This has been my favorite thing about rewatching TNG. The show has reached its rhythm where it’s regularly in dialogue with itself about media and politics of the 90’s. I get to keep doing that stupid excited Leonardo DiCaprio point every time I see something that flew over my head when I was a child.

Can somebody explain to me, what WAS The Next Generation? It ran for so long and provided so much intermittent work for a-listing actors. Was appearing as a plot-centric guest a form of slumming it? Or was getting to deliver a line as a nameless ensign a momentous way for new actors to try and get in to the business?