Star Trek: The Next Generation, Series 6, Episode 3. First broadcast on Monday 5 October 1992. Stardate: 46071.6. It’s an outstandingly stupid episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation this week, except for the astonishingly brilliant idea of giving Marina fun things to do and a range of fabulously fun things to wear. Actually, let me start that again. It’s an astonishingly brilliant episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation this week,…
Star Trek: Prodigy, Series 1, Episodes 19–20. First broadcast on Thursday 22 December 2022 and Thursday 29 December 2022. Stardate: Unknown (2384). You may think you need me to get there, but after seeing everything you’ve accomplished, I have full confidence you’ll find your way. Because together your potential is infinite. Now, go boldly. This week, the crew of the USS Protostar save the Galaxy in the most selfless and heartwarming way imaginable, in a version of Star Trek that’s complex, enth...
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Series 6, Episode 20. First broadcast on Wednesday 22 April 1998. Stardate: Unknown (2374). Fly me to the moon Let me trek among the stars Let me taste the cocktails In some holographic bars In other words, please be true In other words, I love you
Star Trek: Discovery, Series 4, Episode 1. First broadcast on Thursday 18 November 2021. Stardate: Unknown (3190). The crew of the USS Discovery are really settling down and starting to enjoy their new life in the 32nd century — repairing some butterflies’ GPS network, giving a commencement speech to some socially-distanced Starfleet Academy students, and fixing the unexpected and alarming angular velocity of a Federation space station. Then suddenly an unimaginable tragedy strikes....
Star Trek: The Next Generation, Series 6, Episode 9. First broadcast on Saturday 14 November 1992. Stardate: 46307.2. Data is excited to get a new puppy and understandably miffed when Riker decides to explode it in order to solve this week’s space problem. Back on Earth, Nathan is delighted by the story’s optimism and sheer nerdery, while Joe remains sceptical.
Star Trek: Voyager, Series 2, Episode 18. First broadcast on Monday 19 February 1996. Stardate: 49301.2. Opinions are split on this week’s Untitled Star Trek Project , with Nathan leading the prosecution and Joe the defence. Will Nathan sentence Death Wish to be imprisoned a comet, subsisting only on a rare form of Nogatch hemlock? Or will Joe prevail with the argument that at least it’s Voyager trying to have something to say and giving John DeLancie a new thing to do?...
Star Trek: Lower Decks, Series 3, Episode 7. First broadcast on Thursday 6 October 2022. Stardate: Unknown (2381). This week, a mathematically perfect recurring villain gets her own episode of Star Trek , and we discover how much fun the show can be without all that relentless moralising, just moments before we also discover how much fun it is to watch a villain get her comeuppance while some dunderheaded bird people shake off the dead shackles of a stupid tradition....
Star Trek: The Original Series, Series 2, Episode 25. First broadcast on Friday 15 March 1968. Stardate: 4040.7. In hoc episodio, cum nautae astronavis Enterprise ad Urbem Aeternam pervenissent, brevi tempore magister Kirk amicos suos in harena certantes spectavit, passerem garo elixum gustavit, ancillam formosissimam futuit, postremo festinanter discessit. Sed dum navem solvit, cognoscit se testem fuisse novam religionem pacis ac fraternitatis oriri....
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Series 5, Episode 24. First broadcast on Monday 19 May 1997. Stardate: 50901.7. This week, Deep Space Nine does the best that it can with a slasher horror premise involving four redshirts and some murderous Cardassians, including beloved secondary character, plain, simple Garak. Fortunately, no one suffers any long-term ill-effects — except for the people who are no longer around to complain, I suppose.
Star Trek: Enterprise, Series 4, Episodes 18–19. First broadcast on Friday 22 April 2005 and Friday 29 April 2005. Stardate: Unknown (2155). The finish line is in sight this week for Star Trek: Enterprise , and so it’s time to throw out the rulebook and have some fun for a change, with a preposterous farrago of fan service that remembers at least that one of our most important jobs is to be enjoyable and entertaining. T’Pol starts wearing a miniskirt and Archer drinks some poisoned champagne, an...
Star Trek: The Next Generation, Series 3, Episode 13. First broadcast on Monday 5 February 1990. Stardate: 43539.1. As private parts to the gods are we! They play with us for their sport! Lord Melchett, Blackadder II: Chains A defrocked god appears on the bridge of the USS Enterprise and wanders around being much more fun than anyone else aboard. (Apart from Whoopi Goldberg, obviously. And maybe Brent this week.) A solid outing from TNG ’s Imperial Phase....
Star Trek: Prodigy, Series 2, Episodes 1–2. First broadcast on Monday 1 July 2024. Stardate: 61859.6. Star Trek: Prodigy is here for a second season, bringing our crew back together and sending them off on an epic mission aboard the USS Voyager . It’s Star Trek: Voyager as you’ve never seen it before, but it would be cruel of us to say why. (Hint: we both think it’s really good.) Also appearing: the two best Roberts, which is quite exciting....
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Series 3, Episode 8. First broadcast on Monday 14 November 1994. Stardate: 48423.2. This week, Deep Space Nine serves up a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, in which a respected female character undertakes an ill-advised heterosexual romance with a creepy and unattractive white guy, which makes her look like an idiot. Meanwhile, over in the B-plot, Quark and Jeffrey Coombs try to get hold of some deepfake celebrity porn of Nana Visitor....
Star Trek: The Animated Series, Series 1, Episode 8. First broadcast on Saturday 27 October 1973. Stardate: 1254.4. This week, with a budget of dozens of crisp American dollars at their disposal, Joe and Nathan pull out their smocks, palettes, easels and oils in order to bring you a lavishly illustrated story of human creativity and achievement in a 25-minute episode you won’t be embarassed to show your kids. Or not terminally embarrassed, anyway.
Star Trek: Voyager, Series 7, Episode 15. First broadcast on Wednesday 14 February 2001. Stardate: 54553.4. This week we drop into a parallel universe where Voyager ’s situation is desperate, resources are constrained, and the crew has no alternative but to live by its principles — helping, making friends, reaching out, forming alliances, working together to solve problems, seeking out new life and new civilisations, that sort of thing. Turns out, it would have made quite a good premise for a St...
Star Trek: The Next Generation, Series 1, Episode 14. First broadcast on Monday 25 January 1988. Stardate: 41636.9. Nothing to learn about gender politics this week as we visit Angel One, where large aggressive women lord it over their twinky male consorts, and Star Trek: The Next Generation finds plenty of exciting new ways to be as offensively sexist as possible. Could someone pass Gene a napkin, please?
Star Trek: The Original Series, Series 1, Episode 25. First broadcast on Thursday 9 March 1967. Stardate: 3196.1. A terrifying cave monster attacks a bunch of miners in pastel jumpsuits and burns them alive: it must be killed to ensure a continuing supply of raw materials for the engines of capitalism. But then, of course, we reach out, learn that the monster is a person, and thereby discover a terrifying truth about ourselves. A triumph: literally the thing that Star Trek is for....
Star Trek: Lower Decks, Series 3, Episode 1. First broadcast on Thursday 25 August 2022. Stardate: Unknown (2380). While we wait for the final season of Lower Decks to drop, we head back into the show’s distant past to see how it reintroduces itself to the world at the start of its third season. As you might expect, it’s with love, loyalty, extreme cartoon violence and a few affectionate digs at one of our favourite Star Trek films. And, inevitably, gallons and gallons of alien seminal fluid....
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Series 6, Episode 13. First broadcast on Monday 2 November 1998. Stardate: September 1953. Some time in 2374, Ben Sisko, tired of helming Deep Space Nine in wartime, considers handing the job over to someone else. At the same time but in 1953, Benny Russell dreams of a version of himself living beyond the daily indignities of existing as a Black man in America. And meanwhile in 1998, people tuning in for this week’s episode of White People Living on the Moon find them...
Star Trek: Enterprise, Series 3, Episode 12. First broadcast on Wednesday 14 January 2004. Stardate: Unknown (2153). This week, untrustworthy foreigners attack and terrorise Enterprise for literally no reason other than the arbitrary tenets of their weird and incorrect religion. There’s a lesson to be learned here, but only if you don’t think too hard about it.
Star Trek: The Next Generation, Series 1, Episode 20. First broadcast on Monday 21 March 1988. Stardate: 41503.7. Long before the invention of Ronald D Moore, the Klingons were simple souls who enjoyed brownface, poisoning grain, making lists of rules, and planting a bomb on the bridge of the Enterprise . But by 2364, the next generation of Klingons had embraced the wave of liberalism sweeping across the galaxy, all except for a few holdouts who refused to read the series bible and decided they ...
Star Trek: The Next Generation, Series 5, Episode 5. First broadcast on Monday 21 October 1991. Stardate: 45156.1. In this week’s outstanding instalment of Competent People Solving Space Problems , the Enterprise is hit by an unexpected and dangerous premise which separates the crew into five distinct subplots and forces each of them to confront their greatest fears. Deanna contends with yet another fibriform space anomaly, Geordi faces the horrors of a Gilbert and Sullivan patter song, Worf tak...
Star Trek: Voyager, Series 6, Episode 3. First broadcast on Wednesday 6 October 1999. Stardate: Unknown (2376). A quick trip to the afterlife this week, as B’Elanna discovers the importance of faith and family, and as Voyager itself discovers (too late, perhaps) the importance of the same things. We also learn that hell is the Voyager sets only lit slightly differently, which is something that we had hitherto only suspected.
Star Trek: The Next Generation, Series 3, Episode 3. First broadcast on Monday 9 October 1989. Stardate: 43152.4. On the ravaged surface of the Federation colony planet Rana IV, the crew of the USS Enterprise are surprised to discover an excitingly modernist Malibu home set in a lush, quadrilateral garden; after landing on the planet with an away team, Will Riker is surprised to find himself dangling upside down by his ankles; soon after that Deanna Troi is surprised to find herself suffering fr...
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Series 1, Episode 9. First broadcast on Thursday 30 June 2022. Stardate: 2510.6. Of course the people you care about are going to cause you pain. It will hurt, but the love it yields will far outweigh the sorrow. Now, hand me the electron coupler. In this week’s Strange New Worlds , we watch standard space genre things happen to relaxed and likeable characters. Which, turns out, works incredibly well.
Star Trek: Voyager, Series 5, Episode 18. First broadcast on Wednesday 3 March 1999. Stardate: 52586.3. For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any thing, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten. (Ecclesiastes 9:5) This week, like every week, we continue to experience our gradual, humiliating dissolution, to dread our own inevitable deaths, and to consider with dismay the deaths of everyone we have ever known or loved. And so, to cheer ours...
Star Trek: Enterprise, Series 4, Episode 22. First broadcast on Friday 13 May 2005. Stardate: Unknown (2161). This week Enterprise fans get the chance to watch their favourite show with Jonathan and Marina sitting next to them on the couch, which only raises enraging and bewildering questions like Is any of this even real? and Does any of this actually matter? (to which the answers are of course not and if you like , respectively). Meanwhile, Trip is forced to sacrifice himself to ensure that Ar...
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Series 3, Episode 16. First broadcast on Monday 20 February 1995. Stardate: Unknown (2371). Basically nothing happens on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine this week, as Nathan undergoes a religious experience which inspires him to be terribly nice to people for a change, while Joe anticipates failing to win a major podcasting award. Still, sometimes it’s just nice to hang out with the people you love, isn’t it?
Star Trek: The Animated Series, Series 2, Episode 6. First broadcast on Saturday 12 October 1974. Stardate: 6770.3. A return to the realm of cheap Saturday-morning-cartoon Trek , where the only person apparently putting in any effort is Master of Dialect, Jimmy Doohan. This week, we find ourselves in a universe where space is white, stars are black, people age backwards, women give birth to large old men, and the Enterprise crew are listless, lifeless and dull....
Star Trek: The Next Generation, Series 1, Episode 23. First broadcast on Monday 25 April 1988. Stardate: 41601.3. This week, we watch an dreadful hour of Star Trek — cheap, mawkish and absolutely absurd — but we end up enjoying ourselves enormously. Have we found a fatal flaw at the entire heart of the Untitled Star Trek Project ?
