Star Trek: The Next Generation, Series 6, Episode 3. First broadcast on Monday 5 October 1992. Stardate: 46071.6. It’s an outstandingly stupid episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation this week, except for the astonishingly brilliant idea of giving Marina fun things to do and a range of fabulously fun things to wear. Actually, let me start that again. It’s an astonishingly brilliant episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation this week,…

Star Trek: Prodigy, Series 1, Episodes 19–20. First broadcast on Thursday 22 December 2022 and Thursday 29 December 2022. Stardate: Unknown (2384). You may think you need me to get there, but after seeing everything you’ve accomplished, I have full confidence you’ll find your way. Because together your potential is infinite. Now, go boldly. This week, the crew of the USS Protostar save the Galaxy in the most selfless and heartwarming way imaginable, in a version of Star Trek that’s complex, enthralling and breathtakingly beautiful.

Star Trek: The Next Generation, Series 3, Episode 13. First broadcast on Monday 5 February 1990. Stardate: 43539.1. As private parts to the gods are we! They play with us for their sport! Lord Melchett, Blackadder II: Chains A defrocked god appears on the bridge of the USS Enterprise and wanders around being much more fun than anyone else aboard. (Apart from Whoopi Goldberg, obviously. And maybe Brent this week.) A solid outing from TNG’s Imperial Phase.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Series 1, Episode 18. First broadcast on Sunday 30 May 1993. Stardate: 46922.3. You know how it is: it’s your first spinoff — a cast of delightfully high-concept characters set against a colourful backdrop, with story possibilities around every corner. But then you find yourself limping towards the end of your first season. You’ve done the plague one, the weird alien fugitive one, the buddy comedy one with the CGI shaving cream, and the terrible boardgame one that everyone will have such fond memories of. So what’s left? How about a story where all of your beloved regulars play people no one cares about, embroiled in a conflict that no one has any interest in? We can do that, can’t we?

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Series 1, Episode 1. First broadcast on Thursday 5 May 2022. Stardate: 1739.12. Space. The final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. It’s five-year mission: To explore Strange New Worlds. To remind us of our love the Original Series. To have a fun adventure every week. To look like nothing else on television. To boldly attempt —  for a world exhausted by impending catastrophes — to be the most authentic expression of Star Trek since the 1960s.

Star Trek: Discovery, Series 1, Episode 7. First broadcast on Sunday 29 October 2017. Stardate: 2136.8. meanwhile, Michael tries to work through her feelings for the tall and handsome new security officer Lieutenant Ash Tyler. After a catastrophic explosion destroys the ship, Harry Mudd sneaks on board Discovery, kills the captain, and searches for a way to sell the spore drive to the Klingons; meanwhile, Michael tries to work through her feelings for the tall and handsome new security officer Lieutenant Ash Tyler. After a catastrophic explosion destroys the ship, Harry Mudd sneaks on board Discovery, kills the captain, and searches for a way to sell the spore drive to the Klingons;

Star Trek: Picard, Series 2, Episode 3. First broadcast on Thursday 17 March 2022. Stardate: Unknown (2401 and 12 April 2024). This week, Joe and Nathan are on the edge of our seats, wondering what insignificant event will tip the twenty-first century over the edge — turning it from a punishing ordeal into a shrieking hellscape of fascism and climatic disaster. Fortunately we’re able to distract ourselves from all this with a really enjoyable episode of Star Trek: Picard.

Star Trek: The Animated Series, Series 1, Episode 12. First broadcast on Saturday 24 November 1973. Stardate: 5267.2. Exhausted from last week’s astonishingly brilliant performance, this week Bill Shatner is literally phoning it in — so bored with Star Trek that he can’t even be bothered to say all five digits of this week’s stardate. Meanwhile, the Enterprise is trapped in a thing, unable to escape until they do another thing. Or something. Whatever.

Star Trek: The Original Series, Series 2, Episode 6. First broadcast on Friday 20 October 1967. Stardate: 4202.1. A nameless and unknowable monster which has destroyed whole star systems and wiped out an entire Starfleet crew is now heading towards the most populated part of the galaxy. The only things standing in its way: a dramatic soundtrack, a memorable guest actor, an incredibly confident production, and William Alan Shatner. It doesn’t stand a chance.

Star Trek: The Next Generation, Series 5, Episode 15. First broadcast on Monday 24 February 1992. Stardate: 45571.2. This week, on Untitled Star Trek Project, Joe and Nathan sit down to watch a sentimental sci-fi favourite from their youth, only to discover that it’s really just a police procedural where some of the regular cast get to do funny voices. Still, they get to see Marina menacing people with a gun, so there’s that, I guess.

Star Trek: The Next Generation, Series 7, Episode 14. First broadcast on Monday 31 January 1994. Stardate: Unknown (2370). This week, Star Trek takes its first ill-judged stab at the Gothic romance genre. Will Beverly fall for her dead grandmother’s lover (sorry), a rangily unattractive anaphasic ghost who encourages her to give up her job and to stand by helplessly while he attacks her friends? Or will she learn a valuable lesson about not dating sociopathic men? (Temporarily and no respectively, it turns out.)

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Series 5, Episode 23. First broadcast on Monday 12 May 1997. Stardate: Unknown (2373). Previously, on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Tired of being a supporting character in a thankless role, Michael Eddington leaves DS9 to star heroically in a TV show which we never see and which exists entirely in his own imagination. After most of the cast and crew are killed by Cardassians — which can happen — and he himself is imprisoned for treason, he is recruited by Sisko for one final mission — to stop a deadly attack on Cardassia that is also entirely imaginary. Hero, traitor, or just some asshole with bad hair and a penchant for lavish Broadway musicals? Let’s find out.

Star Trek: Prodigy, Series 1, Episode 8. First broadcast on Thursday 20 January 2022. Stardate: 607125.6. It’s a heartwarming rite of passage for our youngest Star Trek crew — their very first encounter with a baffling new kind of temporal anomaly. And it’s not just any temporal anomaly: it’s a metaphor for the difficulties they have co-operating as a crew and an opportunity to overcome those difficulties. Plus, it gives Rok-Tahk the chance to be sweet, vulnerable, clever and magnificent in turn. And who doesn’t want to see that?

Star Trek: Prodigy, Series 2, Episodes 1–2. First broadcast on Monday 1 July 2024. Stardate: 61859.6. Star Trek: Prodigy is here for a second season, bringing our crew back together and sending them off on an epic mission aboard the USS Voyager. It’s Star Trek: Voyager as you’ve never seen it before, but it would be cruel of us to say why. (Hint: we both think it’s really good.) Also appearing: the two best Roberts, which is quite exciting.

Star Trek: Voyager, Series 4, Episodes 18–19. First broadcast on Wednesday 4 March 1998. Stardate: 51715.2. It’s business as usual on Star Trek this week, as the crew of Voyager find themselves in an episode of Secret Army which has been cast, written and directed by latex-headed aliens in Nazi uniforms. Will Voyager’s extensive back catalogue of holodeck programs persuade the Hirogen that there’s more to life than festooning your bulkheads with human skulls? Or will the Captain be forced (reluctantly) to kill Seven of Nine first?

Star Trek: The Original Series, Series 3, Episode 6. First broadcast on Friday 25 October 1968. Stardate: 4385.3. The crew of the Enterprise find themselves in a weird and beautifully directed simulacrum of Tombstone, Arizona with a couple of hours to kill before their certain death at the hands of Wyatt Earp’s gang of off-puttingly ugly cowboys. Meanwhile, we all learn a valuable lesson about why Star Trek is superior to real TV westerns. A classic.

Star Trek: Voyager, Series 4, Episode 6. First broadcast on Wednesday 8 October 1997. Stardate: Unknown (2374). In this week’s meeting of the Jeri Ryan Appreciation Society, we watch the most aggressively average Star Trek episode the Randomiser can find, only to discover that there’s still a lot of fun to be had — hilariously sluggish action scenes, a shockingly low-effort Intransigent Alien Race, and some wonderfully subtle and nuanced performances from Ethan Phillips, Tim Russ and Jeri Ryan.

Star Trek: The Next Generation, Series 7, Episodes 25–26. First broadcast on Monday 23 May 1994. Stardate: 47988. After seven years of thorny space problems and some of the most ingenious space solutions in Starfleet history, what do we have left to learn? Something about tachyon scans and anti-time, inevitably, but also something about the enduring power of love and friendship. Let’s see what’s in here.

Star Trek: Discovery, Series 3, Episode 13. First broadcast on Thursday 7 January 2021. Stardate: Unknown (3189). Previously, on Star Trek: Discovery: it’s the distant future, the Federation is broken, and isolationism runs rampant. Then, of course, lots of things happen, we make new connections, and find a new purpose. And now, the very noisy conclusion. Explosions! Gunfights! Space battles! There’s plenty of action, but do we find ourselves missing the days when Star Trek was a lot of people talking urgently in rooms?

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Series 6, Episode 19. First broadcast on Wednesday 15 April 1998. Stardate: 51721.3. This week, we discuss one of Star Trek’s most sacred texts — a forty-five minute Ben Sisko soliloquy, in which he saves the galaxy in a trolley problem of Garak’s devising, killing in the process a Romulan Senator, an obnoxious blue guy and at least one really hot Romulan bodyguard. Is this a great episode, a truly great episode, or something else altogether?

Star Trek: Picard, Series 1, Episode 7. First broadcast on Thursday 5 March 2020. Stardate: Unknown (2399). Picard and Soji arrive on the planet Nepenthe, where their confusion and self-doubt are assuaged by the planet’s atmophere, by the love of trustworthy old friends, and by some really good wood-fired pizza. Meanwhile, Agnes vomits two or three times, a beloved secondary character is horribly murdered, and a pretty young Romulan is trapped on a Borg cube with little hope of escape. On balance, we think it’s a win.

Star Trek: Short Treks, Series 2, Episode 6. First broadcast on Thursday 9 January 2020. Stardate: Unknown (5 April 2385). An inexplicable terrorist attack on Mars claims tens of thousands of lives. But how to react to it? Do we succumb to panic and fear? Or do we forget our differences and re-commit to our shared values?

Star Trek: Enterprise, Series 2, Episode 22. First broadcast on Wednesday 30 April 2003. Stardate: Unknown (2153). The crew of Enterprise encounter the Vissians, a genial and technologically advanced species who enslave three percent of their population and force them to have sex with married couples who wish to conceive their horrible latex-faced children. Surprisingly, we’re generally fine with this. Apart from Trip, who is a good person.

Star Trek: The Next Generation, Series 6, Episode 26 / Series 7, Episode 1. First broadcast on Monday 21 June 1993 and Saturday 18 September 1993. Stardate: 46982.1. After their critically acclaimed attack on Earth on Stardate 44001.4, the Borg are back with a terrifying new plan — to pad out the the running time of the Star Trek: The Next Generation Series 6 finale and Series 7 opener. Meanwhile, Deanna is amused by Data’s porn consumption, Nathan is impressed by Beverly’s approach to command, and Joe is distracted by the memory of much more enjoyable Star Trek episodes.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Series 3, Episode 8. First broadcast on Monday 14 November 1994. Stardate: 48423.2. This week, Deep Space Nine serves up a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, in which a respected female character undertakes an ill-advised heterosexual romance with a creepy and unattractive white guy, which makes her look like an idiot. Meanwhile, over in the B-plot, Quark and Jeffrey Coombs try to get hold of some deepfake celebrity porn of Nana Visitor.

Star Trek: The Original Series, Series 3, Episode 1. First broadcast on Friday 20 September 1968. Stardate: 5431.4. A young woman wearing fabulous boots materialises on the Enterprise, renders the crew unconscious, and then removes Spock’s brain. And soon we discover — to our horror — that everyone else involved in making this episode has had their brain removed as well.

Star Trek: Prodigy, Series 1, Episode 3. First broadcast on Thursday 4 November 2021. Stardate: Unknown (2383). Star Trek welcomes a whole new generation into its ranks, as Dal, Rok-Tahk, Zero, Pog, Murf and their prisoner Gwyn become the new crew of the USS Protostar. Their first mission: to accidentally set course for a black hole, to learn to work together as a crew, and to come to appreciate the value of good advice. And, of course, to boldly go where no one has gone before.

Star Trek: Voyager, Series 3, Episode 4. First broadcast on Wednesday 25 September 1996. Stardate: 50252.3. When the Doctor’s hard drive starts to fill up with opera, romantic relationships and all the complex glories of being human, he finds himself increasingly unable to fulfil his function as Voyager’s Chief Medical Officer — instead becoming a heartbreaking analogue of your dad suffering from dementia. Also, a bunch of space things happen that we couldn’t possibly care about.

Star Trek: Lower Decks, Series 2, Episode 8. First broadcast on Thursday 30 September 2021. Stardate: Unknown (2381). It’s Star Trek’s most terrifying crew evaluation since Coming of Age: the crew of the USS Cerritos confront a ridiculous alien from Star Trek: The Animated Series, the Terran Empire, medical ethics, an unconvincing Old West set on the Paramount lot, the plot of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, the Borg, complex strings of water molecules which acquire carbon from the body and act on the brain like alcohol, hexagonal crates in the cargo bay, and the plot of Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. But more than anything, they confront the need to work together and respect each other. Because this is — and of course it is — Star Trek.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Series 7, Episode 4. First broadcast on Wednesday 21 October 1998. Stardate: Unknown (2375). When passive-aggressive Vulcan racist Captain Solok arrives on Deep Space Nine and challenges Sisko to some kind of sportsball game, a series of hilarious training montages ensues, followed by a Very Important Lesson about how utterly adorable Rom is. Bless.

Star Trek: Enterprise, Series 1, Episode 4. First broadcast on Wednesday 10 October 2001. Stardate: Unknown (2151). After the crew of Enterprise decide to ignore the advice of their only competent crewmember, they find themselves on a very routine away mission on a very unremarkable planet, exhibiting behaviour that would embarass the most racist of your racist uncles. Turns out that at the end of the day, it hasn’t been such a long road getting from there to here.

Star Trek: The Original Series, Series 1, Episode 10. First broadcast on Thursday 10 November 1966. Stardate: 1512.2. Tensions are running high this week, as the Enterprise is attacked by a series of regular geometric solids and the bridge crew’s morale starts to crack under the pressure. Is this a ropey and glacially paced moment of disposable 60s TV, or the beginning of something indescribably magical?

Star Trek: Discovery, Series 3, Episode 4. First broadcast on Thursday 5 November 2020. Stardate: Unknown (3189). It’s been 1,183 years since Rick Berman left Star Trek, and so it’s time for two new queer characters to join the Discovery family — Trill host Adira Tal and their adorable boyfriend and former host Gray Tal — in an episode all about the importance of connection and belonging.

Star Trek: Voyager, Series 7, Episode 12. First broadcast on Wednesday 24 January 2001. Stardate: 54452.6. It’s our first trip to the Delta Quadrant, and we have questions that need answering. Is B’Elanna’s father a massive racist or just a regular-sized racist? Which is more convincing: Tom and B’Elanna’s baby or an 8472 in a well-lit room? And can we maintain focus all the way through a 45-minute episode of Voyager without a single space anomaly?

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Series 3, Episode 3. First broadcast on Monday 10 October 1994. Stardate: Unknown (2371). In this week’s episode of Family Ties, when Quark (Michael J Fox) lies about his involvement in the death of a belligerent Klingon customer, he finds himself threatened, hauled off to Qo’nos, forcibly married, and required to defend the honour of his house before the High Council with a combination of Excel spreadsheets and extreme physical cowardice. Will he learn a Very Important lesson about the dangers of greed? (Spoilers: no.)

Star Trek: The Animated Series, Series 1, Episode 8. First broadcast on Saturday 27 October 1973. Stardate: 1254.4. This week, with a budget of dozens of crisp American dollars at their disposal, Joe and Nathan pull out their smocks, palettes, easels and oils in order to bring you a lavishly illustrated story of human creativity and achievement in a 25-minute episode you won’t be embarassed to show your kids. Or not terminally embarrassed, anyway.

Star Trek: The Next Generation, Series 3, Episode 15. First broadcast on Monday 19 February 1990. Stardate: 43625.2. After the Enterprise-C emerges from a mysteriously swirly space anomaly, Joe and Nathan find themselves in an alternate timeline where Star Trek: The Next Generation is dramatically and impractically lit, full of incident, and sceptical about the 1990s belief in the End of History. Star Trek: Discovery Series 1 arrives nearly 30 years too early, in Yesterday’s Enterprise.

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 new civilisations, that sort of thing. Turns out, it would have made quite a good premise for a Star Trek series.

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, please?

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 terrifying truth about ourselves. A triumph: literally the thing that Star Trek is for.

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 one of our favourite Star Trek films. And, inevitably, gallons and gallons of alien seminal fluid.

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 meanwhile in 1998, people tuning in for this week’s episode of White People Living on the Moon find themselves watching something far better than they had a right to expect.

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: Deep Space Nine, Series 6, Episode 20. First broadcast on Wednesday 22 April 1998. Stardate: Unknown (2374). Fly me to the moon Let me trek among the stars Let me taste the cocktails In some holographic bars In other words, please be true In other words, I love you

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 across the galaxy, all except for a few holdouts who refused to read the series bible and decided they would pass their time yelling and pointing guns at the warp core instead.

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 another fibriform space anomaly, Geordi faces the horrors of a Gilbert and Sullivan patter song, Worf takes on the unlikely and challenging role of midwife, Data finds himself having to leave his genitals in another room, and Picard is trapped in a confined space and compelled to be nice to people for a while.

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 had hitherto only suspected.

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 dangling upside down by his ankles; soon after that Deanna Troi is surprised to find herself suffering from an unpleasant and potentially fatal earworm. Meanwhile, back in 1990, Nathan Bottomley and a very young Joe Ford are increasingly surprised to discover a new season of Star Trek: The Next Generation which surpasses both its predecessors in both competence and interest.

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, turns out, works incredibly well.

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, and to consider with dismay the deaths of everyone we have ever known or loved. And so, to cheer ourselves up, we decide to watch an episode of Star Trek: Voyager.