I remember reading an article in the early 90s where they opined that ‘the thing that would really date TNG was the presence of a therapist on the ship’.

Mental health - a total 80s fad, right?

The problem with knowing any amount of history is that any time anything happens you’re just like:

‘Oh. This again’.

It’s somehow both tedious and horrifying.

Parents would find their baby child had been replaced by odd beings who were almost but not quite human.

However strange appearances aside it was their behaviour that marked them out - changelings were said to be either extremely badly behaved - constantly crying and prone to violence, or at the other end of the spectrum strangely docile, often mute and seemingly unable to comprehend anything about the human world they had been left in.

https://www.hypnogoria.com/folklore_changelings.html

Yep, totally a brand new thing that hasn’t appeared throughout human history.

I saw an early screening of that episode at a post-con event at a Star Trek pub in London.

When that scene came on a ripple of ‘FFS - really‽’ laughter went round the room, just because of how blatant it was.

“The mudbloods are stealing our magic!”

That’s Fergus Wilson - frankly, I’d prefer the leech.

You joke, but crop milk is a thing:

Crop milk is a secretion from the lining of the crop of parent birds in some species that is regurgitated to young birds. It is found among all pigeons and doves where it is also referred to as pigeon milk. Crop milk is also secreted from the crop of flamingos and the male emperor penguin, suggesting independent evolution of this trait. Unlike in mammals where only females produce milk, crop milk is produced by both males and females in pigeons and flamingos; and in penguins, only by the male. Lactation in birds is controlled by prolactin, which is the same hormone that causes lactation in mammals.