And they're strangely proud of that.
With BSG you have a nagging question of “why? I hope they explain this” and then within an episode or two it becomes irrelevant as they’ve moved on to the next question. Which is countered by the fact the cast is good and captivating.
I remember that episode. A bunch of people she had assimilated as a Borg started taking over her personality at random.
Yes. I agree.
No I mean that the plot of "The Void" is so very obviously ripped off from the plot of Elite Force. Even in the talk section of memory alpha:
Good. It was stupid and bad to choose minor modern events as examples for 'timeless motivating moments'. It's stupid whether it's showing the left or the right, and whether it's praising it (like some sci fi sucked off Obama being elected president at the time) or condemning it (like SNW and Jan 6th) - There's a reason you don't pick modern events: you have no idea what's going to last through time. Considering the fact that they already established in other Treks that people in the 23rd-24th century struggle with separating the 19th-21st centuries, there's absolutely no reason not to use much older and time-tested events as footage to make the point they were making.
I think the general idea is that the raw computing power of Starfleet computers is ludicrously beyond what the people using them actually realize. Thus, when it's told to make an AI, it inadvertently makes an AI that is capable of sentience, limited only by things like memory banks and time online. The EMH suffered severely from the memory bank issue, as there were multiple episodes they had to go in and patch him due to him filling up all of his hard drive with junk in his quest to become more human. Had they not done that, he would have reset back to the basic EMH, and what would make him considered 'sentient' would be lost. They also had that very questionable episode where the EMH suffers a nervous breakdown because he makes a medical decision based on emotional attachment rather than their chances of survival, and Janeway's immediate response is to take a hammer to him. Had she not done anything at all, they were worried he'd error, crash, and corrupt all his files then, too.
Kes was poorly used and her species made no sense, but I find it a shame they replaced her with 7 because it dropped all the things that they had planned for Kes, including the one episode where Kes traveled backward in time from her old age back to the modern day. It hinted at Year of Hell but also at a bunch of other things that got dropped. If I understand correctly, though, Seven wasn't actually brought in to replace Kes - she was brought in to replace Kim. The actor then won an award at the last minute, so they kept him and dropped Kes instead for some reason.
I've heard rumors that she was very difficult to work with. Wang also said he was never in danger of being written out (in the Delta Flyers podcast).
Given how she turned out I wouldn't be shocked
If nothing else the man was actually good at surrounding himself with competent people and letting them work. He may have been a drug addicted, sex crazed, greedy glory hound but at the end of the day he believed in his people. Not so much on TNG, I guess, but he was getting old and senile so I'm less willing to hold that against him.
It's an interesting thing to compare to Star Wars. I think many parallels can be drawn: The iconic creator with a shitton of helpers that made a great IP, then the creator gets all the laurels, makes a few more products much later and it starts out rather lackluster, but slowly improves. Only with ST, TNG found its footing and gave an opportunity to grow into DS9, VOY and ENT (with growing flaws in those subsequent shows, but still some good things to be had).
