love how the voyager writers were like "we're gonna create this completely incompetent 22 year old vulcan loser and then write him the Most Embarrassing pon farr episode. but how will we introduce him?" and they decided two episodes of context for this guy was all we needed before they did that. they were like "FIRST: this kid is gonna give neelix some weirdly emotional advice (for a vulcan). NEXT: we're gonna have him steal b'elanna from tom. this is gonna be a great leadup to him fucking blowing it. miss jeri taylor get your son in here NOW." and they were right. it was great. i was immediately hooked. i love this stupid idiot boy.
“AND it’s gotta be directed by Garak himself!”
the fact that that episode was directed by andy robinson just makes it like ten times better. i wonder how that conversation went. probably something like
andy: i want to direct a star trek episode.
writers: WHOO BOY HAVE WE GOT AN EPISODE FOR YOU
andy: what's it about?
writers: you'll see :)
