A game of Bat’leths & BiHnuchs takes a surprising turn, as Mariner and Boimler make some very important decisions: Mariner is going to be less insubordinate, while Boimler is going to boldly take opportunities he has never taken before. But soon Mariner finds herself ignoring Ransom’s orders and plummeting from an orbital platform to save her crewmates, while Boimler plays some springball, joins a Bajoran dirge choir, models nude for a figure painting class, and is finally hunted through the ship by a monster for sport. And we all learn a valuable lesson, except Boimler, who learns a stupid one.
Flushed with the success of its previous attempt at Gothic Horror, Star Trek gamely tackles the genre again, as the Doctor’s experiments with the parameters of his program inevitably lead to a high-concept holographic version of The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, with all of the creepiness towards women that that implies. Aggressively mediocre.
First broadcast on Friday 6 May 2005
and Friday 13 May 2005
Enterprise is reaching the end of the long road that brought them from there to here, and before we say a final goodbye, we’ve just got enough time to foil a charmless racist demagogue who wants to destroy our future — a future based on co-operation, openmindedness and mutual respect. It’s just like the present day, really, only the good guys win. Oh, and Trip gets to punch a racist in the face.
This week, Star Trek: Lower Decks does what it does best: plumbing the depths of the franchise’s weirdest moments to produce something fun, entertaining, and sympathetic to its ideals. Which is why we get to root for some underappreciated and frequently mispronounced alien monsters, and why those two beautiful nerdy men, Boimler and Rutherford, get to save the day not with violence, but with a PowerPoint presentation and some maths.
Star Trek: Generations is a Christmas movie, but more than that, it’s the moment when Star Trek: The Next Generation makes its first tentative and ultimately unsuccessful step into the venerable movie franchise. Julian Bashir’s crazy uncle has a horrific plan to get to heaven by killing a bunch of people we don’t see and don’t care about, and can only be stopped by two middle-aged white guys clambering over some gantries or something. Oh, and the Enterprise crashes and the whole crew is killed. Happy holidays, everyone!
Our writers are on strike this week, and so we’re just going to mark time until we reach the end of this blurb. When an uncomfortably horny Lwaxana Troi beams aboard the Enterprise, a series of events happen, culminating at last in the episode’s closing credits. Mick Fleetwood guest stars as a fish.
In one of the best episodes in Star Trek history, our show learns very early on that it can shoot for ridiculous and hit funny and entertaining. What more can we say? It’s brilliant.
Stardate 46519.1: Surgically altered to appear Romulan, Marina Sirtis wakes up on board the Romulan Warbird Khazara looking as fabulous as she has ever looked and starts threatening an increasingly cowed Carolyn Seymour. The result — one hell of an enjoyable episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Eighteen months later: Surgically altered to appear Cardassian, Nana Visitor wakes up on Cardassia Prime looking incredibly striking, but her rich backstory, the show’s increasingly involved premise, and her willingness to just go for it as an actor — all of these combine to make one hell of an enjoyable and satisfying episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
This week, it’s time to ruin everyone’s fun, as Nathan declares that a Deep Space Nine fan favourite is an artistic failure, and compares it unfavourably to Take Me Out to the Holosuite. Is he crazy, or is it the whole damn system that’s crazy?
