JC's Trek Talk

Opinions on Star Trek's Starfleet Uniforms Part 1: TOS and the movies Something I have been wanting to do for some time is to run through every main uniform style (Starfleet uniforms) in the franchise and discuss the positives, negatives and my opinions.  Since this is the 60th anniversary year for the franchise, I decided that this would be the perfect time to take look at the haute couture of Starfleet across 60 years of shows and movies.  So without further ado: The pilot uniforms (The Cage, Where No Man Has Gone Before) William Ware Theiss originals.  Very simple, perhaps overly so.  The shirts with the ribbed collars are almost sweatshirt-like.  The gold and tan shirts are a bit close in color, sometimes they're hard to tell apart.  The women have more fitted shirts with larger, baggy collars. TOS uniforms The classic.  Gold, Red, Blue.  Simple and iconic.  And sometimes simpler is better.  The bell-bottomed pants are very sixties, ...

TNG Episode Tier List Season 3 49 The Ensigns of Command It’s an ok episode.   A decent Data-centric story, would not really be that memorable if not for the Sheliak.   B   50 Evolution Dr. Stubbs’ probe and the nanites.   It’s decent.   Some good Wesley stuff, also it’s good that we get an explanation for where Dr. Crusher was been.   Overall: B   51 The Survivors Ehh...is ok, not a bad episode, but not particularly memorable.   Mediocre really.   B   52 Who Watches the Watchers A good Prime Directive story.   Sets the mold for later stories like Star Trek Insurrection.   Underrated.   A   53 The Bonding Interesting, I kinda wish we had gotten some kind of follow up on Jeremy Aster, the boy who Worf bonded to his house.   A   54 Booby Trap People give this one a lot of crap for Geordi and Holo-Leah Brahms, I thought this one was ok.   An interesting take on the holodeck.   B   55 The Enemy A ...

Episode Spotlight The Best of Both Worlds Parts 1 and 2 Stardate 43989.1.  Responding to a distress call the USS Enterprise orbits Jouret IV, one of the Federations most distant colonies.  An away team consisting of Riker, Data, Geordi and Worf beam down to find the colony completely gone, only a giant crater remaining.  The Enterprise is joined by a ship carrying Admiral J.P. Hansen and Lt. Commander Shelby from Starfleet tactical.  Starfleet believes that the Borg are responsible for the disappearance of the colony.  Shelby points out the crater is almost identical to what the Enterprise detected on the planets in system J-25 (see Q Who?)  Shelbys job is to find any kind of defenses against the Borg.  Riker shows Shelby to her guest quarters.  Admiral Hansen tells Picard that the captaincy of the USS Melbourne is available and is being offered to Riker.  In Shelby's quarters Shelby tells Riker what she's looking for to confirm the Borg are ...

TNG Episode Tier List Season 2 27 The Child Is ok, it’s a reused script written from Star Trek Phase II.   Mediocre.  B   28 Where Silence Has Lease The Nagilum episode.   It’s ok, has a bit of a "horror" aspect to it with the USS Yamato bit.   B   29 Elementary, Dear Data The Sherlock Holmes episode.   Also my all-time favorite Holodeck episode.   A   30 The Outrageous Okona William O. Campbell was good in this one, storyline was mehh, the Data/Holodeck Joe Piscipo stuff just came off as cringe.   All in all forgettable.  C   31 The Schizoid Man It’s ok, not by any means a favorite, Brent Spiner does some good acting in the episode.   B   32 Loud as a Whisper I liked this one.   The fact that they actually had a deaf actor to play a deaf character, and how they used the disability as a plot point.   Very Trek, and a good episode.   Underrated.   A 33 Unnatural Selection Great episode for Dr. Pulas...

Hot Take TNG's Masks Hot take: I actually like TNG's episode Masks.  The one with the ancient alien archive transforming the Enterprise into parts of its long dead civilization and Data taking on the personalities of people from the civilization.  People shit on this episode for the perceived campiness of Brent Spiner's acting and the characters he's portraying.  I disagree.  I think it really showed Brent Spiner's range as an actor and skill at playing different characters and rapidly switching between characters (Eehat, Masaka's father, Masaka, etc).  The overall concept of the episode, an alien archive from a long extinct civilization reveals it's contents by transforming the Enterprise (and Data) is neat, a sort of space "lost library of Alexandria" story.  An interesting, fun twist on learning about new civilizations, and a great chance to see Picard in full archaeologist mode.  The idea of Masaka and Korgano, the two rulers, the "sun...

TNG Episode Tier List Season 1 1/2 Encounter at Farpoint    The pilot.  I personally don't think it's that bad.  Probably biased because I'm a TNG fan.  A Tier 3 The Naked Now  This one always got a bad rep because it was so close to the TOS episode.  I thought it was a good thing.  Really ties the two series together.  A Tier 4 Code of Honor Uggh.  Bad.  Just bad.  Racist, sexist episode, even without all of that it would have been mediocre at best.  As it is: total crap.  F tier 5 Haven  The one where we meet Troi's mother and Troi is supposedly getting married to her betrothed. C Forgettable.  There's a reason I never watch this one 6 Where No One Has Gone Before   Definitely A tier.  Very underrated episode.  I'd almost say one of the best of the season. 7 The Last Outpost   The first Ferengi episode.  Not a bad episode, but there are definitely much better.  Nothing th...

Episode Spotlight ENT's First Flight Enterprise has detected a nebula which they think contains dark matter.  Excited, Archer wants to examine it closer, using a shuttlepod to duplicate a Vulcan experiment to excite the dark matter with metreon particles.  Archer then receives a message from Admiral Forrest: his old friend and fellow NX test pilot A. G. Robinson has died in an accident.  In the shuttlebay Archer prepares to go on the shuttle alone, but T'Pol arrives and insists on going with him, citing ship regulations.  After launching the shuttle and moving to the first set of coordinates T'Pol asks Archer about Robinson, having heard some details from Trip.  At first reluctant Archer finally tells her that he and Robinson were in the NX project together as test pilot, and that they both wanted to be the first to break warp 2.  In a flashback to 2143 Commander Archer meets with Commodore Forrest to discuss warp reactor simulations.  Forrest tells hi...

Coming Soon Season by season tier lists of all episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation.  These will obviously be a bit-ok maybe more than a bit-biased as I am an old school TNG fan (TNG was my first trek series, and I still contend that is the best trek series.

Star Trek Trivia Quiz Delta Answers 1. Robert Picardo as the Doctor (EMH) 2. Delta Quadrant 3. Commander Sonak 4. Terra Prime 5. Altimid 6. Ni'Var 7. Craft 8. Tulaberry Wine 9. Landru 10. Valdez, Alaska 11. The Narada 12. Nacene