TOS - Plato's Stepchildren

This is actually a rather ordinary episode; it is basically a reworking of a plot that had already been used many times by that point in Star Trek history. Some type of powerful beings hold the crew of the Enterprise hostage for their amusement, or other nefarious purposes. Two such examples are The Cage, in which the Talosians hold Captain Pike hostage in their efforts to create a race of human slaves, and the Squire of Gothos in which Tralane (possibly a Q) holds Kirk and company just because he is an asshole. This episode is much the same; a powerful people decide that they want Doctor McCoy to join their ranks and don’t care who they have to step over to get him, resulting in the torment of Kirk, Spock, Uhura, and Chapel. The only reason why this episode gains notoriety is that it contains the first televised inter-racial kiss. But the rest of the episode is actually quite dull. While this episode was definitely historic, it is not an interesting episode for its own sake.
Please note: I will be going on vacation for most of the summer, and will not be able to post. I will be back for vacation and able to blog in late July.

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier

This is definitely the worst Star Trek movie ever made! It has very few positive qualities, and copious amounts of negative ones. First off, the special effects look much more fake than those in the Star Trek movies preceding it. Some of them, especially the Great Barrier, are almost a cheesy as those in the original series itself, which brings me to my next point. It is stated on more than one occasion that the Great Barrier, which the Enterprise passes through in ST:V, is located in the center of the galaxy. This is, of course absolute bullshit! From the neutral zone between the Romulans, Klingons and the Federation, it would take about 20 or more years to get to the center of the galaxy, and the Enterprise reaches the Great Barrier in less than a day! There is absolutely no way in hell that the Enterprise actually went to the center of the galaxy, it simply could not have happened. Yet, it is stated that it lies at the center of the galaxy on multiple occasions. However, these comments do not have to be interpreted literally. Instead of taking Sybok’s statements to mean that the Great Barrier is literally at the center of the galaxy, it could be interpreted to mean that the Great Barrier is located in the direction of the center of the galaxy but still near to Nimbus Three, probably encompassing “sha-ka-ree” in order to contain the malevolent life form that attempted to pass itself off as God. Another continuity error in this movie is the fact that the turbo-shaft that Kirk, Spock and McCoy shoot up is labeled incorrectly. As stated in a previous post this is most likely the result of a simple malfunction in the automated device that most likely labeled the shaft; everything else on that ship was screwed up, so why not this too? This mislabeling may have been the reason that the ship was closed for repairs. The plot of The Final Frontier is boring and really stupid: A madman rounds up the biggest low-lifes of the Federation, and Klingon and Romulan empires, takes over the Enterprise and takes it on a wild goose chase for Eden, while being pursued by Klingons, whose captain is apparently having a bad hair day! This is basically the entire plot, if you don’t count Kirk, Spock and McCoy going on a camping trip. Practically none of the movie is well written or directed. Despite the loads of crap that comprise this movie, there are a few good lines: Catlin Dar’s response to Kord’s gaseous welcome, “I expect that’s Klingon for hello,” and two of McCoy’s limes, one of his explosions of temper at Spock, “It’s a SONG you green-blooded… vulcan!” and my personal favorite “Jim! You don’t ask the Almighty for his I.D.!” Other than those quotes and a profound musical score by Jerry Goldsmith, this movie is pure crap, and easily the worst of the ten Star Trek movies made to date.

TNG - Hollow Pursuits

This is the first episode of TNG in which the holo-addicted Lt. Barclay makes an appearance, making for a really funny episode. The holodeck caricatures of various crewmembers of the 1701-D, created by Barclay, are absolutely hilarious to watch, as their actions are so bazaar for someone who looks just like Picard, Geordi or Wesley, and because of how the actual crew reacts to meeting “themselves” while looking for Barclay on the holodeck, such as counselor Troi coming face to face with the Goddess of Empathy. Other than this, the episode is relatively bland. Barclay acts like a complete asshole, a mysterious substance moves around the ship causing random systems to go off-line. It freezes anti-matter injectors, threatening to blow up the ship, happenings that are relatively common occurrences on Star Trek. There is nothing that makes this particular occurrence of “technological malfunction puts ship and crew in dire situation” especially good or especially bad either, it merely serves as a vehicle for the main plot about Reginald Barclay. This part of the episode is above average; however the rest of it is not especially outstanding.

The Enigma of Elim Garak

Despite Mr. Garak’s claims that he is nothing but a plain, simple tailor, this is definitely not the case. However, determining exactly what the “case” is, is another matter entirely, since what we do know about Garak’s past is a myriad of conflicting a half-truths, or just outright lies. As best I can figure out, Garak was the son of Enabrin Tain, and rose to become one of the top executives of the Obsidian order. He remained in this position until after Tain’s retirement, until he became involved in some scandalous event. We do know exactly what the scandal was about, Garak’s statements about himself and “Elim” in The Wire notwithstanding. As a result, he was exiled form Cardassia. However, Garak was still a member of the Obsidian order and, although he was exiled, was ordered to spy on the federation and Bajorans at DS9. Because of his overwhelming sense of duty to the state (and sense of self preservation), Garak complied. Events continued this way until the military government fell and the civilian leaders came to power on Cardassia and disbanded the Obsidian order, at which point Garak was no longer an exiled spy, but merely an exile. Gul Ducat’s subsequent seizure of power caused Garak to lose what ever standing he had left with the Cardassian government – causing him to fight against his own people during the Dominion war. While we can only guess at what Garak’s actual past was, the aforementioned scenario is a plausible explanation, for his remaining on DS9, and motivations for actions he took while he was there.

ENT - Regeneration

Regeneration is inherently flawed, because it is an Enterprise episode that revolves around the Borg. Although it has an interesting premise, the discovery of the Borg sphere that Picard shot down in First Contact, the fact remains that the existence of the Borg was not known to humanity until the 24th century when Q flung the Enterprise D into system J-25. And if my math is correct this episode took place over 200 years before that happened. How do the writers get around this? They simply omit the word Borg from the episode. This is incredibly cheap and doesn’t fix the problem. This incident was no doubt the subject of multiple logs and records in Star Fleet, which were available in Picard’s time. And since Picard and company were not stupid, it stands to reason that they would have put two and two together, and figured out that these creatures had been encountered before, but the writers apparently didn’t take this into account before writing this episode. Also, since Phlox was partially assimilated and was in contact with the collective, it seems very weird to me that he would not have learned their name, which brings me to another point, the time it takes for something to be assimilated in this episode is much, much slower than in previous shows. Since these are Borg from the same era as those shows, then why does it take their nanoprobes so much longer to assimilate people? The episode itself is not very good either, as far a Borg episodes go. If they had to make a Borg episode in Enterprise they could have at least made it a good one!

TNG - A Matter of Perspective

This episode in actually quite good, which is surprising considering that it mainly consists of the same story played over and over again with only minute variation. It is the reason for this that makes A Matter of Perspective interesting, determining Commander Riker’s innocence in a crime, through examining the suspected murder case, from the various points of view of the various witnesses. Even though this episode mainly follows the same events leading up to the “murder,” the perspectives differ quite a lot, making an interesting point about the nature of memory. A Matter of Perspective is an interesting episode because of its unique nature, showing how various perspectives of the same series of events can differ so greatly.

VOY - Demon

If I had to pick one word to describe this episode it would be boring. There are not many interesting things going on. The episode mainly consists of boring dialogue between whining duplicates, and various other crew members. Although the ship is actually in danger in Demon, the slow moving, annoying way in which this danger is presented makes this episode a very good sleeping pill. Only the landing of Voyager on the demon planet’s surface is mildly interesting; that and Neelix turning sick bay into a dormitory. Other than that Demon is nothing but boring.

The New Trek Movie

It had been announced that some bigwig director has been given the go ahead to make another Star Trek movie. While this is definitely a good thing, I have my reservations. The last time they hired a director who was not steeped in the lore of Star Trek and had no respect for it, he changed so many things that the movie tanked. While this director seems to have more respect for the franchise, I still worry that without the former cast of people working behind the scenes, the result will be something so different from what we have come to know as Star Trek that it will be hardly recognizable. So while I do hope that this movie does indeed get made, I also hope that the result is something that is recognizably ‘Trek.’