[Video description: A compilation of clips from Star Trek: The Next Generation showing the instances in which Picard pulled his shirt. It is edited so that every time he pulls his shirt, his badge flies off of his uniform with a ‘pop’ sound. End description]
Deanna being so fucking sick of Picard and his horse riding in Starship Mine is like top 5 Deanna moments.
Forget Riker tormenting her with jazz, every day on the bridge she has to put up with Picard thinking incessantly about horsies and ponies 16 hours straight, she’s not even reading his thoughts he is just thinking so intensely about them that it’s inescapable, and then making her come to the holodeck with him for a pony adventure. Enough! She’s had enough!
I listen to a lot of podcasts in which the speakers examine works of film, literature, video games, television, etc. and the opening question is always “what’s your history with this particular work?” And let me tell you, listening to someone dive back into their own history in relation to the subject is a real joy. It’s targeted microbiography, part nostalgia and part background for the discussion ahead.
As I’ve been on an ever-revolving tour of everything Star Trek, I’ve listened to many people explain where they began with this sprawling fifty-plus year series. It’s got me thinking about that as well, and since I love a good catalogue of unnecessary information, I’ve decided to explore that. Now I can check this when I need to remember how many times I’ve watched all this.
The beginning: 2012 DS9 #1, TNG #1, movies #1
So I don’t remember the moment I started watching Star Trek, but I know I started because I was browsing Netflix at the time when they were the streaming platform that had all the TV shows. I knew Patrick Stewart and Jonathan Frakes from their other works (X-Men and Fact or Fiction, respectively) and that they were famous for being on that space show that was on the air when I was a kid in the 80s and 90s. I should’ve started there. But instead I came across the Star Trek show featuring a black captain and a big-eared hypercapitalist, and I thought, sure let’s do it. Then, having completed that, I did go and watch the one with Professor X in the lead role. I remember that one being real rough going in the first seasons and wondered whether it was worth finishing, but this was the essential lesson of all Star Trek: ya gotta stick with it because it gets better.
Having watched both Deep Space Nine (DS9) and The Next Generation (TNG), I thought I owed it to the series to see what the big deal was with Kirk and Spock and all those old-timers. I really only understood The Original Series (TOS) as a punchline in shows like The Simpsons and as the material from which Futurama pulled a lot of stories and themes. But also… I just couldn’t see my way to watching an old show like that in its entirety. And hey when there are a bunch of movies featuring those characters, why not just take the shortcut and watch those instead?
Now we get to how I know that this was all circa 2012. Netflix didn’t have the movies but I was living in gloomy SW Portland near to a honest-to-goodness Blockbuster video store. Since I moved away later that year, I think I got a new Blockbuster card just for that one location and just to rent these specific movies. So the image I can recall as my first Star Trek memory is a dark afternoon, a stack of Star Trek movie DVDs on the coffee table, and feeling stunned when that’s what V’ger turns out to be. I also watched the TNG movies afterward for a full-on weekend marathon. This would’ve been the last thing I did before leaving Portland to return to the bay area.
This time in order: 2014 TNG #2, DS9 #2, VOY #1
So that was a lot of Star Trek, but I can’t says it hit. So circa 2014, now living in a stable place in Oakland, I decided to give it another try. I’d already been doing this with other shows for years, so as long as all the shows were still on Netflix, might as well. I dived back into the show starting with TNG this time, then DS9 again for the full confirmation that this was my favorite of these shows, and moving on to my first time watching Voyager (VOY). While the contrast between TNG and DS9 is there but fuzzy, the contrast from these shows to VOY was huge. I’d watched Battlestar Galactica and Firefly years before and that early 00s CG-heavy style of sci-fi has a distinctive air of trying hard to get away from the kinds of goofy (at the time) practical effects seen in shows like Star Trek. DS9 had some of it, but late VOY really leaned into CG bonanzas.
But still no TOS or The Animated Series (TAS). I just wasn’t ready to take it seriously. Then I got to early 2015 when things were, uh… shaky in my personal life.
Alright, fine: 2015 TOS #1, TAS #1, TNG #3, movies #2
But things settled down when I got to Portland again and was ready for more Trek. While I know I finally devoted some time to getting through TOS and TAS, I mostly recall zipping through them in a semi-distracted state in order to get to the more familiar TNG episodes. TOS is just very much of its time and I couldn’t get past some of the outdated notions and production quality, as forward-looking as the show was for its time.
Something about Sisko: 2016 DS9 #3, VOY #2, ENT #1
Having kicked off a complete rewatch from the start the previous year, I went on to DS9 because of course, and then breezed through VOY with little appreciation for it in order to quickly get to Enterprise (ENT).
ENT was… rough. I had naturally developed the innate instinct to stick with it past the first season, but then I had to extend that to season 2, and season 3, and it wasn’t until season 4 that the show seemed to find a good voice and cadence. Naturally, that’s when they decided to cancel it.
Kelvin calls: 2016-2019 Abrams movies #1
I don’t recall or really care exactly when I watched the Kelvin movies. I’m pretty sure I sort of watched them as they released, and I would have definitely watched the third one in the theater as I was all-in on watching stuff at the theater by this point. So let’s say I’d definitely watched them all by this period.
Strangely, I don’t think I was (re)watching the shows at this time, except for a couple of episodes of Discovery (DSC) that I was jazzed to see on Netflix in the UK during a work trip in 2017. DSC was one of those big gets for CBS’s streaming service so it never released anywhere outside of that in the U.S. But after that, I didn’t bother to watch the rest until a few years later…
2017 to 2019 was strangely bereft of Star Trek, but I came back around in early 2020 as news of Picard (PIC) began to circulate. Since I was signing up to what was then called CBS All-Access to watch that, I decided to go and watch the seasons of DSC that were available then. That was… fine, but it wasn’t quite the same Trek.
So a bunch of us who were watching PIC together hoped that would hit the spot, and while I recall enjoying it, it still wasn’t quite the classic Trek (of the 90s, because what does “classic” even mean for something that’s around for decades?)
And yep, just keeping DS9 on loop by this point. This is when I began to see that there’s something about Garak, someone who I’d really not thought about much in previous watchthroughs. He’s really unlike any other character on this or in any TV show. I glommed onto his attraction to Bashir when before I’d never even glimpsed it. Oh and Nog, gah he’s great too. Rewatch a show enough times and every character starts to really pop.
Later in the year I dragged myself away from another DS9 rewatch in favor of starting over from TOS, which leads us into the current times.
The neverending frontier: 2022 DS9 #7, VOY #3, ENT #2
This year’s DS9 rewatch led me to buy the EU DVD set so I could rip the episodes with all language dubs intact. It was Spanish this time but the disparity between spoken dialogue and subtitles is awful. Subs are best for non-native speakers to get the gist.
I finished the VOY rewatch just a few days ago and this time it really hit, to the point that I’m now listening to podcasts, reading novels, and playing the video games featuring these characters when I’d previously only done that for DS9. It’s still kind of a mess at times but I just appreciate the time with these characters more.
The upcoming ENT rewatch kicks off next month. Will it finally click the way VOY did? And then on to the Kelvin movies again, and DSC and PIC and LD and Prodigy (PRO) and then, then I can finally watch Strange New Worlds (SNW). Please Paramount no new shows until I’m caught up thanks.
ALT
