Set Phasers

Everybody's got secrets! As the Enterprise explores an abandoned Illyrian colony planet for evidence of what happened to the gene-experimenting people, Spock and Pike are trapped down on the planet by an ion storm and the Enterprise is beset by a strange disease that makes people super randy for light and heat.   Number One, Una Chin-Riley, appears to be affected by the disease but also not at all...

Cadet Uhura attends a dinner at the captain's table with a bunch of senior staff and other officers during which she admits that though she beat out several thousand applicants for the job on Enterprise, she might not be "all that Star Fleet."   Meanwhile, a comet the Enterprise is observing is on course to destroy a nearby planet with a young, pre-warp culture and when they try to push it off cou...

It all begins with Una (AKA Number One) goes missing on a routine First Contact mission. Pike, who has been roughing it out in the wild with a beard and a lady-friend, gets the call to return to the Enterprise and find out what went wrong. Then he calls Spock who was in the middle of... an adult consenting adults do with his betrothed, T'pring. Despite the inconvenient timing, Spock comes running....

Ok, well the Borg-queen/Jurati has absconded with the ship and Picard et al are stuck in the past. But the past still needs saving. Renee Picard needs to go on the Europa mission and Adam Soong is still out there trying to stop it from happening.   Thus begins a desperate play to ensure Renee's safety and foil Soong's plans as best the team can. IF they wrap that up, there is only the issue of Soo...

Nobody freak-out, ok? It's the penultimate episode of season two of Picard. Everything is going to be fine! Picard has everything under control and the future is in good hands! Now. Are we a little concerned about the full blending of Jurati and the Borg Queen and their ability to turn Adam Soong’s super-soldiers into *Borg* super-soldiers? And that they have remote accessed la Sirena’s transporte...

It's Season 2 Episode 8 of Picard! Well, Picard and Guinan are in an undisclosed location, some basement FBI facility, being questioned by the tenacious Agent Wells, who has a real bee in his bonnet about aliens.   Meanwhile, Borg/Jurati (AKA "Borgati") is running rampant through LA. Raffi and Seven are on her trail, but catching up to her has disastrous consequences. They are, however, able to fi...

Recapping Star Trek Picard Season 2 Episode 7 "Monsters"   A funky little episode. We spend most of the time romping around in Picard's subconscious. Meeting his mother, Yvette, whom he stylizes as a queen, and his father, Maurice, whom he calls a monster. And also young Jean-Luc, a little prince. Tallinn uses her Watcher technology to go in there with young Picard and they navigate a literal meta...

A lot transpires at this halfway point of season 2 of Star Trek: Picard. Firstly we meet the Watcher. It's not Laris. She calls herself Tallinn. Her job is to watch one person and make sure their movement through time is protected. That person is Renee Picard! And Renee is supposed to leave on the Europa mission in three days times.   And would except that she struggles with inner demons. And, als...

The crew of La Sirena manages to fend this alternate-reality magistrate and his soldiers, only to be pursued by more ships of the "Confederation" of Earth. Things seems dicey, but then the hook the Borg Queen up to the ship, she converts the whole thing over to Borg and sends them back to the year 2024. Which is before whatever timeline divergence took place.   So. Ok. But Elnor got shot in the ch...

And we're back with a brand new season of Picard!    Meet Jean-Luc. He's a formerly disgraced and retired, now reinstated, Star Fleet officer. He has just been named chancellor of the Star Fleet Academy. His friends are doing pretty all right, actually. His buddy Rios is back in Starfleet as a captain, and his buddy Raffi is back in Starfleet, and his buddy Seven-of-Nine is saving people in the ga...

Now we come to end, my friends. The End! Tarka has locked Book up and taken over his ship to gain access to the DMA controller so he can go universe hopping, DISCO is trying to get out of their bubble and get after them, and – meanwhile, at Earth – Admiral Vance and Tilly are running the evacuation effort, hopeless though it may be, for as many people as they can get out before the DMA debris hits...

Finally, we are at the hyperfield bubble of Species 10C! The whole season has been leading up to this! Will Michael, President Rillak, et al be able to find a way to communicate with this vastly advanced species and get them to stop mining the alpha quadrant and accidentally destroying whole planets?!   With the help of Dr. Harai and Saru and a few members of the bridge crew, they *are* able to fi...

Closer and closer to the object of all this season's fussing about – but not quite there yet. Convinced that they need to do a bit more research before entering the "hyperfield" and trying to establish first contact with species 10C, Captain Burnham takes Discovery to a former gas giant planet where it is theorized species 10C may have originally come.    While she and the away team look for clues...

Things are really heating up as the first contact task force heads to the Galactic Barrier. DISCO is the ship that will carry them out to species 10C's weird energy/Dyson sphere and there is no time to waste as the new DMA is bigger and badder (and perhaps slightly less predictable) than the old one.   So DISCO heads out. A bunch of the delegates that were on their way are unable to make it and so...

Well, it's time for the rubber (or starship nacelles) to meet the road (or hard vacuum). Michael and the crew of DISCO attempt to ambush Book and Ruon Tarka as they are building the explosive isolytic device (using the tracker Michael planted). The Federation, concerned about Michael's closeness to Book, put someone on the bridge that will make the hard choice if she can't do it when the time aris...

....and we're back at the DISCO!    Since Book and Ruon Tarka took matters into their own hands and decided to steal the next generation spore drive and go build their own isolytic bomb and take a punch at species 10C on their own, the Federation is in a shambles. Michael has been told that she and DISCO cannot go after Book (the president feels she is too close to it), but then in private Admiral...

This week as Discovery is on hiatus for just one more week, Stevie was asked to join some other Trek podcast hosts to take part in a Star Trek Jeopardy... Akie (our champ) was unfortunately busy being a cool musician guy so Stevie stepped up, how do you think they did?  Check out Keeping up with the Cardassians and Star Trek Podcast: Trek Cast Discovery resumes so normal Set Phasers service will a...

So, this is it. Finally, we are doing a watchalong of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. A regular contender for the "best Star Trek movie of all time." And it does not disappoint. From the sartorial splendor of Kirk's wardrobe, to increasingly slower and slower chase scenes with higher and higher stakes, to – let's just call it like it is – Ricardo Montalban's chest and pretty much every line he de...

Another watch-along monday! We screwed our courage to the sticking place and made valiant effort to watch the third of the JJ Abrams Star Trek movies – Star Trek: Beyond. High was the anticipation for this film when it came out in 2016, but alas, it proved to be well below most people's expectations.    Why? Who can say? Maybe because Abrams didn't return to direct this one because he was already ...

And we're back! The DISCOVERY hiatus continues, as does our series of watchalongs. We continue with the 2013 follow-up to Star Trek entitled Star Trek: Into Darkness. Kirk et al are hoping to start their five-year mission when, because of his flaunting of the rules, Kirk's command of the Enterprise is revoked and Spock (who dropped dime on him) is transferred to another ship. How will Kirk become...

The year was 2009. Barack Obama was president in the United States. The economy was tanking. ands JJ Abrams had made a new Star Trek movie. It had Kirk and Spock and Bones... Uhura, Sulu, Chekov... the *whole* gang. And, for many, it is was jump started this new era of Star Trek shows.    So... we did a watchalong. Akie and Stevie start with the movie that (re)started it all. the blandly titled "S...

It's the mid-season finale of Star Trek Discovery. What it's all be leading up to (before, you know, the rest of the season). The Federation has called together an assembly of all the major worlds and races, Federation and otherwise, from all four quadrants of the galaxy to discuss what must be done about the DMA and "Species 10C." At the same time, Zora (Discovery's erstwhile computer), has used...

DISCO has been ordered to go into the subspace rift made by the DMA to gather any readings or information they can about the anomaly. Things are going nominally at first, but when the ship gets inside, there is nothing to be found. They are in a data-less void.   Zora, the AI that lives in and runs the ship, is having a rough day with no data to crunch. There is an invisible barrier closing in, ab...

A fairly straightforward day on the DISCOVERY. The ship is sent as part of a rescue mission to a string of asteroids that are about to get his by the crazy dark matter anomaly in that is tearing through the quadrant. there's only a couple of hours to get everyone off the planet before the gravitational situation send everything haywire. So its hard work   Meanwhile, Stamets is working with Dr. Ruo...

What is happening?! Michael and Saru get called down to the surface of Ni'var to help President Rillak close the deal with Ni'Var joining the Federation. Tilly goes to Starfleet academy, with Adira in tow, to run some critical team building exercises. Book sits down for a therapy session with Dr. Culber. I guess it's gonna be a pretty chill episode. Except, Book is really resistant to confronting...