Trek Marry Kill

PIKE'S FORMER CRUSH has a secret and this week we have guest co-host Cassie Soliday from The Ink & Paint Folk Podcast to talk about it! Is the perfect world of Majalis too good to be true or does it just seem that way to Federation outsiders?  Meanwhile, Cadet Uhura gets exposed to La'an's list of security rules -- which are more like guidelines -- and Dr. M'Benga's doctor goes on a playdate. Does...

SPOCK BECOMES T'PRING after a Vulcan Soul Swap goes awry and it's all thanks to Spock's pesky humanity! This week, Bryan is joined by Aliza Pearl from the Women at Warp Podcast, the Star Trek Adventures campaign called Clear Skies: Perseverance and she's created an interactive story you can playthrough right now on StoryLoom called Welcome to the Blood Bar. Will Spock and T'Pring learn a valuable...

HOT GORN ACTION! The Enterprise comes face to face with the mysterious Gorn, realizing La'an's worst nightmare! With the entire ship under constant attack, the episode splits into multiple storylines: Cadet Uhura and Lt. Hemmer are trapped in the cargo bay; and, Number One is trapped in Sickbay with the manic pixie dream Nurse Chapel.  Listen to this one to find out what Bryan and Krsiten think ab...

SECRETS AND LIES invade the Enterprise while investigating a distant planet that once was home to the mysterious race called the Illyrians. Has this genetically modified people been hunted to extinction or have they evolved? Bryan and Kristen conduct their own investigation into an episode that's heavy on incident and light on consequences.  They also talk about the production realities that affec...

ARBITER OF LIFE? Second episodes can be as difficult as the pilot episode of a new show, and Bryan and Kristen don't see an exception with Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. Does the combination of Anson Mount's charisma and Celia Rose Gooding's talent sell a sometimes sweaty script or does the Star Trek-ness of the whole thing wind up saving the day?  The Enterprise tries to stop a comet from collidi...

A BUREAUCRAT'S OFFICE! That's all Captain Picard seems good for to rogue Captain Benjamin Maxwell, but little does he understand that the USS Enterprise is the top diplomatic vessel at the Federation's disposal! Trek, Marry, Kill wraps up its Star Trek: Picard Season Three prep by watching this 4th season episode that introduces Cardassians to the world of Star Trek ... and maybe the world to the...

BEVERLY CRUSHER COMES to the realization that her entire maternal line has been haunted by an anaphasic life form in one of Star Trek's most hare-brained episodes ever. It's the one with the Sex Ghost! Or... the one where Beverly Crusher has an orgasm! Or... the Sex Candle. Whatever you call it, this episode has gone down as a camp classic akin to "Spock's Brain" or "Threshold." Does that make it...

BEVERLY'S GRIEF BUBBLE? With Beverly Crusher set to play a pivotal role in the final season of Star Trek: Picard, Bryan and Kristen decide to watch a couple of key Beverly episodes to prepare. In this one, Wesley's warp bubble experiment traps Beverly in a alternate reality where one by one, everyone she loves disappears. Has she lost it or is something amiss?  This episode also holds a special pl...

DATA'S DAD LIVES and that causes a whole lot of problems for our favorite android and the Enterprise. Joining us this week is special guest Craig Calcaterra, a sportswriter who writes at Cup of Coffee, one of the top newsletters on Substack. He also has a brother and a dad, but his love of Star Trek goes beyond family ties -- his love life was at one time centered around the outcome of "The Best o...

SHUT UP, WESLEY! People forget where this eternal line was first uttered, but it's right here, in this oft-forgotten episode from TNG's first season. But "Datalore" does quite a lot of heavy lifting for TNG lore, not just with that line, but also some new "rules" about Data. With Lore -- Data's evil twin -- set to return in Star Trek: Picard - Season Three, Bryan and Kristen take a look at his fir...

HOLODECK HIJINKS ENSUE when Lt. Barclay unlocks a secret file that stored the sentient hologram Professor James Moriarty from Data and Geordi's ill-fated adventure we graded in last week's "Elementary, Dear Data." Moriarty figures into the plot of Star Trek: Picard - Season Three in some way, and joining Bryan to figure out how he fits -- along with returning to this Next Gen classic -- are Laurie...

LEAVE DATA ALONE! Dr. Pulaski teases Geordi for hoping Data would get into the spirit of cosplaying as Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson on the holodeck instead of quickly solving the case like a computer would. This compels Geordi to ask the computer to create a holographic adversary capable of defeating Data, a character who winds up being Sherlock Holmes' arch nemesis, Professor James Moriarty, pl...

COUNSELOR TROI'S MOM has a problem: she wants to sleep with Captain Picard, only, he's nowhere to be found. So in the meantime, she takes to interviewing all the males on board the Enterprise to see he would be a worthy mate. And just where is Picard? He's hiding in the holodeck playing a Dixon Hill adventure.  How do Bryan and this week's guests, Tamar and Nathan, feel about this season two adven...

THE ULTIMATE CROSSOVER? UPN decided to attack a two bird problem with a single stone: corporate synergy. Does special guest star Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson boost a Seven of Nine storyline in the 6th season of Star Trek: Voyager? According to Nielsen ratings, yes, it did, making "Tsunkatse" the highest rated episode of that season. With Kristen away, Bryan has on two of his favorite Twitter follows:...

JEAN-LUC PICARD has meant so much to audiences that his return to TV in Paramount+'s Star Trek: Picard was an event, one that this week's guest, Hector Navarro (YouTube's Heroes Reforged) actually attended -- and quite by accident!  Hear his story about being in the audience at the Las Vegas convention where Patrick Stewart made the announcement, and then stick around for not just our usual grades...

THE FIRST PREQUEL to bear the name Star Trek, and it's incredible that so much of Enterprise has remained canon despite all the changes to the universe following the Chris Pine movies. Bryan and Kristen explore the big 2-hour premiere episode of the last Trek show of the Rick Berman era to see if Scott Bakula works as the first captain of a starship named Enterprise and if humanity's first adventu...

WEIRDEST TREK EVER. That's the only way to describe Star Trek's return to television after a thirteen-year hiatus since the end of Enterprise. Bryan and Kristen tackle the first two hours of the show that helped launch Paramount+ (née CBS All Access) and try to figure out just what the adventures of Michael Burnham are supposed to be about. We don't even get to the USS Discovery by the end of thes...

MINOR BIPEDAL SPECIES? Captain Kathryn Janeway has a problem: in order to save a childlike race of people called the Ocampa, she must strand her ship and crew 70,000 light years from their home quadrant of space, or else risk the Ocampas future as slaves to the evil Kazon. What is a Starfleet captain to do?  This week, Bryan and Kristen grapple with Captain Janeway's decision and a lot of the behi...

GRIEVOUSLY SAVAGE RACE? Join Bryan and Kristen as they decide whether or not the pilot of their favorite Star Trek, The Next Generation, deserves to be Trek'd, Married, or Killed.  Patrick Stewart steps into the role of Jean-Luc Picard, which would eventually set off a pop culture debate as to who's the best captain: Kirk or Picard? In the 2-hour premiere episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation,...

THERE'S YOUR WORMHOLE! Writer-Producer J. Holtham (The Handmaid's Tale, Supergirl, Pitch) joins Bryan and Kristen to decide if Deep Space Nine's 2-hour premiere warrants a Trek, Marry, or Kill. And where does Benjamin Sisko, Star Trek's first black captain, land on their list of favorite captains?  Michael Piller is responsible for bringing Star Trek: The Next Generation from pale spinoff of a cul...

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A SECOND PILOT? Star Trek spent three seasons defying the odds, and it all started here in this second pilot, a rare occurrence by TV's standards even today. What did NBC see in this show? Why, the promise of action adventure and solid science fiction, of course. They get all that and more  with William Shatner as Captain James R. Kirk of the USS Enterprise and a script by novelist-turned-TV write...

Our first regular episode kicks off a look at all the Star Trek pilot episodes.  MEET CAPTAIN PIKE and the crew of the Enterprise *before* Captain Kirk took command. In this episode, Bryan and Kristen examine the first episode of the newest Star Trek series and try to figure out if it's a sequel to Star Trek: Discovery, a prequel to Star Trek: The Original Series, an alternate timeline, or all of...

WELCOME TO TREK, MARRY, KILL! We're another modest Star Trek podcast with a modest goal: to determine which episodes devoted fans and curious viewers should find and "Marry," which are good enough to "Trek" out again and again, and which episodes we should "Kill," but only in the metaphorical sense; because, let's be honest: even when Star Trek is bad, it's still pretty good. In this initial episo...