If you do that you miss much of the best Trek villains:

Kai Wynn and Gul Dukat

They are part of reason folks are advising you to hang in there.

But ultimately just enjoy it and skip any episode that is boring you; if you make it halfway you’ll probably want to watch the few relevant ones you skipped.

p.s. Buckle up 🖖

Data, Mozilla has issued a ruling. You are the property of Firefox. You can not opt-out.

We know Riker plays for keeps; Quark owes him platinum and tried to foist gift cards on him for payment.

We know the TNG poker games would also raise the stakes; Crusher challenges Riker, LaForge, and Worf to bet shaving their beards that one time.

We know that gambling lingo is still commonplace, even though Mariner doesnt know other slang from our era (eg what a pinup poster is)

I want to say that gambling never left and it makes me realize we're sorely missing a proper heist episode. With Quark 👌

Edit: I am mistaken, I forgot about Moogie

I have no idea, but I hope so haha

I like to think of Mirror Chakotay like, with giant eagles' wings and singin' lead vocals for photonic Lynyrd Skynyrd with like a Maquis band.

Also some unexpected glory of my own

Ya I’ll have some of that please.

Federation outsiders serving a gleaming resort planet find out their day-to-day exploits are being broadcast to the entire quadran

Ok not bad, Acapulco is a funny show about working in a resort so I can sorta imagine it in space. Not as sure about the Punkd angle, but I’m remaining optimistic.

I appreciate your thoughtful take. Maybe these are unavoidable contradictions when the simple premise of evil twins is stretched too far.

What do we usually call the method of killing people to send a political message?

“we” is carrying a lot of weight because one man’s ‘terrorist’ is another man’s ‘freedom fighter’

Trip has so many great moments!

The episode when he is obsessed with pimping out the Captain Chair is one of my favorites.

Let's go further, since they already lie about the number of symbionts.

The TSC would take an inspired approach and seek to discover the cloning process so they can scale symbionts to the entire population, and thus finally end the conspiracy.

You get a symbiont, and you get a symbiont, everyone gets a symbiont!