Well, it's not rocket science.

I can't remember, don't you also see Green Dudes in TOS?

There were Orion Pirates (and, of course, Orion Slave Girls) in the original series. Apparently by the TNG era they'd settled down to become more of an organized crime kinda thing.

You could make a very strong case for switching Quark and Garak.

Was going to say. Yes, the dialogue is from some of the later episodes and could be considered minor spoilers. Particularly Sisko's. It would be a shame to spoil that little speech out of context.

Yeah, I'm with LCD. Odo's justice-obsessed but he clearly cares more about "the right thing" rather than Judge Dredd-style enforcement of the law. Worf's more by-the-book, which is classic Lawful Neutral.

Thanks for giving the correct credit there. So many people post those Alignment Charts without crediting MGK as their creator. He deserves massive hits for those things.

SPOILERS?

Quiet, you fool! The Anti-Netflix Illuminati have ears everywhere! Do you want to be their next victim? DO YOU?!?!?

That's mean, Zack. MEAN.

That novel has similes like a Mexican hates fireworks.

Let me put on my sourpuss political theory hat here and say that I don't think biblical thinking is the CAUSE of most social conservative thinking, it's just an effect. Modern social conservativism is almost always traceable to a bunch of plutocrats who like having an easily manipulated base, and religion is a tool…

The original comic—the Steve Gerber run—is really quite good, and very little to do with the movie. Marvel had always been the superhero universe that mashed together other genres; Howard was an attempt to do 60s "Underground" comics a la Fritz the Cat, but made more mainstream and palatable to Marvel readers. And,…

The thing is, the ideas behind this episode could have made for some really great material—they deserved more than a throwaway "comedy" episode. The Essentialists could be argued to have a point, and getting Worf on their side should really make them more sympathetic. But…yeah.

I actually have a weird respect for DS9's (and to an extent, TNG's) insistence on continuing to use stuff that really didn't work, or at least wasn't that interesting, the first time. It actually led to some good stuff, like the way there were actually eventually some good Ferengi episodes. I'd also argue that there…

It may be true that channel-clogging mediocre stuff makes more money in first run than the really high-end, quality TV shows (though saying Mad Men and Breaking Bad make NO money is a bit of an exaggeration…) but there's also the lucrative DVD model, which favours high quality shows that people want to own. I mean,…

Yeah, even I have to jump in and defend B5 at this point—Alurin's last paragraph above is the key point, for most of the show's run. It's just the usual "hero saves the universe" thing, which is probably inevitable if you're telling a story with an active protagonist on a huge scale.

I tend to think the use of Jack the Ripper in that episode was a reference to Harlan Ellison's story "The Prowler in the City At the End of the World", which also involves Jack being brought forward into the future, albeit for very different reasons and with very different results. But maybe I'm just reading into…

This seems like a good enough point to say this, and I'm well aware that this is a weird nitpick, but it REALLY, REALLY fucking bothered me that the Emperor shrugs off wearing his goofy wig in this episode. Everything else we see about the Centauri suggests that their hair is a major social thing, and having it short…

The filmmaker lineup for Marvel Phase 2 is pretty great. Shane Black, Joss Whedon, and James Gunn on Guardians of the Galaxy (and man, is THAT going to be a weird movie). Alan Taylor on Thor 2, making his big-screen debut. The only one that has me scratching my head is getting those Community guys to direct Captain…