Chris and Terry...general agreement. With a point to add: when I've
spoken highly of this series, from my POV I'm talking about the series as a
whole being something very different. Yes, you'll see it in flashes here and
there, but the cumulative effect is what I'm going for. (Now obviously you
can't expect everyone to see the whole thing, that's not going to happen, and
I'm not planning on it, every episode *must* still stand nominally by itself
and be entertaining on its own terms.)

To use a metaphor, this is a marathon. I intend for this show to go
further than has been seen before. Some people, seeing that only a faew first
steps have been taken on that journey, say they're not impressed because it
hasn't gone very far. And they're missing the point. We're barely out of the
starting gate, and we have miles to cover.

But they're *entitled* to feel this way, and I have no real problem with
it. I have been very patient for seven years; now we wait, we put the show
out there, we ride out the ST comparisons...and then, gradually, as the show
goes on week after week, people are going to begin seeing where we're
going...and wondering just how far we'll manage to go with it.
So by the end of the season, the full cumulative effect will be there.

Fortunately, most folks will have a pretty good sense of what that is
after episode #6, "Mind War." I don't think someone should have to wait
around a full season to start picking up stuff and seeing, for lack of a more
original term, the shape of things to come.

This is going to be a revolutionary series, with the emphasis on the word
SERIES. Some episodes -- like "Parliament," "Sky," "Mind War" and others --
are definitely extraordinary. But for me, it's always been the series as a
whole.

I'm glad the episodes are doing well, and glad they hold up to some
pretty close scrutiny. But this is a marathon...and we have far to go.

jms