Untitled Star Trek Project

Star Trek: Voyager, Series 7, Episode 15. First broadcast on Wednesday 14 February 2001. Stardate: 54553.4. This week we drop into a parallel universe where Voyager’s situation is desperate, resources are constrained, and the crew has no alternative but to live by its principles — helping, making friends, reaching out, forming alliances, working together to solve problems, seeking out new life and...

Star Trek: The Next Generation, Series 1, Episode 14. First broadcast on Monday 25 January 1988. Stardate: 41636.9. Nothing to learn about gender politics this week as we visit Angel One, where large aggressive women lord it over their twinky male consorts, and Star Trek: The Next Generation finds plenty of exciting new ways to be as offensively sexist as possible. Could someone pass Gene a napkin...

Star Trek: The Original Series, Series 1, Episode 25. First broadcast on Thursday 9 March 1967. Stardate: 3196.1. A terrifying cave monster attacks a bunch of miners in pastel jumpsuits and burns them alive: it must be killed to ensure a continuing supply of raw materials for the engines of capitalism. But then, of course, we reach out, learn that the monster is a person, and thereby discover a te...

Star Trek: Lower Decks, Series 3, Episode 1. First broadcast on Thursday 25 August 2022. Stardate: Unknown (2380). While we wait for the final season of Lower Decks to drop, we head back into the show’s distant past to see how it reintroduces itself to the world at the start of its third season. As you might expect, it’s with love, loyalty, extreme cartoon violence and a few affectionate digs at o...

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Series 6, Episode 13. First broadcast on Wednesday 11 February 1998. Stardate: September 1953. Some time in 2374, Ben Sisko, tired of helming Deep Space Nine in wartime, considers handing the job over to someone else. At the same time but in 1953, Benny Russell dreams of a version of himself living beyond the daily indignities of existing as a Black man in America. And...

Star Trek: Enterprise, Series 3, Episode 12. First broadcast on Wednesday 14 January 2004. Stardate: Unknown (2153). This week, untrustworthy foreigners attack and terrorise Enterprise for literally no reason other than the arbitrary tenets of their weird and incorrect religion. There’s a lesson to be learned here, but only if you don’t think too hard about it.

Star Trek: The Next Generation, Series 1, Episode 20. First broadcast on Monday 21 March 1988. Stardate: 41503.7. Long before the invention of Ronald D Moore, the Klingons were simple souls who enjoyed brownface, poisoning grain, making lists of rules, and planting a bomb on the bridge of the Enterprise. But by 2364, the next generation of Klingons had embraced the wave of liberalism sweeping acro...

Star Trek: The Next Generation, Series 5, Episode 5. First broadcast on Monday 21 October 1991. Stardate: 45156.1. In this week’s outstanding instalment of Competent People Solving Space Problems, the Enterprise is hit by an unexpected and dangerous premise which separates the crew into five distinct subplots and forces each of them to confront their greatest fears. Deanna contends with yet anothe...

Star Trek: Voyager, Series 6, Episode 3. First broadcast on Wednesday 6 October 1999. Stardate: Unknown (2376). A quick trip to the afterlife this week, as B’Elanna discovers the importance of faith and family, and as Voyager itself discovers (too late, perhaps) the importance of the same things. We also learn that hell is the Voyager sets only lit slightly differently, which is something that we...

Star Trek: The Next Generation, Series 3, Episode 3. First broadcast on Monday 9 October 1989. Stardate: 43152.4. On the ravaged surface of the Federation colony planet Rana IV, the crew of the USS Enterprise are surprised to discover an excitingly modernist Malibu home set in a lush, quadrilateral garden; after landing on the planet with an away team, Will Riker is surprised to find himself dangl...

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Series 1, Episode 9. First broadcast on Thursday 30 June 2022. Stardate: 2510.6. Of course the people you care about are going to cause you pain. It will hurt, but the love it yields will far outweigh the sorrow. Now, hand me the electron coupler. In this week’s Strange New Worlds, we watch standard space genre things happen to relaxed and likeable characters. Which,...

Star Trek: Voyager, Series 5, Episode 18. First broadcast on Wednesday 3 March 1999. Stardate: 52586.3. For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any thing, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten. (Ecclesiastes 9:5) This week, like every week, we continue to experience our gradual, humiliating dissolution, to dread our own inevitable deaths, a...

Star Trek: Enterprise, Series 4, Episode 22. First broadcast on Friday 13 May 2005. Stardate: Unknown (2161). This week Enterprise fans get the chance to watch their favourite show with Jonathan and Marina sitting next to them on the couch, which only raises enraging and bewildering questions like Is any of this even real? and Does any of this actually matter? (to which the answers are of course n...

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Series 3, Episode 16. First broadcast on Monday 20 February 1995. Stardate: Unknown (2371). Basically nothing happens on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine this week, as Nathan undergoes a religious experience which inspires him to be terribly nice to people for a change, while Joe anticipates failing to win a major podcasting award. Still, sometimes it’s just nice to hang out...

Star Trek: The Animated Series, Series 2, Episode 6. First broadcast on Saturday 12 October 1974. Stardate: 6770.3. A return to the realm of cheap Saturday-morning-cartoon Trek, where the only person apparently putting in any effort is Master of Dialect, Jimmy Doohan. This week, we find ourselves in a universe where space is white, stars are black, people age backwards, women give birth to large o...

Star Trek: The Next Generation, Series 1, Episode 23. First broadcast on Monday 25 April 1988. Stardate: 41601.3. This week, we watch an dreadful hour of Star Trek — cheap, mawkish and absolutely absurd — but we end up enjoying ourselves enormously. Have we found a fatal flaw at the entire heart of the Untitled Star Trek Project?

Star Trek: The Original Series, Series 2, Episode 13. First broadcast on Friday 15 December 1967. Stardate: 3619.2. A few tense moments this week, as a fragrant dikironium vampire kills a bunch of redshirts before threatening some characters with names and ultimately the Enterprise itself. But the real suspense comes from an entirely different direction: Will this episode teeter over the edge of c...

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Series 7, Episode 22. First broadcast on Wednesday 12 May 1999. Stardate: Unknown (2375). It’s four weeks until the Deep Space Nine finale, and so it’s time for a momentous and operatic episode, an episode full of subtext and thoughtful performances, and an episode that deals a killing blow to two crumbling empires and changes the status quo forever. In short: an episod...

Star Trek: Short Treks, Series 2, Episode 2. First broadcast on Wednesday 9 October 2019. Stardate: 1421.9. Captain Lynne Lucero (Rosa Salazar) can’t wait to take command of the USS Cabot as it heads off to the Klingon border to save some settlers from a planetary famine. But that’s before she meets walking HR disaster Edward Larkin (H. Jon Benjamin) and his viviparous and prolific sidekick (Tribl...

Star Trek: Discovery, Series 4, Episode 8. First broadcast on Thursday 10 February 2022. Stardate: Unknown (3190). This week, but in the thirty-second century, two people face each other across a poker table. The man’s unbearable loss has made him resolute, and the woman remains resolute despite the loss she is about to suffer. And somewhere far away, in a distant, isolated, unreasonable space at...

Star Trek: The Next Generation, Series 5, Episode 9. First broadcast on Monday 18 November 1991. Stardate: 45349.1. The absence of Robin Williams and the presence of Rick Berman are both keenly felt this week, as a normal day at the office for the Enterprise-D becomes merely a mildly diverting day at the office. The cause: an elegantly named time-travelling confidence trickster, who nicks a bunch...

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Series 4, Episode 21. First broadcast on Monday 29 April 1996. Stardate: Unknown (2372). This week, we discover to our surprise that there’s a lot to enjoy in a flawed and ultimately unsuccessful episode episode of Deep Space Nine — two wonderful guest actresses, some (largely) cringe-free sexiness, and a mature and gentle romance. Meanwhile, some TV writers imagine a j...

Star Trek: Voyager, Series 1, Episode 14. First broadcast on Monday 8 May 1995. Stardate: 48784.2. As a result of a horrific medical experiment, this week’s episode of Untitled Star Trek Project finds itself split into two irreconcilable parts — one convinced that this Voyager episode is extremely dull, and the other one certain that there’s nothing very interesting going on here. Apart from that,...

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Series 7, Episode 6. First broadcast on Wednesday 4 November 1998. Stardate: Unknown (2375). It’s all about faith this week on Deep Space Nine — Weyoun’s faith in Odo and the Founders, Nog’s faith that the genre rules of the comedy B-plot will lead inevitably to a happy ending, and the writers’ faith that wonderful, charming actors like Aron and René can make it all lan...

Star Trek: The Next Generation, Series 4, Episode 7. First broadcast on Monday 5 November 1990. Stardate: 44246.3. After just over a season of reliable and competent, this week, Star Trek: The Next Generation goes for dramatic and surprising — with amazing results: a memorable epsiode full of good performances and the sort of direction that lets those performances shine. One of the best.