Category: Trekathon

Archer mediates a dispute between the Vulcans and the Andorians. There’s a lot to like in this episode. Involving the Vulcans in a war puts them in a very strange position relative to the rest of Trek, and Shrank and the Andorians have also been consistently interesting. But we spend a lot of the episode…

Enterprise visits a medical conference. The main plot here is pretty uncomfortable stuff. We learn that T’Pol has a stigmatised Vulcan disease, which she acquired in what was essentially a rape. And Vulcan society is deeply intolerant of anything at all do with it. It’s frankly not the Vulcans that we’re used to, although I…

Trip and a random hostile alien are stranded and lost on an asteroid, and will die when the sun rises. Solid but not brilliant. It’s not exactly a new story – *Darmok* covered similar ground, as have several other episodes. And while it’s interesting to see Trip under a bit of duress, we don’t learn…

The crew has to shelter in the nacelles during a storm. This looked interesting to start with – let’s just throw the crew together in close quarters for a week, and see what happens. But the writers lose confidence in their own idea about two thirds of the way through, and we go for a…

At long last, the much maligned final Star Trek TNG movie. Rather than write a normal review this time, I thought that I’d go for a more scientific process. Here’s the minute-by-minute ‘worm’, tracking how much I ‘liked’ this film. There are some good moments, but it’s all undermined by the main protagonist character. I…

Tucker has to rescue a stuck-up princess. The vast majority of this episode is some of the most out of date crap I have seen in a long time. Tucker and a princess (a literal princess) have to escape together. She’s stuck up, she’s never been out in the real world. There’s even a ‘fight…

Hoshi thinks she’s turning invisible. Memo to the writer: no, it’s not OK to do ‘It’s all a dream’ just because it was really ‘It’s all just the transporter buffer’. It’s still a frustrating plot device. Fundamentally nothing at all that happens in this episode is important. Hoshi will be saved regardless of her actions,…

The Enterprise has a very strange time when monitoring a black hole. OK, foreboding opening, everyone is passed out except T’Pol, the ship is doomed. What’s the next item on the cliche check list? Well, I guessed ‘8 hours earlier’, and it was actually ‘2 days earlier’. A stupid way of showing the episode that…

Reed loses a communicator while on a pre-warp planet. Probably the firmest attempt at a Prime Directive story. But the little moral at the end seemed to emphasise that the biggest damage they did was actually the coverup story, not the other contamination. Should we protect people from higher technology for their own good? Perhaps,…

T’Pol and Archer go on a secret mission. It turns out that T’Pol is basically the worst spy ever, and must have pretty much been fired for cause from the Vulcan security services. Through this episode she’s easily manipulated, gullible and foolish. Not to mention that the plot seems to basically turn on what I…