Exasperated Calculator: Star Trek & Economics

Worf goes on a mission with General Martok. Star Trek has always had fairly clear ideas about Klingon society (well, since TNG at least), but has always struggled to present them on screen in a way that makes sense. This episode goes a long way towards making it work. Sure, there’s a brutal hierarchy to…

The Doctor decides to simulate a family for himself. A strong finish doesn’t make up for a weak start. This story starts off in very predictable and dull territory – oh, the Doctor has made a family that’s far too happy and nice, but let’s make it more realistic. There’s nothing new here, it’s been…

Quark goes home to find his mother starting a relationship with the Grand Nagus. Remember a couple of episodes ago when there was a half decent Ferengi episode? It wasn’t a trend, it was an attempt to lull you into a false sense of complacency. So that this piece of absolute garbage can hit you…

Kira works out her daddy issues with her Cardassian ‘father’. Meh. Tried for deep and moving, just didn’t quite work. The Kira part of the episode just had some missing element, nothing I can put my finger on, that kept things from coming together properly. The more interesting part of the episode was Dukat and…

Kes becomes unstuck in time, from her death back to birth. After 3 seasons and 63 episodes Voyager finally pulls a really episode together. It’s not perfect, but it’s a good story well told with good Science Fiction elements. It even gives us some hints about things that will be happening fairly soon. The main…

Quark becomes a weapons dealer to get himself out of debt. This is really pretty dark stuff. Quark gets into the business of selling weapons across the quadrant, and then in order to get out of it sets up a trap to kill his boss, his cousin, and two warring leaders from another planet, because…

Odo falls in love with a bad girl. Relationships are tricky, especially when you’re dealing with someone like Odo who has (due to the makeup) limited facial responses, and a quiet approach to things. It makes the technical challenge of making us feel like the relationship is real very difficult. In the past it’s failed,…

Harry turns out to be a member of a skanky cuckoo species. This season voyager has been swinging between ‘average’ and ‘stinker’. This is another stinker. The *idea* of one of the crew being transformed into another species has a lot of potential – we could have seen a lot of interesting stories told. But…

Tuvok and Neelix are stuck on an away mission together. This is mainly another attempt at the Tuvok/Neelix relationship story that so miserably fell flat on its face in previous episodes, mainly because Neelix came across as an intolerant jerk. Here Tuvok is made to look like the intolerant jerk, which strangely enough makes a…

Dr Bashir is selected as the template for the Long-Term Medical Hologram. There is a lot of interesting stuff in the story – Julian’s relationship with his parents, a new insight into the Federation and the things they do. But the plot hinges on a scene so stupid that I had to cover my eyes.…