A lot of the Den of Geek's Star Trek: The Next Generation reviews are good, but the one for The Vengence Factor (including the infamous phaser settings list is exceptionally funny.
TNG WTF: In the final scene, Riker is forced (well, maybe not forced. He's quite keen) to kill Yuta. In the background, Picard sort of sits there looking blankly ahead, barely blinking. The reason is that he had to stay still so that they could add the disintegration effect. But in-story, we're forced to assume he's thinking "oh great, now I'm going to have to fill out loads of incident reports to explain this one."
And it's not like Riker HAD to kill Yuta. In this situation, where he's trying to stop her from physically attacking someone, a crowbar to the back of the knees would have achieved a similar effect to his preferred option of "completely incinerate". I guess when you're holding a phaser, every problem looks like one of those floaty lights that you shoot for phaser target practise.
