Exasperated Calculator: Star Trek & Economics

Sisko leads a mission to the Klingon home world to do something about that whole ‘Gowron is a changeling’ thing. OK, exactly what is Sisko’s job supposed to be here? On paper he’s the commander of the station, which would seem to be a full-time job. But he heads off all the time to command…

The Doctor breaks down, and Voyager does some trespassing. Better again, but still missing something. The plot of the Doctor breaking down was interesting, and it was clever to pair that with crises elsewhere on the ship. But the only emotional content was from Kes and the Doctor – we never got an impression anyone…

Tom and Harry get themselves thrown in one of those ‘throw away the key’ jails. Fairly average stuff, but nothing really major fell down here. The story was a bit old, but the surgical modifications to make people angry added something new and a bit darker for Harry. And we learnt something about Harry and…

Tuvok suffers from a mental condition that can only be solved by watched *Star Trek VI*. Good idea: let’s celebrate the long history of Star Trek by putting the current series characters together with the old series ones. Bad idea: getting hung up on the fact that Tim Russ, who plays Tuvok, was an extra…

The day is saved by two ex-cons and a hologram. Well, it looks like we’re done with the Kazon at least. This episode wraps that story up, killing Seska off and seemingly removing the imperative to hunt down Voyager. Good riddance I say, they were boring. And it made no sense – Voyager should be…

Last season I was getting pretty worried about the trend in Deep Space Nine. Fortunately this year turned things around substantially. We’re still not back to the stellar heights of Season Two, but quality is back. The two best episodes of the year, *The Visitor* and *Hard Time* are some of the very best things…

Odo catches a strange Changeling disease. This episode would have made a lot more sense if it had happened about halfway through the season. The major story arcs have been almost immobile, and the two big moves from this episode (Gowron might be a changeling, Odo is now human) could have helped a lot with…

A whole bunch of Ferengi stuff. You’re not going to make me remember it, are you? This episode manages to cover Ferengi Contract Law, Ferengi Religion, Ferengi Funerals, and, most importantly of all, Ferengi Boredom. There is little interesting in the story, and then it ends with a blatant ripoff of *It’s a Wonderful Life*.…

After 42 episodes Voyager is yet to produce a single great episode. At the same point into their runs every other series had at least one, normally more. It generally stays out of truly awful (with the exception of *The Thaw* this year), but never really clicks. Mediocrity at work. There was no common thread…

Voyager loses a game of cat and mouse with the Kazon. The Kazon have never been an interesting villain. Seska has helped a little bit, but not enough. They just don’t have enough dimension to them. That makes the events here pretty shocking – all they needed as slightly better tactics to capture the ship?…