Category Archives: Analysis

Romance in Star Trek – The One Episode Stands

OneEpisodeStands
In celebration of Valentines Day we here at Let’s Watch Star Trek are doing a quick run-through of the one-episode romances that have occurred during the first three seasons of each series. It isn’t comprehensive, ’cause that would get a little boring, but we tried to include the most notable relationships.
Stay tuned: tomorrow we’ll rank all the major Star Trek relationships!

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When The Prime Directive Is Wrong by Matt Sheean

When The Prime Directive Is Wrong

Comic book artist and guest Let’s Watch Star Trek writer Matt Sheean posits that Star Trek gets the Prime Directive wrong when it comes to situations involving world-wide catastrophe.

The Prime Directive, for those of you who have been deep in the Kolinahr for the last fifty years, is the guiding principle of interstellar exploration for Starfleet. It states that no member of Starfleet shall interfere with the internal development of an alien society. There should be no contact with pre-warp societies at all, since the introduction of such dramatically advanced technology or alien ideologies could not but interfere with the development of a society. During the course of Star Trek’s various series, the crews encounter a wide variety of situations that are rightly guided by the Prime Directive. However, there are a number of situations where the characters find themselves deciding how to apply the Directive when a world-wide catastrophe is occurring in a pre-warp civilization, and it’s my contention that absolute adherence to the Directive is wrong. I’ll be looking at this particular application of the Prime Directive in light of the way it is presented in the Next Generation episode “Pen Pals” and the Enterprise episode “Dear Doctor”.

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[VOY] Season Two Rating Comparisons

We’ve compiled some of the ratings from various reviewers for season two of Voyager. We calculated what their scores would be out of 100 to more easily compare with each other. Keep in mind that they originally didn’t rate the episodes with that exact scale, but we tried to accurately translate their rating.The reviewers we looked at were Jordan Hoffman, Jamahl Epsicokhan who runs the review site Jammer’s Reviews, and Kethinov. It appears there wasn’t a lot that we agreed on for this season.

One area of agreement was that Threshold was bad, getting an average rating of 10 out of 100.
Each of the other reviewers gave one episode a perfect score, but no one had the same episode as their favorite. Jordan Hoffman’s favorite episode was Non Sequitor (the one where Harry wakes up in San Fransisco). Jammer’s favorite episode was Projections (the one with Barclay). Kethinov’s favorite episode was Death Wish (the one with Q). Our favorite two episode were Basics Part I and Meld, which after adding in the others’ ratings averaged out to be lower than Tuvix, one of our least favorite episodes.

[DS9] Season Two Rating Comparisons

We’re once again looking at what other people have said about Star Trek, in this case season two of Deep Space Nine. We took the ratings from a few different reviewers and calculated what their scores would be out of 100. They originally didn’t rate the episodes with that exact scale, but we tried to accurately translate their rating.

The reviewers we’re looking at are Jordan Hoffman, who writes for StarTrek.com, Jamahl Epsicokhan who runs Jammer’s Reviews, Kethinov, and Treknobabble. Treknobabble’s scores are a combined rating from two reviewers, so keep in mind their scale is slightly different.

The episode that seemed to bore everyone was Second Sight, which ended up with the low score of 34.5.

Here are the top 5 rated episode:

1. Blood Oath – 85.5
2. Necessary Evil – 82
3. (tie) The Maquis Part II and The Wire – 81.5
5. The Jem’Hadar – 79.5
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[TOS] Season Two Rating Comparisons

Just as we did with the first season, we’ve compiled some of the ratings for season two of The Original Series all in one place to compare. We took the ratings from a few different reviewers and calculated what their scores would be out of 100. Keep in mind that they originally didn’t rate the episodes with that exact scale, but we tried to accurately translate their rating.

We once again took a look at Jordan Hoffman‘s reviews, blogger for StarTrek.com, Jamahl Epsicokhan who runs Jammer’s Reviews, Kethinov, another Star Trek reviewer, and the duo that is Treknobabble.

The episode with the lowest average rating was The Omega Glory (The one where Kirk teaches aliens how to properly understand the Constitution of America.) which had a score of 27.

Everyone liked Mirror, Mirror just a bit more than us, but overall there weren’t a lot of big discrepancies between one reviewer and the rest. We also thought The Ultimate Computer was okay, but the rest of the reviewers liked it very much.

Here are the top 5 according to the averaged scores:

1. The Doomsday Machine – 96
2. The Trouble With Tribbles – 94
3. Mirror, Mirror – 90
4. Amok Time – 85
5. Journey To Babel – 83 Continue reading

[TNG] Season Two Rating Comparisons

Like with the first season, we’ve compiled some of the ratings for season two of The Next Generation all in one place to compare. We took the ratings from a few different reviewers and calculated what their scores would be out of 100. Keep in mind that they originally didn’t rate the episodes with that exact scale, but we tried to accurately translate their rating. It’s also important to keep in mind that each reviewer may have different meanings behind their ratings. Continue reading