Category: Trekathon

Voyager discovers a Borg collective made up of children. Remember [*Muppet Babies*](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Henson’s_Muppet_Babies)? I would like to make one thing very clear. Muppet Babies are the *only* time that you can possibly do that kind of ‘what were they like as children’ show. It only works because they’re so bizarre. Nothing else could possibly work. No,…

Seven of Nine is involuntarily enrolled in Fight Club. Every now and then there’s a ‘writer obsession’ I just don’t get. A good example was all the lounge numbers in the last season of Deep Space 9. Another very common one is the ‘noble art of boxing’ trope that pops up again and again -…

Returning from an away mission, some of the crew have memories of a massacre they participated in. Voyager is a very frustrating show. Sometimes it picks up the easiest plots, and puts barely any effort into turning them into shows. And then sometimes it decides to try and dig in to incredibly difficult and touchy…

The Doctor becomes a star. Sadly, not the type involving flaming gas and fusion reactions. Ouch. What a stinker. Not convinced? A few selections from the dialog: * “We want to learn more about the algorithmic expressions you call music” (which is pretty much ‘what is this thing you Humans call love” with a funny…

Voyager orbits a planet where life moves a lot quicker. Almost pure science fiction, of the Asimov and Clarke type, in a way that works well within the structure of Voyager. While I didn’t check everything with a stopwatch, the time passing on the planet always seemed to make sense, never slowing conveniently for the…

Janeway has her first holo-crush. I spent most of this episode dreading the inevitable ‘holodeck malfunction’, where the storm makes the character self aware, or they leave the Holodeck, or something like that. But it didn’t happen. Instead this is an adult science fiction show about the implications of holo-technology, and the ethics of having…

Reg Barclay is obsessed with communicating with Voyager. I loved Troi’s reaction to ‘it all started in the Holodeck. Exactly right, And Reg’s return to his old bad habits after leaving Enterprise also makes sense – he has trouble making human connections, and in a world where you can create friends in a holodeck the…

Seven of Nine downloads too many X-Files episodes and goes on a conspiracy spree. It appears that the Borg in the 24th century haven’t fully worked out the dangers of data mining. Too much data means you can prove almost any pattern, so long as you’re willing to accept a special enough case. Seven proves…

Voyager finds a link to the early exploration of Mars in the Delta quadrant. This could have been a magical episode. The component parts were all right – dipping back into the earliest days of (future) space flight, reminding us of the exploring mission that has always been at the core of Star Trek. But…

Seven awakes an alien civilisation from sleep. The title of this episode is pretty much a spoiler – if you know the legend of the dragon’s teeth, you also know they aren’t going to be fighting on the side of the good guys. So from the start you can be pretty sure that the aliens…