This is a really interesting thought that changes my perspective on this scene. Which I've always rather disliked because of the GLBTQ rights overtones and the way it casts Quark as a little too Archie Bunker for comfort.

Your essay on this matter is still the best tackling of this particular topic.

""Wasn't Ezri’s official title at her previous posting junior assistant counselor or something?"

"The Man Who Was Thursday" would be a big hit on Cardassia.

I love this headcanon and fully support it.

I actually get the feeling Sisko would have been happy as one of those Engineering Professors who builds trebuchet in the backyard, not specifically a historian. Which would have been too quiet for him.

I actually have always assumed that was Felix's intent.

Taking it further, there are probably even pre-programmed API packs made by developers that holoprogram makers can install that already have the settings for the various Fed species.

I always got the sense that the DS9 crew made it more difficult than it needed to be. Surely you could enter the game and just empty-desert the guys if you wanted.

Even though we see people doing stuff in "Holonovels", the fact that they're called "holonovels" and have scripts implies to me that they're much more passive narratives than the holoprograms.

It's like planes and cars, I think. Both have the ability to kill you dead right quick if they malfunction, but they don't usually - so people don't think about it.

And there's this. It isn't hard to find black people disturbed by the idea of fantasy plantation life, as Paula Deen and Ani DiFranco recently discovered.

Star Trek has also had a mission to educate since the beginning. As a wee little Las Vegan, this episode was my first introduction to that side of the city's history. It might be a bit out of place, but I think that makes up for the slight OOCness of it all.

In general the film has a 'this scene is going on too long' problem, but I do wonder how long is too long, and how long is needed to lull the viewer into her exact state of working depression. (I mean, it's interesting because Adele is arguably most alive and interesting with those kids, as you say, but the character…

It's arguably a film about how class plays into romance, so all the scenes with Adele working have more importance than a lot of folks give credit.

Every major studio summer flick since Star Wars has stunk of Reifenstahl.

I'm in favor of just saying Magneto has been cursed with immortality because of (handwavionium). Done correctly it makes him more tragic because eventually he'll be the Last Survivor.

Yeah, but it was babydaddy who outed card shark so he has motive. (And let's be real: outside Mary and a couple of the staff characters like Carson, everyone on this show is just Fellowes' plot device. Even Thomas, who is sometimes a fully realized character - his forced closeted life leading him to do things that the…

Quick question/theory: anyone think the card-shark guy hired the brownshirts to off Edith's babydaddy? I distinctly got that impression but couldn't say why, other than confusion that card-shark guy is back in the plotline at all.

Me, but then the repeated references to hookers made me think maybe not.