Bryce Lynch

I liked this episode a lot as it demonstrates the dangers of a "utopian" nanny state. I think Alixis is Mike Bloomberg's soulmate (or soulless mate, perhaps) I loved the way Sisko took his stand against it by refusing to give up his uniform and going back into the box. My only problem was that I thought the ending was WAY too easy on Alixis. The woman was a liar, kidnapper, tyrant and mass murderer. I could understand the colonists considering staying and keeping to their low tech ways, but they should have had zero sympathy for the monster who deceived them, kidnapped them and killed many of their friends and family. The ends do not even begin to justify her utterly evil means. She could have found like minded people and shared her plan for a low tech colony with them.

I didn't like the first "Blood vs. Water" and the "Twinnies" was unbearably annoying on TAR. I am NOT optimistic about this season of Survivor. The "Twinnies" are both Crossfit instructors? Given the shape they are in, I'm guessing Crossfit is NOT hoping for plugs on the show.

Actually, as far as I remember, the Dax symbiont did seem to be treated pretty much like a living memory chip. I recall Jadzia frequently speaking of memories and talents of her prior hosts but never spoke of anything thr Dax symbiont ever did or thought. Of course, the symbionts didn't exactly live exciting lives swimming around the pools in the Cave of Mak'ala, before they joined their humanoid hosts.

I'm not sure how much control the symbiont has over the actions of the host. I get the idea that the symbiont shares the knowledge and experiences of prior hosts with the new host, but doesn't necessarily exert any moral or physical control over the new host. Also, Verad was deemed unsuitable to be a Trill host. Perhaps part of the psychological screening involves having someone with a strong enough personality not to get swallowed up by the prior hosts' personalities, but also being flexible enough to harmonize with the prior hosts, rather than push them aside. I agree that Tim Russ is much more fun as a Klingon than as a Vulcan. :) Voyager (aka Gilligan's Quadrant) seemed to have the weakest characters in nearly all the traditional Star Trek roles, from the Captain on down. Janeway was nowhere close to Kirk, Picard or Sisko. Chipotle paled in comparison to Spock, Riker and Kira. etc., etc. etc. IMHO, the Doctor was the only one who was up to par with or better than his cohorts and of course, he was only a hologram. :)

Good episode. The synopsis is weak. Mine would be: "Tuvok and Lionel Luthor team up to take over the station and steal the Dax symbiont." :)

I really liked both of them. They both had good attitudes, were capable and worked well together. I like the way he encouraged, but did not pressure her to temporarily give up her vegetarian ways, for the sake of her health. I respect her for both holding onto her ideals as long as she could, and for being flexible enough to give in and eat the yummy lizard when she realized she really needed to. It was nice to see two people who were so different, respect each other, learn from one another and work together so well.

I love this show. This is funniest thing on TV right now. I love how they pretend that terms like "selfie" and "touch up" mean something different and dirty in the UK. I especially loved the Paul Revere segment, ("He's like a school with skin!" "The British are leaving", Paul Revere was a "snitch".) the taxidermy and cattle auction in Texas and the celebrity homes tour in Hollywood and their interaction with the Bold and the Beautiful actress, when Georgie talked about the stage kissing making you "want to make a baby". I also loved how they annoyed the self important, tree hugging barista in NYC. "Are you good enough to work at Starbucks?" Yes, and don't forget "The Rock". :) Did Poppy say "I had that once" or "I have that once a month"?

I loved the idea of him making the nonsensical speech, but I thought it went on a bit too long. The looks on the audience members faces were the funniest part of the speech. They were rather polite to sit through it. Poppy starting off the Q&A session with "Do you like Barack Obama?" was the funniest part of that segment, to me, along with them both being indignant over not being served tea at a Tea Party.

I love how she sort of waits quietly on the side as Georgie rambles on and then chimes in with some of the funniest lines.

Yes, you are totally "diluted"! *LOL* Again the whole "naked survival" scenario that the show sets up is rather contrived and has little or no relation to real life, so applying normal moral standards to it is difficult. That said, under normal circumstances a married man hanging out naked with another woman would be considered "cheating" by a very large percentage of the population, and spooning naked, would be considered cheating by the overwhelming majority. This is sort of like lying, backstabbing your "friends" and swearing on your children's lives and dead father's grave in "Survivor". In the real world, most people would find those things abhorrent, but in the context of the show there is a debate as to whether they are still wrong or just "part of the game". I guess what I am saying is I could understand the wife being OK with it and Tom being comfortable with it, but I can also understand them not being comfortable with it. I just think it is odd that anyone would think his wife is totally "nuts" for having a problem with the nekkid spoonin'. :)

That is not what I said. If a married man finds himself naked with an attractive woman (doesn't happen much in real life, unless he is trying, of course) his best course would be to remove himself from the situation. That is essentially what Tom did, to the extent he could, by minimizing the cuddling. There is a big difference between merely seeing a woman in a sexy outfit and rubbing your naked body against her naked body. To me, the best self control means avoiding the the naked body rubbing in the first place. Once naked people are rubbing their genitals against one another, self control has a way of going out the window. :) I think this is true of both men and women, but probably more so with men. In the case of a man seeing a woman in a sexy outfit is his responsibility to look away or keep his mouth shut and his hands to himself. Now, in a true life or death survival situation (man and woman stranded in freezing conditions in a blizzard, for example) sharing body heat could be necessary. Of course, there is a 99.9% chance that one or both of the people would have some sort of clothing, so proper precautions could be taken (e.g., keeping underwear on) to minimize risk of inappropriate behavior. The scenario on N&F is one that would likely never happen in real life, as people generally always have clothing on or access to clothing. While the "naked" angle makes adds a large degree of difficulty to the challenges on the show, it also creates situations and problems that would never happen in real life survival.

The idea a man cuddling naked with an attractive young woman could be a "gateway to cheating" is not "right wing nut job thinking", it is common sense, based upon a basic knowledge of biology and sociology. It is extremely naive to think otherwise. It won't necessarily lead to cheating, just as juggling live hand grenades won't necessarily lead to death or injury, but the risk is certainly there. Men generally don't stay faithful through heroic acts of self control, after they have found themselves naked, with attractive women. They usually do it by avoiding such situations. I do agree that if someone has a legitimate concern about sharing body heat in that manner, they should probably not go on the show, or at least not in a location where the temperature drops low at night. Trying to survive, for 21 days, in the wilderness, with no supplies, with a member of the opposite sex...naked, is certainly not for everyone. In fact I'd say less than 5% of the population (possibly even lower) are well suited to it. In defense of Carrie (somewhat anyway), Tom was a total jerk when she came back from clam beach with a bounty of clams and instead of thanking her, he whined about her not bringing back any kindling.

A few thoughts on this: 1) I don't think there is anything "uber conservative" about a spouse not liking the idea of their partner cuddling up naked with a member of the opposite sex. I would think that if either the Tom or his wife were "uber conservative" about nakedness, they would not approve of him romping around naked with a naked woman for 3 weeks, even without any physical contact. 2) In a TRUE emergency survival situation, I think a reasonable spouse would understand the naked cuddling. But this was a contrived situation. The choice wasn't "cuddle or die" but "cuddle or tap out and fail on the show and immediately be safely extracted". I would not be nearly as unreasonable to expect a spouse to tap out rather than cuddle as it would be to ask them to die rather than cuddle. 3) I believe it was about 57 degrees, so the choice was really, "cuddle or be rather cold and uncomfortable" rather than "cuddle or tap out" (much less die). They both survived the night, and 20 more, after Tom refused to cuddle. 4) While it is possible for a man to cuddle naked all night with an attractive woman and not have anything sexual happen, it is not the optimal fidelity strategy. :) 5) I believe the cuddling dispute took place on the first night, so Carrie wasn't much of a "dehydrated, filthy, stinking to high heaven pitted moonscape of bug bites." (love that description, btw) at that point. Actually, compared to most teams, the two of them seemed to escape relative unscathed physically, even after the 21 days.

I liked this episode a lot. I found the farmer very sympathetic as did Kira obviously. Once again she is torn between being an idealist, freedom fighter and a practical administrator and officer. I guess some of you have a point about the energy scheme being a little extreme and perhaps unnecessary. Though, Star Fleet seems to give Bajor more moral support than practical aid. The send them a depressed and distracted commander, a few runabouts, and a rookie doctor, to protect them from the Cardassians. I get the sense that if not for Picard's influence they would not even have done that much. That said, I don't think those details are so important. The idea was to create a situation where we could see that the government had a legitimate interest in evacuating the moon, creating the conflict between the private property rights of those who slaved to tame the land and the "best interests of the majority". I love how DS9 shows both sides of such issues without being preachy or heavy handed.

I agree that Keiko was a bit too stubborn and inflexible when Vedek Ratched...I mean Winn, offered the compromise where she would not teach about the wormhole/Celestial Temple. An option for Bajoran parents to opt their kids out of wormhole lessons would have been even better. I think Winn's fairly reasonable offer is a bit of a plot hole, though. If the whole school controversy was a ruse to lure Bariel to DS9 to assassinate him, why would she make a reasonable offer that Keiko might accept? I think the assassination plot took away from what started out as an interesting and fairly well balanced look at the issue of religion and other controversial subjects in school.

Babe Ruth got heavy as he career went on but he has 6'2" and a powerfully built man. Buck Bokai was built like Barney Rubble. :)

One of the best episodes in the series. Both Kira and the Cardassian were amazing. I remember the first time I watched, I almost refused to believe that Marritza wasn't really Gul Darhe'el, after his true identity was revealed. The character went from being utterly despicable to sympathetic in an instant.

This was one of my least favorite episodes in the series. I found the plot to be ridiculous. Bashir's figment of Dax was embarrassing and uncomfortable rather than funny. Also hard to buy that the pudgy nerd Buck Bokai was the greatest baseball player of all time. I guess it would explain why there were only 300 fans at the last World Series.

I agree. The scenes with Kira and Opaka were amazing. The rest of the episode was ordinary, at best. I have always felt that the "crew must find a way out of an unusual and dangerous situation" plots were always rather TNGish and often not that great. The plots that developed the characters and relationships and moved the serial story forward were generally very good to outstanding.

LOL. Not sure if she has Tosk. She does have most of the major characters. BTW, I saw a "Hunter of Tosk" action figure for sale on Amazon the other day. That might be even cooler than Tosk. :)

I liked this episode, especially the "B" plot with Jake and Nog and Varis. I always enjoyed the episodes with an A and B plot, especially when Jake and Nog were involved. My favorite part was Nog helping Varis realize that her problem was really an "opportunity". I like to think that Nog saved the post series Federation by reinjecting a little free market Capitalism into it. :-) We see him doing this in later episodes like "In the Cards" and "Faith, Treachery and the Great River". The plot with O'Brien and Bashir on the surface was OK, but if it had taken up the whole episode I think it would have become tedious. There are a few funny moments and we get another glimpse into Bajoran culture. I did find the whole idea of the artificially generated monster to bring unity to the village a little far fetched, though I suppose all societies have such things in a figurative sense. We also see a rather rocky start to one of the better bromances in television history, with Dr. Bashir...I mean Julian, reaching out to O'Brien.

Regarding Dave & Connor: 1) At least 3 of the road blocks that Connor performed required no physical prowess whatsoever. (Welsh poem, calligraphy, balloon shaving). There was no need for any "conspiracy" with the rules to help Dave. Since so many RB's required some brain power and/or composure, if anything the new RB rules would favor a team with one panicky moron, like Brenchel. 2) Dave and Connor were taped nearly all their waking hours for 3 weeks, and that footage was edited. It is not surprising that Dave mentioned his injury and age a few times in those hundreds of hours. 3) TAR rules have always been "fuzzy" and have been constantly evolving. 4) If there was any "conspiracy" it was to hand the race to Brenchel. The RB rules were good for them, the Finale was held in their hometown, a task was held at a place where Rachel used to work, and there was no memory task or other intellectually challenging or stressful task to trip up Rachel. It seemed like TPTB did everything they could to make "The Amazing race fun and good" for Brenchel.

Very, good episode. We finally get to learn more about Dax and Trills. I loved the judge. Interestingly, the same actress played a judge on an episode of "Northern Exposure", with a very, similar plot. In that episode she also presided over an extradition hearing. The authorities in West Virginia wanted to extradite Chris for crimes he had committed many years earlier. He used a similar defense, that he had changed so much since he moved to Alaska, that he was no longer the same person who had committed the crimes. I do have a hard time buying that the Federation would have a unilateral extradition treaty with any planet that would allow its citizens to be extradited without a hearing. Did the judge ever decide if Jadzia could stand trial for the crimes of Curzon Dax? Obviously, it became a moot point, when his innocence was proven, but it would have been nice to get an answer.

Love the the play on the opening scene of "The Godfather" when Nava comes for an audience with Quark. I also think this might have been the first episode with the oft repeated threat to "throw you out the nearest airlock."

I didn't have a huge problem with the TPI. I think it is good to add an element that can cause a major shakeup in the game. It just so happened that the guy who found it, was a somewhat unlikable player, who was running the dominant alliance and already had a regular HII. In a different scenario the Tyler Perry Idol, could have made a boring, predictable season more exciting.