One year after the events of Thimbleweed Park, the second season of Star Trek The Next Generation was produced. Yesterday I saw the episode “The Measure of a Man” (Wem gehört Data?) and I saw specks of dust on the bridge of the USS Enterprise and nobody cared to pick it up.
Just because “collect X specks of dust” isn’t on your to-do list, doesn’t mean you should ignore them entirely. They’ll never understand the fulfilment of looking down at their pockets with a smile, thinking to themselves:
If you look at it like that Thimbleweed Park is just a very elaborate Holodeck episode. Maybe it was Sexy Riker who just would have needed to have said:“Computer end program!”