Nice catch. Thanks!
I would not call a kindergartener a clown.
Clown behaviour. Have a time out.
Tell that to the Baku.
My apologies that this one's going up late, even by my standards. Between work, social obligations, and my internet going out during the time I normally have to write these, I wasn't able to get it up when I'd like. Still, it is (barely) before the next episode drops, so there's that.
He didn't imagine it. He just took the ball and ran with it.
I think the shot we see of it against the Enterprise E in "First Contact" doesn't help with the perception of the scale of the ship.
"Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home" - release date: 26 November 1986
"Encounter at Farpoint" - original air date: 28 September 1987
"The Bonding" - the first episode of TNG Ronald D. Moore wrote, and sold as a spec script before getting hired as part of the writing staff, original air date: 23 October 1989
There is plenty of references to money in TOS, and not merely as a figure of speech.
Roddenberry didn’t imagine a moneyless future; that was an invention of “The Voyage Home”, which Roddenberry had no involvement with.
It was a lot to scrub through every episode of Trek to find all the relevant instances, but I do feel like that’s the sort of accuracy people have come to expect.