It was literally so they could depict a character drunk and puking without actually having to show puke and getting a higher rating than they want for the show.
As usual, "bad writing" here equates to "not what I wanted them to do".
What do you mean, what was the purpose? It was meant to be humorous, of course. Doesn’t mean you or anyone has to find it particularly funny, but that is obviously why they included the gag. And I’m sorry, but why would we expect it to convey any sort of “message”? What a weird and arbitrary bar to set. It absolutely doesn’t need to go any deeper than both conveying that Darem is an alien with a body that functions differently, and to make the viewer chuckle. Explaining a joke rarely makes it any funnier, but the humor of it lies in the fact that it subverts the expectation of a character’s vomit looking gross. And what was the “message” that Kirk getting buried under a pile of Tribbles was meant to convey? Or Worf smashing Geordi’s lute, Kirk saying “A little too much LDS” or Odo moving the bowl instead of the whisk in order to whip a soufflé? Sometimes a gag is just a gag. And an alien character vomiting a reflective substance is not as universe-breaking as some people want to make it out to be.
All Frakes said was that it "seemed absurd." Given the context of his comments, I did not get the impression he meant that as a negative. But hey, if it gives you comfort to think one of the Statesmen of the Trek franchise agrees with you, I obviously won't be able to convince you otherwise here.
The tribal bullshit is getting so old.
Clearly you've never sat through a Mariah Carey movie.
Why would anyone subject themselves to that?
Remember how Star Trek has these things called aliens from strange new worlds? It’s showing what would be a normal occurrence, but inverting it or changing the detail so it’s not wholly mundane. It’s a grace note amongst the symphony for color and tone, not the aria itself.
Maybe not for you, but some seem just fine with it.
