In My Head I Live On DS9

S5E8 of Ds9: we explore the ramifications of Odo being Chief of Security during the Occupation, dismantling the idea of him being a neutral party because you can't be impartial when serving under a fascist regime, and Odo has the blood of innocent Bajorans on his hands and will never wash it away. We'll also add a small side plot of Garak being schooled on his own casual racism, and then a final gut punch with Kira, who always stood up for Odo and believed in him as an impartial force of justice, confronting our changeling about the people he got killed in the name of the law. May the image of the implacable Odo with a Cardassian uniform haunt everyone's nightmares

I totally get why it's there. It's a direct way of conceptualizing Data's emotions for the audience. Showing him slowly coming to grips with his humanity (if that's the word) in dream sequences, as well as his friendships and actions, is much harder to convey to the audience. But it's just far superior as far as story telling go, you know?

I loved the idea of Data constantly reaching to those places on his own, coming a little closer each time, without suddenly being given a ladder to quickly climb to the top. The ladder effectively removes the agency and the existential struggle of Data's arc which is a goal within itself. Considering, debating and struggling with your existence is often the very point.

It always bugs me whenever a fictional setting regards personal names as a unique enough identifier. It seams quite illogical that there are enough personal names for every member of the population to have a unique one (except when it is an intentional part of the world building which is not the case), so it is natural to assume there is some mechanism of identifying which John you're looking for, whether it's a surname, profession, patronim/matronim, place of birth etc. It is even more likely that Ferengi have one, as they are very big on contracts and help you God if you can't uniquely name one of the parties. It can be argued that they can use id numbers, fingerprints and such nowadays, but the need for identification almost certainly preceeds centralised numbered ids of any kind, so even if the mechanism is less relevant, it would still be in place at least as legacy.

Secondly, Ferengi seem to have something of a clan system ?? Idk how to put it, but when it transpires that Ishka is earning money Brunt clearly states that it's Quark's problem, as he is the head of the family, which obviously isn't just traditional but has some legal consequences. It is probably due to Ishka, a female, not having any legal agency and therefore needing a male proxy, but Ferengi still seem quite worked up about family ties, even if their family values are kind of different from ours, so it is possible that the "head of the family" thing includes not only female relatives, but also younger males.