It was a dark and stormy night, but the crew of the Enterprise didn't know that because, of course, they were in space and didn't get the weather report. So instead of staring out his ready room viewport at thunder and lightning (very very frightening...) Picard just stared out at the stars.

And after seven years, the stars were getting pretty boring.

"Is it the best of times," the captain soliloquized, trying to liven things up a bit, and only incidentally providing a link to the first half of the title. "Is it the worst of times? Is there a fugitive out in the darkness, fallen from grace, that I must see safe behind bars? Is this soliloquy fizzling for lack of a little Shakespeare?" He took a deep breath and prepared to rememdy that lack. "To be ..."

Chirp! went his combadge.

"Or not to be ..."

Chirp! once more, like a demented bird. Picard sighed and slapped the offending item. "Picard here."

"Captain, you'd better come to the bridge," said the bearded smirking voice of his bearded smirking first officer, Commander Riker. "We've found a ship. The captain says he knows you."

Ah! An adventure! "On my way." Picard marched briskly through his ready room door onto the bridge. "All right, Number One, I want a full report."

Riker straightened to attention and, as usual, smirked. "Yes, sir. Well, we found this ship, and the captain says he knows you."

Picard's eyes narrowed. "Does he? It's not Q is it? On screen!"

The screen flickered from its humdrum everyday star pattern to the bridge of a spaceship. A very old spaceship. An incredibly old spaceship. An ancient spaceship, even. And in the command chair sat a pudgy balding guy with a bad toupee, wearing a uniform at least a century old and grinning a big, annoying, yet somehow very charming grin. "Jean-Luc," this apparition gushed. "Long time, no see! Well, I was dead for awhile, that probably explains it. Hey, remember that time we wore panty hose together and rode horses?!"

"Oh, no!" Picard groaned and sat down in his own command chair. "Kirk, you're supposed to be dead! What are you doing here?"

"Well, you know how it is. How do you tell a determined Vulcan who's also your best friend, 'hey, I'm dead, leave me alone!' So here I am ... And I'll just come out and say it. We're lost."

"You're lost?" Riker smirked.

Kirk grinned at him. "Hey, this must be that bearded, smirking first officer of yours. No offense, Picard, but I like mine better. I like my yeoman better, too."

"I don't have a yeoman," Picard protested.

"My point exactly." Kirk proved that he could smirk with the best of them when the necessity arose.

"Where are you going?" Picard asked, just wanting to get rid of this guy before his bridge crew actually caught on to the panty hose remark.

"Wait a minute!" Riker smirked again. "You mean ... the captain wore panty hose?"

Too late! Picard hid his face, burning with shame as Kirk elaborated.

"Yeah. In the Nexus, when we went horseback riding, we wore panty hose to protect our legs. But he didn't even know how to put them." He shook his head at this evidence of stupidity and sighed. "Mr. Sulu, what's our heading?"

"First star on the right, sir. Straight on till morning," Sulu answered as he furiously punched buttons and twirled dials for reasons unknown to anyone else in the scene.

"There you go," Kirk said to Picard as if that explained everything. "We've been traveling for months. We should have been there by now!"

"Where?" Picard squeaked, really afraid to ask.

"Never Never Land, of course! We've got a yen to join the Lost Boys."

"Aren't they vampires?" Riker, naturally, smirked.

"Captain, all hailing frequencies are open," Uhura interrupted, just so she'd have a line in the scene.

"Thanks, lieutenant. Keep trying to contact Peter Pan." Kirk met Picard's eye sternly. "Help us out, Picard. For old time's sake."

"Do you think," Geordi whispered to Data, "that the captain wears panty hose when he goes riding on the holodeck?"

Picard thought fast, and as usual wimped out. "Let's talk about this Kirk ..."

"Come on, Picard! This situation calls for action, not conversation!" Kirk rose to his feet, stirred by his own stirring rhetoric."Talking's all very well, but there comes a time when a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do! That's why we're out here, in the trenches! So read my lips, Jean-Luc: Get a Life!" He sighed and sank back into his chair. "Sheesh. Beats me how these talkative guys get to be captains! What do they teach them at the Academy these days?"

"Not how to wear panty hose, apparently," Data muttered to Geordi.

"On the other hand," Picard said through clenched teeth, "maybe if you keep going in the same direction ..." He trailed off, resisting the temptation to add "you'll hit a supernova."

"That's your solution?" Kirk demanded incredulously. "More months of total inaction?" He leaped to his feet and declared in ringing tones, "Forget Never Never Land! The universe is obviously in serious trouble with you at the helm!" He grinned at Picard. "I'm back! Kirk out."

The screen returned to its boring pattern of stars.

Well, Picard reflected, that answered the question he'd begun with. This was definitely the worst of times.

And now his whole crew knew about the panty hose!