Exasperated Calculator: Star Trek & Economics

  • Trekathon 394: The Sword of Kahless (DS9)

    Worf and Dax go hunting for the Sword of Kahless with another Klingon warrior, Kor. A huge chunk of this episode is basically that episode from the Simpsons where several kids by a comic book together. They find something really precious. There’s a lot of fighting over who gets to keep it, and it ends…

  • Trekathon 393: Cold Fire (VOY)

    Kes finds a sideline as a psychic firestarter, as Voyager finds a potential way home. So far we’ve seen a few times where the seemingly light Kes shows a dark side. I’m hoping it’s real character development rather than just a grasp for a useful contrast. Here it works, as you get the sense that…

  • Trekathon 392: Little Green Men (DS9)

    Quark, Nog and Rom end up in Roswell in 1947. Grading against the curve for Ferengi episodes this was excellent – only a couple of scenes that made me want to kick things, and for the most part a fairly fun story. It’s a very silly premise, but the earnestness of the performances of the…

  • Trekathon 391: Tattoo (VOY)

    Chakotay meets his ancestors’ sky spirits. I’ve mentioned before that I don’t like the ‘native american spirituality’ stuff here. It just doesn’t feel real or deep enough, it’s a very simplistic approach to a culture. I’m also not a big fan of ‘ancient astronaut’ stuff in science fiction, so the combination of the two was…

  • Trekathon 390: Starship Down (DS9)

    The crew of the Defiant performs a tribute to the great submarine movies. With the exception of three quibbles, this was a pretty well put together episode. There was good action, good tension, good character development, and a resolution that depended on brains rather than on technobabble. The initial setup required to get into the…

  • Trekathon 389: Persistence of Vision (VOY)

    A new alien species gives everyone nightmares. Finally, a decent use for the terrible holo-novel that Janeway has used several times. Here it finally pays off as it gives a good segue into the general horror theme of the episode. Horror is tricky to pull off, particularly when you know that (a) everyone;’s going to…

  • Trekathon 388: Rejoined (DS9)

    A past lover returns to Dax’s life. It’s almost hard to believe that this episode was incredibly controversial back when it first aired, due to the same-sex kiss between Jadzia and Lenara. A lot has changed since then, and it simply doesn’t have the shock value it once did. Fortunately the episode never really relied…

  • Trekathon 387: Indiscretion (DS9)

    Kira and Dukat go looking for a ship that crashed during the Occupation. Let’s get the bad out of the way first – the Sisko/Kassidy plot was such by-the-numbers sitcom rubbish I was surprised. GIrl wants to move in, guy has problems with things moving too fast. It’s an old story, and there’s absolutely nothing…

  • Trekathon 386: Hippocratic Oath (DS9)

    O’Brien and Bashir are captured by Jem’Hadar looking for a way to escape their addiction. The setup takes a while, but the final conflict between Bashir’s desire to heal and O’Brien’s pragmatic survival plan is a nice piece of conflict. The Jem’Hadar setting doesn’t work quite as well as we don’t know them well enough,…

  • Trekathon 385: Parturition (VOY)

    Paris and Neelix work out their problems with each other while on an away mission. Another episode that is largely based on Neelix’s insane jealousy. Oh goody. That’s worked well so far. Well, I suppose it isn’t that bad. It’s very low calorie, just not much substance to it. And the puppet for the baby…