Casual Trek - A Star Trek Recap and Ranking Podcast

We’ve got our first guest star in today’s episode as we get the nonstop machine of comics crowdfunding Matthew Hardy to join us in talking about the First Lady of Star Trek: Majel Barrett! Majel’s been in so many episodes, hell, so many SERIES of Star Trek over the years, so there’s a lot to work with here. We’ve got shockingly little Majel in the TOS episode that ostensibly is a spotlight focus o...

We’re feeling a bit musical in today’s episode of Casual Trek. Charlie’s been eager to crowbar in a musical episode after realising it’ll get another episode of Picard ticked off our list, then Strange New Worlds provided us with the perfect opportunity to talk music! We’ve got three episodes all about music. First up is Voyager with a classic Hubris of The Doctor episode where some Space Karens g...

It’s time for another Star Trek movie! We’re looking at Wrath of Khan, the supposed best Star Trek movie, which means we’ll also be watching the Star Trek episode which introduced us to 90’s icon Khan Noonien Singh, a man who thinks himself Kirk’s greatest nemesis. Will he be? And where will these episodes rank on our big list? 18:56 The Original Series: Space Seed 55:15 Star Trek II: The Wrath of...

Oh my god it’s been a year already! We decided after a self-indulgent episode celebrating our birthdays that we should do the same for the podcast. Things get unscripted, but we cover things like: Friends call each other out on weird ideas and make them follow through Marathoning television shows The things that surprised us with Trek Living in a post-scarcity world Our favourite characters in eac...

It’s Miles’ birthday and we’re here to celebrate it with a thematic episode of Casual Trek. And you know what? It’s also Charlie’s birthday, so we’re going to celebrate both hosts with a special episode dedicated to some of the most memorable Mileses and Charlies in Star Trek! Miles O’Brien is a fantastic member of not one but two crews in Star Trek and we’ll get to see both those incarnations her...

Did you know that some planets in Star Trek might not have the best laws? Especially utopian ones which are suspiciously wary of joining the Federation. Today we’ve got a trio of planets that are up to no good, from an algorithmic war, a fuck planet with some deadly attitudes about lawns and a sky city which will fail if you don’t plug a child into it for… some reason. 09:54 Star Trek: The Origina...

SYNERGY! Yes, it’s time to try and coordinate an episode of Casual Trek with the start of one of the new shows. Specifically it’s Strange New Worlds, a show which has been fantastic so far. Being Charlie and Miles, we do have some difficulty keeping to the point and ultimately this is more of an episode where we talk about Balance of Terror and how very good it is. 11:48 Strange New Worlds “A Qual...

It’s time to call out some Bad Admirals! Why do admirals go bad in Starfleet? Oddly enough one of these episodes will get into it. We could have picked so many episodes for this one, and we’ve got some interesting choices including a couple of recent Trek outings. We also talk about the awkward conversations on Voyager once Janeway de-Tuvixed Tuvok and Neelix for some reason and we cancel JL Picar...

It’s time to get assimilated into the new episode of Casual Trek! We’ve got some great episodes all about the ominous Borg. We’ve also got John DeLancie lounging on things and seeing a young Q here, wouldn’t Andy Samburg be a perfect Q? I’d love to see if he could be as ominous as John DeLancie, and we know he’d be good at the capering lunacy. We get some Frankenstein vibes from Drone which was no...

What’s less casual than the Maquis? This episode we’re watching our first non-pilot two-parter with “The Maquis” which introduces some Federation rebels, something you didn’t often see apart from in the occasional colony as a one-off problem. Well, these folks are going to be a bit tricky both as a problem and an existential threat to the concept of the Federation. At least, that’s the potential o...

After having to sit through Tuvix, Miles and Charlie are feeling a little burnt out on Star Trek, so decided to talk about a book beloved to both of them- Lord of the Rings and they don't care how much they offend Tom Bombadil to do it! An attempt to talk about the book seriously briefly occurs before it devolves into the pleasures of saying the name 'Fatty Bolger,' Miles' school having a Tolkien...

Welcome to this inaugural meeting of the Brad Dourif Appreciation Society. Today we’re… wait, wait, that’s a different podcast. A private podcast. We will be talking about Brad Dourif here, but we’ll also be talking about a number of other things including war criminals and Tuvix! Yes, we’re ripping that plaster off and talking about the merging of a good and awful character into a somehow worse c...

Hello and welcome to a very special episode of Casual Trek! We talked about games in Star Trek last episode, now we’re playing a Star Trek choose your own adventure style game! Voyage to Adventure is an old book and quite a weird one, being not one adventure but several short ones in different duty stations on the Enterprise. Revel in my bad choices and Miles’ bad accents in this episode! 08:57 -...

Show Notes ***Properly Fixed Edition! Damn you AGIMUS for sabotaging our show!*** It’s games night here at Casual Trek! Crack open a steaming tin of gamer fuel and stretch those controller-twiddling thumbs! We’ve got three episodes all about games today. The Ktarian Game - A free to play puzzle game which looks very simple but is worryingly addictive Chula - We get so annoying about this one and I...

Whether played by Leonard Nimoy, Ethan Peck or even Zachary Quinto, The fantastic Mr Spock is one of the most popular characters in all of Star Trek. This episode we’re celebrating Spock by showing all manner of shenanigans; Angrily Horny Spock, Giant Spock and Freaky Friday Spock! A quick note for the pedants: we forgot Jack Harlow’s song and talked about Harry Styles’ one again at the start of t...

Synergy! It’s what got me to force Miles to finally watch and rank the pilot episode of Picard! We recorded this episode before watching the first episode of Picard season three, so we’ve picked the other two episodes based on guessing what’s going to happen thanks to the trailer. That means we’re covering the first appearance of Lore and of Evil Hologram Moriarty! 00:00:00 Opening 00:14:21 Star T...

We’ve got our first Ko-Fi donor request today! It’s time for time loops! How annoying can we make this for everyone including each other? We’ve got three very good episodes from different Star Treks, and even better, we’ve got our first Ko-Fi donor request today! It’s time for time loops! 11:29 Star Trek Voyager - Coda 31:03 Star Trek: The Next Generation - Cause & Effect 54:34 Star Trek Discovery...

It’s time to go to the movies! Yes, we’re covering Star Trek: The Motion Picture! We’re also watching The Changeling which is a very comparable episode to the movie. It’s an episode where a giant floating electric toothbrush threatens the ship, Earth and causes the first redshirt deaths we’ve seen on the podcast so far! 00:00 Opening 07:12 The Original Series: The Changeling 35:58 Star Trek: The M...

We’ve got a slightly different episode today and a callback to our very first episode of Casual Trek! We discovered Chris Claremont had written a Star Trek comic and HAD to check it out. So here, in lieu of our normal episodes, we’ve got a bonus episode where we review and talk about Debt of Honour. I know that’s not how honour is spelled on the book but I kept writing it that way and with Claremo...

I hope you all had a nice festive time! This episode should be airing on Boxing Day here in the UK, so enjoy your time off work and listen to a couple of chaps as the ‘gift’ each other a Star Trek episode. Will we be overjoyed with festive cheer, or will we hope desperately that the other person kept the receipt? Also this one’s a bit low energy, as Charlie was thick with a cold and there was quit...

It’s Jeff time! Jeffrey Combs has played roles in several different Trek shows, so when I first started putting together theme lists, a Jeffrey Combs Appreciation Episode was on the docket. Here we have him as a mad robot, an angry Andorian and a pair of cloned zealots of varying levels of faith. 00:00 Opening 14:48 Lower Decks: Where Pleasant Fountains Lie 36.40 Enterprise: The Andorian Incident...

Once more we throw ourselves into very un-Casual waters as Miles tries to tell Charlie whether or not it's worth Charlie's time to watch Jodie Whittaker's final episode of her tenure as Doctor Who. Will Charlie watch and have an opinion of his own? Jump to: TIMECODE 53:00 to find out for youself. Miles' first time in the editing chair, so the machine isn't as smoothly run as possible. Talking poin...

It’s time for some Junji Ito style body horror with three funny episodes about little furry creatures! I didn’t mean to lose it at the utter horror of it all, but I do. Also Miles’ audio’s not great here. We’re trying to sort out the levels and the general audio, please stand by and hopefully we’ll be able to improve it soon. 00:00 Opening 10:32 The Original Series, The Trouble With Tribbles 33:16...

There are so many Star Trek shows that we’ve got three more pilot shows to watch! No, not Picard. We’re still putting that off. There are enough animated Star Trek shows for us to have a whole episode based around them, and we’ll be mixing live action and animated shows from now on (mainly to help our Jeffrey Combs episode idea). It took some effort for me to bother with Lower Decks and that was t...

It’s Halloween and time for a spooooky Star Trek show! Slightly less spooky is Miles’ audio which wasn’t great on this episode, let’s say that’s part of the spooky atmosphere. 0:00:00 Opening 0:16:50 The Next Generation - Genesis 0:40:39 Voyager - The Thaw 1:00:22 The Original Series - Catspaw Talking points include: Mobile Suit Gundam Cucuruz Doan’s Island, Trophy RPG, Midsommar, The T-Virus, Jor...