Exasperated Calculator: Star Trek & Economics

Voyager tries to rescue a ship from a singularity. Again, this is pretty good. There’s a horrible moment early on with Neelix explaining what’s happening to Kes in such a terrible way that I was surprised that his version was ‘true’ in the Star Trek world, rather than being an insight into his character. The…

In a lot of ways this is the best Star Trek premiere yet. Now that is damning by faint praise: *The Cage* and *Where No Man Has Gone Before* were shaky early TOS episodes, *Encounter at Farpoint* was largely bad, and *Emissary* was mixed at best. So, simply by clearing the bar to ‘good’, this…

I should start with a brief note: I have seen less Voyager than any other Star Trek series, including Enterprise. I’m not sure that I’ve seen even one complete episode. So this is all pretty new to me. But I start with the general knowledge that this was not a popular series with the fan…

Sisko and Bashir try to get history back on the right track. I made the mistake of thinking too deeply about this episode for a second and the logic all fell apart. Bashir and Sisko get events back without any help from Kira or O’Brien, so why should their history have changed? And shouldn’t there…

A transporter accident throws Sisko, Dax and Bashir back over three hundred years. The real problem this show has is that since airing it’s gone from 30 years in the future to 10 years in the future. It makes the ‘future’ shown a lot harder to believe. As for the rest: they undersell the new…

Lwaxana Troi visits again. There is practically nothing good in this episode. There’s a strange virus spread by Lwaxana causing people to fall in love. Much embarrassment and ‘hilarity’ ensues. This is just a painful way to spend an hour. 343 down, 394 to go.

Riker turns up on the station, and steals a ship. No, not that Riker, the [other one](http://www.exasperatedcalculator.com/archives/2010/06/trekathon-275-second-chances-tng/). There are some pretty good parts here. A TNG guest star taking advantage of the wrap of the movie. More Gul Dukat. Cardassian intrigue. Some of the best combat VFX scenes I’ve seen in DS9. But something doesn’t…

The Next Generation makes an uninspiring leap to the big screen. So, what did I think was the problem here? * There’s a long stretch (basically the first hour with the TNG crew) that feels little removed from an episode of the show. A relatively slow moving one at that. There simply isn’t the scale…

Dax falls in love with a man from a planet soon to disappear for 60 years. Oh this is bad. The romantic dialog is clunky. It’s almost George Lucas levels of bad, that’s how bad it is. It’s hard to imagine that this seemed like a good idea at any point. But as bad as…

The station’s computer system triggers a security lockdown against all non-Cardassians on the station. It’s not exactly a great work of fiction, but it’s a good fun action episode, with some nicely done light moments. And for a change from the past few episodes I had no problems with the logical plausibility. And finally, Gul…