(Memory Alpha says 728, but I count five of the two-part episodes in their syndication versions, not their original aired versions).

What did I learn from all that?

First, I became a Star Trek fan. Before I did this I was just someone who liked Star Trek. But after watching the whole thing I found I liked it a lot more than I thought I did, and liked it in a broad way. I learned to appreciate The Next Generation and The Original Series a lot more than I did before, I found flaws in Deep Space 9 that I hadn’t appreciated, and I even found some things to like in Voyager. Enterprise was the genuine surprise – I was expecting bad, I got (for the most part) good.

Secondly, I found out that there’s a lot more to being ‘Trek’ than I thought. When reading the books about Star Trek I used to find the Roddenberry philosophy stuff a bit annoying and pretentious. But having watched the whole thing, I can now see there’s a core to what it means to be Star Trek present in that philosophy. As I mentioned before, it’s most obvious when it’s missing, as in the first Abrams Star Trek, or Season 3 of Enterprise.

Thirdly, I had a good history lesson in TV. With Star Trek stretching over nearly 50 years of TV history, the changes are interesting, and tell you a lot about what’s going on with the people who run TV networks.

To finish things up, a few more lists.

First, the classic episodes. My own notes put 65 episodes down as great or better, but there are 16 that stand out for me.

Next Generation:

• Yesterday’s Enterprise
• The Best of Both Worlds
• Darmok
• Cause and Effect
• The Inner Light
• Chain of Command, Part II
• Frame of Mind
• Parallels
• All Good Things… (I)
• All Good Things… (II)

Deep Space Nine: * Duet * The Wire * The Visitor * Hard Time * Trials and Trbbleations

Enterprise: * In A Mirror Darkly, Part I

(Yes, no Original Series – there’s a lot of great episodes, but nothing that quite makes it to this level).

There were about 30 writers with more than 10 credits on Star Trek. So now we have the top 6 and bottom 6 writers:

Top 6: * Peter Allan Fields (16 credits) – The Inner Light. * René Echevarria (43 credits) – Lower Decks, I, Borg, Trials and Tribble-ations. * Ronald D. Moore (64 credits) – Yesterday’s Enterprise, Trials and Tribble-ations. * Chris Black (13 credits) – Countdown, Proving Ground * Michael Piller (44 credits) – The Best of Both Worlds * Robert Hewitt Wolfe (40 credits) – The Wire, Had Time

Bottom 6: * DC Fontana (19 credits) – This Way to Eden * Lisa Klink (15 credits) – Favorite Son * Gene Roddenberry (17 credits) – Datalore, Mudd’s Women * Maurice Hurley (12 credits) – Shades of Grey * Raf Green (11 credits) – Virtuoso * Hans Beimler (37 credits) – What You Leave Behind, His Way

This isn’t a totally fair picture, of course – not very much separates Robert Wolfe from DC Fontana. The main reason Hans Beimler comes in absolute last place is my deep and abiding hatred of Vic Fontaine. And almost all of the most prolific (30 plus credits) writers have at least one stinker and one great to their name.

Poor old Gene gets the hardest rap from this – he was a great series creator, but the episodes he wrote himself just weren’t that great.

That was 32,792 minutes – or 546 and a half hours, or just short of 23 days. Of which, by the way, around 1,817 minutes was the opening and closing credits (1 and a quarter days).

I’ve written 117,327 words on this whole thing, or about twice as many words as there are in an average novel.

And that’s it. Well, there’s still a few more things to do. There are about a dozen non-Trek things I want to review specifically in terms of the influence that Trek has had on them. And after that, well, maybe some more normal blogging for a year or two at least.

But for now, Live Long and Prosper.

Let’s start with the rankings, and then discuss:

Great:

• Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
• Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

Good, but flawed in some way:

• Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
• Star Trek Into Darkness
• Star Trek: First Contact
• Star Trek

OK, but not great:

• Star Trek Generations
• Star Trek III: The Search for Spock
• Star Trek: The Motion Picture

Plain and simply bad:

• Star Trek: Insurrection
• Star Trek: Nemesis
• Star Trek V: The Final Frontier

But wait, I hear you say. Didn’t you call the movies just a little down this page ‘not Trek’? True. But the sad fact is that the movies on average are not a great representation of Star Trek. Even the undisputed champion, Wrath of Khan, only barely hangs on to what’s at the core of Trek.

If someone wants to watch some Star Trek, start them with parts of the TV show. The movies are just not the right place.

Which makes it all the more sad that right now TV Trek is dead, and only Movie Trek is around.

For the first time since I started this, the spoiler one is in effect. Watch out, spoilers for the entire movie after the break. If you want the non-spoiler version: I liked it. Some of the flaws of the first movie are still a problem, but it feels a lot more like Star Trek overall.

I went into the film prepared to not like it. Since I wrote the review of Star Trek my feelings have hardened against it – it’s just not Trek. So opening in what felt like a classic Star Trek story was a good way to win me back. The Prime Directive, for all of its flaws, is one of the core hallmarks of Trek. The 10 minute opening sequence actually ends up being a surprisingly full account of the reasons for and against it, as we see it nearly kill Spock, and we also see why it might have been a good idea. Star Fleet also takes it more seriously than almost any other time in the series, with Kirk facing a real punishment for violating it (and for not providing a full and accurate report).

With a start that won me back, there’s then a lot I didn’t like. The initial terrorist attack and response stuff felt like material from another movie. While it was nice, and plausible, to see Section 31 pop up both too much and too little is made of it. Too much in that Section 31 has become too large a thing for its role in other series. And too little in that it’s dropped almost as soon as it’s mentioned, despite the implications for the overall Trek universe. Some bits feel forced, particularly the mind meld with the dying Pike – this seemed like something deeply out of character for Spock to do, done solely so that he could have a cool monologue later.

The Kronos sequence, together with new makeup for the Klingons, also bugged me deeply. There was no requirement for a change. And it also messes up the continuity with Enterprise (although that could be escaped with a little bit of work).

From that point the movie becomes a loving tribute to Star Trek II: we’ve got Carol Marcus, Khan, a death while restoring the warp drive. It’s nicely done, and rotated at 90 degrees to the old universe in a very interesting way.

But there’s also a ridiculous big black starship (third movie in a row, if you’re counting, and a pretty silly chase sequence through San Francisco.

There are still some major problems with the Abrams Star Trek. The continuity isn’t strong enough – just throwing in a tribble, a reference to Harry Mudd and a Daystrom building isn’t enough to make it seem like part of the Trek universe. Kirk is still off – while that makes in-universe sense, given his background, it’s time for him to become more like the Kirk of the other series. And most damningly of all, there’s too much grunt and not enough thinking. Star Trek is about brains over brawn, and there’s just too much brawn here.

(A quick side note: I’m enough of a real world science nerd that I was looking at the Enterprise engine room thinking ‘hey, that looks a lot like the National Ignition Facility’. So I was very nerded-out to see that those scenes were in fact shot there. That’s the kind of thing that tells me that Trek still has its heart in the right place).

738 down. What next?

This is a pretty good, but not spectacular, movie. There’s a good mix of action and plot, a believable enemy with understandable (if extreme) goals, good character development, and some good humour. It has some problems, most notably some ridiculously overcomplicated camera work, and a some bad inconsistencies on scale/speed of things. But generally a good fun summer action movie.

Where I struggle more is with the question of whether or not this should be considered Star Trek or not. Some elements work well – Zachary Qunito is excellent as Spock, and there are occasional glimmers of the Kirk we know in Chris Pine’s performance. More importantly, the relationship between the two of them feels as it did in the TV series. The supporting characters are less consistent – Bones is good, but Uhura, Sulu and Chekhov have been reduced to one note versions of themselves. Scotty has more promise, but still feels off.

But there are continual tonal problems. I don’t mean things like the bar brawl – that’s the sort of thing we saw in TNG, Voyager and DS9. But rather things like the clumsy Nokia product placement, building spaceships on Earth, too many new alien species – things that (Nokia aside) feel more like Star Wars than Star Trek to me. But there are some hints back to the right tone, particularly through Old Spock, and when Kirk offers mercy to the Romulans.

On balance it is more Star Trek than not, but it was a close run thing.

737 down, none to go. Well, until the next movie is released tomorrow Australia time.

So to start, this season needs to be considered in two brackets. Firstly, the five ‘standalone’ episodes: three awful (Bound, These are the Voyages… and Daedalus), one average (Home) and one OK-ish (Observer Effect). By any measure, a pretty bad year here.

But then there are the seven multi-part stories: one bad (Storm Front), one average (the Terra Prime two-parter), one OK-ish (the Augments trilogy), one good (the Andoria/Tellar trilogy) and two excellent (the Vulcan trilogy and In a Mirror, Darkly). With the exception of Storm Front, these were all about digging into the origin stories of the Trek that we know from earlier (and therefore later) series. Given my entire project, these episodes were always going to appeal to me more than the average run. The Vulcan trilogy mainly rescued the series from some continuity problems. But the mirror universe story resurrected a plot that DS9 had ground into dust.

Overall that’s the very definition of a mixed bag, with as many great episodes as there are terrible ones. There are only four other seasons with as many great episodes (TNG 4, 5 and 6, and DS9 2). But there are also only two others with as many terrible episodes (TOS 3, TNG 1). In the end it’s a nose ahead of Voyager Season 5 on the great episodes, but just behind DS9 Season 1 because of the terrible ones.

That brings the final league table to:

The very best of Trek:

• TNG Season 6
• DS9 Season 2

Strong performers:

• DS9 Season 5
• TNG Season 3
• TNG Season 5
• TOS Season 2
• ENT Season 3
• TNG Season 4
• VOY Season 4

Mixed bag:

• TOS Season 1
• DS9 Season 4
• DS9 Season 1
• ENT Season 4
• VOY Season 5
• ENT Season 1
• VOY Season 1
• TNG Season 7

Not good:

• DS9 Season 3
• DS9 Season 6
• VOY Season 6
• VOY Season 3
• TNG Season 2
• ENT Season 2
• TAS Season 1

Really just awful:

• VOY Season 7
• VOY Season 2
• DS9 Season 7
• TOS Season 3
• TAS Season 2
• TNG Season 1

Overall Enterprise is clearly substantially better than Voyager, and clearly not as good as TNG. But what about the Original Series? They have similar numbers of episodes overall (80 for TOS versus 98 for ENT), and similar numbers of excellent episodes (6 for TOS, 7 for TNG). But Enterprise never got as lost as TOS Seaosn 3 managed, so by a nose I’m giving this one to Enterprise.

That makes the final series league table:

• Deep Space 9
• The Next Generation
• Enterprise
• The Original Series
• Voyager
• The Animated Series

That’s 736 watched, 32,533 minutes, and 99.61% complete. 115,585 words written. 1 to go. Only the one movie left now. At least until the 9th.

No, Fuck You!

Signed,

Everyone who actually liked this show.

Outside of the big problem (that this is a bad episode of TNG, not a farewell to Enterprise), there are a lot of other issues with this episode. Characterisation feels off all over the place. No one has gotten a promotion in six whole years. Shran is suddenly unable to solve problems on his own. Reed appears to have given up on internal security. And then Trip dies for absolutely no purpose or benefit. And no one other than Archer or T’Pol seem to care that he’s dead. And it’s implied that this isn’t the founding of the Federation, which doesn’t match with what we were told by Daniels back in Zero Hour when we saw the same ceremony.

Truly horrible. A full third is wasted on the TNG sequences, which add to an episode in no need of further explanation.

736 down, 1 to go. That was the end of TV Trek, after 18 uninterrupted years.

Still too complicated, but the core plot makes a bit more sense this time around. But the main villain still seems like he’d be more at home foiling 007 than NX-01.

What, exactly, was the point with the hybrid baby? From any perspective? I don’t understand why Terra Prime created it, it seemed to be an unnecessary add-on to their cause. I don’t understand why they used T’Pol and Trip, there must have been plenty of other DNA sources around. And I don’t understand what the point of saying ‘she died because Humans and Vulcans aren’t compatible’ only to strike that a few moments later with ‘No, it’s cool, they can do it’. Deeply confusing and misguided.

Callbacks: We see the Mars Pathfinder, at its Carl Sagan Memorial Station – complete with plaque.

735 down, 2 to go.

The villain here is straight out of a James Bond film. He has a long monologue explanation, but more directly he has a giant flying mining facility, takes over a cannon and uses it to fire on the moon. Actually, I take that back – most James Bond villains keep it a little bit more restrained than that.

The episode is a bit of a mess all round – too many threads running, between Travis’s reporter girlfriend, Trip and T’Pol’s apparent surprise daughter, plus the Coalition of Planets negotiations. It’s just too much to be coherent. There was a clear ending to get to, the writer just seemed to throw a bit too much in on the way there.

Funnily enough, I believe this is the first episode in all of Trek to have scenes set on either Mars or Luna.

Callbacks: The first Vulcan-Human hybrid. We also see a video of Colonel Green from WW3, last mentioned in The Savage Curtain.

734 down, 3 to go.

The first half is a bit lost, with the only highlight being a Gorn fight – nice callback sure, but not the most interesting way to spend time during the episode. They don’t make nearly enough out of the mirror universe nature of the ship – it had more potential than just the cue for a mutiny by T’Pol.

But the second half picks up substantially, with Archer’s attempted coup, T’Pol’s counter-mutiny, and the revelation of who the secret mastermind really is here. Hint: her name rhymes with ‘Roshi’. Sorry, I mean ‘Empress Roshi’.

There are many great touches, but my favourite was dressing everyone in original series uniforms. The perfect reference back to the start, just as we’re reaching the end.

733 down, 4 to go.

So, remember 668 episodes ago, when the Tholians tried to steal the USS Defiant? It turns out they were from the past of the mirror universe, and this episode tells the rest of the story. In a welcome departure for mirror universe stories, there isn’t any cross-over with the ‘home’ universe at all, everything is set in the mirror universe.

Unlike DS9, we get the attractions of the mirror universe in terms of allowing the actors to have some fun, and an opportunity to work out what the ‘dark side’ of everyone is. Phlox in particular is great as a gleeful vivisectionist, but all of the counterparts work well. There’s maybe a bit too much skin in Hoshi and T’Pol’s costumes, but that is consistent with everything else from the mirror universe.

But the cherry on top of a great episode is the USS Defiant, and the full 60s style bridge. But we’ll see some more of that next time. Changing the opening credits was a nice touch.

Callbacks: The origin of the mirror universe Terran Empire. And Phlox is the inventor of the pain booth.

732 down, 5 to go.

Archer and Reed (among others) wander around the ship panting after three Orion Slave Girls, in the most embarrassing thing Star Trek has put on screen since Precious Cargo. Of all the various elements of the Star Trek universe that did not need expansion, I think we can safely put Orion Slave Girls at the very top of the list. After avoiding decon gel for so long as well.

It isn’t made any better by the fact that the situation is discussed explicitly. And it’s not made any better by one of the Orion Slave Girls turning out to be the ones in charge. This is exploitation pure and simple, and it’s not even in service of an interesting story. Insulting to everyone involved.

Callbacks: Surveying for the first Starbase. And the Gorn get a mention.

731 down, 6 to go.

Phlox may need an ethics refresher. While I agree with him on the ‘don’t kill patients’ thing, I think that engaging in biological warfare probably also fits under ‘not ethical’, even when done to save a planetary population. It was a well acted scene, but it felt just a bit too far out of character for me.

The transfer at warp sequence is both one of the silliest things Star Trek has ever bothered to show on screen, but I have to admit, also one of the coolest. It’s also about the only consequence of the ‘Trip goes to the other ship’ plot, which seemed to serve little or no purpose.

Callbacks: Interestingly, more than the Klingon appearance is explained – we also get some hints at why it is that Klingon culture was so different in TOS. And yeah, that was Section 31.

730 down, 7 to go.

Ever since Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Star Trek fans have been plagued by one question – why do the TOS Klingons look different? For a long time the accepted explanation was ‘they didn’t’, and that the TOS appearance should just be thought of as bad special effects. But then in DS9’s Trials and Tribbilations that changed, and instead it was ‘we don’t like to talk about it’. This episode is finally talking about it, and we see the first TOS-style Klingons in a long time.

Kidnapping Phlox didn’t make sense to me until the relationship with the Human augments was explained. And so it seems the simple answer to the question ‘Why did the Klingons look like that’ is that it was all Khan’s fault, in the end. Indirectly, at least.

Ah, Klingon medical ethics.

Callbacks: Other than the Klingon TOS appearance thing, is that the shadowy beginnings of Section 31?

729 down, 8 to go.

Dammit, does everyone except humanity have a secret subspecies? We might be feeling a bit left out. A mysterious, half mythical, blind and telepathic species at that. Well, I don’t suppose I can say we’ve seen enough of the Andorians to expect to have heard about them before – Enterprise is really the only series that has ever given them much screen time.

The episode itself was serviceable, but not nearly as interesting as the previous couple of episodes in this trilogy. Other than Shran and the Romulans it has little do with the previous two parts. The previous episodes were telling a broad story about the birth of the Federation – this is just a ‘hunt the ship’ episode with a couple of minor twists.

728 down, 9 to go.

One of my narrative weaknesses – I love a good origin story. It’s clear now that this season is focusing much more on the origin story of the Federation – how did those four races settle their differences, and become a united force. I’m not entirely clear on how duels to the death normally fit into those origin stories, but I suppose they are a good alternative to diplomacy, at least from an on-screen perspective.

I loved the small touch of Shran talking about the origin of his ship’s name – a great way of reminding viewers that other species have had the same journey of development. It’s little things like that which make the idea of uniting alien races together seem possible.

Callbacks: Unsurprisingly, a couple of small references to Nemesis, including some Remans.

727 down, 10 to go.

Back onto the dangerous ground of Minefield – can we have an episode about the Romulans without breaching continuity. You can see the writers struggle with it, but they have succeeded so far. The first Romulan war is meant to be very soon in Star Trek’s future history, so it makes sense to start setting it up.

The level of distrust between the Andorians and the Tellarites seems a bit too much – sure, they don’t get on. But this is more ‘Israel and Palestine’ level of conflict and distrust – it’s hard to see how they will be part of the Federation in only a few years from now.

Callbacks: The Babel conference facility, as used in the Original Series.

726 down, 11 to go. This was also the last episode to air before Enterprise was officially canceled, so this is the official beginning of the end for the show.

An ambitious episode that ultimately falls short of its goals. It was interesting to see these observers inhabit different people, and assemble their views on humanity. But it’s not at all clear what they were trying to learn from this, or why this will tell them about which species will develop towards their ideals. Actually, the biggest flaw was their methodology – if this is supposed to be a scientific observation then they’re incredibly sloppy about it.

The framing of the story in terms of these aliens completely overwhelms most of the rest of the episode, but there are some nice moments between Trip and Hoshi as they’re suffering from the virus.

Callbacks: The second most famous of Star Trek’s ‘super powerful non-corporeal aliens’, the Organians. But the Cardassians also get a quick mention.

725 down, 12 to go.

The first entirely standalone episode Enterprise has done since Bounty, 35 episodes ago. Let’s just say they should stick to the bigger stories. For a large part of this episode it danced on the edge of ‘awful’, before plunging over the edge with a dreadful final sequence of trying to rescue the inventor’s son at the end.

Also one of my pet peeves, which Enterprise has been surprisingly good at avoiding, reappears: the Barrens has no star system within 100 light years? So that means it must be at least 100 light years from where Enterprise was at the start of the episode. But a year ago we were told it takes Enterprise 6 months to travel that distance. All I’m asking for here is a little internal consistency, please!

724 down, 13 to go.

With the exception of administrator V’Las, I thought this worked very well as the reconciliation between TOS and later Vulcans and the Vulcans of Enterprise. V’Las, though, just goes too far over the edge. Maybe that’s meant to be a hint to his affiliations, but he goes far enough that the complicity of the other Vulcans doesn’t make a lot of sense.

But that’s a minor flaw in an otherwise fantastic episode. There’s plenty of Vulcan philosophy on the way out of the desert. And there’s some good character building stuff involving Shran (Enterprise’s best recurring character) and the Andorians. The final fleet battle sequence was an exciting and tense moment of a time that Star Trek doesn’t often allow.

723 down, 14 to go. Just two weeks now.

Well, it’s a good thing this appears to be the ‘Vulcan reset button’ story. Because if it wasn’t, I’d be pretty annoyed by the portrayal of the high command. They simply are not acting like the Vulcans we know from later series. Apart from being plainly based on the 2003 US leadership, they’re quite emotional, and very duplicitous. This episode has pushed that beyond the breaking point, and I’m really just hanging in there by a thread.

But as with all three parters (OK, this is only the second ever, still) this is the middle of the story – let’s see how this can be resolved.

Callbacks: T’Pau, I believe the first crossover of an actual character between Enterprise and another series (TOS, in Amok Time).

722 down, 15 to go.