The idea of two beings falling in love across species lines is potentially very interesting. And of course this is the place where the show's budget and suspension of disbelief collides with the visible reality of "we cast a very attractive actress to play that alien". But Star Trek never seemed to spend any time…

Man, I love Extreme Measures. One of the highlights of the final 10 to me.

To be fair, the plague in "The Quickening" took Bashir weeks and some pretty bullheaded determination to cure—more, I think, than any other medical challenge he was presented with in the run of the show. And even then, he didn't technically "cure" it, he just found a way to prevent it from being passed on to the next…

It's been a while, but isn't that the only episode of the last 10 that really focuses on Bashir and O'Brien? Whereas Odo is a crucial character throughout the arc. I say let them have it.

Honestly, that kinda bugs me on DS9. I realize that the concept of "interracial relationships" has connotations and the writers don't want to stand in their way, but these aren't differently-coloured humans, these are supposed to be ALIENS from OTHER PLANETS. You'd be able to fuck them, let alone produce children,…

Yeah, hilariously, Marcus pulls pretty much exactly the same move in Into Darkness that the Obsidian Order and the Tal Shiar do in "The Die is Cast". Not very Section 31-ish.

The final arc has its weak points, but there's generally more good than bad, surely?

All due respect to the DS9 writers, but that kind of smells like they were bullshitting the guy and then later on decided, "Hey, maybe Damar really IS important!"

Most DS9 seasons only really have a handful of "mythology" episodes, or at least, episodes that directly involve the Dominion, the Prophets, and stuff like Section 31. The rest are more or less standalones, though they often build on existing plot points. By today's standards it's an odd way of doing things, but I'd…

Since someone else mentioned DS9 was destroyed and rebuilt along Starfleet lines, weren't the Jem'Hadar a little confused when that happened?

As these comments' resident Enterprise defender, I have to say it wasn't a particularly pretentious show, if only because they were clearly getting pretty desperate by the time the third season rolled around and they started putting the emphasis more on action and long-form adventure arcs.

EDIT: Never mind.

As per my post above, the idea that Section 31 honestly likes the idealists fits. They see themselves as the ones who do the dirty work so the majority of Federation citizens can be like Bashir.

Speaking of which, I get the impact of Section 31 being a bunch of humans, and white male humans at that, but you'd think they would have at least a FEW Vulcans in there. Seems like their philosophy would win them over pretty easily.

I think you could argue that the crucial difference with Section 31 vs. the CIA and NSA is that Section 31 operates in a post-scarcity culture. One of the biggest things that motivates shady espionage, wetworks, toppling democratically elected governments, and so on, is (sorry to sound like a loudmouth college…

I don't know if I buy that Garak and/or the Obsidian Order knew NOTHING about Section 31—that seems like the exact kind of thing they should know about, and I just can't swallow that humans, even Sloan and co., are sneakier than Cardassians. But I'm prepared to accept that Garak wouldn't have had much actionable…

I've said it before (in the "Far Beyond the Stars" comments) and I'll say it again: Marc Alaimo somehow manages to be scarier as a human than as a Cardassian. It helped that he was playing the kind of New York cop you didn't want to meet in a dark alley in FBTS, but still.

I believe there's a subtle "Minstrel Boy" cue in a couple of DS9 episodes too—I wanna say we hear it in "Hard Time", but that could just be my faulty memory.

They were saving that for sweeps week.

It's actually a bit weird that all the real ongoing arcs on this show have been Boyle-related. Boyle gets shot, Boyle gets engaged. They could have turned Holt's running for the presidency of AAGLNYSPA or whatever it was called into a multi-episode storyline and I would have been cool with it.