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 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 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 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.
Episode 93
Friday 12 January 2024
Star Trek: The Next Generation
Series 4, Episode 7
Stardate: 44246.3
First broadcast on Monday 5 November 1990
After just over a season of reliable and competent, this week, Star Trek: The Next Generation goes for dramatic and surprising — with amazing results: a memorable epsiode full of good performances and the sort of direction that lets those performances shine. One of the best.
Episode 38
Friday 22 July 2022
Star Trek: The Next Generation
Series 4, Episode 12
Stardate: 44429.6
First broadcast on Monday 28 January 1991
Our Irish lad to the war has gone
On the deck of the Phoenix you’ll find him.
He’s got a song that goes on and on
And a sad backstory behind him.
Marc Alaimo’s here in a silly hat
He’s missed some bits while sha-a-ving.
And Captain Maxwell has shown us that
He’s a dick and he isn’t worth saving.
Episode 75
Friday 28 July 2023
Star Trek: The Next Generation
Series 4, Episode 23
Stardate: 44821.3
First broadcast on Monday 13 May 1991
Star Trek: The Next Generation makes another ill-judged attempt 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.)
Episode 49
Friday 21 October 2022
Star Trek: The Next Generation
Series 5, Episode 2
Stardate: 45047.2
First broadcast on Monday 30 September 1991
They were victorious. But Enkidu fell to the ground, struck down by the gods. And Gilgamesh wept bitter tears, saying, “He who was my companion, through adventure and hardship, is gone forever.”
Now this is what Star Trek is about — kind, competent people solving a space problem, while learning about the importance of storytelling, connection and understanding. Magnificent.