With the thirty-fifth anniversary of the show coming up (as I write) I thought it might be kind of time to do a retrospective look back at it. However, as per the first sentence, don’t expect any reviews. If you haven’t seen it, either hand in your human visa and go back to your home planet or remedy this most unacceptable situation right now by watching all seven seasons. By a week Monday at the latest. Although I do love the show (I mean, who wouldn’t? It was the first time we got more Star Trek after the original) I’m the first to admit it got off to a shaky start. Some of the episodes in seasons one and two are frankly laughable, with many of the first season ones being nothing more than rewrites of old classic Trek stories - “The Naked Now”, “When the Bough Breaks”, “The Last Outpost” etc - and some truly awful acting, costumes and ideas that did not pan out.
I’ll be, as we say here in Ireland, ripping the piss out of the early episodes as much as I can: laughing at the writing, cringing at the acting, and no doubt enumerating the various uniforms and hairstyles of Deanna Troi. After a while, of course, the series settled down, and while there was still occasionally the odd thing to laugh at (Picard playing piano in “Lessons”, anyone?) or just roll your eyes at (the ending, such as it was, of “Where Silence Has Lease”?) it’s not really fair to poke fun, as it really did find its feet and now deservedly holds its place among the very best of science fiction TV drama, and is highly revered in the ever-growing Star Trek franchise.
So when I run out of things to slag off, I’ll be taking it a bit more seriously, but still no reviews. I’ll be pointing out interesting events, people, battles, character development and so on in episodes, and maybe referring back to earlier ones to see how well they’ve come on. And having enormous fun at the same time, as hopefully you will too.
Note: I’m not going to list the cast, as if you don’t know by now who plays who you can f
uck off. I’m also not listing guest stars, because the hell with that. Anyone reading this more than likely has all seen these episodes already, probably more times than any of us care to or can remember, so I won’t be explaining stuff, just poking fun at it where I can.
I’ll be doing the episodes in order, obviously, and trying if possible to do one a week, but we’ll see how it goes. Oh and please, by all means feel free to jump in, disagree, have a fist fight with me, agree, challenge me to a duel to the death... you know the sort of thing.
Well, only one man to get us on our way and growl “Engage!” right?
What? No! Not him!
You tell him, Captain! Now, orders?
