Exasperated Calculator: Star Trek & Economics

Dax discovers a dark past. So, at your workplace, everyone heads off on a road trip when someone’s sick, right? Just makes sense. After all, I’m sure no one else had very much else to do this week. Oh, and your boss is willing to blackmail a whole planet in order to save your life?…

Oh goody, a comedic episode with Klingons and Ferengi. Hooray… Two mediocre tastes that taste mediocre together. With great lines such as “We Are Klingons” and “Quark” “Quirk?” “Quark!”, how could this go right? To be honest, I didn’t hate this episode. The concepts were pretty silly, and the implementation ham handed. But it kept…

Odo learns about his people. So, first of all – the ‘reset button’ simulation that most of the crew are in for the majority of the episode didn’t bother me too much. It was a nice chance to do something a bit more extreme, and the reset at least made sense and contributed to its…

Sisko gets a new toy, and heads off to the Gamma quadrant with it. There’s a lot of ‘course adjustment’ in the show format early on. Giving the station a ship to use changes the stories that can be told, and overall seems like a very interesting idea. There’s also a new character, along with…

In contrast to TNG, DS9 had a pretty good year. They managed to avoid ‘awful’ entirely, and only three ‘bad’ episodes (*Melora*’, *Rules of Acquisition* and *Profit and Loss* – two out of three Ferengi heavy too). The other side of the spectrum was even better, with 9 good or very good, and 7 excellent…

A science project turns into a war. This episode develops in a very careful sequence. For the first 10 minutes it looks like its going to be an annoying comedy episode, with Quark and Sisko trapped on a camping trip. Then it looks like it’s going to slightly advance the ‘Dominion’ plot with a simple…

Miles O’Brien goes on trial for war crimes. Once again there’s a Federation double standard on display here. There’s a lot of lip service in other episodes about respecting other cultures, but no one at any point here suggests the Cardassians have a right to their own judicial system. We spend way too much time…

Season 7 ended well. That’s about the nicest thing that I can say about it. Otherwise the season was mostly bad to mediocre, with only 6 episodes making it to ‘Very Good’ or better in my ratings (*Lower Decks*, *Preemptive Strike*, *The Pegasus*, *Parallels* and *All Good Things* 1 and 2). Against that were two…

And now, the end of the end. Endings are hard. But they pull it off about as well as could be imagined. It’s a good story, the stakes are high, and the performances are great. It’s masterfully done. The intercuts between the different time periods become more and more complex as the episode progresses, but…

It’s the beginning of the end for The Next Generation. Endings are hard. Just ask the the writers of *Lost* or *Mass Effect 3*. So there’s a lot of pressure coming in to this episode. There’s a lot happening in this first part. Too much really. Picard is jumping through time. Worf and Troi are…