Well said, both of you.

"This week’s pair of episodes work really, really well together; they almost feel like an informal two-parter, with the former’s light tone gradually leading into the latter’s intensity."

"Maybe after she died, he was so grief-stricken he left the others behind, wandering the planet on his own, changing shapes and forgetting who he was; and when he returned, all the others he’d know were dead, and there were just strangers, and he couldn’t bear the thought of caring for them."

"What's Up" is a damn good song.  Never heard of Dean Ween, though.  He seems to have a problem with "females" and "lesbians."

So Zack is going to switch from Star Trek to Red Dwarf?  I hope that's the meaning of "more amusing."  I'd love to read Zack's reviews of Voyager and Enterprise, but I also don't want him to suffer through those series.

Oh yeah, good point.  I watched both of those but they always seem to slip my mind.

"By Inferno's Light" is probably my favorite episode of DS9 to this point in the series.  I think I have a couple of bigger favorites down the line.  But as a huge fan of Garak, Dukat, Worf, and Martok, it's hard to top this.

The live-action "Jungle Book" from 1994 with Cary Elwes, John Cleese, Sam Neill…  I wanted to go see it in theaters again and again, and my parents kindly obliged.  I watched it relatively recently and would argue that it's a legitimately good movie.

It had been a long time since a Garak episode, and this isn't a Garak episode per se but his storyline is the aspect of it that gets to me the most.

"Grumpy characters who melt in the face of children (literally in this case) are an old idea, but Odo’s enthusiasm and warmth are a joy to watch."

Nice Arafat/Rabin reference.  And regarding that spoiler, I agree that it's more of a "They're there, but now I will despise and shun them because they do not speak through me as they speak through some of my political enemies" thing.  That's how I prefer to see it, anyway.

(SPOILERS)

I think he is.  Meaning that I feel sympathy toward him, not that he's sympathetic to others, of course.  Nobody likes him on Cardassia or Bajor or anywhere else in the galaxy, and he failed at his one really important job in life (which, in his mind, he tried to do properly and with a sense of noblesse oblige).  He…

I don't know where they filmed "The Ascent," but it sure was a welcome change of pace from the southern California desert where Trek characters usually find themselves stranded.  Imagine an entire Star Trek series filmed in Vancouver, a la early X-Files seasons.

"[S]peaking of Voyager, it did its own tribute with “Flashback”; anybody know if it’s any good?"

"He also discovered blogging and embraced it with a fervor few older writers can muster for the new."

Speaking of forgettable, I intentionally skipped "The Muse" on my last trip through the series because the Jake storyline was so bad.  Then toward the end of the series I was thinking, "Hey, what ever happened to that episode where Odo marries Lwaxana?  That was kinda good."  This feels like a case where they stuck…

An insightful review that makes me realize anew how great the par-for-DS9 episode "Rules of Engagement" really is.  I find it hard to understand how or why the quality of writing in the franchise declined to the poor standards of Voyager and Enterprise.

Shark: jumped.  Awful ending to what I thought was a strong, relatively restrained (childbirth death scene notwithstanding) season.  But I'm not angry so much as numbed to the point of apathy; why get invested in a character-driven world in which characters drop dead arbitrarily and in the most cheesy, soapy fashion?…

Cakes up a shilling after reports of cake-blight.