Picard's Greatest Moral Lesson – The Drumhead

Man, your great videos on TNG really make me want to re-watch it again! And I think you nailed the difference between new and old Trek. New Trek is trying to teach you or educate and it can be quite obnoxious; old Trek presents interesting philosophical questions or dilemmas and lets you draw your own conclusions.

“I’ve brought down bigger men than you, PICARD!” Great episode!

Loved the Gene Simmons joke. The issue with use of a Betazoid is an interesting one. I had a recent discussion about real-world levels of proof, and what was appropriate for different purposes. My discussion was about what level of proof *I* needed to conclude that someone was a criminal, versus what the justice system requires to conclude the same. A private person's opinion does not need to meet the same standard as the court system, partly because a person's opinion isn't usually going to radically affect the potential criminal at the level that the justice system's conclusion will (incarceration, death, public shame, etc.) Picard's use of a Betazoid is somewhere between that of a private person and that of the court system (represented by General Satie.) I do not know if the Federation admits testimony from Betazoids in criminal trials, but I do know that the US Government does not allow the results of polygraph tests in them, because they are not reliable enough -- not much better than pseudoscience. Digression: I'm always distracted by the costuming of the female assistant, which looks like the special cushioning for some types of fruit (a websearch for "Foam Fruit Protection Net" will turn up many examples.)

What a heck of a video!