Exasperated Calculator: Star Trek & Economics

Sisko meets a woman who was never there. There wasn’t anything particularly bad about this episode, but it fell flat in almost every direction. There was an *incredibly* interesting science fiction premise here – if a species biologically mates for life, what implications does that have (moral, practical) for people of other species. Is it…

Speed limits come to the Star Trek universe. This feels like an episode that went very badly wrong somewhere in the writing process. There’s an awful lot of padding in the first half, and the story of the researchers happens so quickly that it doesn’t make much of an impact. Then we spend a little…

A crime committed during the occupation comes back to light as someone tries to kill Quark. The first major episode to feature Odo, and it’s a great story. The flashbacks to the occupation are very well done, giving us the first look at what the station was like before. The actual mystery is a little…

Picard and Crusher are captured and inadvertently joined telepathically. The best parts of the episode were the Picard/Crusher scenes as they came to terms with their new mental link. Perhaps they got there a little too quickly, but the adaptation was fun to watch. The final scene between them was also nice to see, with…

Some Like It Hot takes on a Ferengi twist. Overall an offensive and misguided episode, focusing on the single most offensive part of Ferengi culture. I simply can’t believe that in Gene Roddenberry’s future we’d tolerate aliens who treat women like this. The rest of the episode doesn’t help. I find the Grand Nagus tiresome,…

Q: How do you make a tolerable Lwaxana Troi episode? A: Make it not a comedy. Oh, and make her unconscious for at least half the episode. I don’t want to go over board here – the episode isn’t great by any means. The conceit of ‘what happens when a telepath suppresses a trauma’ is…

Deep Space 9 has to adjust to the Aliens with Disabilities Act. This episode was well constructed technically, but something rubbed me the wrong way. I think that we’ve moved a long way in our understanding of disabled and disadvantaged groups, and so now Bashirs naive attempt to ‘cure’ Melora comes across as more arrogant,…

Data’s nightmares show that something is going very wrong, with the ship or with him. I loved a lot of this episode. The dream imagery is wonderfully filmed, and it has that kind of stra be menace that nightmares often have. And there are some good moments, like Picard hovering a bit too much during…

An emotional story of war orphans is tied up, as it often does, in espionage and intrigue. I found this episode nearly flawless. The only downfall was the slightly arch ‘drawing room reveal’ with Bashir at the end, but that’s a minor quibble at best. The story of the Cardassian orphan confused over their identity…

Riker and Picard play pirates as they try to stop a renegade Vulcan. Once the Macguffin gets upgraded from ‘pot shards’ to ‘world destroying weapon’ things pick up a lot. With something to care about in the plot, it begins to make sense that Riker and Picard stay on the ship rather than making a…