Gentlepersons, I know many of you on this board have watched many hours of most of, if not all, the generations and universes. So what moment made you wonder if someone had been hitting the Romulan ale when they wrote it? A particular moment for me came with Captain Kirk playing horsey with a dwarf while making the appropriate horse sound. I know why it happened, but it’s still a moment.
Spock joking on the bridge about how much Rand wanted to be raped by Kirk. It was out of character and outrageous even for the time. Even worse when you consider what happened to the actress, and who is strongly hinted to be the offender.
The raised eyebrow is the cherry on top of the awful. He literally leers at her after she walks off. For my own WTF, it's the entire episode, "The Alternative Factor." Completely nonsensical until the entire plot is laid at your feet and the right choice is thrown in front of you in the last 10 minutes." Also, "Sure, arrogant, condescending stranger who won't give me your name, help yourself to my ship's schematics. All I know about you is that your ship left just after the Eugenics Wars and that it's named after a penal colony, but what could go wrong here?"
Protective suits that only block substances they know. Holograms that crash when you blink too much. Dilithium explodes everywhere because a kid cried. Combadges that break when stepped on. Klingons that retreat from the final battle before certain victory because someone claims they'll blow up their homeworld. Sock-gliding in a Borg cube. Only asking where you are repeatedly when someone tells you that one moon circles. Allamaraine.
A couple that spring to mind... Quark sex changing into a woman and then changing back again... in the span of less than TWO DAYS!!! Benjamin Sisko ready to sacrifice his own son to the Prophets!!! "Sub Rosa"... the entire episode. Plus the fact it was co-written by the only woman on the writing staff. Who was also in charge of said staff that season. The ending of "PARADISE"... not a single person wanted to leave???!!!
Humans must be VERY different by then because, try something like that now and the number of colonists that want you dead will not be zero. Nor, I suspect, will be the number that try to make that happen.
Threshold. Yeah, tis is a good one. I remember watching this episode with my brother and feeling embarrassed by it.
Perhaps humans don't evolve into better creatures in a few hundred years but if everybody has what they want and need then things like criminal behaviour just might come down, significantly.
I think Sisko implied it was true on Earth but not out in the colonies near Cardie space, in that rant with Kira.
I think that’s what I love about DS9. It recognizes how far humanity has come, but, without creature comforts, we devolve.