Exasperated Calculator: Star Trek & Economics

Janeway finds out that three of the crew are ‘broken’, and decides to fix them. So, let’s get this straight. Voyager has a crew of around 160? They’ve been stuck in the Delta quadrant for 6 years? And somehow Janeway is only noticing now (because of Seven of Nine) that three of them aren’t very…

Voyager finds the parents of one of the Borg children. This episode puzzled me for most of its duration. Why are we spending so much time on this character who we don’t know? Shouldn’t we have more focus on Seven in this plot? And then at the end I realised – he’s a new member…

A Voyager crew member returns from the dead. So, an alien race that reproduces by reanimating the corpses of other species? Can I be the first to say – Ick! Unfortunately, the show doesn’t have the history to make this work. Imagine for a second an alternate Voyager, where some second-tier crew member that Harry…

Back to Fair Haven, as the holograms malfunction. *Sigh* I really did quite enjoy *Fair Haven*. But now we head straight into standard Holodeck Malfunction plot A – the holodeck characters become aware the crew are different, and do something about it. It’s predictable and tiresome, and begs the question ‘why don’t they reset things,…

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…