YouTube Theater: Star Trek Dubs

I can't stop laughing at these. Enjoy, courtesy of the Dayjob Orchestra.








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10 Secretly Great Episodes from TNG

Some episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation are well remembered because they are so great (“The Best of Both Worlds”, “Yesterday’s Enterprise”, “The Inner Light”). Some are remembered for being so bad (“Angel One”, “Shades of Gray”). Some are famous as defining character moments (“The Measure of a Man”, “Hollow Pursuits”, “Sins of the Father”) and still others are famous for their inventive storytelling (“Cause and Effect”, “Darmok”). But there are other great episodes that aren’t always remembered, they’ve fallen through the cracks of our collective consciousness as Trekk(ies/ers). Rewatching the series as I have been lately thanks to SyFy and BBC America, I’ve found quite a few episodes that I had forgotten how much I loved. Here is a list of some of those forgotten gems (in chronological order).

“Clues” (4x14)

The ship encounters a wormhole, and everyone aboard except for Data is knocked out for thirty seconds. They send a probe back to the planet they thought they had detected before the wormhole, and then they continue on their way. But before long, strange things start happening. A plant sample that Dr. Crusher is cultivating shows 24 hours of growth. Data begins acting strangely. Computer logs have been tampered with, transporter logs show 24 hours of extra cell growth, Worf has a broken wrist that’s been mended and no memory of breaking it, and boy is Data ever acting strangely. All the clues point to a missing day, and Data seems to know what’s happening, but he’s not talking.

This episode is a prime example of my favorite type of TNG show, the mystery. In fact, this episode is all about how much humans love a good mystery, and how they can’t resist trying to solve it, even when they know that they probably won’t like the answer. As the titular clues begin piling up, the viewer becomes just as invested in this mystery as the characters, longing to solve it, to find out what happened.

“Identity Crisis” (4x18)

Five years ago, on an away mission as part of the crew of the USS Victory, Geordi LaForge took part in an investigation into 49 missing Federation colonists. Now, all but two members of that away team are also missing, and the Enterprise is on its way back to that same planet to find out what happened to them. When they get there they find abandoned shuttle craft and torn Starfleet uniforms. Somehow, the missing crewmen and being transformed into aliens, and the same thing is happening to Geordi and his lady friend. Geordi now has to review the logs from the original away mission to find the answers to this mystery before he himself is transformed.

Remember that scene in Blade Runner where Deckard is using his computer to examine a photograph, moving through it and zooming in to find the clues that it contains. There’s something very compelling about that scene that I’ve never been able to fully explain to myself. You’re watching the wheels turn in someone’s head, extrapolating information, piecing together clues, trying to figure out what it all means. Geordi’s scenes recreating the away mission logs on the holodeck have that same indefinable element, as he locates a shadow that doesn’t seem to belong to anyone and extrapolates where it’s coming from. A mysterious humanoid figure, previously invisible appears, and there’s moment where we instinctively know that something bad is about to happen. It’s that tension that keeps the viewer riveted and makes me love this episode.

“Conundrum” (5x14)

The Enterprise is struck by a mysterious energy wave from an alien ship, and the entire crew gets amnesia. They retain enough knowledge to run the ship, but they have no idea who they are. They’re finally able to get some data from the computer, including their names and their immediate mission. The audience is immediately aware that something is wrong, because the personnel files list a Commander MacDuff as the First Officer and the mission files say that they are at war with a race called the Lysians, and they’re supposed to destroy their command center. But when they discover that the Lysians are about 100 years behind them technologically, they realize that things aren’t adding up. Turns out Commander MacDuff (pictured above with his human shell burned away, revealing his chewy nougat center) is a big fat liar, and a member of a race that really are at war with the Lysians and they just wanted the Enterprise to do their dirty work.

“Sorry about all those ships we destroyed. Our bad.”

This is an unusual episode, but it’s a lot of fun to watch the crew interacting with each other in strange ways, making incorrect assumptions about their relationships with each other. Worf thinks he’s in command, Ro and Riker think that they’re an item, and Data thinks that he’s a bartender. The same idea will be done again years later on Buffy the Vampire slayer in “Tabula Rasa”, only played for a lot more laughs. In any case, a very creative episode that was very well done.

“Power Play” (5x15)

Following a distress call to an uninhabited moon, the Enterprise discovers the remains of a 200 year old starship, the USS Essex. When Troi senses life on the moon, Picard sends an away team down to the planet via shuttle craft. The shuttle crashes, Riker breaks his arm, and O’Brien beams down with pattern enhancers to rescue the away team (why they don’t include pattern enhancers as part of the shuttle’s standard equipment, we’ll never know). Lightning strikes the enhancers, knocking everyone down (a stunt that Marina Sirtis did herself, breaking her tailbone in the process) and the unconscious crewmembers (except Riker) are entered by a trio of little floaty balls of light. Back aboard the Enterprise, the three alien possessed crewmembers take hostages in Ten-Forward, where they claim to be the ghosts of the crew of the Essex and demand that their remains be beamed aboard and given a proper burial so that they can rest.

I think it’s a rule now that every show, no matter what genre, has to have an episode with a hostage situation. This is definitely one of the more creative methods that I’ve seen, but still all the normal tropes are here. Picard trades himself as a hostage to get the injured hostages released. There’s a covert attempt to disable the hostage takers, which goes wrong. There’s a mother with a baby among the hostages, Keiko and Molly O’Brien. Considering that this is shortly after Molly’s difficult birth in “Disaster”, also in Ten-Forward, Keiko might want to consider avoiding the room from now on, bad things seem to keep happening to her there. And of course, there’s the heroic sacrifice in the end and the dramatic revelation that the captors aren’t who they say they are. But cliché’s aside, the reason this episode is so much fun is that the bad guys are wearing familiar faces. And any excuse to let Brent Spiner ham it up is okay by me.

“The Next Phase” (5x24)

While offering aid to a damaged Romulan science ship, Geordi and Ro are presumed lost in a transporter accident. However when they wake up back aboard the Enterprise, no one can see or hear them and they have the ability to pass through solid objects. Ro thinks that they’re dead and their ghosts, but Geordi isn’t so sure. And so the two have to solve the myster (there’s that word again) of what happened to them, all while watching their shipmates deal with their deaths and plan their memorial service.

There’s a lot of great character stuff here for Ro, as she explores her relationship with Picard (seen walking through her, above) along with her mixed feelings toward Riker, and his possible feelings toward her. Ro didn’t get that much character development that didn’t directly refer to her being Bajoran or her people’s plight with the Cardassians, so it’s nice to see her on her own here with her guard down. There’s also some great character stuff with Data and Geordi, as Data considers his friendship with him and what it means. But the best part I think is the stuff with Geordi and Ro. These are two characters that haven’t had much interaction with each other in the past, thrust together in a situation, clinging to each other as comrades and friends. The scene with the two of them at the end laughing together is really touching. I wish they would have developed their friendship more in future episodes.

“Frame of Mind” (6x21)

Riker is rehearsing a play aboard the Enterprise where he is playing a mental patient, when weird things start happening to him. People staring at him strangely in the halls, an alien crewmember that he’s never seen before keeps appearing, and a cut on his head that keeps reopening. Then he wakes up to find himself in a mental hospital for real, the mysterious alien is his doctor, and he’s told that he’s insane and his life aboard Enterprise is just a delusion. Then he wakes up on the Enterprise again and is told that the alien mental hospital was just a dream. What’s real and what isn’t? Is he crazy or is he being held prisoner?

I love these kinds of episodes that fuck with your head. We see all of the events from Riker’s perspective, so by the end we are just as unsure as he is as to what is actually happening. It’s a great character episode for Riker, something he didn’t get very many of, a great mystery, and it had a lot of dark and scary imagery that really worked well. It’s a fear that plays to all of us, being thought of as crazy and having no way to prove otherwise. Watching “Shutter Island” earlier this year, it reminded me a lot of this episode.

“Timescape” (6x25)

Picard, Troi, Data and LaForge are returning from a conference on Earth, traveling via runabout, when strange things begin occurring. Troi notices that the others all seem to freeze for a few seconds, as if being put on pause. One of the runabouts engines fails, drained of fuel, and the logs say that it’s been running continuously for 47 days. Some rotten fruit and some long fingernails later, they figure out that they are encountering pockets of space where time is either speeding up or slowing down. And when they return to Enterprise, they find it trapped in one of these pockets, seemingly during an attack by a Romulan Warbird.

Again, this episode breaks down into essentially a great mystery story, with a lot of really fun sci-fi tropes along the way. As the four of them move around aboard the frozen Enterprise, each new scene they encounter is another clue as to what is happening. The Enterprise is supplying power to the Romulan ship, but why? They’re beaming aboard injured Romulans, but why?

Dr. Crusher seems to have been shot while doing the robot, but why?

“Parallels” (7x11)

After returning from a bat’leth tournament, Worf starts noticing small changes on the Enterprise. People suddenly appear or disappear during conversations, Data’s eye color changes. As the Enterprise begins to investigate a sensor array close to the Cardassian border that is no longer transmitting data to the Federation, the changes that Worf observes become more pronounced. Suddenly he finds himself married to Counselor Troi, then he’s first officer and Riker is the captain. Cardassian ensigns, Wesley as tactical officer, cats and dogs living together, it’s crazy! They eventually trace the problem to a space anomaly that Worf encountered on the way back to Enterprise, turns out that Worf isn’t crazy, he’s just hopping between alternate universes. They make their way to the anomaly and after an attack from a Bajoran warship, it starts spitting out Enterprises like crazy, all of them from alternate universes. Worf flies his shuttle back into the anomaly, clicks his heels together three times, and before you know it everything is back to normal again?

Alternate universes are another one of my favorite sci-fi tropes. It’s all about ‘what if’, which is the question that you’ll find at the core of most great science fiction. The idea that every decision we make results in an alternate reality where the opposite decision was made, and that those decisions can butterfly effect in fantastic ways that we can only imagine, is tremendously interesting. This is also a good character episode for Worf, and set up the whole Worf/Troi relationship that persisted throughout the rest of the series. Now, I’ve never been a fan of Worf/Troi. To me, adding a relationship to a show that late in the game smacks of the old add-a-kid strategy. Things are getting stale? Shake them up a bit, add a cute kid or a talking animal with magic powers, start pairing people off for no reason. The whole thing is just a little to soap opera for me, and Star Trek is better than that. It doesn’t have to resort to cheap character gimmicks to tell interesting stories.

“Masks” (7x17)

The Enterprise is investigating a rogue comet, when strange alien artifacts start appearing throughout the ship. Turns out that the comet is actually some kind of alien archive, and it’s been traveling through space for 87 million years. It’s transforming the Enterprise into an alien city, and it’s transforming Data into its queen. Data begins to exhibit several personalities, all of them warning of the arrival of Masaka. When she wakes up, shit is going to go down. So they activate the transformation sequence to create Masaka’s temple, to try to get some dirt on her and summon her so they can convince her to stop turning the Enterprise into an Aztec yard sale. Everyone of Data’s personalities says that Korgano is the only one who can stop Masaka, but that he has stopped chasing her. Picard uses his archeology experience to figure out that Masaka and Korgano are like the sun and the moon, and uses that information to impersonate Korgano and convince Masaka to go back to sleep, which turns everything on the Enterprise back to normal.

This is probably my favorite episode on this list. It’s just so strange and yet so fascinating. When Data first starts exhibiting these other personalities, he looks up at the camera and says in a really creepy voice “Masaka is waking” right before a commercial break. It’s such a great WTF moment, and it really sets the tone for a lot of the strange stuff that happens later. It isn’t a very well received episode among the fans. Oddly enough, the thing I like the most about this episode, Brent Spiner’s performance, is the thing that most people point to when they shit on it, including Spiner himself. He apparently didn’t get as much prep time as he wanted for this performance and wasn’t happy with the end product, but I think that he does a wonderful job. A lot of the other criticism seems to be on the general weirdness of the story, which again I loved. Star Trek has always done such a great job of taking Science Fiction and making the elements relatable by drawing parallels to our modern day lives, but I don’t think that means that it can’t be weird too. Some of the best science fiction is the stuff that is just plain weird, and you can’t be afraid of that.

“Genesis” (7x19)

In Sickbay, Barclay has diagnosed himself with a fatal illness. Dr. Crusher assures him that he only has some alien flu, and gives him a treatment for it that involves activating dormant t-cells. Meanwhile on the bridge, the crew is testing a new weapons guidance system. One of the torpedoes they fire goes off course, so Picard and Data take a shuttlecraft to retrieve it. Aboard the Enterprise, the crew begins to behave strangely. Barclay is hyper, Troi starts complaining that it’s too cold and dry, Riker can’t concentrate, and Worf is acting extra aggressive and primitive. Worf attacks Troi, biting her on the cheek, and he attacks Dr. Crusher, spitting venom in her face. Three days later when Picard and Data return, they find the Enterprise in shambles, and the crew devolved into various primitive life forms. Riker is a caveman, Barclay is a spider, Troi is some kind of amphibian. Worf (pictured above) is some kind of proto-Klingon, and he’s marked Troi as his mate (hence the biting). Picard and Data figure out what’s going on thanks to Data’s cat, who has devolved into an iguana. Picard, who is devolving into a lemur at this point, has to distract Worf from trying to break into Sickbay to get to Troi so that Data can finish the cure and disperse it to the ship, which he does. In the end, Dr. Crusher names the new disease after Barclay and Troi clears her calendar for the next few days.

This is just a fun episode all around. It has humor, it has action, it has mystery, great special effects, and great character moments. It marks the directorial debut of Gates McFadden, as well as Barclay’s fifth and final appearance on the series. Worf and Troi’s relationship has developed to the biting stage, which is good for them. A lot of fans complain whenever any humor is injected into the show, and while I’ll agree that a lot of early episodes that tried it fell flat, this episode is a good example where it works. It isn’t forced, they aren’t trying to do gags, it’s just an unusual situation where characters are acting out of character in a way that’s funny. Riker trying to eat Picard’s fish, Data telling Picard that’s he’s transforming into a lemur or a pygmy marmoset. In the immortal words of Larry the Cable Guy, I don’t care who you are, that’s funny.

Book Review: “Star Trek: Destiny” Trilogy by David Mack

When I was younger I used to read Star Trek novels religiously. This was back when the shows were still on the air, the books were all numbered, they were all stand-alone stories, and none of them were canon. The books were pretty good, and some authors, like Peter David, even made them great. I stepped away from the books for a while when I discovered fan fiction, but when I rediscovered them again a couple years ago I found out that something wondrous had happened during my absence. With none of the series on the air anymore, the books became free to continue the story. No longer were they hindered by the giant reset button that had to set everything back the way it was by the end of the book. New characters were introduced, loose ends left hanging from the series were tied up, and new situations were introduced. There was continuity, all the books released took place in the same universe, even across the different series. Oddly enough, the books were numbered when they weren’t contiguous, and now that they are the numbers are gone. And while still not technically canon with the TV series or the movies, the novels became better because of their new freedom. The downside of this is that without any of the shows on the air, the public interest in the books is less. So even though the books are better now, the selection at your local bookstore is likely to be pretty sparse. And without numbering, it can be hard to figure out which books come before others. But if you take the time to do a little research and get the books through Amazon or some other online source, the reward is well worth it.

“Star Trek: Destiny” represents a major event in this new bookverse (yes, that’s what I’m calling it). It crosses between almost all of the series, primarily focusing on four Captains and their ships. Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the USS Enterprise, Captain William Riker of the USS Titan, Captain Ezri Dax of the USS Aventine, and Captain Erika Hernandez of the USS Columbia. (And for you DS9 fans who haven’t been reading the books, yes, you read that correctly. Ezri is a Captain now. In the DS9 books she’s still a lieutenant, but it’s still the same continuity, the DS9 books just take place earlier). The greatest threat that the galaxy has ever seen, the Borg, have returned. And this time, the outcome can be nothing short of total annihilation. Previous TNG novels had been building up the Borg threat for a while; “Resistance”, “Before Dishonor” and “Greater than the Sum” to name a few. The Borg once thought of humans and nothing more than a nuisance, but now that they’ve turned their full resources to destroying the Federation, not assimilating it, nothing can stop them.

Meanwhile, across the galaxy in the Gamma Quadrant, the USS Aventine is investigating the discovery of the centuries lost USS Columbia, crashed on a planet that it would seem impossible for them to ever have reached. And when an Aventine crewmember is mysteriously killed on Columbia, Captain Dax has a tough decision to make. Stay and investigate, or follow her orders to return to Federation space to join in the fight against the Borg. Ezri feels like she has a personal stake in the mystery of Columbia, something that started with her previous host, Jadzia. She’s a young Captain (sort of), but she’s determined to do right by her crew. I have to say that when I first came across these books and saw that Ezri was the Captain of a starship, I was skeptical. It didn’t seem like a logical fit to me. The Ezri that I remember from the series was a sweet woman, caring, dedicated, but nothing about her really said ‘command officer’. But reading the DS9 books, there is a natural progression there as Ezri gets more in touch with what it means to be a joined Trill. She no longer the flighty young woman we first met who was unprepared to be joined. For lack of a better term, she’s grown into her symbiont. And in these books, she shows that she has what it takes.

Flashbacks to the events of Columbia’s disappearance start filling in the back story, as they meet an enigmatic, isolationist race of aliens called the Caeliar. Erika Hernandez only made one or two appearances on Star Trek: Enterprise as an old friend of Jonathan Archer’s and Captain of the NX-02. The character is fleshed out here and given a story arc that provides the through line for the trilogy. One of the things that I liked about Enterprise (there’s a sentence I bet you never thought you’d read) was the feeling that these ships really were out there on their own. They didn’t have the Federation to support them, or a vast fleet of ships to back them up if needed. Here we see that first hand as Columbia faces an ordeal that will ultimately leave them lost to history. And Captain Hernandez is left to make some pretty hard decisions.

On Earth, Federation President Nanietta Bacco (with the help of her staff and advisors, including Seven of Nine) is gathering allies, trying to create a unified defense against the Borg. These scenes work very well I think, sort like The West Wing meets Star Trek. With most Trek, the focus is so much on life in Starfleet aboard a starship, it’s always nice I think to learn more about other aspects of the universe, like government and politics. I know on paper it looks like science fiction and political thrillers shouldn’t mix (just ask George Lucas), I think it works here to better give us the scope of these events.

Meanwhile halfway across the galaxy on the USS Titan, Riker and Troi are faced with tragedy of their own. Deanna is having a difficult pregnancy, and she’s informed that the baby will not survive. One of the things that I like most about the Titan books is the character drama. Titan is a ship crewed by many different alien species, some of them not even humanoid, and as they try to live and work together they face many personal difficulties. Captain Riker is faced with a distraught wife who is also a member of his senior staff, he has to be there for her while dealing with this tragedy himself, but he has to put his ship and his crew first. It’s a balancing act, and he isn’t always successful at it. Titan is investigating the transwarp conduits that the Borg use to travel to the Alpha Quadrant. What they discover are the Caeliar. And with them, looking as though she has not aged a day in 200 hundred years, is Erika Hernandez.

In the third book, the Borg come, laying waste to everything in their path. These three Captains have a chance to stop them, but the plan is risky. Everything is at stake. Along the way we learn the origins of the Borg, and we learn what happened to the Caeliar and the crew of the Columbia.

This trilogy is a must read for anyone who is interested in the modern Star Trek bookverse. When it’s over, nothing will ever be the same again. It’s a fast paced, energetic read filled with personal drama, political intrigue, and everything in between. But of course, you don’t have to take my word for it.

Top 7 Bizarre Alien Foods

If there’s one thing that I’ve learned from watching the Travel Channel (or as I like to call it, Food Network II), it’s that you can tell a lot about a culture by looking at the food they eat. If there are two things I’ve learned, the second would be that Andrew Zimmern enjoys eating testicles. The stranger and more disgusting the food, the more a culture seems to be proud of it. This is true of even regional cuisine right here in the states. Case in point, my own hometown of Philadelphia has a little local delicacy called Scrapple. It is essentially the fruit cake of meat products, in that it is a good way to use leftovers. They take the parts of the pig that they can’t put into hotdogs and press it together in a loaf. It’s then sliced and fried and served with breakfast. Personally, I think it’s delicious, as long as you don’t think too much about what you’re eating.

So what does Scrapple, or cheesesteaks for that matter, say about my fair city? What does spicy food say about a culture? It’s fun to speculate, and it’s fun to think about these fictional alien foods and wonder what they might say about their respective races. As I looked back on some of these foods, I can’t help but think of Andrew Zimmern again from “Bizarre Foods” and I wonder what his reactions to some of them might be.

Gagh (Klingon)

Gagh are serpent worms, usually consumed live. Where I come from, we call it bait. Klingons are big on death, so the closer their food is to it the more appealing it is. The appeal of Gagh seems to be not in the taste, but in the feeling of the worms’ death throes in the mouth and stomach. Even when they are eating, they have to be defeating an enemy in some way. From the other Klingon cuisine that we’ve seen, it seems that they’re also big on I-dare-you-to-eat-this foods. They like to prove their bravado by eating things that other species would find repellent. Any Klingons living on Earth in the 24th Century probably enjoy haggis and stinky tofu.

I’m pretty sure I’ve seen Andrew Zimmern eat live insects and worms before, so Gagh wouldn’t phase him a bit. He’d swallow them without issue, comment on their earthy flavor (or Qo’noSy flavor I suppose) and ask you to pass the targ testicles.


Hasperat (Bajoran)

Hasperat is a spicy concoction that resembles a burrito, though it does not appear to contain any meat. Its eye-watering, tongue searing heat seems to be its primary feature. Ro Laren commented once that her father made the spiciest Hasperat that she had ever tasted. She then offered to make it for the leader of the Maquis cell that she was infiltrating at the time, thereby setting him up to be a father figure for her, right before he was gunned down in cold blood by the Cardassians. Spicy food can also be considered a type of I-dare-you-to-eat-this food, but not because of any gross-out factor. It’s almost a test of strength and character, a trial by fire if you will. In a way, I think this represents the Bajoran people very well. They are a deeply religious people, and so they revere tradition. They have a pride in themselves that comes with fighting oppression, and a need to show their strength. But they are also a passionate people, and to me spicy food has always represented a desire for the spice of life.

Again, Andrew Zimmern wouldn’t have a problem here. He’d probably ask if there was some small animal available whose organ meat he could spread on the tortilla to add some flavor.

Plomeek Soup (Vulcan)

Plomeek soup is a dish that is probably most famous in Star Trek lore for Spock throwing a bowl of it against the wall in “Amok Time” when he was going through Pon Farr. That Christine Chapel, she never could take a hint.

It’s often described as bland in taste. No real surprise there. If spicy food represents passion and zeal for life, then Vulcan cuisine in general is probably plain and tasteless. It’s doubtful that they would see the logic in preparing a meal with complex flavors, food to them is just sustenance. But then, no one species is ever all one thing. An argument could be made that the flavor of Vulcan food is simply subtle, and needs to be appreciated as such. Neelix once tried to prepare Plomeek soup for Tuvok on Voyager, but he found it to be too spicy. Neelix then told him to go fuck himself. No, wait, that was a different episode, my mistake.

If Andrew Zimmern were to take a culinary tour of the galaxy, circa the 24th Century, he’d probably skip Vulcan. Since Vulcans are largely vegetarians, brains and testicles aren’t likely to be on the menu.


Tube Grubs (Ferengi)

Who would have thought that the Ferengi and the Klingons would have something in common, namely the eating of live worms. In addition, Ferengi also use a product called Beetle Snuff, which they snort to get a buzz on. I think there’s definitely an effort here to make the Ferengi seem more rodent or troll like. They’re short, they hunch over and cringe a lot, they eat insects, and it rains a lot on Ferenginar so there’s a good likelihood of finding them hiding under bridges for refuge.

The Ferengi enjoy their tube grubs chilled, and occasionally pre-chewed by their women folk. I think Andrew would be fine with the cold worms, but he’d probably pass on the naked bridge troll chewing on them first. He’s just not that kind of guy.

Jumja Stick (Bajoran)

A Jumja Stick is an extremely sweet Bajoran confection made from the sap of the Jumja tree. They were often seen carried by people on the promenade on DS9. Chief O’Brien and Nog both had an affinity for them. In a way, I think things that are extremely sweet can say much the same about a culture as things that are extremely spicy, they’re both forms of excess. If spicy food represents passion, then sweet food represents decadence, something that Bajorans might like to show off after the Occupation.

“What is that? Is that a testicle? No? Damn!”

Leola Root (?)

A root vegetable native to the Delta quadrant, its taste was never fully described, only that it was bad. Very, very bad. During the starship Voyager’s trek across the Delta quadrant, their resident guide and self-proclaimed morale officer Neelix introduced them to leola root. He cooked many dishes using the vegetable including leola root stew, leola rice pilaf, leola bark tea, I think he even used leola root to make that coffee substitute that he tried to foist on Janeway. There was even a running gag among fans regarding the number of shuttlecraft that had been destroyed during Voyager’s run that they were making additional shuttles out of the stuff. Thankfully for Neelix, he didn’t return to the Alpha quadrant with the rest of Voyager’s crew. If he had, he would have likely stood trial for crimes against taste buds.

Something tells me that Andrew Zimmern and Neelix would have gotten along swimmingly. He could have spent a lifetime sampling the bizarre concoctions that erupted out of that kitchen.

Rokeg Blood Pie (Klingon)

Rokeg Blood Pie is a Klingon dessert, and a favorite dish of the Enterprise-D’s own Lt. Worf. Though not explicitly stated, we can assume that it’s made with blood of some kind. Klingon cuisine seems to feature a lot of blood and organ meat, that is when what they’re eating isn’t still alive. In fact, there’s even a variety of Gagh that’s packed in targ blood. They’re a warrior culture, and blood equals life and death, so there’s some symbolism involved. Or maybe they just have an iron deficiency, who knows.

“What are those things sticking out of the top? Are they testicles? Gimmie!”

Top 7 Ways to Get F-ed up in the Future

One interesting thing that I’ve observed from my years of watching Star Trek is that despite the utopian nature of the future depicted, humans (and aliens alike) still haven’t lost the need to dull their senses and escape into the loving embrace of booze once in a while. I mean, practically every starship or space station we’ve seen has a bar in it. That should tell you something.

Star Trek: The Next Generation introduced us to the idea of synthahol, a synthetic alcohol substitute which tastes and smells just like the real thing, but doesn’t really get you drunk. Talk about missing the point entirely. Why would you want to drink something that tastes like gasoline if you’re not at least going to get buzzed on the stuff? For the purposes of this list, I’m sticking to the real thing.



Bajoran Springwine



Religion and wine go together like, well, religion and fanaticism. And since the Bajorans are Star Trek’s go to race for religion allegories, it makes sense that they be given their own wine. The Bajorans have been making it for centuries from fermented kava fruit, so there is a sense of tradition that goes with it. And like seemingly all space-faring races in Star Trek, the first and best reminder of the comforts of home that you bring into space with you is something that can fuck you up.


Saurian Brandy

Always shown in a very phallic looking bottle, that can mean only one thing. It will fuck you up. Of all of the alcoholic beverages on Star Trek, this is probably mentioned the most, going all the way back to the original series. It’s usually referred to as being strong, and seems to have a reputation as a classy drink, enjoyed by civilized peoples. It’s mentioned with reverence, and bottles of it may be saved for years for a particularly special occasion. Basically, if rappers exist in the 24th Century, this is what they will be passing instead of the Courvoisier.



Tulaberry Wine

Remember how prohibition in the United States gave organized crime a foothold, what with their illegal bootlegging and such. And then after prohibition was repealed, they moved on to drugs, prostitution, extortion, murder, and all that fun stuff. Well, think of the Dominion as Al Capone and Tulaberry wine as his hooch, it’s how they got their foot in the door so to speak. Grand Nagus Zek sent Quark to the Gamma Quadrant for the purpose of acquiring a large amount of Tulaberry wine, more than the local producers could handle, for the express purpose of getting the attention of the Dominion. Anyone who remembers the last two seasons of DS9 knows how well that worked out*.

*not well.


Kanar

From my vast stores of Star Trek knowledge, I surmise that the perfect evening for a Cardassian, after a hard day of oppressing the indigenous population of whatever planet whose resources you’re stealing, would be to curl up on a nice hot rock and drink a glass of motor oil. Kanar may not be motor oil exactly, but it’s black and viscous (at least most of the time) and it’s good for getting well lubricated. Garak drank Kanar when the pleasure chip in his head stopped working. Damar drank Kanar when he was head of the Cardassian Union and the Dominion had him under their thumb. So I guess it’s good for making your forget your troubles.

Considering that in the mornings Cardassians like to drink a beverage that has been described as cold fish juice, what exactly Kanar tastes like is anyone’s guess. Since Cardassia has no agriculture to speak of, I like to think that it’s made of fermented rocks, or maybe ground up puppy dogs.


Aldebaran Whiskey


“It is…it is…it is green.”

What more is there to say about a beverage so nondescript that its chief feature seems to be its neon green color? That, and getting you promptly trashed. So when Scotty wanted to drink away his sorrows after finding himself aboard the Enterprise D, most of his friends dead, his once prominent engineering skills now 80 years out of date, Data reaches behind the counter and pulls out something that will get right on top of his boo-boo. It’s from Guinan’s private stash, so you know it’s good.

For those of you who recognize the color, the answer is yes, it’s Ecto-Cooler. There’s just something about Scotty and Picard sitting on the bridge of the original Enterprise, passing a bottle of Ecto-Cooler between them, it makes me smile.

PS: I miss Ecto-Cooler.


Romulan Ale

The Cuban cigars of alcoholic beverages in the future, in that it is illegal and yet seemingly not that hard to obtain (note: I have never actually attempted to obtain either Cuban cigars or Romulan Ale, so I have no idea exactly how difficult it would be. I’m just having a guess). The drink is highly intoxicating, even for Klingons (who have a notoriously strong constitutions), and resembles the blue stuff that barbershops use to soak combs in. This also appears to be the one drink from the series that is most replicated in the real world. There’s a beer, an energy drink, and several make at home recipes including everything from Bacardi rum to Blue Curacao liqueur. Or if you’re cheap, vodka and blue raspberry kool-aid works nicely.


Klingon Bloodwine

So if Bajoran Springwine is light and fruity and reminds you of springtime, Klingon Blood wine is dark and heavy and reminds you of war and murder. It’s made of blood after all (whose blood, we’re not sure). And is it any wonder that no Klingon vessel leaves port without a healthy supply of the stuff. Life aboard a Klingon ship is hard. You sleep on a shelf, your clothing is covered in spikes so every time you bump into a wall you hurt yourself, dental hygiene isn’t exactly the greatest, and the threat of death is constantly hanging over your head. So it’s no surprise that your average Klingon might like to get a buzz on every once in a while? Remember that notoriously strong constitution I mentioned earlier? This is where they get it from.

"Drink up, pussy."

Interesting note: the first human to drink bloodwine in the Star Trek universe was Jonathan Archer. Knowing his reputation as a human punching bag, it probably beat up his internal organs and stole their lunch money.


So what are your favorite fictional alcoholic beverages? Come on now, don't be shy, share with the class.

Way Too Late Movie Review: Star Trek (Includes Spoilers)

As anyone who knows me longer than 30 seconds can attest, I am a huge Star Trek fan. So I’m afraid that I am cheating a bit here with the format that I’ve established for my ‘Way Too Late’ movie reviews in that I saw this one in the theater when it first came out. But I didn’t have a blog back then, so cut me some slack. With the movie’s release on DVD however, I did recently get to experience the next best thing to seeing it for the first time. Showing it to my father, and fellow Star Trek fan, and my brother-in-law last weekend. You see, my father loved the original series and he always hated William Shatner, so this movie was a win/win for him. Competing with the movie for attention was my two-month-old nephew Jackson. His cuteness made for a close battle, but I’m proud to say that the movie held it’s own. Also in attendance for this viewing: My sister, who hates Star Trek and took the opportunity to tease me about my obsession as well as my nerdly observations (Look, Kirk’s motorcycle doesn’t have an axle!) and my five-year-old daughter, who sat with rapt attention throughout most of the movie. Never have I been more proud of her. Seriously, it almost brought a tear to my eye. *sniff*

Anyway, on with the show. The movie largely centers on Kirk and Spock, on their lives, on their extremely contentious relationship and their burgeoning friendship. Spock is born into conflict, the child of the Vulcan Ambassador to Earth and his human wife. He doesn’t feel like he belongs anywhere, certainly not on Vulcan where his mixed heritage is treated like a handicap. But his mother encourages him and supports him. One of the best things about Zachary Quinto’s performance as a young Spock is the vulnerability he shows, the subtle just-under-the-surface conflict between his Vulcan and human halves. Speaking of, Kirk is born into conflict as well, literally. Aboard his father’s ship as it’s being attacked by the crazed Romulan commander Nero. George Kirk sacrifices his life for his wife and his child, for his crew. We’re shown little of Kirk’s childhood, but enough to tell us that it wasn’t an easy one. He’s gifted, but rebellious. Talented, but reckless. And when we see him as a young man it’s clear that growing up without his father has made him very different from the Kirk that we’re all used to, but at the same time we can still see confident swagger that Shatner originally brought to the role so many years ago. He carries with him a lot of pain and anger, but he’s still our Kirk.

Once aboard ship the movie really gets moving. The look of the Enterprise is just modernized enough so as not to look silly, but enough of the original style is kept to remind us where we are. Our heroes finally come face to face (or ship to ship) with our antagonist Nero and Pike is taken prisoner. We get a great action scene on the drill, complete with a redshirt death. It’s around this time that the average viewer may be thinking ‘This is fun and all, but there’s no real sense of danger. We know how it all turns out, everybody lives, etc.’ And then Vulcan is destroyed. Spock spells it out for the slow kids in the class. Whatever happened in the original history, it doesn’t apply now. Nero changed all that, it’s a whole new ballgame. This is a brilliant move on the part of the filmmakers I think. Every huge movie like this, whether it’s a remake or an adaptation, always has to face the challenge of making changes to the source to suit the movie or to appeal to non-fans, and yet somehow still try to please the hardcores. Very few are able to accomplish it. But by starting the story over again, and by giving the big fans a legitimate reason for doing so (with references to the original timeline to tie it all together), everybody wins.

So Spock loses his mother and decides to tuck tail and run. Back to Starfleet to regroup what’s left of the fleet. Kirk thinks this is a horrible idea, he thinks that they should go after Nero. The disagreement ends with Spock putting Kirk in an escape pod and leaving him behind on some ice planet. An extreme reaction perhaps, he could have just put him in the brig, but Spock’s not having a good day, he just watched his entire planet get sucked into a black hole. Kirk wakes up, runs from some CGI monsters, and ends up in a cave where he runs into…Spock. Leonard Nimoy, that is. And that’s when he fills us in on the rest of the back story. Future Spock, on a mission to prevent a star from going nova, fails and Romulus is destroyed. Nero blames Spock and attacks him, both get sucked into a black hole and appear at different points in the past. Nero waits 25 years to get his revenge (Romulans age pretty well apparently). And now Vulcan is destroyed and he’s going after Earth next.

Kirk and Future Spock hike to the nearest Starfleet outpost where they meet Scotty, played by Simon Pegg. Kirk and Scotty transwarp-beam back to the Enterprise, Spock beats up Kirk, Kirk takes command, they track down Nero, Kirk and Spock beam over to his ship, Kirk gets beat up again, they rescue Captain Pike, Spock flies Future Spock’s ship into Nero’s ship, blowing up all the red matter and creating a black hole in the middle of the ship, and the Enterprise escapes. Back on Earth Kirk, and the rest of the cadets presumably, graduate and Kirk is promoted directly to Captain and given command of the Enterprise, where he chooses Spock as his First Officer. Pretty cool, huh?

In short, this movie is awesome. From the performances to the special effects, and the rebooting of a classic story and classic characters making them new and fresh to a whole new audience while still keeping their core audience on board. I can’t wait to see what the next movie brings.

My Netflix Rating: Five out of Five Stars


Random Observations:

-Kirk gets beat up a lot in this movie. I think he might have broken Captain Archer’s record for sheer number of ass-kickings in a two hour time period.

-Speaking of Archer, I loved the shout out Scotty gives. Poor Porthos.

-Karl Urban is awesome as Bones. From his first scene on the shuttle to his scene with Spock (Are you out of your Vulcan mind!), he hit it perfectly.

-Simon Pegg is awesome as Scotty. Everything he said made me laugh.

-Was that…Tyler Perry? …the hell?

Possible Sequel Ideas:

“Sulu and Chekov go to White Castle”
Along the way they run into Neil Patrick Harris who’s trying to get to Risa for some alien poon.

“Tyler Perry’s Madea Goes to Starfleet Academy”
A Tyler Perry Production, directed by and starring Tyler Perry.

“Shaun of the Enterprise”
Klingons invade, boarding the Enterprise where Scotty fights them off with a cricket bat.

Top 5 Transporter Accidents

Aside from the holodeck, the one other piece of equipment in Star Trek that has caused the most problems has been the transporter. The concept of the transporter was created by Gene Roddenberry for the original series as a cheat. The show didn’t have the budget to shoot a shuttle landing on a planet every week, so he came up with the transporter. And almost immediately the problem seemed to be that it was too perfect a device. Nearly every problem could be solved by it, and so they had to limit its functionality. It only had a short range, it didn’t work through shields, and a hundred other things that kept the episodes from being only five minutes long. And then someone finally said “Hey, this think scrambles your atoms and airmails them down to a planet where it puts you back together again like a jigsaw puzzle, right? What would happen if something went wrong?” Badness, that’s what happens. But for the purposes of this list, I’ll stick to the more interesting and less fatal incidents.


5. “Realm of Fear” (TNG)

Most of us like to imagine that if we lived in the Star Trek universe we would be as suave as Riker, as smart as Data, and as well respected as Picard. But the fact is, we’re all Barclay and we know it. Lt. Reginald Barclay is the socially maladjusted everyman character that the viewers can identify with. He’s the only character on the show to ever use the holodeck for the same thing that all of us would if given the chance, scoring with Deanna Troi. Who can’t relate to that?

In this episode, the Enterprise responds to a distress call and beams aboard the USS Yosemite, whose crew appears to be missing. We learn that among the rest of his psychological problems, Barclay is also afraid of the transporter. He eventually manages to beam over and then back, but while he’s in the transporter beam he sees what looks like a large worm, floating inside the beam with him. And just before he materializes, the worm bites him on the arm. Just when it seems like Barclay has ingested more than his daily requirement of vitamin LSD, he starts to show other symptoms and diagnoses himself as having transporter psychosis, a debilitating disease that has no cure. But just when we think that we can also add hypochondriac to Barclay’s list of mental problems, it turns out that there really is something wrong with him. They discover some weird microbes on the Yosemite, and then they discover the same microbes in Barclay, and the only way to get them out is using the transporter. Barclay has to face his fear. While in the transporter, he sees the worms again, and for no discernable reason he decides to grab one. When he rematerializes, one of the crewmembers from the Yosemite materializes with him. Apparently the crew of the Yosemite became infected with the same microbes and tried to use the transporter on their ship to get them out, but somehow became trapped in the transporter.



So, if they were trapped in the transporter on the Yosemite, how did they get into the Enterprise’s transporter? And why did they turn into worms? And why did they bite Barclay? And what about Scarecrow’s Brain? Are you beginning to see the kinds of problems that can arise when you routinely disassemble your atoms and broadcast them across outer space? Why was this a good idea again?


4. “Rascals” (TNG)

It’s Jim Henson’s Next Gen Babies! Returning from an away mission, a transporter accident turns Picard, Ensign Ro, Guinan, and Keiko O’Brien into twelve-year-olds (just their bodies that is, their minds remain the same). And just when you think that that’s too outrageous to be believed, the ship is hijacked by Ferengi pirates. The adults turned kids manage to save the day ala “Home Alone” through trickery and their kidly wiles, and in the end Dr. Crusher manages to reverse the process. Unfortunately though, not before a misunderstanding landed Chief O’Brien on the Federation’s sex offender registry. Because of the error he was later forced to transfer to a broken down old Cardassian space station at the ass end of the galaxy.

My question is that once they discovered that the transporter could do this, why did they never do it again? Shouldn’t everyone in the Federation be Immortal right now? This is the fountain of youth here, and yet we never hear about it again. Shouldn’t we be seeing starships staffed with twelve-year-olds, like some sort of bad Stephen Ratliff fic gone amuck?




3. “Second Chances” (TNG)

So in addition to being the fountain of youth, the transporter can also be a cloning machine. In this episode the Enterprise ventures to a planet where some kind of space thing means that they can only use the transporters every eight years. The last time a Federation ship was there was eight years prior, when Riker was part of the evacuation crew and barely got out. So when they beam down imagine their chagrin when they meet Riker’s double, who never got out and has been living on this abandoned base all by himself for the last eight years. They eventually figure out that it was a transporter accident, and that this double is every bit as much Will Riker as our Will Riker is. Except of course he’s been living the last eight years like Robinson Crusoe in space, he has a problem with authority, and he’s still carrying a torch for Troi. Lieutenant Riker however ends up making the same choice that Commander Riker did, choosing his career or his relationship with Deanna, and takes a post on another starship. He changes his name to Thomas, and later he shaves his beard into a goatee, joins the Maquis and steals the Defiant. Talk about overcompensating for a more successful sibling. Maybe he should have changed his name to Garth Knight.

o/'...They're cousins, identical cousins...o/'

This accident more than any other reveals the horrible truth about the transporter. It doesn’t actually transport you, it’s more like a fax machine. It sends your information to another transporter, which creates a copy. The original, meaning you, is then destroyed. So essentially every time you step into the transporter, it’s killing you and creating a clone. Damn, no wonder Barclay (not to mention Doctors McCoy and Pulaski) hate the damn thing so much. I’m beginning to see their point.


2. “Tuvix” (VOY)

This is the exact opposite of what happened to Riker in “Second Chances”. Instead of taking one person and splitting them into two, in this episode the transporter took two people and combined them into one. Apparently it’s just really bad at math. It happened like this; Neelix and Tuvok were on some planet picking flowers (honest) and when they beamed up, only one person materialized. He called himself Tuvix, and he seemed to combine the best qualities of both men. He made a good tactical officer, a good cook, he didn’t have a stick up his ass, and he was only half as annoying as Neelix. The crew warmed up to him pretty quickly, with the exception of Kes who was a little disturbed by watching the mashed together corpses of her boyfriend and mentor walking through the corridors of the ship. The Doctor finally figured out how to separate them, much to Tuvix’s dismay. I guess he wasn’t too keen on being murdered, but they went ahead and did it anyway. Afterwards Neelix and Tuvok both agreed to never talk about the time that they were ‘inside each other’.


1. “Mirror, Mirror” (TOS)

The granddaddy of all transporter accidents, the model to which all other transporter accidents are compared, occurred during possibly the most famous episode of the original series. During a transporter accident, Kirk, Scotty, McCoy and Uhura are beamed aboard an Enterprise in an alternate universe. In this mirror-universe, the Federation has been replaced by the Terran Empire, a brutal totalitarian state. Where they take what they want, destroying any planet that gets in their way, and murdering your superior is the typical mode of advancement. They did make the female crewmembers wear two piece uniforms though, so I guess no universe is all bad. The mirror-universe would later be used in several episodes on Deep Space Nine, where all the female characters made out with each other, and one episode of Enterprise, where Hoshi became empress of the empire. For obvious reasons, these episodes were among the best of both shows.

This episode is also famous for creating the cliché of all evil twins having a goatee, since the mirror-universe Spock had one. Having a goatee myself, I personally find this stereotype to be very offensive. Just because I have a goatee, it doesn’t make me evil. There are so many other valid qualities that I have that make me evil, judge me by those. That’s all I ask.

Goatee = Evil

Honorable Mention: “Relics” (TNG)

This isn’t technically a transporter accident, since it was done on purpose, however it’s pretty cool so I think it bears including. The Enterprise receives a distress call from a transport ship that has been missing for seventy-five years, the USS Jenolan. When they follow the signal they discover a giant sphere, 200 million kilometers in diameter.

“That’s not a moon. Holy shit, it’s the fucking Deathstar!”

No, it’s not the Deathstar, it’s a Dysonsphere. It’s a sphere built to enclose a star, and the Jenolan is crashed on the surface of it. When they beam aboard they find the transporter jerry-rigged to run in a continuous cycle without rematerializing, and there’s still a pattern in the buffer. When the run the materialization routine, guess who it is. Scotty, that’s right! I guess that picture up there is a dead giveaway. Scotty then goes through a little culture shock about the Enterprise-D. He annoys LaForge so much that he kicks him out of Engineering. Then he goes to the holodeck to sit on the bridge of his old ship and get drunk on Ecto-Cooler. In the end, the Enterprise gets pulled into the Dysonsphere and Scotty and LaForge save the day by using the Jenolan to hold the hatch open like a doorstop long enough for the Enterprise to squeeze through. Scotty and LaForge patch up their differences, and Picard decides to give Scotty one of their shuttlecraft to replace the destroyed Jenolan. Which is a bit like giving a retired Army general a tank as a gift, but whatever. Troi also gives Scotty a kiss goodbye, which is odd considering that she had absolutely no interaction with him in the episode at all.




Additional

To review, the transporter can also function as a stasis device, a cloning machine, the fountain of youth, a gateway into other dimensions, and Jeff Goldblum’s pod from The Fly. You know what, I think I’ll just take the bus.

Top 5 Holodeck Programs

Ask any Star Trek fan what piece of technology from the show would they most like to own, and you may get a few different answers. Warp drive, transporters, maybe phasers. Those people are all lying. They’re trying to impress you with their altruism by wishing for technology that can better mankind. There’s only one truthful answer to that question, the holodeck. But we don’t want to say that because we don’t want to sound like creepy introverts who want to disappear into our own little fantasy world. The ironic thing is that as Star Trek fans, that’s what everyone else thinks we are anyway. So what the hell, let’s be honest. We all want a holodeck.

The way I see it, if the holodeck were introduced today, it would be a lot like the Internet. A small segment of our population would disappear into it and never return. Escaping from reality will always be attractive, whether it’s through TV and movies or drugs and alcohol. And new, attractive ways to make that escape are always going to swallow up a few mouth-breathers, and we have to accept that. We can’t ban everything that’s fun just because a few people don’t have the self-control to handle it. But just like with the Internet, society will adjust to the new technology and we’ll find equilibrium again. Well, most of us will.

Star Trek has shown us many uses for the holodeck. Training simulations, exotic environments, sports, games, entertainment, and of course Quark’s main stock and trade, sex. But of course, like all technology, it isn’t perfect. At least a couple of times per season the holodeck would try to kill everyone inside of it, and sometimes outside of it, because of some kind of malfunction. It’s a wonder they let the things run at all. But I guess when you’re in deep space, and there isn’t a whole lot to do, risking your life for a cheap thrill sounds like a fair trade.

Here are a few of the more memorable programs that I wouldn’t mind giving a try. Don’t worry, I’ll keep it PG for the kids.


5. Captain Proton

For the most part, the holodeck programs that we saw on Voyager were pretty lame. In order to conserve power, they used a lot of communal programs that many people could enjoy at once. Sandrine’s pool hall, Neelix’s resort program, Paris even created a program of a movie theater once. Watching a movie in the holodeck is kind of like playing checkers on your X-Box 360, it’s tremendously stupid. But by far, Fair Haven was the stupid straw that broke the stupid camel’s stupid back. For those of you who don’t know, Fair Haven was a simulation of a 19th Century Irish village. That’s it. The most modern of 24th Century technologies, with the ability to simulate anything, anything at all, and the most entertaining thing that they could come up with was drunken Irish pig farmers playing darts in a pub? Seriously? I can pull random words out of my ass and come up with a better idea than that. How about ‘Monster Truck Dinosaur Party Island’? There, I just made that up and that would have been a thousand times more entertaining than Fair Haven. But I digress. My purpose here is to talk about good programs, not bad.

By season five of Voyager, Tom Paris’ obsession with all things 20th Century led him to a holonovel called “The Adventures of Captain Proton.” The program appeared to be based on the science fiction movie serials from the 40’s and 50’s, like Captain Video or Commando Cody. He had a rocket ship, a jet pack, and a ray gun. His sidekick’s name was Buster, his girl’s name was Constance Goodheart, and the villain’s name was Dr. Chaotica. That should pretty much tell you everything you need to know. It was over-the-top, cheesy, campy fun.

The Inevitable Moment of Disaster: “Bride of Chaotica!” (VOY). A pair of photonic lifeforms, trying to make contact with Voyager, transported aboard the holodeck while the Captian Proton program was running, and thought it was real. They were attacked by Dr. Chaotica, and in order to save them, Janeway had to pretend to be the queen of the spider people and the Doctor had to pretend to be the president of Earth. I wish to God that I was making this up.

President of Earth. No shit.

4. Vic Fontaine

Over the course of the three Trek series that featured holodecks, we’ve met a few self-aware holograms. But none were as cool as Vic Fontaine. Played by James Darren, Vic was a nightclub owner and lounge singer in 1960’s Las Vegas. He was introduced to the crew of DS9 when his program was given to Dr. Bashir as a gift by his friend Felix. Because of the advanced nature of his program and his ability to read people, Vic became a friend and confidant to many of the crew. He was a cross between a counselor, a bartender and a guardian angel. He gave Odo love advice and helped him win over Kira. He befriended Nog after he lost his leg in the Dominion war, and encouraged him to move on with his life. After that incident, Nog arranged for Vic’s program to run 26 hours a day (the station ran on a 26 hour Bajoran day) and Vic was given the chance to live an almost normal life.

The Inevitable Moment of Disaster: “Badda-Bing, Badda-Bang” (DS9). A jack-in-the-box subroutine of Vic’s program becomes activated, causing a new character to be created for a program. Frankie Eyes, an old rival of Vic’s comes in and buys the hotel and casino out from under him, leaving Vic without a job. The jack-in-the-box can’t be removed without damaging Vic’s program and wiping his memory, so the crew decides that an old-fashioned heist is in order to bankrupt the casino and leave Frankie Eyes at the mercy of his mafia connections. Basically just picture Ocean’s Eleven, if it took place on a space station. In the end the good guys win, and Vic and Captain Sisko perform a duet of “The Best is Yet to Come”.



3. Dixon Hill

Our very first introduction to the holodeck is during season one of TNG, when Picard discovers a holonovel of his favorite private detective, Dixon Hill. He gets so excited that he calls a senior staff meeting. Let’s think about this for a moment. This is kind of like the captain of an aircraft carrier calling a meeting because he found a waterslide on the lower decks of his ship, and it’s, like, really fun!

Our introduction to the holodeck also became our introduction to the holonovel. Just imagine if every book you ever read became a movie, and you were the star. That’s what a holonovel is like. In short, it’s the coolest idea ever. My only question is this; what happens if you don’t follow the events of the story? What would happen if Dixon Hill just whipped out his tommy gun and started shooting motherfuckers just for shiggles?

“I ordered dressing on the side, ON THE SIDE MOTHERFUCKER! DIE!!!”

Sure, it would be fun. But it would make for a short novel.

The Inevitable Moment of Disaster: “The Big Goodbye” (TNG). The very first holodeck episode was also the very first the-holodeck-is-trying-to-kill-us episode. When Picard decides to go back into the Dixon Hill program, he invites Dr. Crusher, Data, and some guy we’ve never seen before to come along. I think we can all see where this is going. The holodeck malfunctions, trapping them all inside and disabling the safeties, and the guy we’ve never seen before gets shot. In the end they manage to get out and get their man to sickbay, and presumably he survives. Picard gets to the bridge and saves the day, and for safety reasons they shut down the holodeck and never use it again. Oh, wait, no they don’t. They actually continue to use it quite a lot and it continues to try to kill them quite a lot. I guess they’re just gluttons for punishment.



2. Sherlock Holmes

Probably the greatest thing about the holodeck is that when you step inside, you can be anybody. You can become a great hero or go on grand adventures, every fantasy can come true. In the case of our favorite socially awkward android, you can become the world’s greatest detective. No, not Batman, the other one, Sherlock Holmes. Data’s interest in Holmes is no doubt related to his interest in becoming more human. Holmes posses a tremendous analytical mind, much like Data, but Holmes is also undeniably human, with human frailties and desires. So it makes sense that Data would want to emulate him. Or maybe he just liked that hat, I don’t know.

The Inevitable Moment of Disaster: “Elementary, Dear Data” (TNG). Data and LaForge go to play Holmes and Watson on the holodeck and Geordi gets upset when Data solves the mystery after only a few minutes. So in an effort to create a scenario that will pose a challenge to Data, Geordi asks the holodeck to create an adversary capable of defeating Data. The computer then makes Moriarty self-aware and gives him access to the ship’s systems. Let me go over that again. The holodeck ACCIDENTLY CREATED A SENTIENT LIFEFORM! This would be like if you tried to send an email on your computer, and instead Windows created a small troll, which then crawled out through the disk drive and tried to eat you. Something tells me that there would be a very angry letter to Bill Gates in your future, not to mention the fact that when you finished beating the crap out of your computer with a sledge hammer, you’d set it on fire. Not only isn’t there a major investigation into how the Enterprise’s computer accidentally CREATED LIFE, but they continue to use the holodecks. Now they’re just fucking asking for it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cybiKeu-sow


1. Julian Bashir: Secret Agent

Honestly, this had to be the first holodeck program created ever. Something tells me that five seconds after the first holodeck was invented, the first engineer turned to the second and said ‘So, what do you want to do with this?’ and his answer was ‘Be James Bond!’ The action, the glamour, the gadgets, the women, James Bond is designed to be the ultimate male fantasy. So when Julian gets a new secret agent holosuite program, is it any wonder that he seems to spend almost all of his off hours running it, much to his friend Garak’s curiosity. And of course, being the killjoy that he is, Garak has to immediately point out that real spies don’t operate that way, but who cares! God Garak, who the fuck invited you anyway?



The Inevitable Moment of Disaster: “Our Man Bashir” (DS9). A transporter accident (I think I’m going to have to do an entry on those as well) causes DS9’s computer to have to store the patterns of Sisko, Dax, Kira and O’Brien. So the computer decides to store them in the holosuite, inserting them as characters in the secret agent program that Bashir and Garak are running. All the usual parameters for a holodeck disaster are in place, they can’t shut the program off, they can’t leave, the safeties don’t work, and they can’t harm the holodeck characters without harming their friends. They have to play out the program and let it end on its own. Julian eventually figures out that the easiest way to do that is to lose.

Honorable Mention: “A Fistful of Datas” (TNG)

This one wasn’t a reoccurring program on the show, but I think it bears mentioning just for the ‘holy shit’ malfunction. Worf, Alexander and Troi are playing Old West on the holodeck while Data and LaForge are monkeying with the ship’s computer, hooking it up to Data’s brain for some reason. The result is (surprise!) a malfunction, in which Data’s brain starts infecting other ship’s systems, including the holodeck. The various holodeck characters start getting replaced with simulations of Data, the safeties get disabled, they can’t end the program, same old song, different tune. Worf manages to defeat the android gunslinger and end the program just after an oddly homoerotic moment featuring Data as the female saloon keeper who’s sweet on Worf, but that’s not even the best part. At the end, Alexander feels upset because he knows that Worf probably won’t want to play the program again (You think?!), but Worf surprises him (and us) by saying that he would. This would be like a father taking his son on a roller coaster, which then catches on fire and flies off the track, nearly killing everybody, and the son says ‘Oh, I guess we can’t go again’ and the father says ‘Ah hell, why not!’ WHAT?! We’ve reached the point now where holodeck malfunctions are so commonplace that the characters don’t even blink, and think nothing of scheduling some more time right after the thing ALMOST KILLS THEIR KID!

Say what you want about Windows, when my computer bluescreens, at least nobody dies.