Episode 121
Friday 9 August 2024
Star Trek: The Next Generation
Series 3, Episode 13
Stardate: 43539.1
First broadcast on Monday 5 February 1990
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.
Episode 120
Friday 2 August 2024
Star Trek: Prodigy
Series 2, Episodes 1–2
Stardate: 61859.6
First broadcast on Monday 1 July 2024
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.
Episode 119
Friday 26 July 2024
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Series 3, Episode 8
Stardate: 48423.2
First broadcast on Monday 14 November 1994
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.
Episode 118
Friday 19 July 2024
Star Trek: The Animated Series
Series 1, Episode 8
Stardate: 1254.4
First broadcast on Saturday 27 October 1973
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.
Episode 117
Friday 5 July 2024
Star Trek: Voyager
Series 7, Episode 15
Stardate: 54553.4
First broadcast on Wednesday 14 February 2001
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 Star Trek series.
Episode 116
Friday 28 June 2024
Star Trek: The Next Generation
Series 1, Episode 14
Stardate: 41636.9
First broadcast on Monday 25 January 1988
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?
Episode 115
Friday 21 June 2024
Star Trek: The Original Series
Series 1, Episode 25
Stardate: 3196.1
First broadcast on Thursday 9 March 1967
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.
Episode 114
Friday 14 June 2024
Star Trek: Lower Decks
Series 3, Episode 1
Stardate: Unknown (2380)
First broadcast on Thursday 25 August 2022
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.
Episode 113
Friday 7 June 2024
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Series 6, Episode 13
Stardate: September 1953
First broadcast on Monday 2 November 1998
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 themselves watching something far better than they had a right to expect.
Episode 112
Friday 31 May 2024
Star Trek: Enterprise
Series 3, Episode 12
Stardate: Unknown (2153)
First broadcast on Wednesday 14 January 2004
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.