Month: February 2010

Star Trek III gets a lot of heat from people who want to maintain the ‘odd numbered Star Trek films aren’t any good’ myth. But it’s really not that bad. There are quite a few distracting missteps. The recasting of Saavik, Scotty assimilating the contents of the pie van, the silly Klingon dog, Christoper Lloyd…

The film that saved Star Trek. I mean that seriously. While the first movie was a success, it wasn’t very good. If the second one had also been bad, then I think that the movie series would have stopped, and we never would have seen any of the other TV series. Fortunately, Star Trek II…

So, imagine that you’re a Star Trek fan back in December 1979. It’s been over 10 years since the last real episode (June 1979), 5 years since even the last animated episode. Is this a worthy return to Star Trek? Or is this Star Wars Episode One? The Motion Picture is, I think, a pretty…

It’s not completely fair to treat this as a complete season. After all, it’s only six episodes long. But it’s technically a season, so here we go. There’s nothing terrible here. But by the same token, there’s also nothing very good, certainly nothing of the quality of *Yesteryear* in season one. The biggest thing to…

So this would be the last bit of Star Trek on screen that fans would get for five or so years. And what do we get? Star Trek Babies. Actually, it’s beautifully done from an art perspective, and even the plot manages to avoid a lot of the stupidities that this kind of episode can…

The 100th episode of all Star Trek. It’s a mark that many franchises are very happy to reach. Of course, Star Trek would go on to reach it six more times (so far). The episode is off to a good start in avoiding cliche. For instance, it’s nice that the ‘ancient alien who once visited…

Hmmm. McCoy is accused of causing a plague and forced to go on trial: good. The alien is fooled into sneaking on board the Enterprise by leaving the shuttle bay doors open: bad. Post-apocalyptic looking planet: good. No one remembers to exercise basic quarantine procedures on leaving a planet covered with plague: bad. Funnily enough,…

The computer of the Enterprise goes mad and starts playing practical jokes on everyone. A pretty forgettable episode, although it’s interesting in that it has the ‘Rec Room’, which appears to be almost identical to the Holodeck of the next series. More evidence that, regardless of what Roddenberry thought, The Animated Series is part of…

This episode starts out quite strangely: an alien whose bottom half can wander off independently and pick Kirk’s pocket. I never quite worked out what he was up to. Although the idea of a composite alien is a fascinating one. And then there’s the strange super-powerful alien on the planet, who is also quite strange.…

Not a bad little story, although an example of the kind of thing that really wouldn’t work that well in a longer form. But there’s still a lot of good classic Star Trek stuff, especially in the Spock and McCoy relationship. Oh, but the pronunciation of ‘Orion’ really really bugged me. 96 down, 641 to…