JC's Trek Talk

Throwback Thursday Star Trek Technical Manuals Star Trek technical manuals.  The favorite reads of the geekier fans and generally hard core trekkies who want to learn more about their favorite ships and technologies from an in universe perspective.  From schematics and cutaways, to diagrams of shuttlecrafts, bridge layouts, and even the inner workings of warp drives, phasers and transporters, Star Treks various technical manuals, both official and unofficial, licensed and unlicensed are a gold mine of starship design and treknology information.  Here, in chronological order, are four classic fan favorite Star Trek technical manuals. Star Trek Starfleet Technical Manual by Franz Joseph The original, the classic.  Despite its status as unlicensed and non canon Franz Josephs 1975 Technical Manual covers the original series Starfleet, the ships, the equipment, the uniforms and much more.  In additional to giving blueprints and specs for the classic TOS Constitution ...

The Worst of Star Trek Deep Space Nine Profit and Lace A potentially progressive episode in the tradition of trek, using Ferengi society to talk about gender inequality, the "glass ceiling" and women in business, totally wasted by playing the "Quark in drag" plot device as the butt of a joke.  What could have been a good "deeper message/moral lesson" episode was instead turned into a cringeworthy crossdressing comedy.   Let He Who is Without Sin… DS9's Risa episode.  Jadzia takes Worf on a vacation to Risa.  And he's miserable the whole time.  Which should have been obvious before they left.  And he bitches and complains the whole episode.  Yawn.  The episode was supposed to explore the topic of sex, but it wasn't able to deliver on that due to tv restrictions at the time.  The only thing we got resembling that was Terry Ferrell and Vanessa Williams in one piece swimsuits with their legs around each other. The Muse Bad boring A-plot abou...

Starfleet Academy Series Premiere Review Addendum: The Title Sequence Although not seen in the pilot episode "Kids These Days", the Star Trek Starfleet Academy title sequence (first seen in episode 2 "Beta Test") deserves a close look and reaction.  These are my opinions. The Sequence Heavy on the theme of growing: the seed sprouting, growing into the plant, and eventually the tree, the buildings being built.  And of course the area around the buildings is the shape of the Star Trek delta-yawn.  The tree sprouting flowers, the flower petals flying through the Academy campus/USS Athena corridors and the atrium/courtyard.  And then the show's title over a skylight window conveniently shaped like the delta.  Ending over a wide shot of the Athena landed on Earth at San Francisco.  Fade to black. The Visuals As I mentioned above, heavy of the themes of growing and building.  But that doesn't really fully tell the series story.  It doesn't really say wh...

Starfleet Academy Series Premiere Review "Kids These Days" Following a special Star Trek 60th Anniversary Intro, the episode opens with a main character giving a speech, clearly a callback to the 'Space, the Final Frontier' speeches, as well as Una's speech at the beginning of Strange New Worlds eponymous pilot.  We get a little flashback to Caleb Mir as a child that establishes Nus Braka (Paul Giamatti), a half Tellarite-Half Klingon as the bad guy and Nahla Ake (Holly Hunter) in a DIS season 3 uniform and badge.  The stardate on screen 853724.6, gives the year of approximately 3177.  Ake delivers starfleet's ruling that Caleb's mother Anisha Mir (Tatiana Maslany) is to be imprisoned, separated from her son.  Ake seems to have very little empathy for the situation at hand.  Nahla mentions Caleb going to Bajor.  Caleb escapes the "facility" by stealing Nahla's badge.  Next we see Caleb (Sandro Rosta) as a young adult with a rap sheet.  After ...

The Worst of Star Trek The Next Generation Code of Honor The poster child for the issues in TNG season 1.  Poor casting decisions and a bad story resulted in this racist and sexist episode.  The aliens of the week being Hollywood stereotypical, tribal African caricatures all played by African American actors and the sexism throughout the episode ("a woman? Your chief of security?") make this episode nearly unwatchable.  When asked about TNGs worst episode at a convention, Jonathan Frakes famously once said "One of our worst, and the one even Gene [Roddenberry] was ashamed of, was that horrible, racist piece of shit from the first season "Code of Honor". Oh my god in heaven!" Shades of Grey The clip show.  A boring, skippable episode.  I'll give this one a slight break, seeing that the 88-89 season was shortened by a writers strike, and the writers on TNG were exhausted by end of the season despite only producing 22 episodes down from 26.  That does not...

Head Canon: The Klingon ships of Discovery season 1 The very un-Klingon looking Klingon ships seen in Star Trek Discovery's Klingon-Federation war. These ships look so radically different from other Klingon designs for a good reason: these are NOT in fact Klingon ships.  These are actually old Hur'q ships, captured by the Klingons during the Hur'q invasion in Earth's 14th century A.D.  These ships were captured and used by the Klingons until eventually being surpassed technologically by Klingon designs.  The ships were then either abandoned or kept as heirlooms by the great houses, passed down through the generations.  Even in the 23rd century, some of these ships would be used as flagships by the leaders of the great houses.  The ships would no doubt be upgraded and augmented with Klingon technology over the centuries.  As the Federation-Klingon War of 2256-2257 was at least initially fought by the fleets of T'Kuvma and the great houses (on the Klingon sid...

The Worst of Star Trek The Original Series Turnabout Intruder The finale episode of The Original Series.  Kirk's old flame is jealous of his success as a starship captain, so she steals his body to become captain of the Enterprise.  Miserably bad acting, a tired boring gimmick (the body swap trope), and a premise (Lester's motivation being that women can't be starship captains) that is sexist and insulting to what the franchise stands for (and wrong: see captains Hernandez, Georgiou, Batel and Janeway among others).  It boggles the mind that Gene Roddenberry's name is in the credits as the writer of this episode.  With this episode TOS ended with a deafening whimper. Spock’s Brain "Brain and Brain!  What is Brain?!"  This episode.  The long ridiculed, goofy third season premiere.  A goofy story filled with silly, absurd, nonsensical, cringeworthy moments like McCoy remote controlling brain-less Spock and being able to perform brain surgery after g...

USS Enterprise NCC-1701 Timeline 2244 USS Constitution and USS Enterprise begin construction at San Fransisco Ship Yards 2245 USS Enterprise is commissioned, enters service, begins a five year mission under Captain Robert April Dr. Sarah Poole-April, wife of Captain April is Chief Medical Officer 2246 USS Enterprise renders aid to Tarsus IV following the massacre by Kodos the Executioner 2248 Una Chin-Riley is assigned to USS Enterprise as science officer 2249 Christopher Pike is assigned to the Enterprise as first officer under Captain April 2251 USS Enterprise's first five year mission ends Robert April is promoted to Admiral, placed in charge of the Constitution Class program Christopher Pike is promoted to Captain, placed in command of USS Enterprise USS Enterprise begins a new five year mission under Captain Pike, Una Chin-Riley is assigned as first officer, Dr. Philip Boyce is assigned as Chief Medical Officer 2253 USS Enterprise docks at Starbase 40, Ensign Spock is assigned...

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