the word you're looking for is freak... unnatural

i imagine the keiko + garak friendship being like two kids going over to play at each other’s houses. keiko rocks up like ”can garak come out for a bit 🥺” and then the two of them return five hours later covered in dirt with leaves in their hair (they’ve been planting peonies)

it’s kind of insane how much you watch star trek run into the same brick wall over and over again with the klingons because they’ll do a good interesting episode regarding klingon society and then they’ll be like btw they’re like this because of BIOLOGY and you’re like ok man. you ruined it

similarly you’ll have characters being like oh klingons are a violent xenophobic warrior race because it’s in their blood and then you’re like ah i see this is a perspective we are going to refute by the end of the episode to gain a more nuanced and rounded perspective of klingon society and then they just won’t do that

spock is like a kinsey 5.5 hes almost entirely attracted to men but diva worship does become sexual for him sometimes thats why hes into uhura obvs

Asking political candidates to tell me their favourite episode of Star Trek so that I can judge the quality of their character.

This might be unfair, but if you give me an answer like "City on the Edge of Forever" or "The Inner Light", I'm going to assume that your handlers are stagemanaging you to be as broadly appealing and inoffensive as possible.

Answers that I would consider good from an elected leader: "The Measure of a Man"; "The Drumhead"; "Past Tense"; "Homefront / Paradise Lost"; "Living Witness"; "Critical Care"

'The Quickening' might be a fun answer

"Bride of Chaotica" to really make em think hard

The BEST trope is when a character tells another “let’s run away together, we can leave all of this behind and start a new life somewhere” and gets rejected. And then the rest of the tragedy unfolds

re prev rb: we should have gotten to see kai winn absolutely wiping the floor with garak. he thinks his "snide little comment" game can match hers but he'd leave the room and head straight for that airlock again

I'm gonna hold your hand when I say this, but Keiko is NOT going to be the emotionally intelligent/mature one in the ds9 polycule. this is a woman who called of her own wedding because she panicked. not only that she made DATA tell her fiance that she was calling off the wedding. on the day of the wedding. the fun thing about the ds9 polycule is that none of them have the emotional intelligence and maturity to be in a polycule like that. embrace the chaos.

This actually gets funnier the more you look into it because Lela Dax died in 2226 after being a host for 66 years. Torias became host in 2284. That means Dax burned through Tobin, Emony, and Audrid in just 58 years.