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Highly dislike Crusher and Picard never being resolved. Especially when the ending we did have heavily implied that the future Q showed Picard made him backpedal and decide he should never hook up w/ her if it would just end up in divorce. In my head canon, Q fictionalized that to keep Picard single b/c he wanted Picard for himself. It's sleezy! Picard and Bev deserve happiness and their chemistry on the show is the probably the best in maybe all of Star Trek. I just want my space-mom and space-dad to be happy. 😭(Tangent: I really enjoyed PIC, and it's a fascinating look at the character, but it'll never not be upsetting to me b/c I jus want my boi to be happy.)
Worf and Deanna hooking up was great for Worf, because it was the culmination of his series-long character development arc of him becoming more comfortable as a person living between cultures and participating in both. Instead of always feeling like an outsider, or like he's betraying his Klingonness by doing UFP-things. In the beginning of TNG, he has an almost forelorn description of how he belongs in neither society. And a lot of his character episodes are about him learning that he can still accommodate and participate in human culture without losing his identity as a Klingon. And that Klingon culture isn't this static thing set in stone but something that changes and evolves (like all cultures do) and that he can and should be a part of guiding that evolution.

The problem with Deanna and Worf is that it does nothing for Deanna. Like, I never got a feeling for what she saw in Worf or why that pairing was something that would be a good mesh with her personality/priorities/lifestyle. It just never made a lot of sense because the writers didn't even seem to think about exploring it. It felt like she had no agency in this scenario and was just a tool for exploring Worf's character development, when a good coupling should be a story about how both parties complement each other. At the very least, I got a better sense of why Jadzia liked Worf and what she got out of that relationship.
 
What is good about the endings of both TNG and Voyager is that both offer glimpses of possible futures that are averted and undone, which is more evocative and much more satisfying than a Harry Potter style epilogue that sets the future in stone. They give you glimpses of how the characters might spend the rest of their lives, but they also leave you room to imagine otherwise.

I think if anything ruled out a Picard/Crusher marriage it was not anything shown on TNG but rather that the team who created Star Trek: Picard didn't want to include it. Until that point, it was still plausible, even if it was never resolved on screen.
 

Mommi

Miss or be made.
(She/Her)
Have we considered that Worf might just be an absolute ride, and that's good enough for Deanna?
 
Dax seemed to think so in DS9. Though I suspect that was pushed a wee bit too much like writers had some content restrictions recently lifted and went ham about it.

Yar dying sucks. I liked her during my initial viewing and endured a lot of cheers at her demise and vitriol during her presence by "fans." Might have been shitty anecdotal environs but that's what I remember. I like Worf - a lot, but even his relationship with her as colleague and junior was something with potential.

Respect to Estragon for finding appeal and good defense of Sub Rosa. It's silly but has merits. Even if it did spoil the A-Plot of The Witching Hour by Anne Rice. Lotta talk over the years of suspicious similarities to that novel.
 
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Have we considered that Worf might just be an absolute ride, and that's good enough for Deanna?
That could very well be, but:
- That's not something ever expressed or even insinuated in the show, esp since by Season 7 TNG had fully morphed into a family friendly, rather chaste show versus its origins.
- Absence anything else, great sex by itself usually isn't the firmest of foundations for a lasting relationship.
- It mustn't have been good enough by itself, since I'm not sure the two characters ever even talk to each other ever again after the series finale and the whole thing gets treated like it never happened.

On a side note, it's hilarious (but mildly tragic) that Worf is miserable and shit-faced during Dianna & Will's wedding in Nemesis.

On an even more side note, Worf goes from not recognizing Gilbert & Sullivan in Insurrection, to instantly recognizing Irving Berlin in Nemesis. And I like to think/it's my head canon that Worf got really interested in Ancient Earth music after the events of Insurrection and just did like a deep dive into it. Which would totally fit Worf's whole schtick, since he loves singing and Klingon Opera, he could probably find a lot to love in similar stuff from Earth history the way he found prune juice to be a warrior's drink. Whenever enough time passes that CBS finally feels like rebooting TNG, I can guarantee there will be a scene where Led Zeppelin will get played diegetically and Worf will be like, "... A WARRIOR'S SONG!!!"
 
I can see the reboot now:

Worf is being encircled by a horde of Borg; they've adapted to his phaser long ago. A series of blocks snaps his bat'leth in half and he falls back to the ground. The collective begins to close-in. Monitoring the situation, Dianna on the bridge is terrified, "We have to do something...! He's not going to hold out at this rate."

Riker leaps over some debris and swings his leg over a chair to quickly take a seat at the vacant Ops station and begins furiously hammering away at the controls, "Lieutenant, we're working to get you out of there, just hold out for two minutes."

The chirping of a transporter hums in the rear audio channel. Worf looks down and finds two mek'leth by his side, "This ought to help too, buddy."
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Worf's eyes twinkle with renewed spirit, "...a warrior's song!"

"AaaaaaAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAHHHH!!!"

"Seriously, Will!?" Picard looks over.

Riker beams with pride. "Just look at him go!" As Worf lets out a primal scream while vaulting off a decapitated Borg and felling four more with a single majestic, brutal move.

🎵Hammer of the gooooodsssssss🎵
 

zonetrope

(he/him)
Time's Arrow: This episode is a lot of fun, but it's really amusing to me how quickly they ditch all of the serious ruminations about Data's mortality after the first act, and just turn it into a Doctor Who episode starring Mark Twain.
 

FelixSH

(He/Him)
Time's Arrow is the best TNG two-parter, and I'll die on this hill.

Would you mind going into detail? I'm just curious, even two years ago, when I already tried to give everything a fair chance, I didn't get much out of that one.

No pressure, you don't need to defend yourself, I'm just curious what you like about it so much. Or do you just find the other ones so lackluster? I just can't imagine that, with Best of Both Worlds and All Good Things.
 
I will admit, it's mostly personal preference. Not everyone is going to get what I got out of it. But it struck every chord and ticked every box with me. What I enjoyed about it was:

- First and foremost, it's just fun. Most of the TNG two-parters are all very serious affairs. Be it Worf doing srs bsns Klingon things, or Picard getting tortured, or Picard getting tortured again, or Picard getting tortured again, or this time Geordi gets tortured! And this one is just yo, what if we had a time-caper? It's good stuff. The other two-parters are all various levels of good to great, but this one is my personal fav.

- It's one of the few two-parters where just about everybody gets something to do, and it feels like the whole cast is utilized. Most Star Trek episodes, and the two-parters are no exception, they focus just on one or a handful of characters and many times several don't even show up. My favorite Star Trek movies are the ones where everybody gets to do something, because it makes the crew feel like a real crew/found family. Which is why Star Trek 4, 5, and 6 are all amazing films, and the primary reason why all the TNG films are kinda butt.

- I'm a history buff and went to college to study history, so history escapades are always great. And instead of the usual "let's time travel to contemporary times" they went to a genuine historical setting with some of the better costume designs and set-pieces that TNG had for a one-off episode. The historical references are jam packed, and the actors who play Sam Clemens and Jack London do a great job.

- It's a Guinan-episode, and none of the other two-parters feature her as much as this one or even have her at all. Whoopi is bae.

- I grew up and have spent the vast majority of my life in California, so it always hits close to home that they spend the episode exploring what is metaphorically my back yard.

- Data fish-out-of-water stories are always a good time.

- Best of Both Worlds is the ground-breaking fan-favorite, and All Good Things is an incredible finale in its own right. But I admit to loving Time's Arrow for rather irrational reasons. Best of Both Worlds aired when I was just getting into Star Trek and just becoming sentient enough to really follow media more complicated than Sesame Street. All Good Things left me feeling extremely empty as a child, because my favorite TV show was now over and it was the first time in my life experiencing loss like that. It also didn't really *feel* like an ending either when the ship sails off to have more adventures that I wouldn't be privy to. And when they spent the entire finale advertising Generations that would come out a year later, it again undercut the feeling like "this is the end" because it wasn't to my mind back when I was like 9 or 10 years old. Time's Arrow though hit at the perfect time in life where the things you love, you'll love unconditionally and they help form the basis for what you'll love for the rest of your life. It was also the cliffhanger that left me the most invested, and made me most want to see how it turned out, and was the one with the best payoff. Because Klingon-business is always :sleep: to me, Descent was probably the worst two-parter in the franchise, and most of the other two-parters you didn't have to wait all summer to see the next episode, at most you had to wait a week to a few minutes. So TL;DR it was the one that delivered the most on the hype. It also bridges Seasons 5 and 6 which are the best seasons. It just represents peak TNG to me.
 

FelixSH

(He/Him)
As I said, I'm not judging, your reasons are totally valid. If nothing else, I agree that it's fun, and having Guinan is always a nice bonus.

Thanks for going into detail.
 
Mild spoilers for future Star Trek:


I have to assume Billy Campbell meant Lower Decks instead of Prodigy, since what he describes sounds way more like Lower Decks M.O. But this is still hilarious and incredible.
 

zonetrope

(he/him)
TNG, Birthright: I'm not sure I've ever seen a two-part episode of a TV show where a significant B-plot (Data's dreams) completely wraps up in part 1. It almost feels like they could have just made the Data and Worf stories their own episodes, but I like the way they linked them thematically.

Also hey, it's Bashir.
 
Never really thought about it before, but ya. Dax would have been a slightly more logical choice since she's the station's science officer. But don't forget Bashir's engineering extension courses he took one summer!
 
Knowing the writers of DS9, if Dax had been there she would have been like, "Yeah, I knew your father in a past life. He had quite the imagination, especially in the sheets :cool:." And that is when I realized it was probably for the best things ended up the way they did.
 

Büge

Arm Candy
(she/her)
WOql.gif


4Nh4.gif

At the time of death, Noonian Soong was ninety years old, placing his date of birth on or around 2277. The Trill symbiont was joined with Curzon Dax in 2286, when Soong was nine years old, or thereabouts. Furthermore, Curzon was notoriously heterosexual, meaning that Soong and Dax could not have had intimate relations in either of their lifetimes.
 
Well, whenever you notice something like that, a wizard did it.

(Or uhhhh in this case let's just say . . . some kind of time warp shenanigans, I guess. Going by what was shown on TOS, I do like to imagine there was an era of way too casual time travel that can be used to explain pretty much any discrepancy you want it to.)
 
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Nowhere in canon is Dr Soong's actual age established. His age being in his 90s is taken from a TNG script but isn't actually mentioned in the show itself. It would be trivial to adjust his age upwards to accommodate sexytimes with an earlier Dax host.

Further more, TNG is notorious for being inconsistent with ages and botching dates. One episode, Picard is implied to be in his 50s, the next he's in his 60s. And that's before you get to the time singularity that Alexander Rozhenko must have been born inside of.

Even further more, the episode in question in TNG was so early in DS9's run, that Curzon's lifespan, the order of Dax's previous hosts, and Curzon's sexual proclivities had yet to be firmly established by the writers. Had Jadzia shown up in that episode, it's very likely that those precedents could have been set there instead of later in the series to allow sexytimes with Dr. Soong.

It is still entirely possible that Soong and Dax did in fact have a carnal relations with one another! And I have very little doubt the writers would have Gone There had Jadzia's actress been available for the part.
 
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Ehhh I'd still take a dice roll on Dax instead of Bashir in that one. Early Bashir is hard to suffer if I haveta' compare. Plus there's a good chance she'd have more broad perspective on the issues Data is going through. Data takes well to compassionate and caring mentoring when out of his depth, of which she's capabale. Where Bashir is not really on that level with someone like Data.

And as pretty common; I'm going off old memories and apologize if I'm processing this through that and off target.
 
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