I'm usually game for the 'practically this doesn't make sense given technology' discussion, but this ep seems so far beyond that.

Thanks for the love Zack. Honestly, this is the only place on the intertubes i participate like this - and it's because of the quality of your writing and the hilarity and insight of the rest of you neeeeeeeeeeeerds.

another vote for sequentially. The crossover eps served their function of making sure fans of TNG checked out DS9, but ultimately the shows had different aims and execution. I'd rather re-examine DS9 on its own merits without a weekly compare/contrast to TNG

phrases like "the most influential band ever" really piss me off. It's either lazy, lazy analysis or a surefire sign of a fanboy posing as a an informed critic.

the interesting thing about the film version is that is was one of those films that you could tell was a play first, and they made little effort to adapt it cinematically. They even wore the same costumes, to say nothing of the failure to use the expanded palette for setting and visuals.

My introduction to LeBute was seeing "The Shape of Things" on stage with Rachel Weisz and Paul Rudd in the lead roles. That play pissed me right off, mostly because I saw it with a bunch of 18 -20 year old drama phonies who kept ladling overwrought praise on it and Mr. Labute (who met with our class after the…

Dinosaurs was also rampantly liberal while managing to pass as kids entertainment.

She's not dead!

what happens if I am neither female, elderly, or gay and I love the Golden Girls?

I just listened to a good segment on WHYY's Fresh Air about the original Rocky and Bullwinkle show(s) - apparently there were two - which are now available on DVD and download.

I think i read somewhere once that production costs kept the borg from appearing more frequently than they did. I'm not sure how - the costumes didn't seem much more expensive than the aliens of the week from the early seasons. Mighta been that Borg story lines seemed to require a lot more space battle…

I think by the time Voyager got plating, the Defiant on DS9 had already been referred to as having 'ablative armour' or something like that. I actually rather enjoyed the small subplots of ds9 that focused on the development of tech as a response to war…and for that matter, Yar has a speech about that idea in…

ToddG, yeah i thought about that - but i couldn't think of how he could have squeezed an extra 42 minutes out of the transformation angle. There would have had to be another element to stretch it out…a borg chase scene? More kickass Guinan scenes? A borg-eye view of trying to get Hugh back? i dunno.

I agree with Zack's critique about the speed with which "Hugh" goes from enemy to friend and how he didn't seem like enough of a threat to begin with. I've watched it a couple times, but I can't think of how Moore could have tightened it up so we could get a more authentic transformation.

by the by, for all you real nerds, check out "The Tolkien Professor" on facebook. He's a professor from Washington College who is absolutely amazing. All his lectures on all tolkien works are downloadable as podcasts.

if you go back to the Middle English and Scandanavian, Cray-bayeen were a crow-like animal that portended death/bad news. Dun land, literally, land of the dark (non-glossy) black.

Thanks, E. Not sure how I missed it, but I'm mad I sat through holodeck fantasies with Michelangelo and some Irish village, but not the ones that were actually entertaining.

Nice find. I can get about 3/4. Kinda pissed that they put in holodeck avatars of characters.

"c'mon guys! *sniff* It was a really tough time for me and those slimey candy things were so good."

also, it's worth noting that the Oxfordian theory of authorship is plausible enough to be presented at the Globe Theater in London and it has some pretty significant scholarly heft behind it.