“Sam says Caleb is 20 years old, but I assume she’s not being precise, since he was separated from his mother nearly 16 years prior, which would make him nearly 22.” In the voice messages from his mom, she can be heard wishing him a happy 19th birthday and a happy 20th birthday.

Love these! First thing I look for after finishing an episode.

One typo: unfinished sentence in the Kometa fish paragraph.

Though I am deeply grateful that there is no cliffhanger.

In a season of genre experimentation they couldn’t decide whether to end with a Doctor Who episode or a Doctor Strange episode, so why not both?

What I always wanted was someone to rearrange all the clips into chronological order. I don’t know why but it bothers me that they skip around.

• The one time I got to see Gene Roddenberry speak, he had brought along a blooper reel, which I think was fairly common to show at Star Trek conventions in the late 1970s, early 1980s?
• The Greatest Trek podcast mentioned that “TK” in the name TK Bellows is clearly an homage to the publishing term: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_come_(publishing)
• The Greatest Trek also felt that the Uhura assistance to Scotty was a nod to her caregiving of him in Star Trek 5 (bringing him dinner while working, going on shore leave together)

I forgot about Gene Roddenberry’s sideburns in the 1970s. Hmm. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_Roddenberry#/media/File:Gene_Roddenberry_crop.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Asimov#/media/File:Isaac_and_Janet_Asimov.jpg

Anson Mount’s sideburns were a clear homage to Isaac Asimov.

Why didn’t they just put Batel in the medical transporter’s pattern buffer, like M’Benga did with his daughter?

I found it humorous that Clem is also a Lower Decker in his society!

It is the best of a bad bunch. The TOS movies inspired the TNG movies. The TNG movies inspired a lull in the movies (no call for a DS9 or Voyager or Enterprise movie) that had to be filled with a reboot.

My dad watched TOS with me when it first aired, but I was too young to remember it. My first recollection is watching it in syndication. I went on to read my dad’s many books, especially the Star Trek Concordance and the James Blish adaptations.

Thanks, that sent me Googling. “KIM: I’ll try extrapolating the verteron exit vector. No, I can’t get it. There’s a strange phase variance in the radiation stream. We’ll have to wait until the probe exits.” Episode 6 (another wormhole?!) http://www.chakoteya.net/Voyager/106.htm

I love this! Now you need to do an analysis like this one on Star Trek and the Bechdel-Wallace test!

I realize you’re not trying to predict quality, just personal enjoyability, but I do wonder how it relates to quality.

I actually think it might be slightly more predictive of the quality of a show overall than of individual episodes. But both ST:TOS and ST:TNG have many great captain-centric episodes that I’m not sure if it is predictive of episode quality particularly.

Great suggestion! Everyone remembers the Gorn, but the Metrons are fairly representative of the incredibly advanced aliens typical of TOS (like the Organians, Thasians, or Providers).

I think I’d suggest a planet-of-the-week episode. From TOS, “This Side of Paradise” or “A Taste of Armageddon.” From TNG, maybe “Who Watches the Watchers” or “Up the Long Ladder.”