VindictiveJudge

If you think about it, logically, Tom is the original Riker and Will is the duplicate. Typically, the transporter moves mass from A to B, but can replace mass that's been lost along the way as a fail-safe. The missing original mass is either left at Point A or scattered along the transport path. The most likely thing that happened is that the transporter's fail-safe systems went overboard when they failed to pick up Riker's mass - rather than aborting transport as failed, it deemed it a successful transport with 100% missing mass and replaced every atom of Riker with spares on the transporter pad. Will is a transporter clone, Tom is the original.

Well, kinda. The original Voyager and crew split into two equally original iterations and the Harry and Naomi from Iteration 1 died and were replaced by the Harry and Naomi from Iteration A. He's technically still the same Harry that left the Alpha Quadrant with them. It's like when a cell divides; neither one is the original or the duplicate.

"And this is Kid Cudi, who's not really a historical figure."

"Kinda am now, I think."

If there isn't a moopsy plush available by the end of the season I'm going to complain very loudly in corners of the internet that no Paramount executive will ever see.

That Paramount seemed to think for ages that the details of how they started production of shows were valuable trade secrets that must never be divulged certainly didn't help. They could have cleared everything up as soon as it started, but chose to keep their mouths shut, which made them look super guilty. Paramount Executives: making baffling decisions for the past 40 years.

That "this is why we have the Prime Directive" episode with evolutionary predestination and evolution as a god figure was pretty awful, though.

Even JMS has actually admitted years ago that DS9 and B5 being in development at the same time was a coincidence. DS9 was already in early pre-production when he pitched B5 to Paramount. They turned him down, but also asked if he would be willing to retool it as a Trek show. Most likely, they hoped to recruit him as a DS9 writer and didn't expect him to turn that down. Granted, it seemed super suspicious, but now that Paramount's documentation has been released it's pretty clear nothing nefarious happened. The DS9 showrunners weren't even informed the B5 pitch had happened and the network didn't interfere with DS9 much if at all, so the only cross contamination came from the handful of writers they shared, like D. C. Fontana.

That people have done that same thing IRL to prove that ancient peoples could have made certain voyages is also neat. Across oceans rather than space, but still.

I think what makes DS9 work is its core premise, and the problem with some of the newer stuff is they're trying for that tone without that premise to back it up. As Sisko says early on, it's easy to be a saint in paradise, but DS9 isn't paradise; they're at a backwater that's been ravaged by decades of military occupation and is struggling to get by. On Earth, people can just replicate whatever they need for free, but Bajor doesn't have a post-scarcity economy and they often need to make hard choices. Half the crew also isn't from the Federation and doesn't have that strong sense of morality ingrained in them from birth.

Bashir definitely gets better. There are a few episodes that recontextualize his character and each one makes him come across much better. He also just grows a lot.

I thought the intro was perfectly suited to a pre-Federation humanity taking its first steps amongst the stars after pulling itself back together from WW3. Right up until they retooled the song to be peppier while also making the show darker.

The evolutionary predestination thing used to justify following the Prime Directive before it was a thing in ENT is also pretty awful.