In it, Tom Paris gets to fuck the shit out of Janeway's MILFy ass, but before you UNZIP, it's because they've been turned into weird giant salamanders by the nonsensical reason a tech which could bring them home is useless.

To add to the episode's unsettling characteristics, Janeway and Paris's frog babies are left abandoned on an alien world.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=3792526&forum_id=2#34656296)

You rate me as THE WORST episode in all of Star Trek history?

So bad that it's not even considered CANON by the fucking show itself???

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=3792526&forum_id=2#34656316)

At least give me a reach-around before I get fucked

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=3792526&forum_id=2#34656580)

While the episode works when you're watching it, it falls apart on inspection— if the universal translator can't handle idioms, what has it been doing this whole time? Star Trek should never shine a light on its plot conveniences. That said, fans love it, and it still has a certain charm.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=3792526&forum_id=2#34656403)

The UT works differently for known and new races and can probably only do idioms with races that are already known (e.g. Klingons). For new races, they're generally hearing formal first contact shit (Hello, I am such and such a name of such and such ship and such of such power is presumably a standard greeting), then as diplomacy happens they exchange language books. The UT is just unprepared to handle a race that talks exclusively in stories that the Federation doesn't know-- there's no starting point.

The real contrivance is that on a ship of 1,000 people that fucking Deanna Troi is the one helping with translation. There wasn't anybody better, really??

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=3792526&forum_id=2#34656924)

(Although why the Feds don't just recruit a betazed into every one of their exploratory ships to easily read alien minds is its own imponderable, other than "it would break two thirds of the plots.")

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=3792526&forum_id=2#34657173)

a funnier twist would be if the alien just had hella autism and could only speak in canned phrases.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=3792526&forum_id=2#34657179)

The main plot of the episode, involving a human boy raised by aliens who murdered his family, is actually not bad, but for some reason the episode is only remembered because of GIFs of Will Wheaton getting a facial.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=3792526&forum_id=2#34656546)

This is the first episode after Encounter at Farpoint. Why are we redoing a bad TOS episode? Why are we having the characters act like not-themselves before we know who they are? Why does Tasha want Data's positronic rod, and why does he remember this as something special after her death? Why do I have such strong opinions about this show I watched as a kid, even today?

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=3792526&forum_id=2#34656707)

.... -^^,--,~....

instead of

....~,--,^^-....

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=3792526&forum_id=2#34656756)

Have you caught the documentary "Chaos on the Bridge" on Netflix?

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=3792526&forum_id=2#34656762)

Avery Brook is 180, but he is CLEARLY on a different spatial plane.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=3792526&forum_id=2#34656870)

Disliked among those who think only the arc-episodes of DS9 are any good (these people should just watch Babylon 5), it's actually a good little character episode with an underrated Bashir B-plot. It's also notable for being one of two episodes to really make good on the reason Avery Brooks took the role in the first place.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=3792526&forum_id=2#34656975)

The episode seems to be in line with the first season's aping of TOS tropes, where aliens have weirdly set up some micro-aspect of human society. However, this episode has an underrated twist which showed the writers' room on TNG was getting more confident at making original SF stories.

It's not beloved, but it is underrated.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=3792526&forum_id=2#34657020)

-an impassioned picard speech

-a sexy tng female

-a characteristic of the crystalline entity

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=3792526&forum_id=2#34656903)

— Leah Brahms

— the fact that it "converts" all life but then leaves behind hydrocarbons and nitrates, which was either really clever or really stupid, but you can't tell with Star Trek writers' rooms

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=3792526&forum_id=2#34657102)

A number of things about this episode are complete missteps: Why do this so early? Why do it before we care about Dax? Why invite comparisons to "The Measure of Man," one of TNG's greatest episodes? That said, it works in a way no early episode of TNG really does because the cast is all committed to their roles in a way few people were early on in TNG.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=3792526&forum_id=2#34657058)