The stones were a terrible idea. I feel like all they did was suck the tension out of them being so far away from earth with no way home. Even on VOY when they got to communicate with earth finally it was in snippets, they had to draw lots for when they could have their one minute contact. Not walk around for entire episodes working out their absolutely boring relationship issues while in someone else's body. It ruined the suffocation and isolation of being on that ship with a small group of people that didn't much care for each other and didn't know if they would survive much less go home.
And the possible sexing it up element of stone sex was just icky rather than kinky, very flat scenes.