Peer pressure?

And he's stabbed immediately after asking Sidney "What do I have to do to prove to you that I'm not the killer?" He could just as easily be asking the audience that question, and of course, "die" is the most appropriate answer.

I like the first scene but I think the one that I liked the most was the scene in which the cameraman is killed, because it masterfully plays on the tradition of audience members screaming "Look behind you!" as horror movie characters do stupid things.

I really enjoyed his performance in Two Faces of January, which I saw before I even really knew who Oscar Isaac was. That film was surprisingly good in general, actually.

"Why don't you go talk to Worf again?"

What do you mean? The low income housing residents confront Mary about Poodle Lady (and Rottweiler Guy) shortly after they move in, and then Mary passes their complaints along to a police officer. The officer talks to Poodle Lady, says it won't happen it again, but it continues happening through the end of the show.

"It was selfish to drag Nay into it…"

No, there's a very real reason to think she's racist: she lets her dogs crap all over the lawns and sidewalks of the low income housing residents even after a police officer tells her to stop doing that.

Wait, Delaware and Pennsylvania aren't even in New England!
(neither is New York, but it's a lot closer, at least…)

It was done in by the flippers, wasn't it?

Yeah but Christopher Plummer spinning around in a chair like a giddy schoolboy screaming with glee, "Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war!" can't be beat.

Oh, yeah, I agree, Stewart was fantastic in that scene. But my point is as you say — he couldn't have had that scene without being able to play against a really strong actor playing a character who'd be willing to take a different stance than him, and all his officers are too cowed by the Great Picard.

"And then we get that lovely scene of him gravely intoning that he can't tell them because of the repercussions it might have…"

I'd say Schmoker's core complaint was not the coincidental nature of what happened but how completely out of character it would've been for Spock to deal with disobeying orders by essentially sentencing an officer to death. And that's a legitimate criticism. That scene was crazy.

Some people have even compared both to the superior show produced in the 90s, Deep Space Nine!

Yeah, they did. Her performance was great, and I think she played a critical and underrated role in that, as she pointed out, no one else on the ship was willing to speak against Picard (a real knock against his leadership style) and she was the only one who could call him out on his BS and tell him to blow up the…

"Much of that is thanks to James Cromwell's excellent supporting performance."

"This is Tasha. She fought a primitive alien African Queen, asked a robot if he was anatomically correct, and was eaten by an evil tar pit. Now we must never speak of her again."

Right. And not just as subtext — as text. It's explicitly, literally stated in the film. What a weird analysis.

I'm not sure. Memory Alpha doesn't have a lot of background information on the production of this episode. But, I mean, even if the writer was fired, the problem went so much deeper than that. Someone (the director, the producers, even the studio) somewhere along the line should've recognized how far off course they…