The Ready Room: A Star Trek Podcast

Errand of Mercy. The Klingons are perhaps the best-known of all Star Trek villains, and that status is due as much to The Original Series as to their role on The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine. It’s an interesting point since they made only seven appearance on TOS and were not even the main focus of all of these episodes. Still, John Colicos’s portrayal of Kor in the first ever appearance of...

Regeneration. As a prequel series Enterprise had to perform a delicate balancing act. While on the one hand it had to serve as a lead-in to everything we knew from TOS onward, it also had to be entertaining and not be so rigidly locked into the vast canon of Star Trek as to cripple the writers. The appearance of the Borg on the series in the second season set off a firestorm even before the episod...

Blood Fever. The Original Series episode “Amok Time” established the Vulcan mating ritual known as pon farr, the effects it has on male Vulcans, and the rituals surrounding it. When Voyager launched in 1995 it was the first series since TOS to feature a Vulcan as part of the main cast, and so it was inevitable that the writers would revisit this biological trial. When the time came, however, they...

Blood Oath. Jadzia Dax may be a young Starfleet Lieutenant, but she is also one of the wisest members of the Deep Space 9 crew. Thanks to the seven lifetimes of experience carried by the Dax symbiont, Jadzia is both young and old at the same time. She is Starfleet and yet not Starfleet. The writers of DS9 played this up in the second-season episode “Blood Oath,” which also marked the return of thr...

The Bonding. Few writers played a larger role in shaping modern Star Trek than Ronald D. Moore, but his first foray into Roddenberry’s universe came in the form of a spec script that was turned into the early third-season episode “The Bonding.” It’s a story that is often forgotten, but one that offers the first glimpses of the cerebral, introspective, and philosophical stories that came to define...

Worst Case Scenario. When Rick Berman, Michael Piller, and Jeri Taylor set out to create the third live-action Star Trek spinoff they were faced with an enormous challenge. The franchise had become so weighted down by more than two decades of stories that it was difficult to find a new way to approach things, and Gene Roddenberry’s no-conflict rule was proving more and more difficult for the write...

Remembering 2011. The past 12 months have been busy for Star Trek despite the lack of original content on TV. Leonard Nimoy bid farewell to convention appearances, Star Trek Las Vegas saw an enourmous gathering and brought us a new World Record for fans in costume, IDW launched a new series of comics based on the Abramsverse, the gaming world was abuzz with activity, and let’s not forget about the...

The Undiscovered Country. In 1991 we bid farewell to the voyages of the Enterprise and its original crew. In a film of heavy Cold War allegory, released just 26 days before the Soviet Union ceased to exist, we were given a final chance to spend time with the characters we had known as Star Trek for 25 years. In this episode of The Ready Room we’re joined by Larry Nemecek to discuss Star Trek VI: T...

The Search. Deep Space Nine shaved the head in the Season Four premiere “The Way of the Warrior,” but the shears of change started trimming a season earlier. “The Search” is a title with many meanings. It’s Odo’s search for his people as well as the show’s search for its own identity. It’s the birth of the Dominion, the introduction of the Defiant, Ronald D. Moore’s debut on the writing team, the...

The Galileo Seven. Logic is good for a lot of things, but command may not be one of them. In the first season TOS episode “The Galileo Seven” we see Spock take command for the first time. The results almost get the crew killed, but this episode is an important turning point in the development of Spock’s character. It’s an episode that combines the best elements of The Original Series with the wors...

Five Year Mission: Year Two. A collaboration of five Star Trek fans who endeavor to write and record a song for each of the episodes of The Original Series, Five Year Mission is a favorite of ours here at Trek.fm. Their first album, Year One, quickly rose to the top of our playlists over the past year, and the wait for Year Two has been a long one. On recent shows we’ve been previewing tracks from...

Past Tense. Star Trek has often been prophetic, but few episodes have been more prophetic of today’s world than the DS9 two-parter “Past Tense.” Many parallels between the Occupy movement and the Sanctuary Districts of 2024 can be drawn, though it’s not necessarily a clear-cut comparison. Still this episode can come across as being “ripped from the headlines” today, despite that fact that it first...

These Are the Voyages… Enterprise was a series that was often misunderstood and was cancelled before its time. Under the guidance of Manny Coto, the fourth season saw the series finding solid footing as a TOS prequel. Bit by bit we were building toward the founding of the Federation and setting up Kirk’s era. Sadly they ran out of time and hastily ended the series with a very misguided finale titl...

Scorpion. As with TNG and DS9, Voyager reached a turning point at the end of its third season. The episode “Scorpion” brought several changes and new elements to the show that shaped the future direction of the journey through the Delta Quadrant. The Borg, Seven of Nine, and even internal conflict that had been missing from the show, all come together to help Voyager grow up a bit. In this episode...

TNG Season Two. After completing a successful first season The Next Generation continued to find its identity in season two despite a number of potential setbacks. The departure of Gates McFadden as Dr. Crusher, a writers strike in Hollywood, and continuing struggles to emerge from the shadow of TOS put this new Star Trek series to the test. In this episode of The Ready Room we discuss the good an...

The Way of the Warrior. DS9 promised a new kind of Star Trek from the very start, yet the early seasons had more in common with the TNG method of storytelling than the rich and intricate Deep Space Nine we came to love. Just as TNG grew the beard with “The Best of Both Worlds,” so did DS9 with “The Way of the Warrior.” Shaving the head set DS9 on a course for greatness and its place as the most un...

The Star Trek Pendulum. With the reboot of Star Trek in 2009 the TOS time period came back into style. But is TNG poised for a comeback? Is the Star Trek Pendulum about to swing back toward the Enterprise-D? In this episode of The Ready Room we’re joined by Larry Nemecek to discuss how fandom moves back and forth between the series. We also talk about how each series was a reaction to the one befo...

Insurrection. In 1998 Paramount followed up the great success of First Contact with a film called Insurrection. This third outing of the TNG cast on the big screen received mixed reviews from critics and a lukewarm reception from fans. It’s a movie that’s not as great as fans had hoped and not as bad as many make it out to be. In this episode of The Ready Room we discuss Insurrection and look at w...

Star Trek Ongoing. Leading up to the 2009 J.J. Abrams reboot of Star Trek, IDW released a series of comics that told the backstory of the movie. Now the publisher has launched a monthly series that is set in the alternate timeline of the Abramsverse. Titled Star Trek Ongoing, this new series re-imagines episodes of The Original Series under the creative direction of Star Trek 2009 writer Roberto O...

The Temporal Cold War. It's one of the most puzzling aspects of Enterprise, both in terms of story and purpose. It's the Temporal Cold War. What started off as a central element in the pilot episode “Broken Bow” became a strand that was difficult to tie together with the missions of the NX-01. In this episode of The Ready Room hosts Christopher Jones and Greg Harbin discuss the exploits of Future...

The Best of Both Worlds. It was the turning point for The Next Generation and perhaps for all of modern Star Trek. The season-three finale left fans wondering for the entire summer of 1990 whether Picard was returning or whether Riker was the show’s new lead. It also brought us one of the greatest villains ever—the Borg. In this episode of The Ready Room we're joined by Brian Finifter of Down In F...

The Final Frontier. Yes, that’s right. Star Trek V. It’s a movie many fans pretend doesn’t exist. But if you look closely you can find some good moments in this mess of a film, especially in the relationships between Kirk, Spock, and McCoy. In this episode of The Ready Room we take a look at Shatner’s masterpiece and call it out where needed, praise it in those spots where it deserves it, and admi...

Romulans. They're an offshoot of the Vulcans who chose conflict over logic. As one of the two original enemy empires from The Original Series, the Romulans have remained almost as mysterious to us as they were to Kirk and Spock. Despite their increased use on TNG and DS9, the Romulans were never fleshed out enough to realize their potential. In this episode of The Ready Room we take a look at this...

Nemesis. The final Star Trek movie set in the prime timeline saw the TNG era fizzle out with surprising rapidity. After the excitement of First Contact, many felt that Insurrection was just the natural lull of the odd-numbered films. With the long-than-usual gap between releases, fans were expected Nemesis to be incredible. Instead Paramount delivered a film that didn't feel quite right and that s...

The Captains. Kirk. Picard. Sisko. Janeway. Archer. Every Star Trek fans has their favourite, and each captain has their own unique command style. Sometimes it's hard to put one ahead of the other when ranking Starfleet's leaders, but in this episode of The Ready Room we're joined by Brian Finifter of Down In Front to discuss each of these captains, their pros and cons, and reveal under whom we'd...