I don't disagree with anything you said here... I can literally see O'Brien singing this song to Julian...:
that's because they're a fuckload more gay than "a bit"
PD episodes are my favorite because of the variety of ways that it can be handled by the characters and how the situations vary wildly. You have stories of accidental contamination, Sisko purposefully fucking with Cardassians, The Dominion, and the Klingons due to it being wartime, Picard almost letting Wesley be executed to respect a society's rules, and Picard refusing to save a primitive species from annihilation in Season 7. And honestly Picard comes off as a kind of hardass prick about the PD in that episode, not willing to silently transport a few members of a species and relocate them to save them from extinction. People have a moral duty to save sentient beings whenever possible.
Strange New Worlds had an episode based on transporters filtering pathogens. Won't spoil it since it ties into one of the ongoing plots in the season, but it's an okay episode. That ongoing plot does make me wonder how many people store themselves or loved ones in transporters Scotty style to buy time against lethal illnesses though.
Yeah, you've already lost me.
TOS did have a moment where the transporter explicitly had a setting to filter pathogens in The Naked Time, the reason the "disease" got loose in that episode was because it was actually some kind of polywater that the computer couldn't pick up on.
I like that episode, but I don't like it be a PD episode because it doesn't feel much like it (even though interfereing with their justice is part of it). For starters, they already fucked up when they sent a team down and told their "God" that they were gonna stay there. The Edos didn't have Starfleet technology, but they managed to keep the crew down and unable to beam back. Dunno, I like it, but it feels strange.
How the fuck was even making contact with the Edos not a massive violation of the prime directive?
It was, but the PD conflict of the episode wasn't because of that. IT was because they were interfering with their laws. The PD was broken when they found the planet and decided to go there and actually meet the Edos. I guess the justification to ignore the PD is that you can be either too tired or too horny (or both) and Risa ain't around.
To be fair, the Kazon were slaves of a more advanced society and just got free. So they are basically savages in space that don’t really have any indigenous technological base or research ability.
The Kazons were based on LA gangs at the time so of course you hate them, they're literally niggers.
Website probably isn't going down right away but I just wanted to put this here to say I did.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=P6oyiDqrDrg
This is the only Trek thread on the internet I've ever posted in for more than a week.
More proof that the universe just hates Miles? He can't even get himself shipped with Bashir.
As handwavium? Sure. In reality, there's thousands of beneficial microbes in meatbags which they need to live but in a different environment could be horribly virulent.
I think it'd be cool if there were more "starfish aliens" in the Federation.
Yes, but then you don't get the actor's charisma to make the character compelling. There were a lot of aliens like the Crystalline Entity or the baby raviolli suckling on the Enterprise or that time the Enterprise gave birth to some alien, but those creatures are seen as truly alien and not conductive to character-driven stories. Those episodes were plot-driven.
Even if we take the whole "Progenitor species seeded a bunch of planets with their DNA making most life forms humanoid" shit as canon, the fact is that non-humanoid species would still arise. And it's not like they couldn't do creatures like that. 2 guys in a suit, or a guy in a suit with puppeteered parts, could easily play a centaur-style alien.