

At least the way they dealt with the Shelby reference had a decent motivation. Shelby mentioned being irritated because she'd seen a promotions list saying "Shelby" had made captain, and briefly thought it was her and everyone forgot to tell her, before realizing that it was someone else and she was still trapped in…

@avclub-962ee17833cdfb46d56594292275f539:disqus That wasn't him. http://en.memory-alpha.org/…

Ironically, the gun-in-spacesuit thing was a bit of a science-fail. Gunpowder contains oxidizer, it doesn't need any air to ignite. You can fanwank around it (the gun was air-cooled, it didn't use gunpowder, so on), but it was a case of trying to seem realistic without actually checking to see if it was succeeding.

The original script was leaked on-line, under the working title "Alien: Engineers" so you can read it yourself and decide how much was turd and how much was polish.

The original script is actually floating around on-line. Google "Alien: Engineers" and it'll pop right up. It's been a couple months since I read it (and, I guess, a year or so since I saw the movie. Whenever it came out), but I didn't think it was that different. Aside from tying directly into Alien (which caused as…

I think of "the Malcolm Gladwell Book Generator," a parody with dozens of Gladwell-inspired title-subtitle-clip art combinations. The website is a GoDaddy squatting page, so I guess whoever made the joke didn't think it was as funny as I do.

Got that right. I'd rather take my chances under Kirk than be on the Defiant, Intrepid, Constellation, Exeter, or Excalibur.

Given how obsessive he was about the kids' moms, I think he was more of a PUA-wannabe with a very roundabout method.

Yes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wik…

@avclub-ba9fab001f67381e56e410575874d967:disqus James May is my favorite primarily due to the lack of any detectible personality. He just stands there and doesn't talk much. I like that in my TV hosts.

The first thing I did after finishing the article was search for "Wally" to see if anyone else had already told that story. Bouncing from job to job and living off the severance packages seems almost mythical nowadays, like Hercules picking up a river with his bare hands to move it.

Thank you, Google. And nerds who are as obsessive about The Simpsons as I am about spaceships. We all form a beautiful ouroborus of time-wastery.

Also, if I remember right, it's a glorified cameo. Didn't she appear for all of one scene in a video recording? How much can the role be expanded? A couple flashback scenes? Maybe a montage?

@fursa_saida:disqus It wasn't in Thor proper. Marvel has been doing little interstitial shorts taking place between and during the movies featuring Coulson and other minor characters for the DVDs (Doctor Who has been doing something similar for the past few years). Someone put it on YouTube, and it's honestly short…

EVIDENCE!

Here's something fun- Based on dialog from later in TNG, the Cardassian War didn't end until around season 3. So he's bitching about having to do combat training when there's a realistic possibility the Enterprise could be redeployed to the front lines at any time.

I always forget that the theme music wasn't actually "Archer's Theme" since I edited it into a couple of episode recordings I made when the show was first on, so I got used to seeing it like that.