Category: Trekathon
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Trekathon 159: Who Watches the Watchers? (TNG)
I know the moral of this episode was supposed to be ‘gosh, isn’t the Prime Directive wise’. But that wasn’t my interpretation. I’d suggest the opposite – the episode shows that the ‘cultural contamination’ is more a result of not controlling contact, not the contact itself. Anyway, leaving aside my Prime Directive problems, I was…
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Trekathon 158: The Survivors (TNG)
Ah, it’s the super-powerful alien again. Well, I suppose it had been quite a while, really (The Royale was the last, I think). The episode is a bit of a throw back to The Original Series in a lot of ways. It had echoes of *The Man Trap* and *Metamorphosis*, but also still had its…
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Trekathon 157: The Ensigns of Command (TNG)
So the Enterprise has every imaginable type of scientist on board, but not even a single ensign with a legal background? That seems short sighted.[^1] So we end up with the Enterprise command staff looking through the treaty text on their own, trying to find a loophole. Seems like a pretty bad idea to me.…
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Trekathon 156: Evolution (TNG)
And on to Season 3. The ‘Wesley nearly destroys the ship’ thing was a nice change from the earlier ‘Wesley saves the day’, but it bugged me that no one ever seemed to mind that a dangerous experiment had gotten out of hand. Surely a stern talking to, at least, is called for in this…
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Trekathon Season Review: The Next Generation, Season 2
Season 2 is a pretty polarised year. As opposed to Season 1, which was bad with the (very) occasional hint of good, Season 2 seemed to alternate between bad and good. There are some very dreadful shows (The Royale, Shades of Gray), and some of the very best of all time (Q Who, The Measure…
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Trekathon 155: Shades of Gray (TNG)
Everybody loves a clip show. OK, no they don’t. No one ever likes a clip show. This episode isn’t dreadful until it gets to the clip show bit – a bit by the numbers, but still not the worst thing ever put to film. The clip show itself is dreadful – poorly organised reminders of…
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Trekathon 154: Peak Performance (TNG)
Sharing your episode title with the subject line of spam I’ve received recently isn’t a good start. Still, I thought this episode was very good up until the Ferengi turn up. That was enough to push the episode from ‘very good’ to ‘good’, but even the Ferengi weren’t as awful as previously here. Overall the…
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Trekathon 153: The Emissary (TNG)
Another strong episode, this time with Worf getting a girlfriend (and also a little bit of time in the big chair). Klingon culture struggles along – apparently Klingon mating rituals are largely based on 1980s romantic comedies, where the two main participants fight until they realise they’re in love. I was a little sad that…
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Trekathon 152: Manhunt (TNG)
Poor Star Trek fans. After the shock of how bad Star Trek V is, what do they get when they turn back to the TV? A Lwaxana Troi episode. I do have to admit – I enjoyed this episode a lot more than the previous one. The first appearance of Mrs Troi was played just…
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Trekathon 151: Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (MOV)
The famously bad fifth movie. And while it’s bad, it’s really bad in an ‘inept and dull’ kind of way, rather than the sort of transcending badness that some things manage. A lot of the problems come from the film trying to be light and funny, but with a group of people who just aren’t…