Category: Trekathon

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…

Someone wants to steal the symbiont that makes up half of Jadzia. For about 10 minutes I was afraid this was going to turn into ‘Die Hard on a space station’. So the ‘symbiont kidnapping’ angle came as something of a relief. This episodes take a bit of Jadzia’s character that hasn’t been much examined,…

Captain Picard dies, and Riker seeks revenge. And gets kidnapped. I was a bit worried at the start that we were going to have another ‘being convinced they’re really not dead’ episode, but this time we got ‘Anger’ rather than ‘Denial’. I guess ‘Bargaining’ and ‘Depression’ will come along later in the series (Although snark…

Star Trek’s first 3-part story draws to a close as the station is besieged by the Bajorans. Ultimately the story fizzles out a bit. It’s an attempt to do something new and interesting in terms of Trek story telling, but the writers and producers just don’t seem confident enough about this. For instance, killing off…

Ah, the old ‘aliens appear as a crew member’s dead mother’ trick. It’s troubled episode when two people staring quietly at a screen is one of the better moments in the episode. This is a very slow developing episode (and strangely enough one without any B-plot). That’d be OK if there was a bit more…

Everything gets just a little bit worse than last time. This episode is a bit weak overall, but has some nice character moments: * The Odo/Kira scene early on where they are fighting about Kira just giving in to living is a fantastic window into their relationship, and the farce that develops is hilarious. *…

Once again alien ambassadors are very annoying as they try to learn about humanity. As you might be able to tell, I’m getting a bit tired of this story. Troi and the chocoholic, and Worf and the angry ambassador were silly and dull – trying to do too much means that nothing really worked well.…