Through the Lens of Time (SNW)

Star Trek: The Next Generation, Series 2, Episode 4. First broadcast on Monday 12 December 1988. Stardate: 42402.7. An experimental quantum probability field causes the entire Enterprise crew to completely forget what humour is and how to do it. An agonising forty-five minutes, only relieved by the sight of beautiful Billy Campbell wandering through the corridors dressed as a pirate. (It’s just possible that the same field has caused the writers to forget how human behaviour works as well.)

Star Trek: Picard, Series 3, Episode 5. First broadcast on Thursday 16 March 2023. Stardate: 78186.03. To celebrate USTP’s 200th episode, Joe and Nathan spend an hour skulking around the dark but beautifully designed corridors of the USS Titan, avoiding a murderous Jack Crusher and trying to stay of the way of the intimidating Bajoran Starfleet Intelligence operative who is apparently here to arrest fan favourites Admiral Picard and Captain Riker. It’s like an alternate timeline where Star Trek: The Next Generation is dramatically and impractically lit, full of incident, and sceptical about the 1990s belief in the End of History. Here’s to the next 200.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Series 5, Episode 13. First broadcast on Monday 3 February 1997. Stardate: 50485.2. This week, the Federation faces a dramatic new adversary: Maquis leader and musical theatre gay, Michael Eddington. Sisko is not happy.

Star Trek: The Next Generation, Series 4, Episode 9. First broadcast on Monday 19 November 1990. Stardate: 44307.3. This week: an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation split roughly equally between saying goodbye to a beloved crew member and taking out the garbage — without saying anything very interesting about either. Apart from some memorable visuals, it’s mostly the kind of thing enjoyed by people who think that modern Star Trek seasons are too short.

Star Trek: Short Treks, Series 2, Episode 4. First broadcast on Thursday 12 December 2019. Stardate: Unknown (2266–2285). A vivid, propulsive and charming love letter to Star Trek: The Original Series this week, of a kind that would have been completely unimaginable during the long 90s. Star Trek tries its hand at animation for the first time since the 70s, and the result is an incredible success, paving the way for even more brilliant and visually stunning Star Trek to come.

Star Trek: Lower Decks, Series 2, Episode 7. First broadcast on Thursday 23 September 2021. Stardate: 58109.3. Even as the sun with purple-colour’d face   Had ta’en his last leave of the weeping morn   Prince Andy Billups knew his proper place   Starfleet he loved, but love he laugh’d to scorn:     His doting mother makes amain unto him,     And sends her prettiest guards at once to woo him.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Series 6, Episode 14. First broadcast on Saturday 14 February 1998. Stardate: 51474.2. And all I ask is one little ship and a star to steer her by. Five years ago, a high-concept space accident shrank the crew of a shuttlecraft, who were immediately forced to thwart the takeover of their starship by a group of alien intruders. And so it’s about time exactly the same thing happened again. But we’ve learnt a lot in the interim, apparently, which means that this time the script is sharper, the effects are slicker, and the tag scene is considerably more amusing.

Star Trek: Voyager, Series 6, Episode 2. First broadcast on Wednesday 29 September 1999. Stardate: 53049.2. This week, the crew of the USS Voyager take a week off being menaced by intransigent alien antagonists to visit a weird and extensive space station and devote some time to the woke nonsense of seeking out new life and new civilisations. But among its visitors are three people from Seven’s past, all afflicted with a strange Borg-related space problem to which only Seven has the key. In the same vein, Joe manages to explore, exorcise and ultimately ruin a small cherished moment from his own past.

Star Trek: The Original Series, Series 1, Episode 6. First broadcast on Thursday 13 October 1966. Stardate: 1329.8. It’s 1966 on board Enterprise this week, with all the horrific male chauvinism that implies. So when three glamorous women beam aboard wearing fashionably asymmetrical sequinned dresses, it’s soon apparent that they have been promised rich husbands by the charmingly ridiculous Harcourt Fenton Mudd, a pantomime pirate with a gap-toothed smile, a beautifully waxed moustache and some alarmingly luxuriant chest hair. It’s kind of fun, but is the chauvinism too high a price to pay?

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Series 3, Episode 5. First broadcast on Thursday 7 August 2025. Stardate: 2184.4. This week, so entranced is Nathan by the beauty of the Enterprise crew, the size and glossy finish of its sets, and the technological wonder of the effects wall that he completely fails to notice that basically nothing happens for about half an hour. Fortunately, Joe is here to help out.