Exasperated Calculator: Star Trek & Economics

Worf goes on trial for destroying a civilian transport It’s nice to see some narrative courage. The ‘turn to the side and answer during flashbacks’ was a bold thing to try. I found it clunky and annoying, but hey, they tried something at least. On the other hand, there was a Klingon culture thing here…

A spatial anomaly creates another Voyager. But only of them can survive. This is a good example of what Voyager does best. There’s a fantastic action sequence in the opening sequence, taking advantage of the two ships to kill off quite a few people in surprising fashions. The remainder of the episode takes full advantage…

Neelix uncovers a spy on board as he tries to do the “Good Morning Vietnam” thing. All that careful plot laying of the last few episodes gets used up all at once, as we find up what Paris was up to, and the traitorous crewmen is discovered. The main payoff is in the misdirect, where…

The Doctor falls in love with a patient. Don’t date your patients. It’s a pretty fundamental rule of medical practice. I’m pretty sure it applies to holograms too. But it doesn’t get mentioned once, so keen is everyone to do the ‘hologram learns how to love’ plot. It’s a nice plot, done well, but not…

Sisko’s position as the Emissary is challenged. The ’emissary’ arc is an interesting one, with Sisko’s acceptance of his role growing. But here rather than come from internal growth, greater acceptance is ‘forced’ by the external events. His reactions all make sense, I just don’t see how we get from ‘I have to be the…

Q visits with the crew of Voyager. This was a pretty good story. It’s a case of not even trying to hide the real world issue (assisted suicide), but it’s handled for the most part with taste and care. Jon de Lancie is great as usual with Q, and it was nice to see a…

Quark and Rom re-enact the [WorkChoices](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WorkChoices) debate. Pretty good stuff. So long as you’re willing to accept that the Federation (or Bajorans) don’t impose many laws on things like labour contracts, it is an interesting conflict. It makes sense that the Ferengi would not be very pro-union. And it’s a nice development to finally see…

B’Elanna has to disarm an old weapon she made. I don’t mind massive logical leaps to get a story started, but this one doesn’t work. So the weapon got to the Delta quadrant by the same way Voyager did? But wasn’t the Caretaker looking for organic material? No way he’d have grabbed the Dreadnought. (Disengaging…

Worf’s brother has trouble coping with his new status in life. Probably the best Klingon culture episode I’ve seen. Usually it’s all ‘Hulk Smash’, but here we see the other side of it. Worf is particularly good as the man with no home, but Kurn is pretty strong as well. The main weakness is a…

Tuvok investigates a murder on board Voyager. Interesting, but something about the two main performances *just* missed for me. Suder is good, but not quite creepy enough. And Tuvok doesn’t quite get the feeling of rage. Although the long scene in the sickbay is excellent, the rest kind of almost but not quite gets it.…