[horatio]

IMO, it is TNG's "The City on the Edge of Forever".

[NCC-73515]

I see more connections between COTEF and BOBW... Riker has to let Picard go (mentally) and kill him

[horatio]

Good point, it really spiced up the the cliffhanger which are usually more about plot than characters.

[Big D]

Originally Posted by FanWriter45

Big D,

Perhaps not as many as you might think... after the big bang (13 billion years ago, give or take a eon) the universe was composed almost entirely of light elements. The first stars had to form, in order to "boil down" the basic stuff of the explosion into heavier elements... so, carbon, the basis of all known life, didn't really form until comparatively recently. As such, it could very well be that intelligent life might be a fairly new phenomenon in the universe...

Good point - though the oldest stars are up to ten billion years old, I believe, which raises the possibility of there having been habitable planets several billion years ago at least

[The Guardian]

I loved the idea that Picard - being an avid amateur archaeologist experienced the life of someone who lived many eons ago. I think for someone in that profession or area of interest that experience would be the ultimate on their personal wish list. A beautifully written episode.

[Zardoz]

Originally Posted by NCC-73515

I see more connections between COTEF and BOBW... Riker has to let Picard go (mentally) and kill him

True.

[FanWriter45]

Big D,

Well, no. The oldest stars are still remnants of that earlier epoch... they just have been burning low and slow compared to others. If they formed during that time, there weren't enough heavy elements around to form smaller, rocky terrestrial planets out of the debris... if any planets circle them, they would most likely be gas giants. Sure, life MIGHT get a start in gas giant atmospheres (similar to those conjectured by Sagan in the clouds of Jupiter) but the recent discovery of hurricane-like convection currents seem to preclude that.

[DNA-1842]

Originally Posted by FanWriter45

Big D,

Well, no. The oldest stars are still remnants of that earlier epoch... they just have been burning low and slow compared to others. If they formed during that time, there weren't enough heavy elements around to form smaller, rocky terrestrial planets out of the debris... if any planets circle them, they would most likely be gas giants. Sure, life MIGHT get a start in gas giant atmospheres (similar to those conjectured by Sagan in the clouds of Jupiter) but the recent discovery of hurricane-like convection currents seem to preclude that.

And the first stars, though, would have been fairly spectacular and would have lived very short lives indeed.

Burn hot, die young!