Untitled Star Trek Project

A high-concept Star Trek episode about quantum fluctuations gives way to a human story about what we owe to each other, a story about time, love, identity and self-sacrifice, where solving this week’s intractable space problem matters so much less than simply doing the right thing.

This week, Enterprise is beset once again by the Temporal Cold War, in the form of two guys who won’t stop talking about the Temporal Cold War, a conflict so subtle and urgent that no one can explain what it is or why anyone should care about it. And in a breathtaking B-plot, a bunch of be-latexed men drop by for a religious ceremony audacious in both its meaninglessness and its orthogonality to everything else in the episode.

An experimental quantum probability field causes the entire Enterprise crew to completely forget what humour is and how to do it. An agonising forty-five minutes, only relieved by the sight of beautiful Billy Campbell wandering through the corridors dressed as a pirate. (It’s just possible that the same field has caused the writers to forget how human behaviour works as well.)

To celebrate USTP’s 200th episode, Joe and Nathan spend an hour skulking around the dark but beautifully designed corridors of the USS Titan, avoiding a murderous Jack Crusher and trying to stay of the way of the intimidating Bajoran Starfleet Intelligence operative who is apparently here to arrest fan favourites Admiral Picard and Captain Riker. It’s like an alternate timeline where Star Trek: The Next Generation is dramatically and impractically lit, full of incident, and sceptical about the 1990s belief in the End of History. Here’s to the next 200.