Month: January 2010

Another episode with an important later tie-in, with Zefram Cochrane making his first appearance. He’ll be back in the movie First Contact. He must have aged in a pretty strange way, judging from the later movie. Also, I look forward to some eventual explanation as to why he was described as “Zefram Cochrane of Alpha…

So, what was the first protagonist to recur on Star Trek? The Romulans? No. The Kinglons? No. The Mirror Universe? No. Nope, none of those, or any other of the protagonists from the good episode. No, it’s Harry Mudd. Star of what I thought was the worst episode of Season 1. Again, this episode is…

I was not previously aware that Star Trek had done a Halloween episode. All things considered, I think I preferred it when I didn’t know. I couldn’t shake the impression that the genesis of this episode was simply in ‘hey, why don’t we have a halloween episode’, rather than any of the other plot points.…

Star Trek so far hasn’t been quite as ‘preachy’ in its messages as later shows. This, however, was a bit of an exception. The ‘nuclear weapons are bad’ bit was way too direct. And a little nonsensical – there doesn’t seem to be a lot of connection in my mind between nuclear weapons and autonomous…

One thing they never really show in Star Trek is the sexual harassment contact officer. It must be a full time position on Kirk’s enterprise, with Mr Chekhov off for the compulsory class this week.[^1] Once again, Kirk shows a complete disregard of the Prime Directive. I wonder why the writers even came up with…

A Star Trek episode so iconic that it has entered into common usage. Everyone knows that your evil universe counterpart [has a beard](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BeardOfEvil). Again, the episode gives Kirk a chance for some good acting, with his brief appearance as the mirror universe Kirk. There’s also an opportunity for a lot of interesting work from the…

Ah, the good old ‘talk the all powerful computer into a logical inconsistency’ ploy. Pretty sure we have Isaac Asimov to blame for that one. If I remember the first Star Trek movie properly, it’s a bit of a plot hole there that this episode never gets mentioned there. Oh, we’re facing an earth probe…

My first question after watching this episode was ‘who on Earth is Adonais’? It’s a strange episode title, easily the strangest so far. As an episode, it’s not bad, overall. The ‘what if the gods where from the skies’ thing was actually fairly new: Erich von Daniken’s book *Chariots of the Gods* wouldn’t actually be…

Season 2 is off to a very good start. It’s not hard to imagine that the genesis of this episode was the contract negotiations with Leonard Nimoy demanding more screen time and more interesting roles. As opposed to other great examples of actors demanding their own way (*cough* Star Trek V *cough*) this one turns…

I’m going to come back after each season for a quick review, and then to produce an overall ranking, from best to worst. So, the first year of Star Trek. Was the promise there? In spades. This is really really good science fiction TV. Better than I expected really. The show settles down remarkably quickly,…