Yeah, "Firstborn" is pretty bizarre, but kind of impressive. Lots of cool stuff, there. I know Ron Moore praised its very different take on Klingon culture, for whatever that's worth. I liked the weird street theater at the big KlingonFest.

Yeah, Conundrum is pretty sweet. Or at least the first act is. The moment when the AUDIENCE knows who the villain is, but no one else can, is just wonderfully underplayed. No creepy music, no nothing. For TNG, it's great stuff.

Well, English "canon" and "cannon" aren't cognate, although they both come from Latin originally. "Canon" having the sense of "law, rule," and "cannon" being closer to "cane," actually. A long pointy thing.

…but they pulled the swicheroo with Nog, when there'd been NOTHING in his character to remotely suggest he'd want to end up in Starfleet. And that gave us many seasons of…Cadet/Ensign Nog. Gods help us.

Mr. Davidson, I hardly know what to say. Cookie Monster is a national treasure, and to ask him to be anything but what he is borders on…well, monstrous. I mean, I loved the guy when I was, like, three—and I had no idea then that he would turn out to know so much about Star Trek. We are blessed by his presence.

Trilltopia. Which would be ironic, since it seems to be a mildly repressive place.

"Hard Time" was basically about PTSD, too, though it wasn't a "war" story, and it was really well done. The problem was that there were no lingering effects. O'Brien just got suicidal, then got over it.

Khanthrok — this seems nuanced, and essentially correct. And it hammers home the point that whether we find these terms annoying or not, we sort of need them to coherently discuss this kind of narrative. I thought it was a bit odd when "canon" became an adjective, but it describes something real. In these…

Yeah, but that only works if you're talking about a lot of different KINDS of cheese. Or you can drink a lot of wine, or a lot of different WINES. Shit doesn't work like that, I guess.

Yes! I didn't even bother to jump into that discussion, because it was so pointless. Of COURSE "Darmok" didn't make any sense at all, you know, LINGUISTICALLY. Of course you couldn't actually live like that. But the story is about MYTH, and it WORKS as myth. I would probably rank it number one, too.

Yeah, that's pretty much how I see it, when I watch those shows, honestly. There are wars and there are WARS. People still use the same word. It's just fun to nitpick.

Well, that whole "implausibility" thing is why people tend to not like it. Even though we put up with all kinds of other absurd stuff. I guess it's "trying to explain the extremely implausible by invoking the even MORE implausible" that really gets to people.

Well, Picard 1.0, for roughly the first season, was kind of a dick. He only became a wise and lovable superman after the writers figured out how much Stewart was capable of. But paradoxically, that made him MORE fun to watch, not less. He was just that good.

Man, I'm with you. It sucks when I get off work and these boards are already dead. You've got to be there in the first three hours or you miss everything.

Sadly, I know that, too.

Well "retcon" is used too much, and used imprecisely. Some people seem to use it when they just mean "clumsily explain away." But it was a necessary word, because it was a concept we were already stuck with. In this kind of very-long-form storytelling, spanning decades and many different creators (it's no accident…

I had only the vaguest memory of this; had to do some Googling.

Yeah, sorry. Didn't mean to make you type all that. I just watched "The Adversary" last week. Snark fail, I guess.

It also works on horses.

But Data knows all about the Varon-T disruptor. And he will wreck your shit with it.