The shuttle bringing Freeman, Rutherford and Shax to the surface has a profile and colors resembling a Tatooine landspeeder, and the staff handling planetary landings were uniforms resembling Imperial ones and speak in pseudo-British accents.
Also, the background music when that shuttle landed sounded like it came straight from a Star Wars movie.
I wish there was a version of the calendar with only canon ship classes. Not a big fan of most non-canon designs.
Voyager is alright. It’s just very uneven. What drags it down is that the producers only very rarely took big swings that had a lasting impact on the characters or the show. Voyager excels at being episodic television. There are a bunch of stinkers (as there are on any TV show) but when it’s good, it’s really good. It has some of the best Trek episodes.
Maybe use an episode guide with ratings (for example Jammer’s Reviews, Ex Astris Scientia or IMDb) and skip the episodes with low ratings.
However what I don’t think is justified is the label as one of the worst Star Trek episodes. Is it nuts? Yes. Is it annoying that they have the technology to bring everyone back to Earth and simply de-lizard them after the trip, and then it’s never brought up again? Also yes.
But it’s nowhere near the worst episodes because it’s neither offending and un-Star Trek (like TNG’s Code of Honor) nor is it boring. It’s actually pretty entertaining for the first 35 or so minutes. It just goes off the rails at the end.
I think you’re not too far off.
Here is an excerpt from The Fifty Year Mission (book 2) by Mark A. Altman and Edward Gross. I highly recommend those books. They are super insightful about the behind-the-scenes stuff from the first 50 years of Star Trek.
I mean, DS9 wasn’t as popular as TNG back then – both in terms of ratings and fan reception. Many considered it the black sheep of the Trek family. Berman focused on Voyager. So it was chrystal clear to every fan with even half a brain that DS9 would never get a movie. Perhaps Voyager had a tiny chance but by the time it concluded its run viewership had been in steady decline, and then Nemesis tanked.
Friendly reminder that the initial fan reaction before TNG aired was very negative.
And look how that eventually turned out.
Give the new show a chance before condemning it.
The reunification of Ireland and Northern Ireland will also take place next year.
I’m not good with scores so I’ll just explain how I rate Discovery.
Back in the 90s/00s I never understood the hate that some Trek fans had towards a new Trek series. Every time a new series premiered there was a large (or at least very loud) chunk of the fanbase hating on the new series. I liked them all. Some more, some less. But I enjoyed them all for being Star Trek and watched them all countless times. (same goes for LD and SNW)
To put that in perspective:
I never felt inclined to rewatch a single episode. It’s not that all of them are bad but there’s just nothing about them that makes me rewatch them. Especially since 90% of them are embedded in season-long story arcs. (same with Picard, although I do plan to rewatch season 1 and 3 at some point)
At first I liked Discovery for trying something new. I’m not one of those fans who wants a new Trek show to do exactly the same thing that other Trek shows have done before. You need to do new things if you want to keep a franchise alive. But when you do season-long story arcs you need a plan. And Discovery didn’t have that. It was quite obvious both in seasons 1 and 2. Season 2 was at least helped by Captain Pike. It’s hard to rate those two seasons because there were so many ups and downs. But in total I’d say the first two season were better than the 3rd and 4th seasons.
Season 3 was a chore to watch. Jumping to the future was like jumping the shark for me. There’s not nearly enough world-building to make that future interesting – and how can there be, when there’s only 13 episodes and all of them are part of a story arc.
Season 4 was okay. I give them credit for doing something big with non-humanoid and really strange aliens. But this story could have been told in the 23rd century with minimal changes. So why again are they in the future?
In short: Discovery is okay-ish but nothing more.
Lower Decks basically did a pilot episode for that.
His Shatner impression is on point.
I found the others terrible too but this one was actually funny. I loved how they made fun of “These are the Voyages” at the beginning.
It’s a bummer that they got rid of the skant so quickly. I wonder if today’s fashion would be different if Star Trek continued to show all genders wearing pants or skirts during the height of its popularity in the 90s. Maybe it would have been somewhat normalized for men to wear skirts too.
My vote goes to DS9 season 2 which is severely underrated. Althouth I like the latter half of DS9 more – mainly because it had Worf in it, and Worf is the best {{:-) – season 2 lay the foundation for DS9’s later success.
The whole season is a huge step up from season 1 which often felt like TNG on a space station. In season 2 the writers began to really try out new things. It starts with a never-before-done 3-part episode, then does some more great world-building in “Cardassians” and “Necessary Evil”, then slowly builds up a mysterious force in the Gamma Quadrant by the name of “the Dominion”, then achieves the feat of making Bashir likeable in “Armageddon Game” upon which his friendship with O’Brien is built, then does a couple of standalone highlights like “Whispers” and “Blood Oath” (in which Kor, Koloth and Kang return! which in today’s crossover-ridden landscape would be just a footnote but back then it was a huge deal), then lays the foundation for the Maquis on Voyager and also does more with the Maquis then Voyager ever will do, oh and in the same episode spells out the show’s leitmotif “it’s easy to be a saint in paradise”, …
… and we’re still not done yet because the rest of the season is a total banger: “The Wire” is a trip into Garak’s psyche, “Crossover” brings back the mirror universe, “The Collaborator” is a big step in making Kai Winn one of the show’s main antagonists, “Tribunal” is the OG O’Brien-must-suffer episode, and “The Jem’Hadar” introduces the Dominion literally with a huge bang by blowing up a Galaxy Class ship. You know, the ship class that we just spend 7 years with and which escaped countless foes unscathed.
Seriously, never skip season 2 on your re-watch. Don’t listen to anyone who says that “DS9 only gets good once the Defiant shows up”. No no no. This is the real deal.
I agree. The episode isn’t perfect but the first ~35 minutes are decent.
I’ll never understand why it’s considered to be the worst Star Trek episode. Yes, it has a weird ending but Star Trek had plenty of weird episodes (which aren’t considered bad). What I find much worse are episodes like TNGs Code of Honor that are insulting, or episodes that are downright boring like SNWs The Elysian Kingdom.
BDSM pheromone dungeon
In the subtitles it was spelled “scentuary”. Neat little pun.
That’s how Vulcans must have felt during First Contact with humans. 😖
Oh, I forgot about The Nth Degree. That’s a good one.
Here’s one from each show:
TOS: A Piece of the Action, and the more obvious answer The Trouble with Tribbles
TNG: First Contact (the episode, not the movie) had some funny moments, but it’s hard to pick a funny TNG episode
DS9: Little Green Men
VOY: Bride of Chaotica!
ENT: Two Days and Two Nights
DIS: – (did they even have a single funny episode?)
PIC: same as DIS
LOW: pretty much any episode, but my favourites are “wej’Duj” and “I, Excretus”
SNW: Charades (probably the funniest out of all the Live-Action episodes I’ve listed, in terms of outright comedy)
Enjoy!
A lot of great bits in this episode.
A Steamrunner class! I love the ships introduced in First Contact. And we even got to see its bridge.
The music! Straight out of Star Trek II.
And the visuals too! Especially the nebula fight, the the Genesis Device glare and the creation of the planet.
The Bomb Defusion Paywall was a nice touch too.
And Boimler did indeed make a great captain.
The ending was a bit rushed though. Neither Mariner nor Boimler had something to say to Tendi? That was a bit weird.