JC's Trek Talk

Opinions on Youtube/Patreon Trek Reactors Of late I have been watching a number of Youtubers/Patreon creators doing first time watch reactions to Star Trek episodes and movies.  Among them Jen Murray, RolyPolyOllie, Target Audience (Josh Singh and Alex Daniels), Court Reacts and bunnytailsREACTS.  There are many others.  It is great to see strong interest in the older Trek series as well as the franchise as a whole.  Jen Murray has watched all of TOS, TAS, TNG the first 7 movies and is currently watching DS9 season 4.  RolyPolyOllie has watched some episodes of TOS and TNG, all of the movies, all of DS9 and has recently started Voyager season 5.  Target Audience are watching the entre franchise in release order, they have finished all of TOS, TAS, TNG, the movies through Generations, DS9 seasons 1-3 and VOY season 1.  Court Reacts is currently enjoying TNG season 7 and DS9 season 2.  BunnytailsREACTS is currently in season 2 of TNG, after viewing ...

JC's Guide to the Final Frontier III The Search for Answers Another fistful of the Final Frontier's follies and failings General Order 1 And the award for the quickest violation of the prime directive (relative to the beginning of the ship's mission) goes to...Captain Christopher Pike.  On the first day of his second five year mission, Captain Pike revealed himself, his half-Vulcan science officer and the Enterprise itself to the natives of Kylie 279.  Granted he was sent there to rescue a captured Starfleet survey team, and granted the prime directive was already violated before that when the battle between Starfleet and the Control-controlled Section 31 forces near Xahea was observed by the Kylians (a classified event in and of itself) and granted it went peacefully and the Kylians would eventually become Federation members, and the classified nature of how the Kylians learned about warp technology let Pike off the hook anyway so... I guess all's well that ends well. ...

Dark Secrets: A Fan Story The Year 2488 Stardate 165422.7 USS Pike.  NCC-118929.  Eclipse Class long range deep space explorer. During a deep space long range exploration of the Beta Quadrant the USS Pike discovered a colony of humans on a planet called Terralysium approximately 51000 lightyears from Earth.  The crew began investigating, their away teams discovered that these humans ancestors were brought to this planet during WWIII in the 21st century.  They also discovered evidence of a previous visit to this planet by a Starfleet ship in the 23rd century, specifically a USS Discovery and Captain Christopher Pike visiting in 2258.  Being totally unable to reconcile this with historical records Captain Martin contacted Starfleet with this information.   In a nondescript office three people looked at the central holographic display showing the data sent back by the USS Pike regarding their discovery.  A dark skinned human with grey hair shook his ...

JC's Guide to the Final Frontier Volume II  More glib, blunt and possibly politically incorrect musings on the final frontier: Unluckiest in Love Possibly the unluckiest man in the Galaxy when it comes to women is a certain eternally mono-piped ops officer on the intrepid starship Voyager.  Out of politeness I won't say his name, but it rhymes with "Harry Kim".  Among his failed exploits: a holodeck character puppeted by an alien, an ex-Borg, the wrong Delaney twin, a women from a xenophobic species (including sex without medical clearance-he got reprimanded for that one) a resurrected dead crewmember, and a group of life-sucking Taresian bridezillas.  This guy has even less luck with the opposite sex than Geordi LaForge.  Stranger Things Sir Arthur Eddington (no relation to Maquis leader Michael-we hope) once said: "Not only is the Universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine".  True.  Look at the time women from Sigma Draconi...

JC's Guide to the Final Frontier In the style of Michael Jan Friedman and Robert Greenbergers' Q's Guide to the Continuum, some glib, blunt and possibly politically incorrect musings on the final frontier: Gul Dukat Gul Dukat went from a self-aggrandizing narcissist and opportunist (and serial womanizer) to self-important egotist and delusional madman.  Sounds kind of like a certain 2020's U.S. President... Some Ridiculous Interstellar Fails In 2371 the crew of USS Voyager experimented with using a new form of dilithium to achieve transwarp velocity.  The test flight of a modified shuttlecraft turned Tom Paris into a salamander.  Paris kidnapped Captain Janeway and took her to transwarp.  And they had salamander babies on a planet.  Yes, this was an episode.  The crew left the salamander babies on the planet-probably for the best (with all the fucked up implications bringing them along would have). It's almost as bad as that time Christopher Pike promoted o...

Star Trek In Memoriam 2025 Clay Hodges Actor TNG "The Vengeance Factor", "Man of the People" and "Phantasms", VOY "Repentance", Star Trek VI Rex Holman Actor TOS "Spectre of the Gun", Star Trek V Paul Capp Actor DS9 "Defiant", VOY "Caretaker" Joe Farago Actor, Stuntman Star Trek VI Bruce French Actor TNG "The Drumhead", VOY "Caretaker", ENT "The Andorian Incident", Star Trek: Insurrection Gary Jense n Stuntman TNG "The Icarus Factor" Layla Sarakalo Extra Star Trek IV Roberto Orci Producer, Screenwriter Star Trek 2009, Star Trek Into Darkness, Star Trek Beyond Patty Maloney Actress VOY "The Thaw" Clive Revill Actor TNG "Qpid" Gene Winfield Set Builder, Model Maker TOS Margaret Clark Novel and Comic Book Editor Pocket Books, DC Comics Clifton Jones Actor TNG "Redemption" and "Redemption Part II" Lorna Raver Actress VOY "Q2" Peter ...

What is Star Trek About? A Reflective Essay What is Star Trek about?  This is an interesting and loaded question.  From it's beginning with the original series in the 1960's Star Trek is and always has been about deep, thoughtful, intellectual stories about an optimistic future for humanity.   The concept as conceived by Gene Roddenberry was a future in which humanity (a united humanity) works together with other races and species in common cause.  The cause being exploration, learning and personal betterment.  A future where humanity has overcome its internal struggles and provincial attitudes and prejudices and moved beyond national squabbles, beyond poverty, disease, war, into a more enlightened future.  In the original series this was often shown in the form of episodes that were in truth morality plays, set in a sci-fi concept and a future several hundred years hence. Episodes like "Let That be Your Last Battlefield" that took a very blunt look ...

Upcoming Holiday Post Schedule Thursday, December 18: Throwback Thursday post Tuesday, December 23: Essay special post: What is Star Trek about? Thursday, December 25 (Christmas): No Post Wednesday, December 31 (New Years Eve): 2025 Star Trek In Memoriam Thursday, January 1 (New Years Day): No Post Week of January 5 2026: back to normal posting schedule Happy Holidays!

Scale and Size: a Discussion There is quite a lot of debate and vitriol online of late regarding size and scale of starships in Star Trek.   In an attempt to quell the fan debate SNW season 3s "What Is Starfleet?" documentary establishes a length of 442.6 meters for the constitution class USS Enterprise.  This numbers fails for several reasons.  As pointed out by VenomGeekMedia on a recent video discussion about starship scale and perspective, this size fails for several reasons.  1: with a crew compliment of 203 (during Pikes time) or even 430 (in Kirk's time) the accepted 289m length (TOS era) or 305m (Movies refit) is plenty big enough for the crew.  Despite what J.J. Abrams and Alex Kurtzman may think, 289m is actually quite large.  To  be frank J.J. Abrams blatant upscaling of the Kelvin Enterprise to around 750 meters long simply doesn't work.  For one, the bridge, with a window viewscreen through which we can see from the outside peopl...

Time for a little ranking fun.  Today, I’m ranking the Star Trek series finales.  Before anyone says anything, I am not counting Star Trek Prodigy 1: because I have not really watched the series, and 2: because there has been no official announcement that the series is ended.   Keep in mind that this is my ranking, you do not have to agree.  As with any ranking YMMV. From best to worst: 1. What You Leave Behind (DS9) A worthy ending for the series, wrapping up pretty much all of the remaining loose ends (granted DS9 had so many loose ends and so many story lines going that the had to start wrapping up things several episodes early).  “What You Leave Behind” is a satisfying end to the series, the Dominion War, and Sisko’s arc.  Definitely top of the list. 2. All Good Things (TNG) “All Good Things”.  Full disclaimer: I am a TNG fan first and foremost, so I am admittedly a bit biased, but I love this episode.  The only reason this isn’t at the t...

From Starfleet Historical Files Filed Stardate 57262.1, February 2380 Lieutenant Aurelan Brand, Starfleet Diplomatic Corps Captain Rylen Sh'ross, Professor Emeritus, Starfleet History, Starfleet Academy An In Depth Re-Examination of the Battle of Narendra III The Battle The battle of Narendra III.  An oft overlooked yet pivotal moment in the annals of Federation history.  The year was 2344, Stardate 21096.4.  A flight of 4 A-type Romulan warbirds crossed the border into Klingon space and attacked the Klingon colony on Narendra III.  Although uncorroborated, sources inside the Romulan Empire have since indicated that the attack was a rogue operation, ordered by the then recently-deposed Praetor, Dralath.  Responding to a distress call from the colony the Starship USS Enterprise NCC-1701-C diverted from its patrol near the Archer system and moved to defend the colony.  What happened next is unclear, as there are no first-hand accounts from the battle.  W...