Exasperated Calculator: Star Trek & Economics

It is tempting to describe this episode as a one-hour long excuse for why the aliens in Star Trek are just ‘humans with bumpy noses and foreheads’. Very tempting… It’s a fun chase sequence, in the tradition of a long range of movies. But once again the emotional content goes missing – Picard’s father figure…

Deep Space 9 focuses on the gamma quadrant for the first time. It’s a bit of the setting that so far has only gotten short shrift. Even here it’s just an excuse to put people in a more remote location. Each of the main characters has been getting a bit of a chance for character…

This is an interesting episode – in retrospect it’s really the first real step into the major plot arc of the series, the Dominion. But I suspect that wasn’t really intended at the time. Of course, it’s never really clear if Odo’s prisoner is just lying about everything, or if there is a grain of…

Jean-Luc and Nella, sitting in a Jeffries Tube, K-I-S-S-I-N-G. It’s an unusually quiet, character centred story – unusual but welcome. It’s a nice change of pace, and a good opportunity to provide more depth to Picard’s character. It’s also nice to have a sequel to *The Inner Light*, an excellent episode that should have some…

OK, I’m just going to point out the obvious: this is *Die Hard* on a starship. The ever-reliable TV Tropes [records over 20 TV shows that have gone the same way](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DieHardOnAnX). Everything is competently done, there are some nice individual bits, and it’s fun watching Picard in his commando mode. But there’s no heart in…

Ah, teenagers. Their rebellious ways, the staying out late and the teaching of English to Ferengi. Just can’t trust ’em… The main plot of the episode, with Quark becoming the leader of the Ferengi, doesn’t seem to know if it’s being played for laughs or not. The music and some of the actors think it’s…

Another mix of a good idea with bad execution. The ‘throw everyone into a strange game’ idea is reasonably (although not completely) novel, and could work quite well if there was more of the sort of thing you see in the movie *Cube*. But most of the individual game scenes come across as quite goofy…

Overall not bad, but by no means was this a ‘two-part’ story – there was no reason why you couldn’t have told this whole story in a single episode. The idea of Worf as a prisoner inside this strange Klingon-Romulan society is interesting, particularly the idea of Worf as the exemplar of Klingon society for…

Ah, crossover time, as the Enterprise visits Deep Space 9. Well, it’s not really a crossover. More just a couple of cameos, and some new sets. Anyway, there are two parts to the episode. The Data subplot, with him discovering his ability to dream, is nicely done, and is a clever way to build the…

OK, so as soon as the episode title came up I was assuming this was going to be standard plot 8, a dying alien transfers their ‘life essence’ into Dr Bashir. Which, as it turns out, is exactly what happens in this episode. Without the suspense of ‘who is the alien’, this episode falls very…