It reminds me of DS9 in that sense. SNW season two seemed to alternate between really dark episodes and really light episodes.

There’s a quite long series of novels that follows on from DS9, starting with Avatar books one and two.

Later they intertwine with Next Gen, Voyager, and (briefly) Enterprise continuation novels too.

But that series was wrapped up a couple of years ago after Picard started, because the TV series contradicted the novels, and the publishers wanted to get back into sync.

I really enjoyed following along with the continued adventures of the ds9 crew.

This week’s just felt designed to annoy us, what with getting the ranks wrong and all. Let alone the totally un-Trek message.

I think there is a reference to a third kid who we don’t see on screen.

It’s an Insurrection reference.

Anything by Una McCormack. Especially DS9, but not exclusively.

A Stitch In Time, by Garak, is also generally considered top of the class.

Yes. They’ve announced it as a direct to Paramount+ TV movie.

If there are only seven people on the ship, why have they turned all those lights on?

She was once. Then she was played by Robin Curtis in her two later appearances. Which at the time was unusual in Star Trek.

Now loads of characters have had two or three different actors play them.

It felt totally natural to me watching it first time round. It’s part of DS9’s thing to be about a group of people who stay in one place and have lives and relationships. And it’s part of DS9’s thing to throw in stuff and let it grow if it works.

It balances against the harsh darkness of the main storyline, and in a 26 episode series you can’t just bash out war after war after war episode - everyone needs a break.

Probably also helps that it’s likely cheaper than other stuff to produce and means they can save some budget for a space battle in another episode.

It’s been a while since I watched it… but weren’t the Augments in season 4 also?

Yeah I thought exactly the same!