"This is the LockPickingLawyer, and what I have for you today is a standard-issue Starfleet self-destruct mechanism from Yoyodyne Propulsion Systems..."
Back then downtown Chicago had a cards and comics shop called Lower Decks. They would put TNG CCG cards in one of those sort of candy-type vending machines where you get a few cards for a quarter. I got the "Lower Decks" card out of that machine at the Lower Decks shop.
A friend stole my Borg Cube card and I never forgave him.
r/greatestgen is still up and there's a thread from 4 days ago from the FoD Mastodon admin about setting up an FoD Lemmy. I pointed that OP here but it wouldn't be official Uxbridge-Shimoda social media unless its the Card Daddy as admin.
I describe it as the Federation taking a "peace dividend" at the end of the Klingon Cold War that disrupted new starship development for a generation or longer. Excelsior-class was the best platform to result from cold-wartime development and thus became the workhorses that lasted through the transition to the more "peacetime developed" heavy explorers like Ambassador and Galaxy-classes.
The real-world parallel are the US Navy Arleigh Burke-class destroyers. They were the peak design at the end of the Cold War, a peace dividend was taken which slowed shipbuilding at the time, their overly ambitious successor classes were ultimately unsuccessful, and it was decided to cancel the newer Zumwalt-class after only 3 ships and instead keep building more third-generation Arleigh Burkes.
Troi prescribes regularly plexing Loreili for stress relief