She also comes on to just about everyone male and acts generally inappropriately.

At least it was a consistant characterization. Plus? Eventual character growth. Not much, but some. She sure wasn't Nurse Chapel.

I'm not passing judgment on her, DCJ. Just giving Vonnie background.

'S all good. It's fun to troll around startrek.com and, you know, get some back-stories on the universe. I was all, "Ahh, so that's who they mean when people say Riker/Troi in fanfic!", and "Huh, that Seven of Nine character everyone hates is part Borg?", and "Hmm, I should probably read up on The Borg since I say stuff like 'resistance is futile!' all the time (I *think* that is a Borg ref, but I could be wrong.) The only Trek ep I watched before DS9 was the one where Joan Collins was not a bitch and Kirk had to let her die to prevent Hitler from winning the war. I ran across that ep on a random afternoon and stuck around to watch, because it was actually pretty good.

Vonnie, that ep is one that Tim cited as having a large impact on him.

It was good TV.

Oh yeah. I recall Tim mentioning something about a Trek episode in his thread a while back. I can see how it would have had a large impact on Tim as a writer. It was all about shades of gray and wonky timelines and oh, the DEATH.

I tried to watch a couple of more episodes of the original ST after that, but it didn't take. Too much dairy for my system.

It's about the only ep I like. I thought I'd liked the whole series -- maybe I did when I was little. So far, all I can rewatch is selected TNG (most anything Picard-centric, for starters) and DS9.

I didn't think you were passing judgement. I was putting in my two cents about the character.

This is the first Trek show I've watched/I have no backstory on any of these people, so I went up and looked her character up. So, she's mother of that black-haired gal on The Next Generation, eh? (Not that I watched that show or anything, but it's on all the frickin' time.) The way she was hitting on Odo like a Mack truck was absolutely hysterical. And Odo's numerous groans and eyerolls! Heh.

Majel Barret has been the longest-standing figure in the Star Trek franchise. Some interesting facts about her; She was married to the show's creator, Gene Roddenberry. She's the voice of every single Star Trek computer after the original series, where she played Nurse Chapel. She voiced the animated series and was the executive producer for the above mentioned Andromeda.

I never minded the translator microbes. To me they seemed to be like a partially autonomous mentally-enhanced ability, microbially powered that is. The default state is 'on' but a concious effort to not use them could be fairly simple to do. I remember an episode where the crew (held prisoner) started talking to each other in their own languages to cover somebody else tried to sneak by or something.

How do you explain the foreign words we still hear, Thomash?

A concious choice, for exclamation or to add a little flair maybe. Their slang and expressive methods are different.