Yay Brother.
Just caught Way to Eden coincidentally this week… can’t get that phrase out of my fricken mind, that and “You’ve got a hard lip… Herbert”
But It brings up a good piece of Comedy from that garbagey episode.
“Gonna Clap My hands and jump for joy got a clean bill of health from Doctor McCoy”
“His name was Adam”
Yeah and the stupid hippie is still twitching you heartless bastard!
Speaking of Eden, that episode was conspicuously absent from a men’s magazine article on cinematic hardman Charles Napier. From dead beat to beaten dead in a few decades 
If I recall the plot correctly :
Data, experiencing fear for the first time in his life, was too scared to prevent the sisters kidnapping Geordi. He was unable to anything more than quiver. The fact they were able to do so is largely down to Data’s negligence.
Because they were able to kidnap Geordi, they were able to bug his VISOR
Because they bugged his VISOR they got secret information about the shields.
Because they got information about the shields, they could destroy the ship.
Ultimately, it’s Data’s fault. He shoulda been court-martialed.
When the drug-addled McCoy “lands” in 1930 Earth shortly before the climax. He sees poor fellow stealing a bottle of milk:
McCoy: YOU!! What planet is this?
The mentions of Whoopi Goldberg as Guinan reminded me, what the hell was the story with Guinan? 
I only saw her in a few episodes - most notably the one where they travel back in time and meet with Mark Twain - but in all the episodes I saw, there was a tremendous lot of winking and nudging. “Boy, when we tell the back story behind this character will everyone just drop their socks or what!!!” 
But they never got to the back story or at least I never saw it. So, was she a thousand year old time traveller or what?
Jim
Now back to your regularlly scheduled topic.
You need to see Star Trek Generations.
Basically, she’s an El Laurian (sp?), a race of listeners. She’s very old, and met Picard for the first time when he went back in time in Time’s Arrow. Of course, he didn’t remember that, and she just popped up as a bartender beginning in season 2.
To add to what ivylass has said: No, I think it was established that she was not a time traveller, at least, not so far as we know, just a long-lived galactic wanderer.
At least one important part of her backstory has not been mentioned - what the first time Picard met her, in his own timeline, was. He implied that it was a memorable meeting, but we don’t know anything more about it.
And, as an aside, the relationship between Picard and Guinan is arguably a conceptual ‘chimera’ - something that exists because it perpetuated itself through a closed loop in time, not arising out of any natural means. Guinan sought Picard out in the 24th century because she remembered him from Mark Twain’s time. Picard went on the away mission to Mark Twain’s time because Guinan told him to.
also from The Cage
Rena, The Yeomen and #1 are in the Cage with Pike and the aliens are discussing which one should be Pike’s mate
in response to a suggestion that it should be #1
Rena says something along the lines of “Her? You’d have better luck coupling him with a computer”
which is hilarious to me considering Majel Barrett future roles in TNG
and the movies
There was a TNG episode where Dr. Crusher teaches Data to dance*. The whole sequence was very funny, culminating with Data dancing with a very attractive holodek partner. While they waltz we eventually see Spiner turn toward the camera with a shit-eating grin on his face.
The scene is impressive when you consider Spiner did almost all of the dancing, some of which was very complex. I read somewhere that he could have done ALL of it, but didn’t want to put the expert dance-double out of work.
The deadpan exchanges involving one or more of the “nonhuman” characters speaking from a different paradigm were always good for mining some amusement…
K: What was that?
S: The turbulence caused by the crossing of a boundary layer.
K: A boundary between what?
S: The boundary between where we were, and where we are.
I love his rant, “Murderers, ASSASSINS!”
“Needles and sutures, they used to cut and sew people like garments…Oh the pain!”
McCoy
That’s funny?
Spock, with dignity: “I am attempting to construct a mnemonic circuit using stone knives and bearskins.”
He actually said he was building a mnemonic memory circuit, which was somewhat redundant and another example of the many errors of science and terminology that plagued TOS.
I always want to change the line to stone knives and bearclaws and then have Kirk reach over and take a big bite out one of the bearclaws getting sugar icing on his nose and have Edith take a jelly donut and bite into it and get jelly all over her chin and have Spock to a spit take with his cup of coffee at seeing this and have all three of them start laughing and then have a voiceover encouraging everyone to go to Dunkin Donuts right away.
Actually, Majel Barrett was the computer voice in the original series too, though the computer wasn’t quite as talkative back then. 
I remember reading one of the star trek pocket books, ‘the rift’, which had to do with a gateway opening every 33 years and took place in two parts, seperated by that much time… the first part was right after ‘the cage’ and involving all of the characters from the old pilot, and the second part was set, erm, a little while before the STVI movie.
Anyway, the superadvanced aliens give them voice response and activation circuits for the Enterprise the first time around, circuits that had been designed by starfleet and were supposed to be installed the next time Enterprise hit starbase. Spock and #1 install the circuits together, and there’s a kind of funny scene when Pike realizes that #1 programmed the computer to use her own voice, because it was such an efficient, commanding tone.
Only in the fanfic.
That reminds me of the scene where McCoy is in a modern hospital; he asks her what’s she’s there for.
Her : “Dialysis”
McCoy : “Dialysis ?! Barbarians ! Here, take this.” < Gives woman a pill >
Later the characters come by the same area; the woman’s waving her hands in happiness and doctors are standing around her wondering how her kidneys started working again.