Threshold story time. My former housemate knows absolutely nothing about Star Trek beyond what she has actually absorbed during ADHD fuelled gushing about episodes from Voyager and J/C.
In a bid to make her understand how absolutely batshit wild some of the episodes are, I explained the plot, concept and reception of Star Trek Voyager's classic episode Threshold.
I explained the plot, some science, that Tom Paris turns slowly into a lizard, kidnaps the Captain to turn HER into a lizard and they have lizard babies, and then the return to Voyager where they become Human again and it is Never Mentioned Again (until ST: Prodigy gave us the amazing reference that KJ just casually drops into conversation she was once turned into a Salamander so how hard can it be).
She toddled off to YouTube and watched the discovery of the lizards.
This was all background for me explaining Threshold Day here on Tumblr, and the Threshold AU artworks.
She came back to me outraged that they didn't take the lizard babies, how DARE they leave them behind! What sort of terrible parents were they? How could they not take them with them and it's an outrage they are never mentioned again.
So I show her the Threshold AU artwork, give her an outline of a few fanfics, explain how this was an Emmy award winning epsiode and that even if the producers wanted to forget Star Trek fans would not.
And this is the story of how my non-star trek friend who has absolutely zero investment in Star Trek or sci-fi, who hasn't even watched the epsiode, semi-regularly messages me to ask how the lizard-babies are.