"Firstly, madam, I have no desire whatever to, as you phrase it, 'jam' with you. Secondly, even if I wished to do so...I have a musical instrument. You have a bicycle wheel."

In lieu of actual content, here’s a picture with a silly caption.

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Hey, everyone, you know what I like? Pie.

Pie is one of the best things ever invented by humans. The delicious, flaky, crust, the endless variety of fillings…what’s not to love? Sometimes, someone will ask me

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what my favorite kind of pie is, and boy is that ever a hard question. To me, pie is kind of a seasonal thing. In the springtime, I think maybe strawberry-rhubarb is the best. Summer is all about peach pie. In the autumn

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I like apple best, and then in the winter, pumpkin pie is my favorite. Sometimes I like

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to put whipped cream on top, or sometimes ice cream, but som

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etimes I just like a plain, unadorned slice of

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pie. The other real que

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stion for pie-lovers is whether you want to serve it warm or cold. And what about

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pie for breakfast? A slice of apple pie with cheddar cheese melted on top? Good

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I like pie, and I hope you do, too.

Me again. Will it help if I say I didn’t make up the stuff about the puppy?

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Overall, I like the prequels a fair bit more than most 30-something Star Wars fans. I’m not offended by their mere existence, for example. The Phantom Menace is probably the most reviled of the bunch, largely thanks to the presence of Jar Jar Binks. Despite this, Attack of the Clones is probably actually the worse movie: it’s all over the map, structurally, trying to be a love story, a compelling mystery and an action movie all at once, and failing at all of them. Revenge of the Sith is probably the best-liked of the three, because it’s mostly just balls-out nonsensical action, and action is something Lucas has always handled well. This is presumably because action doesn’t require him to give any thought to dialogue or emotion, things he handles much less well.

But just what is it about the prequels that they inspire such intense hatred in so many people who grew up on Star Wars? Some thoughts:

1. The Insane Expectations People had been waiting for Episode I for sixteen years. To call it eagerly anticipated is, of course, an understatement. It was the Holy Grail of nerdmovies. Especially for those of us who had been somewhere between 6 and 12 in 1983, when Return of the Jedi came out, it wasn’t just a movie we’d been waiting a long time to see, it was a movie we had been imagining for sixteen years. And no matter what Lucas had made, there’s just no way it was going to match the movie that had been running through our heads, on and off, for sixteen years. The closest comparison I can think of is the Lord of the Rings movies, which we had all been imagining since we first read the books ten, twenty, thirty years before the movies came out. The difference, of course, is that in that case our imaginations were all working off of the same source material, so when the movie came out, it was more a matter of, “How does Peter Jackson’s Balrog compare to mine?”* In the case of Episode I, we had no source material, no starting point except the vague hints about the past dropped in the original trilogy, so we were inventing the entire movie from whole cloth in our heads.

2. It’s Still Not Good Enough Even if our expectations about what we would see had been lower…well, it’s still not that good of a movie, is it? It has good parts – the two-on-one lightsaber duel between Qui-Gonn, Obi-Wan and Darth Maul remains pretty awesome, for example. But even the good parts aren’t put together in a very interesting or cohesive way. The podrace sequence is shoehorned in, there clearly because Lucas loves drag racing and car stuff. If you take the podrace out and look at it solely as a little mini-movie of its own, it’s a pretty well-constructed and exciting scene…and even then, it’s dragged down by the distracting and pointless presence of the two-headed announcer. There are examples of this throughout all three movies, spots where Lucas hamstrings himself by being too interested in bad humor or shiny toys. The final duel in Attack of the Clones, for example. At the point where Obi-Wan is taken out of the action, the duel should take a darker turn, with Dooku tempting Anakin in a way similar to how Vader tries to turn Luke in The Empire Strikes Back, creating the parellel structure of the father and son stories that Lucas seems to be going for. Instead, Dookua and Anakin duel alone for a few seconds, and then Lucas can’t resist his shiny digital toys, and brings in Yoda, bouncing around nonsensically and shattering the image of Yoda as a Jedi so powerful that he is beyond the need for lightsaber combat. The best example of this in Revenge of the Sith is the pointless battle on the Wookiee planet, which is neither long enough to be interesting on its own, or important enough to truly merit inclusion.

3. The Problem of Jar Jar I don’t really mind the idea of a comic relief character, a buffoon who tags along with the heroes. C3PO and R2-D2 often served this role in the original trilogy. What does bother me is the fact that Jar Jar talks like Stepin Fetchit. It’s pointless, it takes you right out of the movie, and it makes you wonder why the hell Lucas made that choice. Even with the massively reduced presence of Jar Jar in the second and third movies, Jar-Jarism spreads across all three. Why does Obi-Wan go to a what appears to be a Galaxy-Far-Far-Away version of a pseudo-’50s diner to talk to the mustachioed dinosaur who runs it? A mustachioed dinosaur named, by the way, Dexter Jettster?

4. Backstory Isn’t Interesting Look at the two climactic battles that are intercut as the finale of Revenge of the Sith. Yoda – still bouncing around like a monkey on speed rather than acting like a dignified and incredibly powerful Jedi Master – battles the Emperor. Obi-Wan battles Anakin. First off, intercutting the two completely undermines the emotional impact of the Obi-Wan/Anakin duel, which should be the most difficult and emotional moment of the entire series. Beyond that…we know for a fact that each of these four characters is going to survive. There’s absolutely no tension or excitement. I’ll admit that the Obi-Wan/Anakin duel was pretty much everything I’d been hoping for since the first time I heard Darth Vader say, “When last we met, I was but the learner; now I am the master!” But still, it exemplifies the biggest problem of all. Do we really even need to know how and why Vader turned to the Dark Side? Maybe. Do we need to have the story related over the course of three movies? Probably not. The complete superfluity of the prequels is their biggest problem, and one that ties directly to problem #1 above. Stories in which the outcome is never in doubt are rarely particularly interesting. The original trilogy feels complete with the prequel trilogies merely as spoken exposition and alluded-to backstory.

In spite of all of this, I don’t believe that George Lucas raped my childhood. I wish he had made better movies than he did. But the existence of the prequels has had no effect whatsoever on my enjoyment of the originals, nor on my memories of many happy hours as a kid that revolved around Star Wars. So there.

* Wow, that sounds really dirty, doesn’t it?

Here, have a look at the results. Nationwide, it’s pretty decisive, with 49% of respndents saying “No,” and 38% saying “Yes, but only if he produces.” The lunatic fringe weighing in with a simple “Yes” is a bit larger than expected, at 12%. One of the neat features of the ESPN poll map is that it shows you how people vote by state as you mouseover each state on the map. It can be sort of fun sometimes, like when they ask whether the Lakers or the Rockets will win their playoff series, and you can discover a strange pocket of Laker fandom in Indiana, that sort of thing. So what do the state-by-state results reveal? Well, here in Colorado, it’s a resounding 58% no to 32% “Yes, if.” Texas is 50% to 38% for “No.” Florida, 46% to 40% no. Louisiana is a bit odd, voting “Yes, if” by 1%, but the whole state only cast 362 votes, so I suppose we can attribute this to the oddities produced by a small sample size.

Then there’s New York. New York votes “Yes, if” by 4%, 45% to 41% over “No.” Neighboring New Jersey votes “Yes, if” by 3 points, 44% to 41%. New Yorkers cast nearly 3,000 votes in the poll. Jerseyites cast over 1,300. That’s really weird. I wonder why on Earth those two states would be the odd ones out? What could possibly be the deciding factor to swing the New York/New Jersey vote in favor of cheating as long as it produces desirable results? There must be a reason why fans of New York teams would be in favor of cheating. If only we could figure out what it…

"Well, we knew they weren't TicTacs..."

Oh, right, this cheating, ‘roided-up douchebag. Win at all costs, right, Yankee fans? Cheating is okay as long as it helps you win. It’s worth noting here that Connecticut, also loaded with Yankee fans, only just barely votes in favor of not cheating – 45% to 44%.

For that matter, the poll results in California are surprisingly close – 43% to 42% for “No.” I wonder if this close result has anything to do with L.A.’s love for Manny Ramirez.

What to do, what to do? When faced with a cash cow franchise like “Star Trek” that has, perhaps, run its course, what’s a movie studio to do? Perhaps take a page from the James Bond and Batman franchises: clear the decks and start over. Tabula rasa. They decided the thing to do – just as MGM had done with Casino Royale and Warner Bros. had done with Batman Begins – was to sweep away the dead weight and start fresh. To symbolize this reboot, the new movie would be called, simply, Star Trek. They found some hot writers and a hot director to figure out how to to get this reboot off the ground.

And thank god they did.

Put it this way: around the time that First Contact came out in 1996, “Trek” fans began to observe that the even-numbered entries in the film series were the good ones and the odd-numbered ones were bad. Curiously, though, there has been an inversion: Nemesis, the tenth film, stank on ice. It was arguably the worst Trek movie of them all. And now J.J. Abrams, Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman have given us Star Trek, the series’ 11th film, which ranks right up there with the franchise’s best. Maybe the Star Trek Movie Quality Algorithm underwent an inversion at the millennium. Who knows?  The point is that Star Trek is a great flick, from top to bottom.

This is, surprisingly, a very difficult movie to review. How can I convey the fun, the excitement, the spirit of the thing, but not just bang out a rote list of comparisons between old and new? I mean, it’s well and good that Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto hold their own as Kirk and Spock in comparison to Shatner and Nimoy…but it doesn’t really tell you much about the movie. It’s great that the production designers created a new Enterprise that is both faithful to the original concept but also looks new and futuristic to a 21st-century audience…but that’s not really the point.

The point is that, purely on its own terms, Star Trek works. I think that it would work for someone with no familiarity whatsoever with the original series and all that came after. It certainly worked for me, a die-hard but not blindly devoted longtime Trek fan. The plot is fast-paced and exciting, the effects are great, the actors are engaging. And what more do you need from your summer blockbusters? For a franchise that has always kept its philosophising at the fortune-cookie level (“The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one…in bed!”), this is just fine. There’s some brief talk about destiny, and a few throwaway lines that ought to (but will probably fail to) assuage the fears of a certain kind of fan that 40+ years of continuity have been wiped out, describing the movie’s universe as “an alternate timeline” to the classic Trek we know and love. Other than that, not a lot of depth here.

Even so, the introduction of some character backstory and development is nice, correcting something Star Trek has always been lacking. The movie conveys a nice sense of how Kirk came to be the character we know. The idea that service in Starfleet provides focus and direction for Kirk’s natural not-entirely-unjustified arrogance and bravado is interesting and appealing, as is the idea that Spock joins up as a way of thumbing his nose at his fellow Vulcans who see him as barely worthy of their presence thanks to his human mother. The writers and director really seem to get these characters. Early on, Kirk gets himself into a bar brawl. Right before it starts, his opponents observe, “There’s four of us and one of you.” Kirk replies, “Well, get some more guys on your side and then we’ll have a fair fight.” That’s a perfect response, perfectly in-character for Kirk, especially a young and especially brash Kirk who has no reason to believe he can ever lose.

I’ll admit that some things don’t make much sense. Nobody involved in the production seemed to have much of a sense of a chain of command. It may be a fun moment when Captain Pike tells Cadet Kirk, “I’m promoting you to First Officer,” much to the consternation of Spock. But, um, yeah…no military or even quasi-miliary organization really works that way. You mean to tell me that when Kirk – a cadet, mind you, who was on the verge of being suspended or expelled from the Academy at the beginning of the movie – simply sort of becomes Captain of the ship, nobody but nobody calls shenanigans? Every other officer who is potentially higher on the chain of command just shrugs and says, “Oh, okay, I guess that kid’s in charge now?” It’s kind of dumb, but I’m willing to forgive it, as it smacks of Executive Meddling. You just know that the Paramount suits sent down two essentially mutually exclusive directives to the creative team: 1. The movie has to be about Kirk and Spock at Starfleet Academy and, 2. By the end of the movie, Kirk has to be the Captain of the Enterprise, with all the familiar characters in place as his crew. I got the feeling that Abrams, Orci and Kurtzman did the best they could with that, engaging in some absurdist plot gymnastics to achieve it.

I was also a bit bothered by the product placement. I’ve never entirely bought into the idea that human society of the 23rd century has no use for money – but as product placement has never been a part of Star Trek before, it was definitely a bit jarring when young Kirk receives a call on a Nokia brand communications device, complete with signature Nokia tune, or when Uhura orders a Budweiser at the bar. Fortunately, these are just a couple of isolated instances…but they were a bit weird.

On the whole, I left the theater feeling happy and excited, more than ready to see as many more outings as these creators and actors care to make. It was exciting, it was funny, it was emotional. Star Trek, the movie, reminded me once again, and very strongly, of all the things that made me love “Star Trek,” the franchise, in the first place.

Yes, I’ll be happy to see more Trek from these folks, without a doubt…but there had goddamn well better be some Klingons in the next movie.

As with TNG, it’s hard to narrow a list down to just five choices when there are so many great episodes. Some that didn’t quite make the list: “The City on the Edge of Forever” (much like TNG’s “The Inner Light,” it’s a great episode, but not, in my opinion, “the greatest” episode), “Bread and Circuses” (the best “parallel Earth” episode), “The Tholian Web,” “Arena,” “Balance of Terror,” “The Enterprise Incident”.

And here’s the Top Five Original Series Episodes:

Turns out that Orion animal women were far from Kirk's strangest vice...

5. A Private Little War: It is an indisputable fact that “Star Trek,” TOS moreso than any of the other series, did not generally deal in subtlety. While not quite so anvilicious as others (“Lokai is white on the right side. All of his people are white on the right side!”), “A Private Little War” is certainly not disguising its allegory. They’re right up front about it, in fact, as Kirk and McCoy specifically discuss “the brush wars in Asia in the 20th century” and how they apply to their current situation. Still, the moral dilemma Kirk is faced with is thoroughly compelling. The Soviets Klingons have started arming one tribe on a primitive planet with flintlock rifles, and Kirk is forced to decide whether to arm the other side and virtually guarantee a never-ending arms race  between the two sides, or do nothing and allow his friend’s tribe to be wiped out. This episode serves as a terrific example of McCoy’s usual role as Kirk’s conscience. Bones is appalled that Kirk is even considering the matter and, with his usual bluntness, tells Kirk so in non uncertain terms. In the end, Kirk goes against McCoy’s advice and orders Scotty to create and beam down 100 rifles. Kirk is disgusted with himself, and departs for the ship. Wisely, the creators leave the ultimate results of Kirk’s decision to the viewers’ imaginations.

"Wow, Spock, I didn't even believe you when you said you could eat fitty egg...but this is beyond the pale!"

4. The Devil in the Dark: Or, “‘Star Trek’ does a ’50s Sci-Fi Monster Movie.” The Enterprise crew pursues a mysterious creature that’s killing the crew of an important mining colony. It’s really reminiscent of stuff like Forbidden Planet and The Thing from Another World – the nature of the monster is at first mysterious, then slowly the origin and intent of the creature becomes clear. Amazingly, the Red Shirt body count is pretty low in this episode – only two Red Shirts plus one miner are killed. Yeah, the horta looks kind of silly by today’s standards, and Spock’s mind meld with it is a bit over-the-top. But when you’re earning praise from no less than Arthur C. Clarke (“It impressed me because it presented the idea, unusual in science fiction then and now, that something weird, and even dangerous, need not be malevolent. That is a lesson that many of today’s politicians have yet to learn.”), you’re obviously doing something right.

William Shatner goes hairpiece shopping.

3. The Trouble With Tribbles: What’s to say about this episode that hasn’t already been said? Playing “Star Trek” as comedy is a brilliant idea, and the whole thing is an awful lot of fun. Shatner chews the scenery like a madman (my personal favorite: “Storagecompartments?Storagecompartments? Whaaat…..storage…compartments?”), and Scotty’s role in the bar brawl is hilarious as well. James Doohan has a lot of fun with Scotty’s patience as the Klingon is insulting Kirk, but then can’t take it when the Enterprise is compared to a garbage scow, and then once more as he sheepishly relates the incident to Kirk later on. There’s really not much to say about it, other than the fact that it lives up to its reputation.

"I said, 'Smiles, everyone!' You're not smiling!"

2. Space Seed: For a starship captain noted for his intelligence and quick wits, James T. Kirk can do some pretty damn stupid things. You come across a ship full of people in suspended animation called the SS Botany Bay, sent away from Earth with no discernable destination in pre-warp days…and you think, “Well, hey, whaddaya say we wake these folks up?” Do they not teach history at Starfleet Academy? Regardless of this bit of silliness, this is a tremendous episode. Khan is a truly worthy adversary for Kirk – stronger, certainly, and quite possibly smarter. It’s really a great character moment for Kirk when he goes to engage Khan in hand-to-hand combat. It’s an almost certain defeat, as Kirk is obviously and hopelesly outmatched by Khan – and yet he goes anyway, and in typical Kirk fashion, finds a way to win against all odds.

In millions upon millions of gigs of awful slashfic, Spock goes right aheand and plants one on Kirk at this moment.

1. Amok Time: Over its three seasons, and again throughout the movies, “Star Trek” got a lot of mileage out of Spock’s dual human/Vulcan heritage, but never better than in this episode. The moment at the episode’s end when Spock discovers that he has not, as he previously believed, killed Kirk is simply perfect. He breaks into an enormous grin, grabs Kirk by the shoulders and shouts, “Jim!” It’s a perfect moment from Leonard Nimoy, letting his guard down for the tiniest fraction of a second before realizing what he’s doing and regaining his composure. It is, however, just one perfect moment out of many in this episode. The early mystery of Spock’s behavior, Kirk’s choice of the health and safety of his friend over his own career (presaging the similar choice he would make in The Search for Spock, of course), the truly awesome fight between Kirk and Spock, Spock’s recognition of T’Pring’s logic in choosing another mate and his resignation to his fate after killing his captain…and, of course, one of Spock’s best lines ever: “After a time, you may find that having is not so pleasing a thing as wanting. It is not logical, but it is often true.”

—

Special Bonus Top Five: Top Five TOS Episodes That Are Supremely Goofy but Secretly Totally Awesome:

5. “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield” – Racism is bad, y’all!

4. “The Savage Curtain” – Kirk and Spock and Abraham Lincoln and Vulcan Jesus vs. some Klingons and Klingon Jesus.

3. “Spectre of the Gun” – Kirk & Co. in the Old West, gunfighting at the OK Corral. Somehow, less stupid than the TNG “Old West” episode.

2. “Wink of an Eye” – Kirk kisses the girl. Commercial. When we come back, Kirk is sitting on the edge of the bed, pulling on his boot. Remember that “lack of subtlety” issue?

1. “The Way to Eden” – C’mon, admit it: Space hippies are totally groovy, and we all know it.

–

And there you have it. Check back in tomorrow as we wrap up Star Trek Week with the main event: my review of the big movie. Sneak preview: It does not suck.

Anyway, those are all fine episodes, great episodes, even. But here, in my opinion, are…

The Top Five Next Generation Episodes:

"Okay, try to fashion a rudimentary lathe..."

5. Darmok: There’s a fun little mystery here, as Picard and the crew (independently) try to figure out how to communicate with the Tamarians. In a universe where the universal translator facilitates easy communications between basically every intelligent species, a plot revolving around failure to communicate is both clever and refereshing. The moment when Picard realizes what’s going on – that the Tamarians communicate primarily through metaphor – is well-crafted, as Picard and the audience are figuring things out at just about the same time. But, as is so often the case with TNG, it’s the quiet moments that really sing, especially on an episode like this one that is somewhat more action-oriented than your typical outing. Dathon, the Tamarian captain, is mortally wounded, and as he lays dying, Picard asks him to tell more about Darmok and Jalad. Dathon tells the story, and Picard responds in kind with the story of Gilgamesh and Enkidu. It’s a supremely well-acted moment by both Patrick Stewart and Paul Winfield as Dathon. The two come to understand one another better as Picard realizes that the reason that Dathon put himself and Picard in the situation was the hope of achieving, as he would say, “Darmok and Jalad on the ocean.” And we get some of that “Picard quotes classic literature to himself” action that we all love.

"Hey, guess what? I'm not really a complete tool!"

4. The First Duty: A lot of people like this episode just because it features Wesley screwing up and not saving the day for once. A lot of them also wish that Wesley had been killed in the accident rather than Josh Albert. I’m not one of them. Actually, I think it shows how badly the writers used Wesley up until this episode, how much they completely failed to understand his potential as a character. If they had let him be a boy genius, but a bit of a troublemaker rather than Mr. “I’m with Starfleet, we don’t lie” Goody Two-Shoes, I don’t think the fans would have disliked him. The fact that it took Wil Wheaton leaving the show and returning for a guest appearance to finally get a good Wesley episode is kind of sad. Anyway, there’s a lot to like here. Wheaton shows that, when given more to do than say, “Aye, sir,” and “Course laid in, sir,” or describe Worf’s penis to a group of scantily-clad teenagers,  he’s a pretty darn good actor. Of course, there’s more than just Wesley going on here – Patrick Stewart does his usual fine job, hitting the right beats in his ongoing surrogate-father relationship with Wesley. There’s also a great scene between Stewart and Ray Walston as Boothby, the gardener, whom Picard told Wesley to look up when he got to the academy back in “Final Mission,” Wheaton’s last episode as a regular cast member. Geordi and Data do their usual “figure out what really happened” thing. Robert Duncan McNeill is delightfully slimy as Nick, the proto-Tom Paris and leader of Alpha Squadron. But in the end, it really comes down to the redemption of Wesley Crusher, something few fans thought was possible.

"Sheesh...anybody else getting tired of Data's goddamn magic tricks?"

3. Cause and Effect: One of my favorite running bits on TNG was the officers’ poker game. It was always a great way to throw in a little surreptitious exposition, and a great way to develop character. I loved the fact that Picard finally joined the game at the very end of “All Good Things…” Here, the poker game becomes an essential part of the plot, too. The Enterprise is caught in a technobabble loop temporal causality loop, repeating the same sequence of events over and over. We come in in medias res at the end of one cycle – and hey, beginning an episode with a teaser where the ship is blown the hell up is a pretty bold start. We see four more cycles through the loop, each one slightly different from the last, as the crew experiences a growing sense of déjà vu. The actors play the moments beautifully – beginning with Beverly’s strange feeling that Riker is going to bluff in the first iteration of the poker game. The next time around, Riker realizes beforehand that Crusher will know that he’s bluffing, and folds. With the third iteration, they don’t even get that far – instead, Crusher, Worf and Riker are all able to predict exactly which cards Data will deal. Finally, having been able to transmit a message into the next iteration of the loop, Data stacks the deck as he shuffles (casting Worf and Riker’s repeated speculation as to whether Data is actually randomizing the cards in the previous iterations in a new light), and though Crusher believes she’ll be able to predict the cards, they’re all threes. Much as with “The Visitor” (as discussed in yesterday’s DS9 post), there’s a bit of technobabble, but it’s all in the service of an interesting story. Ultimately the real resolution of the plot depends not on “if we release an interphasic tachyon pulse, we should be able to invert the polarity of the chronoton emissions,” but rather the characters being genuinely smart and figuring out the right course of action. And the coda, in which we discover that the Enterprise wasn’t the only ship trapped in the loop, is brilliant in showing us just what the consequences of repeated failure might have been.

"Thank you sir, may I have another?"

2. Tapestry: “Tapestry” is a great study of what makes Picard tick, of course. But it’s also a great study, in its way, of just what it is about Picard that fascinates Q so much. It isn’t just that he wants to test Picard. It isn’t just that he enjoys playing tricks on Picard. Because Picard refuses to be cowed or intimidated by Q, Q wants to take the opportunity to demonstrate his own superiority. He’s taunting Picard, saying, “Look, Jean-Luc, I know you better than you know yourself. What do you think of that?” But at the same time, it is a joke, and it is a test. Q is utterly fascinated by Picard – as his chosen examplar of humanity – and wants to see what Picard will do in each new situation Q puts him in. This is the best Q episode because it has that narrow focus – just on Q and Picard. There’s no extraneous weirdness with the Borg or Robin Hood or Q stripped of his powers. It’s the most simple and direct clash between the adversaries who are a wild mismatch in power but perfectly matched in temperament. I also love the callback all the way back to season 2′s “Samaritan Snare,” in which Picard first told Wesley the story related here, and noted that he found his laughter in response to the stabbing to be a strange thing to do. In the end, as Picard puts history right, he’s laughing not just because he knows the future will proceed in his desired direction, but because he finally, after so many years, has an answer as to why he was laughing about being stabbed through the chest in the first place.

"Hmm...well, it's more than I wanted to spend...but I'll take him!"

1. The Best of Both Worlds, Part I and II (plus Family): Okay, this is a bit of a cheat, as it’s three episodes. But obviously, you can’t really separate the two parts of “The Best of Both Worlds,” and “Family” is the absolutely necessary epilogue. I can remember anxiously looking at the clock as Part I aired, watching as it hit 6:30, then 6:45 and 6:55, slowly realizing that there was no way they were going to resolve this thing in one episode. “Mr. Worf…fire!” echoed in my ears all summer long, as my friends and I endlessly debated what was going to happen and whether Picard would actually die. They’d killed off Yar, after all…so there was no particular reason to expect that Picard was going to survive the experience. Okay, I’ll readily admit that Part II was a bit of a letdown, but how could it not be after that buildup? It was still pretty great. If Part II didn’t quite live up to the hype, that was more than made up for by its follow-up, “Family.” So often on sci-fi shows, the characters go through incredible, horrific, traumatic experiences, and then are running around next week like nothing’s happened. “Family” gives us, and Picard, a bit of a rest after the intensity of “The Best of Both Worlds,” and gives Picard a chance to heal from the trauma he’s suffered. His nephew René reminds Picard of his own youthful energy and optimism, reinforcing why he wanted to go into Starfleet in the first place. And his brother Robert is able to clear Jean-Luc’s head and make him see the clarity of his choices about the future in a way that only family can do for each of us. And they really grasp, brilliantly, the way that brothers, even adult brothers who ought to have grown out of it, can be rolling in the mud, at each other’s throats one moment, and then merrily and drunkenly singing together the next. As good as TNG ever got.

One of my favorite things about DS9 is the way it stands out from the rest of the TNG-era shows, design-wise. Setting the series on a commandeered Cardassian space station was a brilliant idea, because it gave the creative team the opportunity to break out of the mold of Starfleet-issue design, and create something that truly stands out and looks immediately different from “Next Generation” and “Voyager.”

I also think it was pretty ground-breaking in terms of telling a long-form story rather than sticking to the “must restore the status quo within 43 minutes” episodic nature of sci-fi television. Thanks to the Ron Moore connection, you can clearly see the influence of DS9 on “Battlestar Galactica.” It’s a complete narrative, with interesting little side journeys and digressions, but you can follow a clear through-line from “The Emissary” to “What You Leave Behind.”

So, without further ado…

Top Five Deep Space Nine Episodes:

5. By Inferno’s Light: Finally. After many years of hearing about what a badass Worf is and then seeing him get tossed aside by every monster-of-the-week who comes along, we finally, finally get to see Worf being a total badass. Worf, Bashir, Garak and Martok have been captured and imprisoned by the Dominion. Garak has an opportunity to send a secret distress call, but he needs time to work on it. In order to buy him time, Worf engages in a series of hand-to-hand battles with the Jem’Hadar who guard the prison camp. Worf keeps fighting, his injuries mount and Bashir pleads with him to stop, but Worf simply refuses to yield. Finally under orders to kill the at-last-beaten Worf, the final Jem’Hadar delivers one of my favorite lines from the entire series: “I cannot beat this Klingon. I can only kill him. And that no longer holds my interest.”

4.In the Pale Moonlight: Though this episode is really focused on Sisko entering Garak’s world of espionage, double-crosses, and manufactured evidence, it’s truly summed up by the brief early moment between Sisko and Quark. Trying to convince Quark not to press charges against an unsavory character who Sisko and Garak need for their plot to bring the Romulans into the Dominion War, Sisko offers Quark a hefty bribe, obviously disgusted with himself. Quark cites the 98th Rule of Acquisition: Every man has his price. It’s one of the classic “Star Trek” themes – the needs of the many vs. the needs of the few. Is the potential benefit from bringing the Romulans into the war greater than the cost of Sisko’s own values? In the end, he tells us (by way of recording his personal log), “a guilty conscience is a small price to pay for the safety of the Alpha Quadrant. So I’ll learn to live with it…Because I can live with it…I can live with it.” Avery Brooks is good enough that it’s clear that he’s desperately trying to convince himself that his words are true…and failing.

3. Tears of the Prophets: One of the best cliffhangers in the entirety of “Star Trek,” because it ends not with a bang but a whimper. Gul Dukat has murdered Jadzia Dax – and I, for one, had no idea at the time that Terry Farrell was leaving the show, so her death was really shocking to me. Utterly shattered by her death, Sisko requests a leave of absence and heads home to Earth. There’s  a great callback to the previous season’s finale, in which Sisko had left his baseball behind in his office when the Cardassians took the station, as a warning that he was planning on coming back to get it. This time, he’s taken the baseball with him, signaling to Kira that he’s not sure he’s ever coming back. The episode closes, rather than with dramatic music and a big, “Mr. Worf…fire!” moment, with silence. Sisko sits in the alley behind his father’s restaurant in New Orleans, scrubbing clams. It’s a great moment, leaving viewers as uncertain about the future as Sisko himself. Usually, “Star Trek” characters – especially captains – are required to be strong-willed, resolute, single-minded. This show of doubt was a bold and brilliant choice by the writers.

2. The Visitor: One of the best father-son stories I’ve seen on any television show ever. It’s a bit technobabbley, but for once the technobabble is at the service of a great story instead of just a deus ex machina to wrap things up in the last act. Yeah, I don’t know about wormhole inversions and temporal anomalies and all that stuff…but I can definitely understand Jake’s obsession with saving his father, and Sisko’s desire to see Jake live his life. Sisko’s dawning horror at the end as he realizes what Jake has done is another note-perfect moment from Avery Brooks. I’m also a sucker for glimpses into the future – so I love seeing the return of the uniforms from TNG’s “All Good Things…” and bad old-age makeup on Dax and Bashir.

1. Far Beyond the Stars: This episode is a bit of a strange digression from the usual for DS9 – a bit like the TNG episode “The Inner Light” (only not vastly overrated) in that it’s mostly a departure from the usual setting and plot. What really sells this episode, though, is Avery Brooks. He’s absolutely phenomenal here playing Benny Russell, a black sci-fi writer in the 1950s who is asked to “sleep late” on the day of the magazine staff photo in order to keep readers in the dark about his race. I think, actually, I’d like the episode even better if they had been even bolder about it and just dispensed with the silly framing sequence with Sisko “being sent a vision by the Prophets” or whatever it is that’s supposed to be going on here. Why not just do something completely out-of-continuity, a stand-alone episode that gives us a little glimpse of how far the science fiction field has come in forty years, a nod to the history and a fun little “spot the actor” game? Why try to shoehorn this marvellous story into the overall DS9 plot? Oh, well. Even as it is, it’s great.

Two ladies from the future who shop at the same store.

Top Five “Voyager” Episodes:

5. That one where Tuvok was on the USS Excelsior during Star Trek VI.

4. That one where Tom and Harry play “Flash Gordon” on the Holodeck.

3. That one where Janeway fights pirates with the help of Leonardo da Vinci.

2. That one where Tuvok and Neelix get merged into a single person.

1. That one where Jeri Ryan wears a spandex unitard.

Top Five “Enterprise” Episodes:

5. That one where they fight the Borg for some reason, two hundred years ahead of schedule.

4. That one where they fight the Ferengi for some reason, two hundred years ahead of schedule.

3. That one where it’s all in the Mirror Universe for no particular reason.

2. That one where they come up with probably the most ludicrous possible explanation for the discrepancy between TOS-style Klingons and Movie/TNG-style Klingons.

1. That one where Jolene Blalock wears a spandex unitard.

—

Okay, so I really never got into the later “Trek” series. I watched the first season or so of “Voyager” and got bored with it fairly quickly. Same thing with “Enterprise,” though I only made it through about half of the first season on that one. I have nothing in particular against either series. They make fine A/V wallpaper if they’re on TV and I’m doing something else. I’ve caught many episodes of each over the years – just never really “on purpose.” Neither series is something I’d really actively choose to sit down and give undivided attention to.

“Voyager” suffered from the “Gilligan’s Island” flaw: half the plots revolved around, “Hey, here’s an idea about how we could get home!” but you know that it’s not going to work for some reason, because the fact that they’re stranded on the other side of the galaxy is the entire premise of the show. Beyond that, you’ve got dull characters (quick: name an interesting character trait of Chakotay or Harry Kim! Can’t do it, can you? Because they don’t have any!), uninteresting plots in those episodes that aren’t “Gilligan’s Island” ones, and boring aliens. I mean, the Kazon make the Ferengi from the early seasons of TNG look like the goddamn Borg.

“Enterprise” was better – but not by much. Boring characters, bad writing, history that contradicts the history fans have been watching over and over for years, and maybe the worst theme song in the history of television. Can’t say I was surprised when it got an early ax.