When the Doctor’s hard drive starts to fill up with opera, romantic relationships and all the complex glories of being human, he finds himself increasingly unable to fulfil his function as Voyager’s Chief Medical Officer — instead becoming a heartbreaking analogue of your dad suffering from dementia. Also, a bunch of space things happen that we couldn’t possibly care about.
It’s Star Trek’s most terrifying crew evaluation since Coming of Age: the crew of the USS Cerritos confront a ridiculous alien from Star Trek: The Animated Series, the Terran Empire, medical ethics, an unconvincing Old West set on the Paramount lot, the plot of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, the Borg, complex strings of water molecules which acquire carbon from the body and act on the brain like alcohol, hexagonal crates in the cargo bay, and the plot of Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. But more than anything, they confront the need to work together and respect each other. Because this is — and of course it is — Star Trek.
When passive-aggressive Vulcan racist Captain Solok arrives on Deep Space Nine and challenges Sisko to some kind of sportsball game, a series of hilarious training montages ensues, followed by a Very Important Lesson about how utterly adorable Rom is. Bless.
After the crew of Enterprise decide to ignore the advice of their only competent crewmember, they find themselves on a very routine away mission on a very unremarkable planet, exhibiting behaviour that would embarass the most racist of your racist uncles. Turns out that at the end of the day, it hasn’t been such a long road getting from there to here.
Tensions are running high this week, as the Enterprise is attacked by a series of regular geometric solids and the bridge crew’s morale starts to crack under the pressure. Is this a ropey and glacially paced moment of disposable 60s TV, or the beginning of something indescribably magical?
It’s been 1,183 years since Rick Berman left Star Trek, and so it’s time for two new queer characters to join the Discovery family — Trill host Adira Tal and their adorable boyfriend and former host Gray Tal — in an episode all about the importance of connection and belonging.
It’s our first trip to the Delta Quadrant, and we have questions that need answering. Is B’Elanna’s father a massive racist or just a regular-sized racist? Which is more convincing: Tom and B’Elanna’s baby or an 8472 in a well-lit room? And can we maintain focus all the way through a 45-minute episode of Voyager without a single space anomaly?
In this week’s episode of Family Ties, when Quark (Michael J Fox) lies about his involvement in the death of a belligerent Klingon customer, he finds himself threatened, hauled off to Qo’nos, forcibly married, and required to defend the honour of his house before the High Council with a combination of Excel spreadsheets and extreme physical cowardice. Will he learn a Very Important lesson about the dangers of greed? (Spoilers: no.)
After the Enterprise-C emerges from a mysteriously swirly space anomaly, Joe and Nathan find themselves in 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. Star Trek: Discovery Series 1 arrives nearly 30 years too early, in Yesterday’s Enterprise.
