Exasperated Calculator: Star Trek & Economics

That Federation-Dominion War finally kicks off. It’s the end of the season, so we’re going to get a cliffhanger. But abandoning the station to the Dominion and Cardassians is a pretty good one. As always with the cliffhanger, it’ll come down to the resolution of course – but as setups go you’d have to look…

A station on the edge of war needs a morale boost, and Jake and Nog are going to provide it. A bit over [200 episodes ago](http://www.exasperatedcalculator.com/archives/2010/06/trekathon-270-progress-ds9/) there was a nice subplot with Jake and Nog trading around the station to make some profit. The main plot here is a subtle callback to that, with them…

The good news for year 3 was that Voyager finally managed a great episode. [Before and After](http://www.exasperatedcalculator.com/archives/2012/08/trekathon-467-before-and-after-voy/) is up there with the very best of Star Trek. Unfortunately, it took almost 60 episodes, and is matched this year by two of the worst: [Alter Ego](http://www.exasperatedcalculator.com/archives/2012/08/trekathon-453-alter-ego-voy/) and [Favorite Son](http://www.exasperatedcalculator.com/archives/2012/08/trekathon-464-favorite-son-voy/). Sadly both Harry Kim episodes – the…

Voyager finds the Borg territory, as well as the alien race that is crushing them. To quote George Lucas’s masterwork – ‘there’s always a bigger fish’. In this case, the unstoppable ‘Species 8472’, whose motto is ‘the weak will perish’. That’s the setup for a pretty good action episode that still takes the time for…

A mission to salvage parts from DS9’s twin goes awry when they seem to end up in a bad horror movie by mistake. Not good. I suppose it’s a reasonably competent attempt to create a more oppressive atmosphere. But it’s really pretty silly stuff. They stretch a long way to set up the situation in…

Chakotay leads a mutiny against Janeway. Another missed opportunity. While the story here (Seska’s booby trapped the holodeck program), it would have been much more interesting to try and maintain the pretence that this is a real mutiny a lot longer – the whole episode, even. There was a really good idea, but it gets…

Eddington helps Sisko stop a final revenge attack by the Maquis. Last season we had a [great Sisko/Eddington episode](http://www.exasperatedcalculator.com/archives/2012/06/trekathon-420-for-the-cause-ds9/), followed up by an [even better one earlier this year](). Fortunately someone was taking notes about what works, because while this is really just more of the same it works really well. It’s a great pity…

The crew of Voyager is kidnapped one-by-one, to be replaced by aliens. Just didn’t make sense. Either this is a situation that should have been easily dealt with by Voyager security, or the alien race is so advanced that the elaborate plan was a complete waste of effort. Mind you, the theme of the day…

The Defiant finds a planet made up of their descendants. Helpful hint to the writes of this episode: a happy pastoral scene with the community helping to plant crops does *not* provide a basis for all of the characters to suddenly decide to act differently. The core moral dilemma was nicely presented here, but the…

A link between Humanity and a Delta Quadrant race is discovered by an alien researcher. This is a very brave episode. It’s about a third of the way into the episode before we even hear the name ‘Voyager’. The majority of the screen time is given over to a non-regular alien in heavy makeup. And…