FWIW, the titles of Royals episodes are all lines from Hamlet. Which is not to say that they can't, over the course of a season, increase in epicness. (Epicity? Epictude?) Anyway, it's a long play with lots of lines to choose from.

This list seems to be half "objectively terrible" and half "this was disappointing". I guess "inessential" is vague enough to be convenient in that respect. I think having those be two separate lists would be more interesting.

Fair enough. In addition to Moss' fine performance, I didn't have a "where is this going?" reaction to it. Maybe it's just me. But Hogarth was both an employer and a resource for Jessica, and what lines either of them would and wouldn't cross for the other were a big part of the story, IMHO, and Jessica getting…

"We’re prepared to be proven wrong by the episodes we haven’t seen "

Both religion and body-building reflect a fear of one's own mortality?

I guess it depends on how you define "bottle episode". If you go strictly by the technical aspects (limited use of existing sets and few or no guests) then sure.

I didn't think Generations was so bad. It was heavily constrained: certain things had to happen that were imposed by outside forces.

Who can forget the "dune buggy chase" scene from Nemesis? Both boring and irrelevant, it was a true highlight of the film.

It's how her people say "hello".

Have you seen small town America lately?

Don't forget, Uncle Sam and your agent each get a piece.

Well, the original series had a dynamic of setting up moral dilemmas, and debating them. McCoy's best moments are in these discussions. There's nothing philosophically deep in these movies to hand that hat on.

There are some good ideas in Nemesis and some bad ones. Apparently unable to tell the difference, they left in everything and it's a huge mess.

At least it was, until the holodeck was invented.

It seemed clear to me that Into Darkness really wanted to be a Star Wars movie (e.g., the "jump" from the Enterprise to the Dreadnought has a very Star Wars look and feel). So, I'm not that worried, frankly.

Hotheads are from Mercury, cold fish are from Neptune.

Wait, they have science fiction books now?

Why can't the Mars colony ever be a bunch of pacifist space-hippies or cowardly computer nerds?

Not a great example, since we don't see either of those right away, and we're introduced to them by characters we met first and got to know a little about at Winterfell

It seems right in line with Buddhism, though.