And yeah, I am so happy that they’re leaving Calypso in the canon. Yes, we don’t know what could possibly justify them retrofitting Discovery back to its 23rd century config… Read More

I know, I know, right? Kovitch being Daniels feels so utterly random. But still, him being a time agent was apparently the plan even without the series coming to an end. I like that he&rsquo… Read More

I really do want to have my say about the aftercare at the end of Discovery and the interesting implications of its ending and the extent to which some of the final reveals feel tacked on de… Read More

I’m tired and don’t want to write about Star Trek this week, so instead, here’s An Art. This is one of a series of encaustic collages I’m doing. Had a heck of a time… Read More

I got some fairly devastating news at work last week (Or, as your therapist would tell you, an exciting opportunity to meet new people and be the untrusted new guy and have to impress them a… Read More

We edge ever closer to inevitable disappointment. This is a good, strong episode, don’t get me wrong. After a few clinkers where they tried to do a puzzle box episode and failed, it oc… Read More

Everything I said about last week remains true: the Discovery writers room is good at feelings and connection and trauma and not good at puzzles. If it was a problem last week that the B-plo… Read More

The frelniks killed my D’argo. Well that’s a hell of a thing. Don’t get me wrong, I liked this episode. But man, that stretch of ten minutes or so where you know that becau… Read More

What the hell was that? Discovery’s been sort of all over the place for a long time, but this episode is giving me feelings more conflicted than usual. Stylistically, this is a good, s… Read More

At long last, after all this time, the deep dark secret that drives our antagonists is revealed. Yes, this week we learn that D’argo is, in fact, a Breen. A shocking reveal that can on… Read More

Well that will teach me. It was just a couple of weeks ago I was saying that Reno isn’t the sort of engineer to do technobabble, and this week, they up and give her a technobabble scen… Read More

Okay so you know how I’ve been saying that Discovery is the show that’s about connection? I think that is a testament to how consistent they have been about their themes and it&r… Read More

You know, I rather liked Michael’s breakthrough last week that “twin moons” referred not to a planet with two moons, but a planet where two of its moons move… Read More

Well okay. Didn’t mean to take three months off, but I found I really enjoyed not having the pressure of churning out a weekly article added to all the other fucking pressure I experie… Read More

Okay so I’m not going all the way to London for this, but if it ever shows up stateside, I know what I want for my next birthday. I think the generic term is “Immersive Experienc… Read More

Captain’s Log, Stardate 58462.8. The Cerritos is departing Krulmuth-B, having retrieved Ensigns Mariner and Boimler. While their adventure in the past seems to have had no significant… Read More

Since I seem to be having trouble talking about SNW so far removed, he’s something about Discovery, even further removed. A scene I’d like to see in season 5: Reno: Hey prof. Pe… Read More

So I finally start writing again after the strikes, and boom, my web host goes down for like a day and a half last Wednesday, and then again for about six hours this past Tuesday. Plus, I&rs… Read More

Charades or I am Curious (Yellow) or How I Meld Your Mother See Also: Faces (VOY), Rascals (TNG), Stargate SG-1 “Divide and Conquer”, Doctor Who “Curse… Read More

I’m not sure if writing a weekly essay about Star Trek counts as crossing a picket line or promoting a work by striking union members, but I think maybe it would be best if I waited un… Read More

My email’s been down for the past two days, which means I can’t get to the draft of the article I wrote about “Charades”. I’ll post when I can. Spoilers: Crinkl… Read More

Among the Lotus Eaters or I AM KI-RISTOPHER See also: The Paradise Syndrome (TOS); “Court-Martial” (TOS); Conundrum (TNG); Workforce (VOY); Stargate SG-1: “T… Read More

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow or Let’s Kill (Baby) Hitler See also: “The City on the Edge of Forever” (TOS), “Tomorrow is Yesterday” (TOS), &ldqu… Read More

Ad Astra Per Aspera or Nobody Expects the Starfleet Inquisition See Also: “The Menagerie” (TOS), “Court Martial” (TOS), “The Measure of a Man” (… Read More

I am on vacation right now, but managed to cobble this together before I left. No idea if next week’s will come out in a timely manner. The Broken Circle or The Roid Rage of… Read More

I kinda want to take a little time doing nothing major to cool down from the volume of Trekwork. Suggestions for Seven’s “Make the ship go” cachphrase: I would like the shi… Read More

And now, the conclusion. I’m still processing my feelings here. I think this finale needed more time to breathe. They managed to still have ten minutes for winding things down, but the… Read More

Somehow, Palpatine returned. That’s kinda how I’m feeling right now. I didn’t want it to be the Borg, but I kinda knew it was, and there’s a distinct sense of “… Read More

I suppose technically I could have been more wrong about how this week’s episode could go, but it wouldn’t be easy. I predicted this would be a “Snatching defeat from the j… Read More

Well okay. This was… Hm. I mean, it’s pretty good. But at the same time, it was painful to sit through this episode knowing full well that this is the kind of show where the her… Read More

I don’t know where I stand on this one. But I guess we’re really going with the changelings as the main antagonist here. That’s disappointing. There’s still something… Read More

Okay everyone, too much excitement last two weeks, let’s slow it down a bit and have a slower, thinkier episode about conspiracies and inner pain. And also Worf. (Worf is fine this wee… Read More

Sorry this is late; provider has been up and down like a seventy-year-old captain and his fifty-year-old medical officer on a vacation. It’s interesting to feel like I’m on the s… Read More

A bit of a mixed bag, this one. We are just going all in on the Sad Dad, aren’t we? Maybe even a little too hard. We end on a cliffhangery conflict between Picard and Riker whose moral… Read More

You know, I almost feel like the people who make this show actually listen to me. Possibly they listen to everyone, because they are heavy on the fanservice this season. Because you know how… Read More

I want to be curmudgeonly, but I can’t. They did, so far, pull it off. Most of the hype leading up to season 3 of Star Trek: Picard has been various forms of, “Oh thank… Read More

And here we end, just, by a remarkable coincidence, in time to kick off next week, I assume with the final season of Picard. See you… Out there. Epilogue 3: Vulcan The door emitted a… Read More

Epilogue 2: Vindication “The council is now in session,” President Roth declared. “If you will all take your seats. Bring them in.” Una Chin-Riley had changed fr… Read More

A note on the timeline: I take no stand on the relative ordering of these epilogues, beyond the self-evident fact that Epilogue 1 antecedes Epilogue 2. It makes far more logical sense for Ep… Read More

Previously on A Mind Occasionally Voyaging… “Bones says she’ll pull through,” Kirk said as he took the seat opposite Pike in the Admiral’s cabin. “That I… Read More

Previously on A Mind Occasionally Voyaging… Jim got to main engineering ahead of Pike, in time to hold him back from rushing the safety door. “You’ll flood the w… Read More

Previously, on A Mind Occasionally Voyaging… On the bridge, Kirk looked to Saavik. “Time?” “Three minutes, thirty seconds,” she said. “Distance from… Read More

I have The Rona, so I’m not writing this week. Instead, enjoy this factoid: We are equidistant in history from the births of Benedict Arnold and Jean-Luc Picard. Also, though this fact… Read More

Previously on A Mind Occasionally Voyaging… Aboard the Enterprise, the Genesis torpedo began to glow. A fine mist issued from it as it pulsed with internal energy. On the bridge, … Read More

Previously on A Mind Occasionally Voyaging… Khan chuckled at the voice from behind. A series of concentric rings rose from the controller, and he twisted the outer one as he turned. I… Read More

A decade and a bit ago Monday, I became a dad. He’s getting big now and isn’t crazy about having his picture taken, so here’s a picture of his birthday haul, with a small c… Read More

Previously on A Mind Occasionally Voyaging No one was there to challenge Pike and La’an as they materialized in Reliant’s transporter room. La’an checked her tric… Read More

I asked Dall-E 2 and Nightcafe to show me a promotional poster for Peter Falk as Columbo on the USS Enterprise. Neither of them seemed to quite know who Peter Falk is, but were kind of consi… Read More

So, I had this idea of a different climax, but I couldn’t get over the fact that in the canon, Enterprise needs to Warp Speed it out of there to avoid the genesis wave, and I felt like… Read More

Previously, on A Mind Occasionally Voyaging… Kirk indicated the maelstrom on the screen as he and Pike stepped from the turbolift. “Mutara nebula,” he explained. “Ga… Read More

Happy Veteran’s Day. Thank you for your service Read More

A second special holiday posting because I hear people are not happy about Halloween Ends. You know why? Because evil never ends… I hear multiversal crossovers are all the r… Read More

Since it’s Halloween soon, I’ll do a thematic one. As you all know by now, the latest incarnation of Scooby-Doo is outing Velma. This has made exactly who you’d expect to b… Read More

(Part 12 will be delayed a week to make room for something seasonal. Also, I have one more plot point I want to introduce and I’m hoping a delay will give me time to figure out how to… Read More

Previously on A Mind Occasionally Voyaging… It had, in fact, been years since Jim Kirk had taken hands-on approach to computer hacking. He struggled to lock out command pro… Read More

Previously, on A Mind Occasionally Voyaging… “Prefix code?” Saavik asked. “I don’t understand.” Jim continued to try to shake Ortegas back to consciousne… Read More

Previously on A Mind Occasionally Voyaging… “We’re too late,” M’Benga said. “Saavik, how bad is it?” Jim Kirk asked. “Impossible to say at th… Read More

Previously on A Mind Occasionally Voyaging… The viewscreen flickered, digital artifacts rolling across the image as the video processors struggled to correct for the signal lost to th… Read More

Previously, on A Mind Occasionally Voyaging… “What’s going on here?” Pike asked. “Go to yellow alert.” “Energize defensive fields,” Sam order… Read More

Previously on A Mind Occasionally Voyaging… “So this is all some twenty-year-old vendetta?” Carol asked. “I don’t understand. All this death?” “We… Read More

Previously, on A Mind Occasionally Voyaging… “Rigor hasn’t set in, no fixed lividity,” Doctor M’Benga said, examining another of the bodies they had cut d… Read More

Previously, on A Mind Occasionally Voyaging… Now, the pacing of this story is not quite perfect. But this is not because of my shortcomings as a writer, no: this is a subtle hint… Read More

Previously, on A Mind Occasionally Voyaging… “I don’t know you.” The man had long, white hair and a face harshly weathered by years of hard living, but his muscular… Read More

Previously, on A Mind Occasionally Voyaging… (I’m actually imagining a whole alternate version of TWOK now with Pike, which perhaps I will write out at length later) &ldqu… Read More

“A Quality of Mercy” or “Tomorrow’s Enterprise” “Stone walls do not a prison make,nor iron bars a cage: minds innocent and quiet take that for a hermitage… Read More

“All Those Who Wander” or “The Wrath of La’an” – no, wait, I used that one. How about, “In Space, No One Can Hear You Rip Off James Cameron”… Read More

Well I don’t know how I managed to donk that up. Got these two in the wrong order. Hope the jokes still work. “Lift Us Where Suffering Can Not Reach” or “Th… Read More

“The Elysian Kingdom” or “Hey, the costume department said the King Arthur thing fell through and we could have these fantasy medieval costumes for free if we wanted”… Read More

“Spock Amok”* or “Hijinks Ensue” Influences: “Shore Leave” (TOS), “The Trouble with Tribbles” (TOS), “Turnabout Intruder&rdquo… Read More

“Memento Mori” or “The Wrath of La’an”* Influences: “Balance of Terror” (TOS), “Disaster” (TNG), Star Trek II: The Wrath… Read More

So last week when I said I didn’t care if it made no sense and I just wanted them to go fucking nuts… Probably shouldn’t have said that while holding the cursed money&rsqu… Read More

“Ghosts of Ilyria” or “I Know This Series Has Been a Bit of a TOS Glow-Up, But This Is Taking Things a Bit Far” Influences: “The Naked Time&rdquo… Read More

Showdown time, I guess. To a large extent, I think this is the real climax of the season. If we follow the pattern we’ve seen in the last season and in Discovery, we can expe… Read More

Do you like forward momentum? Well fuck you then, because not this week. Well, I judge too harsh, because I think some stuff happened? I don’t know. Before Picard, I tried to watc… Read More

Okay so let’s drop everything for a week and talk about Strange New Worlds because I finally managed to build up a buffer. I do not like that Strange New Worlds is… Read More

He said the thing! He said the thing! I know I said that the Easter eggs are largely unimpressive to me, but oh did it warm my heart when Rios tells Teresa, “I’m from Chile; I ju… Read More

Well what the hell was that? Yes, they did it, and… Well I’m not angry. Maybe a little disappointed. But mostly confused, because after a season of pretty tight episodes, we&rsq… Read More

Some of my process of self-discovery has involved being a little bit of an artist. Last Friday I finished a project I’d been working on for several years. Well, a project I’d bee… Read More

Back to form I guess, since this episode is a little bit of an unfocused mess, at least compared to how tight the first part of the season was. There’s a ton going on, which isn’… Read More

Well, I guess I should’ve saved my comments about ICE being a bunch of fascists for this week, because man, without giving the assholes too much screen-time, they manage to v… Read More

Well that’s sure to anger exactly the right people. Four major things happen in this episode of Picard: Seven of Nine maintains her perfect track record of murdering people who ca… Read More

Okay, it’s Friday night, the wife is out with her friends, I’m home alone to guard the sleeping children, time to get loaded and watch me some Star Trek while trying to… Read More

When last we left our rag-tag group of misfits, Old Man Robopicard was about to head out to new adventures aboard La Sirena, accompanied by his young Romulan protégée Legolas… Read More

Lay down your load. We are only down the road. We have no gifts, but we are many – “All of You”, Encanto Let’s get this out of the way first. I kind of brok… Read More

(I am practicing self-control in that I am not going to start in on Picard until I’ve finished Disco. Also in that I watched this episode sober, but I don’t promise thi… Read More

Once again I find myself at the disadvantage of having been pretty drunk when I watched this episode. I’m going through some stuff right now. It’s fine. Anyway, this episode has… Read More

And another low-key one, oddly. “The Galactic Barrier”‘s A-plot is exactly what it says on the tin: Discovery crosses the galactic barrier. It’s… Strangely emp… Read More

“Rubicon” is a good solid name for an episode of pretty much any sci-fi adventure series. It’s got a clear meaning but is just obscure enough that people feel good about th… Read More

We ease back into Disco this week with an episode that’s somehow both high-stakes and low-key. The camera remains upright, the fight scene is discrete, the climax is a poker game, and… Read More

I guess we’re backing away from the Protostar gang for a bit in order to get Back to the Future next week. And we see them off with an episode that isn’t quite what I wanted, but… Read More

Aw man, yeah. Look, Lower Decks just isn’t my jam; I get what they’re going for, but they keep either trying too hard to channel Rick and Morty or drifting into a kind… Read More

Ooh boy, a Nickelodeon Puzzle Box. I kind of love it. “Time Amok” (clever!) is a Temporal Shenanigans episode that showcases incremental problem solving in a very lovely way.&nbs… Read More

Okay, well then. Here we get a look into what the Protostar crew looks like on something approximating “a mission” – something they very broadly tried in “Dreamcatche… Read More

And we’re back to this. As one would expect after a break, we ease back in with a low-key episode. There’s not much that is of major plot-interest: we set things up but don&rsquo… Read More

Our 70%-of-the-season cliffhanger is an episode that is simultaneously high-stakes and low-key. Weird. Yeah, this is a slow, talky episode where most of what happens is speeches. And what a… Read More

Happy New Year! Another Frakes-directed episode and, much like his last Disco, it’s got a bit of a retro vibe to it. Discovery takes on one of Trek‘s oldest and dearest trop… Read More

So… I was pretty drunk while I watched this episode so my analysis might be a little… Weird. Also, I think there was something wrong with my speakers, but possibly I was just d… Read More

Discovery is a flawed show in many respects. But every once in a while it’ll do something – usually not even a huge something – that knocks it so far out of… Read More

Discovery is really getting the hang of being on-point thematically. Other aspects… Well, we’re working on it. We don’t do much to advance the overall plot this week, but… Read More

Okay, that’s a little better. For its second outing this season, Discovery gives us an episode where a lot less happens. Well, that’s not quite right; I mean, quite a b… Read More