Episode 61
Friday 10 February 2023
Star Trek: The Next Generation
Series 1, Episode 8
Stardate: 41255.6
First broadcast on Monday 9 November 1987
Together at last for the first time, Joe and Nathan find themselves on Planet of the Horny but Unattractive White People, faced with a moral dilemmma that wouldn’t challenge a slow-witted five-year-old. Ah, we have fun, don’t we?
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 111
Friday 24 May 2024
Star Trek: The Next Generation
Series 1, Episode 20
Stardate: 41503.7
First broadcast on Monday 21 March 1988
Long before the invention of Ronald D Moore, the Klingons were simple souls who enjoyed brownface, poisoning grain, making lists of rules, and planting a bomb on the bridge of the Enterprise. But by 2364, the next generation of Klingons had embraced the wave of liberalism sweeping across the galaxy, all except for a few holdouts who refused to read the series bible and decided they would pass their time yelling and pointing guns at the warp core instead.
Episode 102
Friday 22 March 2024
Star Trek: The Next Generation
Series 1, Episode 23
Stardate: 41601.3
First broadcast on Monday 25 April 1988
This week, we watch an dreadful hour of Star Trek — cheap, mawkish and absolutely absurd — but we end up enjoying ourselves enormously. Have we found a fatal flaw at the entire heart of the Untitled Star Trek Project?
Episode 54
Friday 16 December 2022
Star Trek: The Next Generation
Series 2, Episode 19
Stardate: 42859.2
First broadcast on Monday 19 June 1989
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.
Episode 108
Friday 3 May 2024
Star Trek: The Next Generation
Series 3, Episode 3
Stardate: 43152.4
First broadcast on Monday 9 October 1989
On the ravaged surface of the Federation colony planet Rana IV, the crew of the USS Enterprise are surprised to discover an excitingly modernist Malibu home set in a lush, quadrilateral garden; after landing on the planet with an away team, Will Riker is surprised to find himself dangling upside down by his ankles; soon after that Deanna Troi is surprised to find herself suffering from an unpleasant and potentially fatal earworm. Meanwhile, back in 1990, Nathan Bottomley and a very young Joe Ford are increasingly surprised to discover a new season of Star Trek: The Next Generation which surpasses both its predecessors in both competence and interest.
Episode 82
Friday 22 September 2023
Star Trek: The Next Generation
Series 3, Episode 8
Stardate: 43385.6
First broadcast on Monday 13 November 1989
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.
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 1
Thursday 4 November 2021
Star Trek: The Next Generation
Series 3, Episode 15
Stardate: 43625.2
First broadcast on Monday 19 February 1990
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.
Episode 77
Friday 18 August 2023
Star Trek: The Next Generation
Series 4, Episode 5
Stardate: 44161.2
First broadcast on Monday 22 October 1990
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.