Comfort food this week, as Star Trek: The Next Generation tries and fails to create a romantic comedy about an exciting new space wormhole. Deanna learns a valuable lesson about the dangers of enjoying herself, some Ferengi learn an urgent lesson about paying attention to their GPS, and the rest of us learn a timely lesson about straight, white American men in the late 1980s. We still have fun though.
Star Trek goes outside this week, for a top-tier episode in which Sisko and Kira are both confronted by radical integrity and self-sacrifice in the face of overwhelming opposition. Solid and memorable.
The second season of Star Trek: Discovery comes to a climax as Spock commemorates Star Trek’s first pilot by taking Michael to Talos IV so that they can both stand around a bunch of singing flowers, weepily recounting their formative childhood traumas. Meanwhile, Paul and Hugh are not the first people to experience difficulties maintaining a romantic relationship after one partner has died. Anyway, Nathan has fun, even if no one else does.
It’s the pilot of a thrilling new spy-fi series, in which Gary Seven (Robert Lansing), his plucky secretary Miss Lincoln (Teri Garr), and his cat Isis (herself) hang out in the twentieth century’s most stylish decade, drinking cocktails after lunch and occasionally foiling America’s military–industrial complex. Is it time for us to end our trek through the stars so that we can complete an assignment here on earth?
This week a mediocre script fails to be enhanced in any way by mediocre direction and some mediocre performances. But there’s an upside: a Voyager episode with real consequences that will open up unimaginable new vistas of storytelling and character development. Or not, probably.
In this week’s episode of Likeable and Competent People Solving Space Problems, Beverly finds herself in a shrinking universe from which her loved ones are disappearing one by one, while Nathan and Joe (who inhabit a very similar universe) find a version of Star Trek capable of inspiring a lifelong obsession and, ultimately, an untitled podcast project.
This week, we learn a valuable lesson about Johnny Foreigner: he’s just not to be trusted. (God knows how we’re going to get a Federation together.) Still, we manage to enjoy ourselves for a bit.
Star Trek: The Next Generation makes anotherill-judgedattempt at romance this week, as Beverly Crusher has an eventful two-week relationship with an alien ambassador, Commander Riker, and an attractive young woman, who are all somehow the same person. It all goes as well as you would expect in a series where every episode returns reliably to the status quo before the credits roll.
(Warning: after the closing credits, there are some incidental spoilers for Strange New Worlds Series 2, Episode 7, Those Old Scientists.)
It’s a low-effort week here at Untitled Star Trek Project, as we pour dozens of crisp American dollars into animating a hilarious encounter between Kirk, Spock, some lizard men in nappies, and an alien who can detach his bits at will, and then spend some time wondering why on earth we bothered.
After the Breen attack Starfleet Headquarters on Earth, Ben Sisko (Alan Dale), fearing for the safety of his new wife Kasidy (Lisa Armytage), gets all of her upcoming missions cancelled, with predictable results. Elsewhere on the station, Ezri (Annie Jones) and Worf (Guy Pearce) bicker about her budding relationship to Julian (Peter O’Brien). On Bajor, Kai Winn (Vivean Gray) and her new lodger Anjohl (Ian Smith) are planning to unleash the pah-wraiths on an unsuspecting galaxy. Which puts into perspective the plans of Legate Damar (Stefan Dennis), who merely wants to kick the Dominion out of Lassiter’s so that he can look at himself in the mirror without cringing.
