YMMV / Star Trek The Next Generation S 6 E 24 S 7 E 1 Descent

• Common Knowledge: Some fans cite the episode as further evidence of Troi's incompetence, claiming that her advice to Data to try and explore the emotion he felt (anger) lead to his going rogue and teaming up with Lore. All that actually results directly from her advice, however, is Data trying to recreate his fight with the Borg on the holodeck, which utterly fails to achieve anything useful. It's actually Picard's leaving Data alone and unsupervised with Crosis that allows the latter to start broadcasting negative emotions into Data, which is the point where things really go south.
• Genius Bonus: Stephen Hawking's joke at the start of the episode which Einstein and Data understand but Newton does not is a bit of an inside joke. Data explains that the joke is based on knowledge about the perihelion precession of the planet Mercury, before Newton angrily cuts him off, saying "Don't patronize me. I invented physics." The perihelion precession of Mercury could not be explained by Newtonian physics alone, and was regarded as a major flaw of Newton's theory, but it later was explained by Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. Furthermore, Hawking's comment "Wrong again, Albert," when revealing his winning hand is a reference to the professor's life work in physics, in which he has disproved some of Einstein's theories.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Data argues with the holographic Sir Isaac Newton about whether the story of an apple landing on Newton's head was apocryphal. In the Star Trek: Voyager episode "Death Wish", it's said that not only is the story true, but Q is the one who dropped the apple.

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