Keep on Trekkin', Part 2: The Best and Worst

Only popes and omnipotent beings can wear such pimp threads

While Star Trek is fun to laugh at and enjoy on a camp level on some occasions, the show usually succeeds on a serious level. Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, in my opinion, have the best run of episodes of all the series. Star Trek: Voyager and Enterprise were pretty lousy, but they had their share of quality episodes. But for no other reason than to justify my undying love for this franchise, I'm going to give you the top ten episodes of all of Star Trek. These aren't necessarily my favorites (though some of them are); these are the ones that I think are the best made. Kickass episodes like "The Best of Both Worlds" are probably more entertaining than some of these, but they're not as well done.

THE BEST:
10. Chimera (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine): Odo, the station's dour shapeshifting security chief, encounters another shapeshifter who has nothing but contempt for "solids" (re: we who cannot shapeshift), and Odo finds himself agreeing with the newcomer, but his love for Major Kira keeps him from taking off with the new guy. After all, Kira loves Odo too, given what a shapeshifter can do for a woman in the bedroom....

9. Yesterday's Enterprise (Star Trek: The Next Generation): The Enterprise-D encounters a "weird time vortex" (a MacGuffin that shows up in Star Trek quite often), and the Enterprise-C, which disappeared 20 years earlier, comes through. Suddenly the universe changes to a much more war-like place as a result of the Enterprise-C's disappearance. It sounds complicated, but it's not hard to follow. It also features a guest role by none other than Shooter McGavin from Happy Gilmore.

8. City on the Edge of Forever (Star Trek: The Original Series): The Enterprise encounters a "weird time vortex" again (this time on a planet) that calls itself (it speaks, of course) "The Guardian of Forever." A drugged up Dr. McCoy runs into said vortex and changes history. Kirk and Spock follow in an attempt to set things right. While on Earth in the 1930's, Kirk falls in love with a woman, but he finds out that he must let her die in order for history to be set right.

7. The Enterprise Incident (Star Trek: The Original Series): Kirk pretends to go crazy (imagine that), and he flies the Enterprise into Romulan space. The Enterprise is promptly captured. Spock and the female Romulan commander end up in an odd pseudo-romance, but the whole thing was a ruse orchestrated by the Federation in order to steal a Romulan cloaking device.

6. Far Beyond the Stars (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine): Circumstances from previous episodes result in Captain Sisko (who is black) having hallucinations of himself as a black science fiction writer in the 1950s. In this other life, Sisko tries to sell a story called "Deep Space Nine," but his magazine editor won't accept it because no one would believe that there could be a "Negro captain." It's a fantastic episode about racism that doesn't hit you over the head with a message.

5. In the Pale Moonlight (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine): In the fifth season, the Federation goes to war with the Dominion (bad guys), but the Romulans remain neutral. By the sixth season, the war is going very badly. Sisko concocts an elaborate ruse to bring the Romulans into the war that involves lying, conspiracy, fraud, coverups, and complicity in a murder. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

4. The Inner Light (Star Trek: The Next Generation): The Enterprise encounters a probe that knocks Picard unconscious for 25 minutes, but in that time, he lives the entire life of a man on a dying alien world. This episode won some kind of award for writing, and it's well deserved.

3. All Good Things (Star Trek: The Next Generation): This was the final episode of The Next Generation, and damn was it good. The Q decide that humanity will be wiped from existence. The plot is too complicated to explain here, but it involves Picard leaping between three timelines: the "current" time period, the time of the series' first episode, and a period about 25 years in the future.

2. The Visitor (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine): The Defiant encounters a "weird time vortex" (imagine that) that traps Sisko in time. His son Jake can't move on because Sisko keeps reappearing to him throughout his life. Jake's obsession with saving his father consumes his entire life, but he finally realizes how to rescue him. This results in Sisko never having entered the vortex in the first place. This episode was all about performances. The actors who play Sisko and his son do a fantastic job.

1. Duet (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine): A Cardassian who calls himself Maritza comes aboard Deep Space Nine, but Kira identifies him as Gul Darheel, the man who ran a forced labor camp during the Bajoran Occupation (think Auschwitz during WWII). Kira's anger toward this guy is formidable since her resistance group liberated that labor camp. Darheel seems to be proud of his past ("What you call genocide, I call a day's work" he says matter-of-factly), but Kira and Odo discover that this guy really is Maritza, but he had himself surgically altered to look like Darheel. Maritza was a file clerk at the labor camp who can't bear the guilt of his time spent there. He wants to force the Cardassian government to pay for what it did during the occupation. Kira sees the man in a new light, but he's murdered by a random Bajoran. ("Why? He wasn't Darheel!" "He was a Cardassian. That's reason enough." "No, it's not.") It may sound a bit bizarre, but dammit, it's good stuff. The final scene where Maritza breaks down is amazing. In terms of writing and acting, this episode hasn't been surpassed.

Yea, I know most of you couldn't care less. Tough shit. It's my blog. I'll write what I want.
But for your entertainment, here are the worst episodes of Star Trek ever made.

THE WORST:
5. Spirit Folk (Star Trek: Voyager): The holodeck malfunctions bringing an 18th century Irish town to life. What the fuck?

4. Profit and Lace (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine): Quark has a sex change operation in order to convince the Ferengi government to work for women's rights. Again, what the fuck?

3. The Way to Eden (Star Trek: The Original Series): The Enterprise encounters space hippies. I don't need to say anything else.

2. Shades of Gray (Star Trek: The Next Generation): The first two seasons of The Next Generation sucked. This episode was a "flashback" episode with clips from the first two seasons. That's double suck right there.

1. Threshold (Star Trek: Voyager): Tom Paris and Captain Janeway fly past warp 10 and turn into giant salamanders. I just don't even know what the creators were going for with this one.


Star Trek Blog Posts: Driving readers away since yesterday.

Keep on Trekkin', Part 1: Loving the Camp

There is no cool way to say this: I grew up with Star Trek in all its forms, and I love it. I have seen every episode of every series at least once, many of them more than once. Some of them MANY times more than once. Star Trek hasn't been on for a few years now, and good Star Trek hasn't been produced in almost a decade, but I still watch the reruns on SpikeTV and G4. I just can't help myself. It's things like this that keep me out of most social circles.

There have been over 600 hours of Star Trek produced since it was introduced in the mid-1960s. Whether it's Star Trek, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, or Enterprise, I've been glued to the TV for all of them. These shows have their fair share of really lousy episodes. In fact, I'll get to those in a later post, but first, let me address why I love some of this stuff, and I'll turn my attention to the original series first.

This is the most consistenly entertaining of the series. Even when the episodes are bad, they're still laughably bad. William Shatner just throws himself into every damn scene. Whether his evil clone is yelling "GIVE ME THE BRANDY, THE BRANDY!" to Dr. McCoy or he's cursing KHAAAAAANNNN from an alien cave, William Shatner just grabs the scenery with his chompers and never stops chewing.

Then of course there's the rest of the crew. You've got the cross-cultural cornucopia occupying the original Enterprise. You've got Scotty, who is naturally from Scotland; Chekov, who thinks everything was inwented by a little old lady in Leningrad (gotta love the Sixties!); Sulu, who we now know was thrusting more than just the warp drive, and Uhura, the token black telephone operator.

I love some of the episode plots too. Jack the Ripper was really an alien. They go to an amusement park planet where there's a giant easter bunny. They were in battle with an Abe Lincoln from space. And then of course, I can't count the number of times Kirk outsmarted a super-computer/robot ruler with a simple paradox ("Everything I tell you is a lie.... I am lying." -- Not kidding, they actually did that one). Kirk would always go into some backwards planet, kick ass, take names, and then fly off as he joked with Bones and made racially-demeaning comments toward Spock. This guy was the original space cowboy, and Shatner just loved every minute of it. He only rivals Adam West in terms of loving his own celebrity status as a cult hero.

The original had some episodes that were genuinely good ("The City on the Edge of Forever," "Mirror Mirror," "The Doomsday Machine," and "The Enterprise Incident" come to mind), but if you're looking for some classic camp, I highly recommend a little gem called "I, Mudd." This is my favorite of the original series. Not only does it feature the original space pirate Harry Mudd, but it also has Chekov doing a Russian dance, Kirk outwitting a robot civilization, Scotty faking his own death, and of course, Kirk distracting robot women by attempting to seduce them. It's vintage Trek.

Star Trek: preventing nerds from breeding since 1966.

The Hometown Advantage

A one-armed prostitute gets more action than you!

I don't watch the national news regularly, and I really don't have an excuse for that. What I do have an excuse for, however, is not watching the local news.

Local news is shit.

I always get to watch the local news whenever I come home for awhile; my parents watch it every evening during dinner, and I just don't see how people mistake this 2 hour reality show for news. These are things I hate about the local news:

Unnecessary Location Shooting: "This is Dick Upyourass reporting from the South Hills Taco Bell where police stopped a guy from taking a shit on the floor ten hours ago." Why does this windbag need to be standing in front of the locale to report something that happened there hours or even days ago. Was I not going to believe that such a place exists? "Fuck you Dick! Prove to me that there's really a fire hydrant on fifth avenue, or I'm taking my business elsewhere." My favorites are the weathermen. In the summertime, they'll often do the weather from some location that has nothing to do with the weather. In Erie, the weather guy actually did the weather from the jumbalaya-tasting contest at the downtown park. There was no part of that that I didn't find sad and hilarious.

Stupid Slogans: The channel four news in Pittsburgh calls itself "The Action News Team." Since when does a man protesting a 0.1% increase in homeowners tax qualify as "action"? They have these slogans to go along with their name too. At first they would say, "Channel 4 Action News, where the news comes first." This made me laugh the first time I heard it. Your show is simply titled "The News." If the news comes first, what the fuck comes second? Perhaps understanding their stupid slogan, they quickly changed it to say: "Channel 4 Action News, where YOU come first." What the hell does that mean? Is Channel 2 reaching out with a virtual cattle prod and busting me back to fifth place?

Lame Eyewitnesses: This has to be the jewel of the local news biz: the neighborly interview. Every time some local screwball snaps and kills/rapes/kidnaps someone, the on-site news reporter always finds some old woman who lives in the neighborhood to comment on the event, and the person always says the same thing: "This is such a quiet neighborhood. I never thought anything like that could happen here." Don't these people watch the news? How many times do the news stations have to interview people who say this before people catch on that psychos live everywhere. Just once, I want someone to come on screen and say, "This neighborhood is a shithole. I'm surprised he didn't kill sooner and in greater numbers."

Traffic "Expert": This is a special kind of eyewitness. Whenever construction occurs (i.e. every single summer), the news has to go out and find some local loser sitting in traffic and get his or her opinion on it, which usually amounts to: "They should go fix something else that's not on MY way to work." We'll see what you say when that bridge collapses with you on it.

Pathetic Chit Chat: Hey anchorman, no one cares if you're happy that it's going to be sunny on Sunday because your puppy will get to run in the grass and piss on the neighbor's yard gnome. Quit wasting my time. Get on with your bullshit excuse for news. And don't compliment the weatherman for a good forecast. He's just reading shit off a screen. He's not actually creating the goddamn weather.

News that's not News: This pretty much goes right to the heart of what these people do. News is stuff that is necessary for other people to know. Watch the typical evening newscast. How much of that really affects your life in any way? FIRE BURNS DOWN APARTMENT BUILDING. That's news for the people who live in the apartment building and those who know them. Doesn't affect me. These people have enough problems without some dirtbag reporter shoving a microphone in their faces and asking if the fire was hot. Even saying that the police arrested a guy for growing marijuana is stupid. It does nothing but show that the police are doing their jobs. Why do I need to know what the police are doing? Unless the cops are out lighting black people on fire and kicking puppies down the street, I don't give a rat's ass.

Lame Cliffhangers: "Will Excedrin give you The Clap? Find out at 11." I think they might have led the 5pm news with that little gem if it were true.

Pathetic Local Connections: No matter what global tragedy there is, you can count on the local news to have a "hometown connection" to it. A roof collapsed at a Walgreens in Maine. What's a local connection? Some frumpy, overweight old woman with a Pittsburgh accent and a lazy eye has a brother who shopped at that very same Walgreens just a few days ago. The reporter has to sit there straight faced as this woman describes her brother's near brush with death.

~ The Local News: Tricking you into feeling informed for 100 years.

Final Reflections

The following is an email that I received from my boss today regarding a meeting for all teaching assistants who just taught English 101. For your convenience, I have included translations for those of you who aren't familiar with how the English department works. My comments are in italics.

Hi 101 Instructors,
Greetings Cheap Slave Labor,

The annual year-end 101 reflection will take place from 1:30 to 4 on Monday, May the 7th, in the ballroom at the Lair.
The yearly "kiss your bosses' asses" party will be spread out over two hours so that you can properly tell us how wonderful we all are. Chuck E Cheese required a 10 dollar deposit so we went with the Lair Ballroom. They gave us a discount on our next batch of Vegan cookies.

We ask that you bring along one favorite lesson plan or assignment -- three copies of it.
We realized too late that we don't have enough reflecting to take up 2 and a half hours so we're going to give you some pointless activity to do.

At four, we'll head downstairs to the Side Pocket Pub, which the Lair has agreed to open up just for us.
Nothing says "gratitude" like sub-par University-approved beer that is "graciously" bestowed upon us once the entire student population is gone and these places are hurting for business. If this shit's free, I'll blow a camel.

They will also provide bowling shoes for the willing. There will be pizza.
We really went all out in showing their gratitude with the party that most 12-year-olds dream of.

It's going to be dynamite!
You may actually feel like blowing up the school! -- I can't believe he actually said this. Does he think the English department is going to turn into the set of Good Times?

We hope to see all 2006/2007 101 instructors there.
Your job will be given to a dancing monkey if you don't show up.

Please contact me if you cannot attend.
I will come to your house and cut out your kidneys.

~ Your Immediate Boss
Names withheld to protect the innocent and defend myself against those who like to google their own names.

Putting a Little English on It

Nobody fucketh with thy Bard

-

Recent events seem to have given English majors a bad name. For those of you who haven't heard (and you must have been on the moon if you missed this), a bat-shit insane English major killed 32 people at Virginia Tech this week and then shot himself. In spite of the tragedy, I found something darkly funny about the fact that this guy was an English major. Part of that is likely due to me being a totally insensitive douchebag, but part of it is that I've worked with English majors for some time now.

We're all on the verge of losing it.

-

Now I don't mean this literally. I don't think anyone I know is planning to go on some shooting spree. That takes a special kind of insane right there. The worst our voices do is force us to volunteer for more work. Finnigan may be my invisible muse who takes the form of Abe Lincoln in a Hawaiian shirt, but dammit, he gets the papers written.

-

This image of the gun-slinging English student is not helping us. On Tuesday evening, the headline (just below "Virginia Tech Massacre") was the following by-line: "English Major Kills 32 Students." Now why did it have to be worded like that? Interestingly enough, it's not out of the realm of possibility for an English grad student to be teaching a class of 32 freshmen in a writing class. This headline makes it sound like this guy had read one "its defiantly my beest writeng" too many and just mowed down his class.

We've all had fantasies, but we'd never act out on them. Besides, we don't have the money to purchase that kind of weaponry.

-

But I've noticed my students looking at me strangely ever since the incident. Today probably didn't help matters. My little moppets were doing a peer review workshop, so while they were working on their papers, I was doing my own work. My own work, as it happens, is an analysis of adaptations of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. This led me to a fascinating connection between that novella and Jack the Ripper. Turns out the Ripper murders occurred less than two years after Stevenson's book was published, and that may have been a big factor in its rising popularity.

-
But I digress. As I said, I was doing my own work. It's at this point that I become aware that my students keep glancing up at me and my reading material. I set my book down and realize that the cover of my book is completely black with the words "JACK THE RIPPER" written in big, clearly visible red letters. It didn't help that the author of the book had a sense of humor, which led me to laugh at various points throughout the class.

-

I immediately understood their concern - I tried to imagine myself in their place, and I became intensely aware of how closely I resembled a sociopath at that moment. I explained why I was reading the book, but I don't think some of them were convinced. I can just imagine the evaluations now.

-

I don't know how much the shooter's association with the English department led to his insanity. Even if the media hadn't given his major, I could have guessed. The explanation note found in his room railed against "rich kids," "debauchery," and "deceitful charlatans." That has English major written all over it. No normal person talks like that. Hell, most normal people don't know what those words mean. Only English majors and Bond villains talk like that.

-

So the life of the English major just got a bit more interesting. The listserv is already abuzz with the socio-lingistic-political ramifications of the shooting. Every professor is trying to out-academic everyone else. I can't wait to see what kind of bullshit this will lead to in terms of department policy.

Towed and Owned

I was up in Indiana, PA today. Kate and I decided to go for a walk in the park, but we wanted to stop at the dining hall first. So we're driving around looking for a spot with a meter with little success. A block away, we find a parking lot for a strip mall. I see a sign: "For customers only."

How in the world would all of these stores know where each driver went? Besides, we're only going to be inside for a half hour. A half hour, a bowl of gravy-smothered fries, and a Chicken Caesar wrap later, we return to my car.

It's not there.

First thought: I'm an idiot and parked somewhere else. No, I remember this sign.
Second thought: Someone stole my car. No, it's a piece of shit. Who would want it?

Then Kate realizes that my car must have been towed. So we wander around trying to find some information. We're absolutely baffled. How could they have towed my car so quickly? Did they beam it into space? Was my car something out of a Hitchcock film and just went batshit insane and killed pedestrians?

We get the number for the towing company that got the car. Apparently, the woman at a nearby store told us, someone actually watches people park and sees if they go into the businesses there. What kind of shit job is that?

So we're on our way to the towing place. I'm laughing. I think it's hilarious. This is just the icing on my car fine cake. Four speeding tickets and now my car has been towed. I'm glad the world has conspired to keep this evil car maniac in check.

We get to the towing place, and I'm in a good mood. Even when the woman behind the desk tells me that the fine is $100, I'm still chuckling. This obviously catches her attention. She tells me that most people are pissed when they come in. I tell her that I've been owned by the police over minor driving violations many times. I've always suspected that people were watching me. Now I have proof.

So we're talking to this woman at the towing place, and Kate says, "That must be a really boring job. Just sitting there all day watching for people to tow."

And a voice behind us says, "Yea, you guys just walked right past me!"

There he was - the little prick who towed my car. I could have punched him in the face. That might have been cathartic. But then I thought: this is good business. These are pro-active towing people. They don't wait for business to come to them. They go out and get it. I was sort of impressed. The watchman told me that he just sits in the corner deli all day drinking coffee as he waits for potential targets. The cynical nature of the man's job left me in awe. I'm even a bit jealous.

So now I don't just have to be paranoid when I'm driving; I can be paranoid when I'm parking too.

Total amount of money spent on fines so far in my life: appx. $600.

Standing on Ceremony

Today in my American Literature class, we're going to be discussing Leslie Marmon Silko's book Ceremony. It's not a bad book. I've read it before. It tells the story of a Native American named Tayo who served in the Pacific during World War II. He spent most of his time as a POW of the Japanese, but the entire book takes place after Tayo returns to the reservation with his family. The book is very interesting in how it analyzes the psychology of recovery, identity, and traditions. JP approves!

Then there's the plot. Here's where the troubles begin. Tayo has a lot of personal issues as a result of his time in the POW camp, and he heads off into the woods in the wintertime in search of answers. As he tries to help a woman find her cattle (a woman he slept with - go Tayo!), he encounters a mountain lion. He somehow forms this spiritual connection with the mountain lion, and said lion later saves him from the white police officers. (Summary probably not as good as it should be)

I hate this mystical Native American stuff. Why does every story involving Native Americans have some moment where the character communes with nature, sees through the eyes of the eagle, or becomes one with the wolf? Why does everyone think that Indians have magic powers? Hell, it doesn't even matter which Indians you're talking about. According to American fiction, people from India are all shamans who control mummies and Native American Indians all have this one-ness with nature.

It reminds me of that paragon of virtue, that king of kings, the man of infinite wisdom:

That's right, we're talking about Walker Texas Ranger. Every once in awhile, Walker would get it in his head to go speak to his Yoda-like mentor, an old Native American guy who lived on the convenient nearby reservation. Chief Yoda would give Walker some random advice about speaking to the animals, and this would help Walker out in a decisive moment. Walker would just be about to be attacked by the drug lord's pet puma, but then the camera would zoom in on the puma's eyes and then do a little overlay with Walker's eyes superimposed on the screen. Some mystical flute music would play, showing the viewer that Walker now controls the beast. The puma would then turn on the drug lord and maul him.

Sound familiar? For as intelligent as the rest of the book is, the fact that the climax of Ceremony plays like an episode of Walker Texas Ranger is just sad. Don't misunderstand me. I don't mean to disrespect the beliefs of Native Americans, but spirituality and magic are two different things. Understanding nature and developing a loving bond with a wild mountain lion are two different things. I don't care how centered Tayo is. Wild mountain lions maul freezing Indian boys; they don't help them out in a bind.

I read this book in my senior year of college, and I made the mistake of bringing up this point in class. The professor informed me that she once taught on an Indian reservation, and she thought I was ignorant. I felt like a dumbass. Well, I haven't really done any research on Native Americans since then, so if I was ignorant then, I'm still ignorant now. That's why this goes on my blog instead of on a response for class.

I've learned my lesson. This time I'll just develop a spiritual bond with some passing bald eagle and convince it to crash through the window of our class. That'll show 'em.