My opinion is that, back when he had just one show to deal with, he did a fine job. Mid-period TNG was frequently great, and that was all he did. Other people were doing the movies. He just did one show, and it was good.

Can you explain the appeal of Peckinpah to me? I find him to be a technically skilled filmmaker whose view of morality and ethics is exceptionally tedious, this Catholic everything's impure, everyone's doomed philosophy that I really find grating.

That is the frustrating aspect. The conflicting sides are all right! It's like a Deep Space Nine episode! From a storytelling perspective, if it had been a movie, the "right" outcome would probably have been a hung jury leading to a mistrial, rather than an outright Not Guilty.

I see this, though this sounds more like bad software design than intent. The difference between real prison and this is that the authorities have total control over what is in a VR program, while in real prisons the problem is that you can't really control everyone that completely. If you could, the prison experience…

I'll agree, though I do think that the conventional wisdom of DS9's being darker, and therefore superior, needs to be somewhat challenged. It's almost certainly not the darkest Trek series—my guess is that Enterprise would come out ahead on that equation, between the main-character bigotry and the Xindi killing off…

I can see that.

I agree with your assessment of Ch'Pok. TOS Klingons definitely owned, though for my money the best Klingon story to date has been Star Trek VI. When you think about that movie, which actually managed to make Klingons scary and threatening again—it's no mean accomplishment. DS9 definitely improved on TNG in that…

I get the sense that Felicia Bell was initially cast because she's attractive and really only was in two scenes in "Emissary" or so. Fine. Then they did a Mirror Universe "Yesterday's Enterprise" thing and brought her back, and that was fine playing distant and petulant. And this is the episode where the wheels…

This does actually get to my one issue with this episode. I do tend to think that murdering the friend is not part of the program, that O'Brien's mind had him react the way he would under such situations. But this is not a terribly well-designed way to prevent crime from happening! The trauma incurred from the program…

I believe that looking at later TNG, Voyager and Enterprise up to S4 gives a fairly good sense of Berman's inclinations on character versus narrative driven television.

@avclub-93e06678bf43969ed7f3b3377605aa8c:disqus But was it up to his performance as Ridley Scott in The Pirates of Silicon Valley?

That is true. It seems like every hearing or trial uses line officers as lawyers, which makes sense dramatically but not logically.

He's merely quitting to take the lead role in Spider-Man: Turn On The Dark.

I liked that movie. It was perhaps too clever for the kiddies, sort of like The Rocketeer was.

Hey, remember back in the '90s, when everyone talked about what a great actor Gary Sinise was, how he was one of the best working? I watched a CSI:NY episode without any sound about three months ago (it was playing on a TV in the gym) and now I know why nobody says those things anymore.

The prequels ruined any chance of that.

I miss the trenchcoat/umbrella/pee-colored wall pic.

Wasn't it Klugman?

They took the idea and used it in season three of The Sopranos.

But do good historical novelists do it? I'm not talking about Harry Turtledove, that guy kind of sucks and we all know it. On the other hand, someone like Gore Vidal was combining like 99% recorded history and 1% supposition. Like in Burr, where he had Burr challenge Alexander Hamilton to a duel because Hamilton…