Star Trek: Picard, Episode 11: "The Star Gazer"

* Ok so apparently we currently have a free trial subscription to Paramount+ for some reason so I am going to try to watch the Picard season premiere because I lack the courage to kill myself quickly.

* It opens on the bridge of a starship filled with explosions and people being killed by robot tentacles. So par for the course. 

* Picard says “computer activate self destruct sequence!” and the computer immediately starts counting down from 10. Ships today are so advanced they don’t even need that code Kirk had to put in. They’ll blow themselves up on a whim.

* But then in a shockingly original narrative device it says "48 HOURS EARLIER" and Picard is back on that damn vineyard again.

* Hover-drones are hovering up and down the rows of grapes, beaming the grapes off of the vines to collect them. Which I guess makes sense but just looks silly to see.

* Picard picks up a fresh bottle of wine and the vintage label is beamed onto it (???).

* In season 1 Picard had two ex-Tal Shiar Romulan servants who kept his house clean and changed his adult diapers, a married couple named Larex and Jarex. They were vaguely interesting but abruptly vanished from the story for no reason in like the third episode.

* Now in season 2 Jarex has apparently been dead a year and a half for unexplained reasons and Larex, a 50-year-old Irishwoman, is putting the moves on 107-year-old Picard.

* Um hello power dynamics?

* "Cheers, Big Ears," says Picard, then pumps his fists enthusiastically when he correctly translates some Romulan gibberish. Classic Picard mannerisms.

* "I thought you chose the stars, Picard, but are you running away from something?" she asks inexplicably. "Why are you always alone?" 

* Picard says that his personal wants and desires are secondary to his commitment to duty, forgetting that he has been in retirement and without commitments for like 20 years.

* Picard almost kisses her but then betas out and she leaves.

* Where the fuck is Beverly Crusher?

* Then there is a flashback to Picard's childhood on the vineyard. He is dressed like a 1920s Oliver Twist.

* "Will you fight less here?" Picard asks, followed by a quick-cutting montage of his dad beating his mom. Great!

* "If you hear us shouting, look up at the stars and imagine how tiny our voices sound out there," his mom tells him.

* All of TNG happened because Picard was running away from his childhood trauma of having an abusive father. Just like Gene Roddenberry intended. 

* Picard is so old. They should have called it Star Trek: Imhotep.

* "We often refer to space as the final frontier," Picard says in a speech at Starfleet Academy, "but the older I get, the true final frontier seems to be time."

* Picard introduces "the first fully Romulan cadet at Starfleet Academy" and the camera cuts to Legolas, the male warrior-nun from season 1 who was always cutting people's heads off with a samurai sword.

* Meanwhile in space Seven of Nine is beating space pirates with a wrench.

* Her crew consists of the EMH program of Captain Rios, Picard's pilot-for-hire in season 1. 

* Captain Rios as I'm sure you don't remember had a dark and tragic backstory that manifested in him crewing his ship with half a dozen holo-people all played by the same actor as Captain Rios, because he was a complete narcissist. 

* I mean because they each represented some fragment of his broken psyche. Or something.

* Idk why Seven has this one when they could have just hired Robert Picardo but okay. 

* "Computer, disengage hologram safety protocols!" Seven says and then the EMH starts punching the pirates. Why would she even have that turned on?

* They capture the pirates and the EMH randomly starts psychoanalyzing Seven: "A lifetime of humans reacting with fear and prejudice to your Borg enhancements may have inhibited developmentally appropriate relationship skills."

* He says it in Spanish of course because that's more diverse.

* "Reacting with fear and prejudice" is so on-the-nose as a description of humanity in Star Trek it's hard to believe the writers didn't put it in intentionally as a fuck-you to the audience.

* Then a glowy green space anomaly appears.

* Meanwhile in the Beta Quadrant we cut to Data's "daughter" who ended up having no actual connection to Data whatsoever. She exposits that the Federation is no longer racist against "synthetics."

* Over at the bar Dr. Agnes Gerardi, who murdered Measure of a Man's Bruce Maddox in season 1, tells a bald guy that she was recently cleared of that murder for reasons of "alien-induced temporary insanity."

* "I'm half in the bag," she says.

* If you look on social media/Reddit there are a lot of bots I mean Star Trek fans saying "boy Picard season 1 sure was bad but this new season premiere is a big step up and I loved it!" They are LYING. 

* Suddenly Captain Rios is there in orbit. His Starfleet commission has been reinstated apparently and he's now the captain of the Federation starship STARGAZER.

* Rios smokes a cigar on the bridge and gives orders in Spanish. He's going to investigate the green glowy thing and wants Agnes aboard because she is a main character.

* "Make it so!" he commands. "The pressures of legacy!" Agnes titters.

* Back on Earth Picard exposits to Raffi, the drug addict 9/11 truther who made Picard check his privilege in season 1, that he is now chancellor of Starfleet Academy and is considering updating the Kobayashi Maru test. I know what that is!

* Raffi and Seven are a lesbian couple because Chakotay was that bad in bed.

* Raffi makes several pointed remarks about Picard being lonely and avoiding working on himself.

* Legolas is about to ship out. Picard gives him a book written by Spock and this piece of advice: "Live a little!"

* Seven meets up with Rios at the green thing, which emits a mysterious transmission. "It's a Unix system, I know this!" says Agnes, translating the message.

* "It says 'Help us, Picard!'" Cut to commercial break.

* Meanwhile Picard goes to visit Guinan's bar, which conveniently located in some dingy alley where they could shoot on location for cheap and just add a few CGI affects to an air conditioner.

* Guinan's bar is building number 10 on Forward Avenue.

* "Why are you so old and fat now?" Picard asks. Guinan explains that her people only age slowly if they choose to. "I've noticed that humans don't like to be reminded of their mortality so I try to keep up." 

* What

* Picard has come to complain about his love life. "You only date women you know you won't have to stay with," Guinan tells him.                 

* Picard is afraid of commitment!

* "Why did you decide to go to the stars in the first place?" she asks him. Man what a lucky coincidence for the writer that so many different people all happen to be asking him this same question at the same time.   

* Picard starts talking about new life and new civilizations but Guinan says the only place he's ever been afraid to explore is his own heart. "I think your answers are not in the stars and they never have been."

* Later an admiral lady brings a copy of the glowy green thing message to Picard's house. The entity wants to join the Federation so Picard must go back into the field. He arrives on Rios's ship and casually remarks that this isn't the same Stargazer he served on.

* So what was even the point

* For once the set design doesn't look bad actually. Lighting is too dim and all the surfaces are way too shiny but it's the closest they've gotten in any of these shows.

* "PICARD" the mysterious anomaly says in a voice that is clearly the Borg while Seven just stands there cluelessly.

* A Borg ship emerges from the green glowy thing. Instead of being a geometric shape it looks like a bunch of spikes because that's more badass.

* Agnes and Picard want to hear the Borg out and let them join the Federation but Seven is like y'all crazy let's just kill them.

* "THERE IS NO MORE TIME," say the Borg. "WE ARE SENDING OUR QUEEN TO NEGOTIATE WITH PICARD."

* "They can't transport through our shields," says Rios. Am I crazy or haven't they always been able to do that?

* Oh they just do it now anyway.

* The queen materializes on the bridge dressed like Darth Vader. "We wish for peace, but first we require...." 

"What?" says Rios. "What do you require?????" 

"Power!"        

* Borg queen shoots out Doctor Octopus tentacles and jacks into the ship's computer. The bridge officers open fire, which has no effect, and the queen kills them all with magic green lasers that emanate from her body like a Power Rangers villain.

* "Cease fire!" Rios orders but no one listens to him. 

* "She's assimilating the ship!" says Seven. "Not just our ship, the entire fleet!" says Agnes. This is where Picard activates the auto destruct.

* "Authorization: Picard-Zero-Zero-Zero-Destruct-Zero!" Yay, he said the thing.

* "Look up," the Borg queen tells Picard in his mother's voice. Then the ship blows up.

* Picard wakes up in his vineyard in an alternate timeline where Trump won in 2020.

* Q appears as Deepfake Young John Delancie. "You're a bit older than I expected, Picard," he says. "Let me catch up." and he turns into Old John Delancie.

* That's fine but it's very apparent that they could only afford to show him de-aged for like two seconds.

* Picard is like Q, you bastard, what's going on here! "You've been thinking a lot about second chances lately. Welcome to the very end of the road not taken."

* TO BE CONTINUED

* Hurray, it sucked.

Breaking Bad and Media Illiteracy

Is it ironic to complain about media illiteracy by defending media illiteracy? "The main character is likable and relatable but he does bad things, therefore it's reasonable to assume the author is saying those things are okay." This is like a child's understanding of literature.

This is how Walter White sees himself, not how anyone who consumes media with a remotely critical eye should see him. Walt is cowardly, weak, pathetic, and so full of himself he's incapable of recognizing his own limitations. He repeatedly bites off more than he can chew and only survives due to his intelligence and dumb luck. Along the way he loses his family, his best friend, his surrogate son, his dignity, and eventually the "money, power, and respect/fear" that he sacrificed everything for.

Darth Vader is maybe the coolest character in movie history. He looks awesome, he has an awesome voice, he dominates the scene every time he's on screen. Yet he's obviously fucking evil; clearly "looking cool" doesn't excuse any sin or personal suffering. Also like Darth Vader, Walter White gives his life to save his "son" by eliminating an evil even greater than himself. There is catharsis in seeing these Nazi bastards get what they deserve, but these are redemptive acts for fallen characters, not a glorification of their badassery.

Similarly this would be an inappropriate time to rub the audience's face in these characters' failures. They've already lost their power and dignity, reduced to cringing, pathetic figures barely able to walk, facing the end of their miserable lives.

It's also odd to complain about media tricking the audience into misinterpreting it as saying the protagonist is cool and good while misinterpreting the protagonist's victims as unsympathetic. You don't even have to like Skyler. What about the terrible paths down which Walt's actions send Hank and Jesse, the two most sympathetic characters on the show? What about the horrific domestic violence that plays out in front of Walt's children? What about the pathetic wretch Walt is reduced to at the end, having lost the money for which he sacrificed his family and the family for which he sacrificed his soul? This is all part of the story, not just the parts in the middle where Walt does something cool.

"I am the one who knocks" is a badass line but it's all bluster. Heisenberg is just the hat.

 

The humans win in Starship Troopers! They have cool spaceships and cool space guns and cool costumes (some of which look like Nazi SS officers, weird coincidence)! Therefore the humans are right and good! The bugs are ugly monsters, therefore they are bad!

Interpretations like this are a result of media illiteracy, not an excuse for it. There's no sin in misunderstanding a text, but such fundamental misunderstandings of such straightforward allegory indicate a flaw in reader analysis, not the author making their villains too cool.

"I agree that people are bad at understanding media, and here are some examples that confirm people are bad at understanding media, but it's the media's fault for not being stupid and obvious enough."

If straightforward narratives like Breaking Bad and Dune are too nuanced and complex for their own good, exactly what media can the reader ever be blamed for misinterpreting? Marvel movies? The fucking Star Wars sequels? Or maybe Star Trek: Picard, in which Pulitzer Prize- and Academy Award-winning writers took the humanist ethos of Gene Roddenberry’s vision for a utopian future free from bigotry and told a story about how it’s good to fear and hate people who are different from you? 

In today’s Golden Age of Media, anything’s possible!

The Real Star Wars Sequels

There are three Expanded Universe series that function very well as sequels to the original Star Wars trilogy and are valid alternatives to the Disney films.

The Thrawn Trilogy, starting with Heir to the Empire, was the first “big event” set after Return of the Jedi. It feels like a logical continuation of the story, progressing the personal lives of the main characters, adding to the secondary cast, and depicting the next stage of the war after the Empire’s defeat at Endor. However, it reads primarily as military science fiction and lacks the underpinning mysticism and philosophy of the Original Trilogy, and the movie characters, while well written, don’t go through much of a developmental arc. Consider this more of a “what happened next?” plot-centric sequel.

The Dark Empire trilogy, consisting of the comic series Dark Empire, Dark Empire II, and Empire’s End, feels in some ways like a counterpart to the Thrawn books. The plot is large, bombastic, and frequently silly, but it takes a back seat to the themes, philosophy, and character growth. Luke finally faces the temptations that ensnared his father and confronts the darkness within himself, while Leia embraces her Jedi heritage and takes up a lightsaber against evil when Luke is unable to. Consider this more of a sequel in terms of continuing the themes of Force mysticism and confronting the Jungian shadow established in The Empire Strikes Back.

Lastly is The New Jedi Order, a 19-book series beginning 21 years after Return of the Jedi. With the Empire defeated, the New Republic in power, and Luke’s reformed Jedi Order 100 Knights strong, the galaxy faces an existential threat in the form of alien invaders from another galaxy. The children of the legacy characters come of age in a war against an enemy who challenges their preconceived notions about the Force and the limits of Jedi philosophy, while the disparate power factions of the galaxy must unite or face extinction. Consider this a generational sequel, where the Original Trilogy characters still play major roles but the focus is equally on their children, and the mantle of galactic heroism passes from one generation to the next.

So these three series can adequately replace the Sequel Trilogy in terms of offering what good Star Wars sequels should have: continuation of the story, further character growth, expanded exploration of established themes and philosophies, and the coming of age of the next generation. Not that there aren’t other good and important post-Return of the Jedi EU stories that take place before and between these ones (Shadows of Mindor, the X-Wing series, the Jedi Academy Trilogy, and the Hand of Thrawn Duology, just to name a few), but in terms of being good sequels, these are the big ones to check out.

Nothing happens and no one learns anything.

 

The Cuckoo's Cry 

By Caroline Overington

Narrated by Aimee Horne 

 

This book takes place during a COVID-19 lockdown and is about as interesting as being stuck in one. It wants to be a slow-burn suspense thriller but in reality it’s just slow. For the first four hours people just sit around inside their houses or talk to each other on Skype. There’s a very slight mystery hook but it’s left mostly undeveloped until the climax, when the book becomes an action scene from a daytime soap opera. Instead of being on the edge of their seat, the reader just feels the mild curiosity one has when watching a Lifetime drama.

The book makes some overtures of being about isolation and society’s neglect of the elderly but these are just passing observations and ultimately the book has nothing to say about them. In the end most of the characters are exactly where they began, with no lessons learned and no changes made. This would be all right if the book was making a point, but instead it just makes everything that happened feel pointless. The majority of the story is just dull and full of references to life during COVID that already feel dated a year later, then it abruptly changes from dull to nihilistic and mean-spirited without any apparent meaning or intention. It’s like you took the aforementioned Lifetime movie and tacked on the ending from American Psycho: “This confession has meant nothing.”
 

I only finished this book because I got it for free; if I had paid for it I would have returned it.

 

Overall: 1 out of 5 stars

Performance: 3 out of 5 stars
Story: 1 out of 5 stars

Alan Wake – The Complete Experience

 

In celebration of Remedy Entertainment's announcement of the upcoming Alan Wake remaster, here is a post enumerating every item in the Alan Wake expanded universe and where to get them.

First is the prequel web series Bright Falls, which takes place immediately before Alan Wake in both chronological and release order. It takes place between August 25 and August 31, 2010.

(Bright Falls can also be viewed in its original format of six individually titled episodes.)

Next is Alan Wake itself. The remaster, set to be released in fall of 2021, will include the base game as well as the two subsequent DLC Specials, The Signal and The Writer. Alan Wake takes place from September 1 to September 14, 2010.

An optional companion piece to the game is the Alan Wake novelization by Rick Burroughs. A faithful retelling of the original story (the two Specials are not incorporated), it also includes unique scenes and character insights not found in the game.

The official music video for Poets of the Fall's song "War" features original live-action footage of Alan Wake during the course of his adventures.

Next are the graphic novels Psycho Thriller and Night Springs. Officially available only as bonus content for the current PC version, it's unknown if they will be included with the remaster. These stories take place during the second half of Alan Wake, on September 13, 2010.

The Alan Wake Files, an in-universe chronicle of the history of Bright Falls and Alan's writing career, is available as a physical book with the Xbox 360 Collector's Edition or as a PDF with the PC version. It takes place in 2011, the year after the game.

The official strategy guide from Prima Games, Alan Wake: Official Survival Guide is written in the style of an in-universe document and contains unique lore not found elsewhere. The Author's Foreword is dated May 13 of the year following the game.

 

Throughout Alan Wake, the player can find and watch several episodes of a Twilight Zone-inspired fictional TV series called Night Springs. Three additional episodes were scripted and shot but did not appear in the game.

The next major narrative installment is Alan Wake's American Nightmare, a spinoff/pseudo-sequel/dream sequence (?) only available on digital platforms. It takes place in 2012, two years after the events of Alan Wake.

Next is This House of Dreams, an ARG blog set in the world of Alan Wake and featuring the first appearance of the town of Ordinary, which plays a major role in Remedy's game Control. This House of Dreams takes place from February 22 to July 29, 2012.

Remedy's 2016 game Quantum Break includes a viewable in-game video featuring Alan Wake, titled "Return." It takes place five years after the events of the original game.

Finally, Remedy's most recent game, Control, is set in the world of Alan Wake and features many allusions to its story and lore. The second of its two DLCs, AWE, is fully centered around Alan Wake. The events of Control begin on October 29, 2019.

a. Expansion 1: The Foundation
b. Expansion 2: AWE
• PlayStation 4 exclusive content

i. Dr. Yoshimi Tokui's Guided Imagery Experience side mission
ii. Astral Dive Suit
iii. Tactical Response Gear
iv. Urban Response Gear
v. Dr. Tokui Tapes

With any luck, the next entry on this list will finally be, at long last, Alan Wake 2.

 

Kung Fu (1972) starring David Carradine is a great and anti-racist show

I don’t understand this need to hawk your cheap wares by tearing down the foundation you stood on to make them. Yeah they cast a white guy as a half-white, half-Chinese character 50 years ago, in a different time with different standards. But the supporting cast was Asian American, the most memorable characters who delivered the most famous lines. Virtually every Asian American actor working at the time appeared on the show at some point. Their culture and heritage were never treated as objects of mockery.

The show wasn’t racist; it featured racism, and condemned it. Caine was an immigrant looking for belonging in a country that didn’t want him, and the anti-Asian bigotry he encountered in his travels was always shown for the ugly thing it was.

Yes, Bruce Lee could have done the fight scenes better, but the fight scenes weren’t the point. The show preached non-violence and the preciousness of life; Caine mourned for everyone he couldn’t save because he recognized the value in each of them, even those blinded by hate.

It was a great show with a diverse cast and a powerful message, so it’s disheartening to see it used as a sacrificial lamb to prop up this CW revenge drama whose common DNA apparently includes the name, the inciting incident, and nothing else.

Talk about an insensitive 50-year-old casting decision all you like, the show’s most embarrassing legacy will still be the lead actor accidentally choking himself to death while rubbing one out. Maybe that’s the wrong this new version is supposed to fix!

How the Borg Were Ruined

Does anyone else remember how, when the Borg were first introduced in “Q Who,” they didn’t “assimilate” people? You see a baby Borg in a dresser drawer, implying that the Borg produce their own offspring (viewed through the lens of modern Borg lore, it makes no sense for them to assimilate an infant).

According to Riker, “From the look of it the Borg are born as biological life form. It seems that almost immediately after birth they begin artificial implants. Apparently the Borg have developed the technology to link artificial intelligence directly into the humanoid brain.”

Q describes them as “the ultimate user. They're unlike any threat your Federation has ever faced. They're not interested in political conquest, wealth, or power as you know it. They're simply interested in your ship, its technology. They've identified it as something they can consume.”

In “The Best of Both Worlds,” Commander Shelby says, “I thought they weren't interested in human life forms, only our technology,” and Picard remarks, “Their priorities seem to have changed.”

So it’s established in “Q Who” and “The Best of Both Worlds” that the Borg only assimilate technology, they are generally indifferent to organic races (they repeatedly ignore away teams that beam aboard their ships), and their sudden interest in humanity is a change in their standard MO. The creation of Locutus, a human absorbed into the collective to allow the Borg to better communicate with other races, seemed to be a first-time thing. Locutus starts talking about how the Borg will assimilate the Klingons and the Federation and improve everyone’s quality of life, but the previous dialogue about the Borg’s priorities indicates that this new mission, to assimilate organic life, is something the Borg haven’t done before.

So how do we get from that to the modern conception of the Borg, which are literally just techno-zombies who infect anyone they come in contact with with a “virus” that transforms them into a drone and have been doing this to other races, including humans, for decades?

I want to say that this is all from First Contact dumbing down the concept for a mass-appeal horror/action movie, but “I, Borg” had already muddied the waters a little bit. I don’t think Hugh was intended to be an individual who had been previously assimilated by the Borg and regained his identity when brought aboard the Enterprise; rather he was born a Borg, because the Borg were originally introduced as an actual literal species, and the episode dealt with him experiencing the concepts of identity and individuality for the first time. But Guinan also says that the Borg tried to assimilate her species. In “Q Who” she said that the Borg attacked her people and destroyed their cities, forcing them into exile and scattering them across the galaxy, so this is a retcon and also seems to contradict “The Best of Both Worlds.”

So although it’s a good episode and the Borg were still a credible threat, it seems like “I, Borg” was actually the start of their rapid decline, as it’s the source of the idea that the Borg’s defining MO is just going around assimilating other races, when that was previously described as a new change in tactics.

I have no memory of anything that happened in “Descent,” but then after that of course you had First Contact take the Borg-as-plague idea to the absurd extreme and depict them as literal zombies, not to mention ruining the idea of the collective by introducing the Borg Queen.

So take post-“Best of Both Worlds” TNG’s idea that the Borg have always been assimilating people, First Contact’s ideas that the collective is paradoxically controlled by an individual and the Borg apparently don’t exist as a sexually reproducing species but an assortment of assimilated individuals from various species, and the natural villain decay of a long-running antagonist and you can begin to understand how Voyager drove whatever menace they had left into the ground.

That said, Seven of Nine’s family’s assimilation years before Locutus was supposed to mark the start of the Borg’s interest in organic races may have been the final nail in the coffin of early-TNG Borg lore, but at least she was a great character whose Borg heritage provided several interesting storylines. The Borg weren’t completely ruined until Picard had an entire cube stop working and its crew go into a coma because they assimilated a lady who was really sad.

Resumption

Ben: According to the last couple of volumes of The Dark Tower, in which King uses himself as a character, Stephen King was 22 in 1977, despite having been born in 1947. Possibly justifiable in that parallel worlds are of extreme significance in the story, and it's quite possible that the Stephen King of "Keystone Earth" was born in 1955.

Me: Happy Thanksgiving!

Me: Rereading The Dark Tower out of seasonal gratitude to Stephen King?

Ben: Well I can only read the last half of the extended septology since you stole my other bookd.

Ben: "Book'd", the show where Ashton Kutcher pranks unsuspecting celebrities by beating them senseless with a shoebox of Stephen King novels.

Me: While shouting spoilers at them.

Ben: You can't show that on MTV.

Me: What passed through your mind and heart when you realized Roland’s circular fate?

Ben: Aw shit, here we go again.

Me: Then you had to start the whole series over.

Ben: The dark man skedaddled across the desert, followed by a guy with a gun.

Star Trek Franchise Retrospective

After seven and a half years of halting progression, I have recently finished watching every existing piece of Star Trek media produced for television and film: 743 live-action episodes, 32 animated episodes, 13 movies, and 10 shorts, totaling roughly 603 hours of content. I am recording my findings here for posterity.

 

 

Star Trek (1966–1969)

 

Best characters: Kirk, Spock, McCoy

 

Best seasons: 1–2

 

Best episodes: 01x04 “The Naked Time,” 01x24 “This Side of Paradise,” 01x28 “The City on the Edge of Forever,” 02x01 “Amok Time,” 02x15 “The Trouble with Tribbles”

 

Most embarrassing episode: 03x24 “Turnabout Intruder,” aka The One Where Kirk Becomes a Woman

 

 

Star Trek: The Animated Series (1973–1974)

 

Best seasons: Season 2 is only six episodes long so whatever

 

Best episodes: 01x02 “Yesteryear,” 01x05 “More Tribbles, More Troubles,” 01x08 “The Magicks of Megas-tu,” 01x14 “The Slaver Weapon,” 02x05 “How Sharper Than a Serpent’s Tooth”

 

Most embarrassing episode: With that animation budget they’re all equally embarrassing

 

 

Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987–1994)

 

Best characters: Picard, Data

 

Best seasons: 3–6

 

Best episodes: 03x16 “The Offspring,” 05x02 “Darmok,” 05x18 “Cause and Effect,” 05x25 “The Inner Light,” 06x15 “Tapestry”

 

Most embarrassing episode: 01x04 “Code of Honor,” aka The Gang Goes to Space Africa

 

 

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993–1999)

 

Best characters: Odo, Garak, Gul Dukat

 

Best seasons: 3–6

 

Best episodes: 03x14 “Heart of Stone,” 04x03 “The Visitor,” 05x06 “Trials and Tribble-ations,” 05x12 “The Begotten,” 05x22 “Children of Time”

 

Most embarrassing episode: 06x23 “Profit and Lace,” aka Quark Gets a Sex Change

 

 

Star Trek: Voyager (1995–2001)

 

Best characters: The Doctor, Seven of Nine

 

Best seasons: 4–6

 

Best episodes: 03x08–09 “Future’s End,” 03x26–04x01 “Scorpion,” 04x08–09 “Year of Hell,” 04x18–19 “The Killing Game,” 04x23 “Living Witness”

 

Most embarrassing episode: 04x17 “Retrospect,” aka The Rape Allegory Episode

 

 

Star Trek: Enterprise (2001–2005)

 

Best characters: Archer, Dr. Phlox, Shran

 

Best seasons: 4

 

Best episodes: 01x07 “The Andorian Incident,” 03x08 “Twilight,” 04x07–09 “The Forge”/“Awakening”/“Kir’Shara,” 04x12–14 “Babel One”/“United”/“The Aenar,” 04x18–19 “In a Mirror, Darkly”

 

Most embarrassing episode: 04x22 “These Are the Voyages...,” aka Overweight TNG Cast Members Steal Another Show’s Finale

 

 

Star Trek: Discovery (2017–)

 

Best characters: Christopher Pike

 

Best seasons: They’re both bad

 

Best episodes: 01x07 “Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad,” 02x02 “New Eden,” 02x08 “If Memory Serves,” 02x12 “Through the Valley of Shadows”

 

Most embarrassing episode: All the other ones

 

 

Star Trek: Picard (2020–)

 

Best characters: None

 

Best seasons: None

 

Best episode: 01x07 “Nepenthe”

 

Most embarrassing episode: The whole show

 

 

Star Trek: Lower Decks (2020–)

 

Best characters: None

 

Best seasons: None

 

Best episodes: None

 

Most embarrassing episode: “Pickle Rick”

 

 

Best to Worst Shows:

1. The Next Generation

2. The Original Series

3. Deep Space Nine

4. Enterprise

5. The Animated Series

6. Voyager

7. Lower Decks

8. Discovery

9. Picard

 

 

Best to Worst Movies:

1. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

2. Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

3. Star Trek: The Motion Picture

4. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

5. Star Trek III: The Search for Spock

6. Star Trek: First Contact

7. Star Trek V: The Final Frontier

8. Star Trek Beyond

9. Star Trek Into Darkness

10. Star Trek: Generations

11. Star Trek: Insurrection

12. Star Trek

13. Star Trek: Nemesis

 

 

Best to Worst Captains:

1. Picard

2. Kirk (1966)

3. Archer

4. Sisko

5. Pike

6. Janeway

7. Kirk (2009)

8. Lorca

9. Freeman

10. Rios

 

 

Historical and Mythological Figures from Earth Revealed to Secretly Be Space Aliens or Otherwise Supernatural:

 

The Greek god Apollo

Jack the Ripper

Methuselah

King Solomon

Alexander the Great

Lazarus

Merlin

Leonardo da Vinci

Johannes Brahms

The witches from the Salem Witch Trials

Satan

Mesoamerican feathered-serpent deity Kukulkan

 

 

Episodes I Remember Watching as a Child

 

TOS:

01x05 The Man Trap

01x06 The Naked Time

02x12 I, Mudd

02x13 The Trouble with Tribbles

03x15 Let That Be Your Last Battlefield

 

TAS:

1x02 Yesteryear

1x08 The Magicks of Megas-tu

 

TNG:

01x01 Encounter at Farpoint

01x24 We’ll Always Have Paris

02x04 The Outrageous Okona

02x06 The Schizoid Man

03x13 Déjà Q

03x14 A Matter of Perspective

03x15 Yesterday’s Enterprise

05x02 Darmok

05x06 The Game

05x07 Unification, Part I

05x08 Unification, Part II

05x18 Cause and Effect

05x26 Time’s Arrow, Part I

06x01 Time’s Arrow, Part II

06x04 Relics

06x11 Chain of Command, Part II

06x15 Tapestry

07x01 Descent, Part II

07x11 Parallels

07x13 Homeward

07x25 All Good Things...

 

VOY: 03x17 Unity

 

 

Timeline:

 

Distant Past

VOY 02x18: “Death Wish”

TOS 02x23: “All Our Yesterdays”

 

1893

TNG 05x26: “Time’s Arrow”

 

1930

TOS 01x28: “The City on the Edge of Forever”

 

1947

DS9 04x08: “Little Green Men”

 

1957–58

ENT 02x02: “Carbon Creek”

 

1968

TOS 02x26: “Assignment: Earth”

 

1969

TOS 01x21: “Tomorrow Is Yesterday”

 

1986

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

 

1992–96

Eugenics Wars

 

1996

VOY 03x08: “Future’s End”

 

2004

ENT 03x11: “Carpenter Street”

 

2024

DS9 03x11: “Past Tense”

 

2026–53

World War III

 

2063

Star Trek: First Contact

 

2151–61

Star Trek: Enterprise

 

c. 2230

Short Treks: “The Girl Who Made the Stars”

 

2239

Short Treks: “The Brightest Star”

 

2254

Short Treks: “Q&A”

TOS Pilot: “The Cage”

 

2256–57

Star Trek: Discovery – Season 1

Short Treks: “Runaway”

Short Treks: “The Escape Artist”

 

2257–58

Star Trek: Discovery – Season 2

Short Treks: “The Trouble with Edward”

Short Treks: “Ask Not”

 

2265–69

Star Trek: The Original Series

 

2269–70

Star Trek: The Animated Series

 

2273

Star Trek: The Motion Picture

 

2285

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

Star Trek III: The Search for Spock

 

2267–85

Short Treks: “Ephraim and Dot”

 

2286

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

 

2287

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier

 

2293

Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

 

2364–70

Star Trek: The Next Generation

 

2369–71

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – Seasons 1–2

 

2293–2371

Star Trek: Generations

 

2371–73

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – Seasons 3–4

 

2373

Star Trek: First Contact

 

2373–75

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – Seasons 5–7

 

2375

Star Trek: Insurrection

 

2371–78

Star Trek: Voyager

 

2379

Star Trek: Nemesis

 

2380

Star Trek: Lower Decks

 

2385

Short Treks: “Children of Mars”

 

2387

Kelvin Timeline:

Star Trek (2233–58)

Star Trek Into Darkness (2259–60)

Star Trek Beyond (2263)

 

2399

Star Trek: Picard

 

3188

Star Trek: Discovery – Season 3

 

Far Future

Short Treks: “Calypso”