5:22 Imaginary Friend – Having children on the Enterprise is a frickin’ bad idea. Next!
5:23 I Borg – A memorable classic, marred only by Dr. Crusher’s initial knee-jerk defense of the Borg — or rather, her knee-jerk opposition to obliterating the “species,” which amounts to the same thing.
Listen: The Borg are categorically NOT a species. That’s why they “assimilate,” because they do NOT propagate biologically. “Borgism” is a technologically facilitated memetic parasite. It is, in terms that Dr. Crusher could understand, an army of aggression in which every soldier is as fully devoted to its ultimate aims as any general or head of state. So while Hugh developing personhood distinct from the Borg made him worthy of asylum and protection, the idea that it’s somehow “immoral” to disrupt fatally a voracious blight on the galaxy with no reason for being except to obliterate all independent life… That’s just supercilious good-feels faux-ethical bullshit.
(Yes, this is the same reaction I had in Genesis of the Daleks when the Doctor, given the opportunity to keep the Daleks from ever existing, starts bleating, “But do I have the right…?” YES. PULL THE TRIGGER.)
5:24 The Next Phase – Geordi and Ensign Ro teleport through a malfunctioning prototype Romulan cloaking device and end up phased into immateriality, visible only to each other! I mean, they’re “immaterial” except they can still breathe, and they never phase through a floor, even when running full-tilt through walls and bulkheads… [Shut up, Nathan, and just go with it!] But they get to hear everyone else’s remarks when they’re presumed dead, and even get to interrupt their own Bourbon Street-themes funeral. Now THAT’S a party!