All Bad Things: How to Amuse Yourself with Star Trek When You Have Already Seen Every Star Trek So Many Times It Even Weirds Out Other Trekkies (Patreon)

Note: This got very long. As in, I managed to cover one episode and my history with Trek and it's already 2500 words. So to save my still destroyed back (I was in traction this week! That was weird!) I will continue this in installments, hopefully finishing up next month. I bit off a little more than I can chew! But it's very fun, and it'll keep going, but I didn't want to keep you waiting any longer.

***

It never seems to have really gotten around that I’m a Trekkie at all, let alone just what level of Trekkie I really am. I’ve started typing out my bona fides a couple of times now and stopped because it just feels easier to say: yes. Whatever gatekeeper question you got to let the nerd girl into the cargo bay: yes. All of it. With the exception of watching the original series in real time BECAUSE I WASN’T BORN OKAY.

Watched TNG live on premier day: yes.

Have seen every episode of every series: yes.

Multiple times: ok yes except Enterprise which I’ve only seen once because it’s Enterprise and why would I want to hurt myself like that.  Multiple documentaries: more plz.

Wore Spock ears to school: you bet.

Have worn a Trek uniform in public: OG red engineering miniskirt with beehive.

Was it Halloween? NO.

Went to conventions: of course.

Before the internet: yep

Belonged to an official “starship” fanclub in the time known as the day when those existed? Lieutenant Cat Valente of the USS Oberon, baby, Sacramento California.

Have toys: bro.

Read tie-in books: brooooo.

Complained about a new series (any new series) “not being Star Trek” on the internet: I, too, honor the traditions of my fathers.

Still watching Discovery and Picard despite kind of hating them: I mean…yeah. And you know I’ll watch all the new ones too, even the Section 31 nonsense I’m not even interested in.

I YAM WHAT I YAM.

Me and Trek are in a pretty serious relationship, and have been for a long time. It’s my comfort watching, my safe place, in the times of greatest stress in my life I have put on an episode and physically felt my blood pressure lower. When I need better than I’ve got, I go to the Enterprise. (And sometimes to this weird space station or gruff redhead’s bridge.)

Do I have ambient Enterprise running noises bookmarked on YouTube to help me sleep? Yeah, we’ve already established I’m a big weirdo.

The love is so deep.

And you know, sometimes the Trekkie in the family is a pretty lonely role. Sometimes the Trekkie in the family doesn’t feel like anyone else in the house gets it, and has to wait to grow up a little before they can find people to be just massive, wobbly dorks about Star Trek with.

But not me.

Because I have a brother.

Well, I have three.

But when it comes to Trek, I just got Nick.

And each of us is worse than the other.

He hasn’t loved Star Trek as long as I have, but that’s only because he’s six years younger. And if I’m completely honest, he may edge me out in terms of raw trivia power these days, but don’t you dare tell him that. I’m serious. Sibling shit is real shit.

So when we were casting about for entertainment of an evening on my recent visit, brother and I obviously thought of indulging in a bit of our favorite fully automated post-scarcity space communist future treat box.

But which episode? THE ETERNAL QUESTION.

We pretty quickly dismissed most of the heavy hitters from each series, since we’ve both seen them so many times and most of them are, well, heavy, and we were feeling that summer evening after work lazy fun vibe. Middling episodes are middling for a reason. So ultimately, we ended up stumbling upon the brilliant idea of putting on the worst episodes we could think of, drinking, and yelling at them.

The really garbage or badly dated or otherwise pants-on-head episodes just don’t get a lot of play or big rewatch energy. When’s the last time you put on Code of Honor for fun? BECAUSE WE DID THAT SHIT. Even you have a party full of Trekkies, rarely will someone be like FUCK YEAH MY PAKLED FRIENDOS WE GONNA DO A SUB ROSA DRINKING GAME OR WHAT? JESSICA, GET THE CANDLES. TREVOR YOU BEST LOOK THROUGH THE LIQUOR CABINET FOR THINGS TO MAKE IT GOOOOOO!

(This is ostensibly an essay but despite it being out of place and not so much with the STRUNK AND WHITE APPROVED manual of style, but I want to tell you that as I was typing the above with one finger holding down the shift key LIKE A BOSS WHO DIDN’T THINK SHE NEEDED NO ALLCAPS BUTTON but actually the joke got way longer and she DID need it, I accidentally hit the ‘ key several times somehow and LIQUOR came out L’IQU’OR and HOW KLINGON DOES THAT LOOK, FELLOW SONS OF MOG? It is my essay, though, so I will tell you, and Mr. White can go Strunk himself.)

We had so much fun we both kind of wished we could start the trip over and make up for being so foolish and young as to watch a feature film or talk to each other in the evenings.

So I am going to share a few of our thoughts and impressions (and drinking games) on a selection of the episodes we watched (which does not actually include Sub Rosa but ONLY because I had just watched it for a podcast a week or two before), because by the poll, you wanted to hear it, and it is, in fact, a delightful way to spend your time. I highly recommend.

I also highly recommend, if you have a sister-in-law as cool and hilarious and not a Trekkie as my brother’s wife Amanda*, that, should she by wild chance be recovering from surgery and full of a rainbow of painkiller flavors, making her watch one of the ones where Troi gets space magic all up inside her and writing down everything she and/or the good Percocet says for posterity.

You know. If it just happens to turn out that way.

*Note: these are their real names, I have asked permission, they don’t mind.

**Other note! We decided to stick to TOS and TNG despite there being NO shortage of bad episodes in the other series. The object was FUN, not deep analysis, and the fact is, DS9 gets very grim and also even if the A plot is Quark Loves Bitcoin or Real Housewives of Bajor or whatever, the B plot is usually pretty good, and vice versa. With Voyager and Enterprise, if the episode is good you end up talking about how to rewrite the series so it works and if its awful you also end up talking about that. With Disco there’s plenty of bad episodes, but they’re not really fun bad because CAMP IS NOW FORBIDDEN NO ONE MAY FUN IN SPACE ALL MUST WHISPERCRY and also they are heavily serialized in a season long arc (a factor with DS9 too) so not great to pop on out of context except for the Mudd episode in S1 AND THAT’S THE BEST EPISODE.

We don’t need to talk about Mass Effect But Make It Old People I mean Picard. And Lower Decks is already super busy making fun of itself.  Sorry, T’Pol fans.

MAKE IT SO, BABES!

The Gamesters of Triskelion: Oh my bleeding eyes and brain matter, this fucking episode. Somehow, we all kind of treat Trek like it didn’t happen in the 60s, or at least treat the 60s like some exalted Era of Exception that didn’t actually happen in the actual 60s and thus weren’t full of all the regressive shit the non-hippie part of culture was just sloppily hoovering up like Elmo facedown a pile of cocaine at the time. Oh and also turns out the hippie part was helping itself plenty, they just had better PR. Kirk kisses a girl and immediately just straight-up closed-fist PUNCHES HER IN THE FACE in this episode, and she was also fucking enslaved AND his super temporary love interest AND hadn’t done anything yet but make out with him and defy her masters by trying to teach him how to escape. And he just cold-cocks her.

And by her, I mean the lady in the publicity still up there, and by the lady in the publicity still up there I mean DEFINITELY LADY GAGA'S SPACE MUM, RIGHT?

This shit is B-A-N-A-N-A-S.

But mostly, it is fucking hysterical given how gamer culture actually developed in the following decades. (EXTREMELY important aside: We just kept yelling GAMER and taking a drink every time they said “gamester” to obviously mean what gamer means in 2021, because seriously can you imagine it being gamester? Gamestergate? Gamester culture? Gamester girl? Ew, David, no.)

The whole thing is a classic SF trope: land on a planet, get gladiator’d into some 1% trustafarian douchebag Rich Aliens of Instagram’s esport League of Legends arena LARP for funsies that might make you deadsies except lol not really, because—get this—KIRK CAN PUNCH WITH NOT ONE BUT TWO HANDS.

Looking back from the vantage point of gaming being literally the biggest entertainment medium there is, you have to assume they meant to comment on gladiators or at least professional sports, because there were no commercially-available video games in 1968, and unless suburban parcheesi was getting REAL WEIRD or swathes of America were getting into the weeds with serious Operation addictions, the target of the satire is WAY ahead of its time.

This is a baby Hunger Games, basically, except instead of Katniss Everdeen being a Strong Female Protagonist, Shahna gets punched in the fucking face for trying to help and/or showcase the Game of Heterosexuality. (Every time they said her name I sang SHAWNA in dulcet Ferris Bueller tones.)

Naturally, Kirk eventually finds a way to Kobayashi Maru this bitch and beam himself to the box seats where a bunch of Wrinkle in Time brains are sitting around on a Sorry! board with Simon lights going and talks them into a bet, challenging them to wager big like the “true gamesters” they are.

Now, first of all, the head gamester brainbeard is named Galt, which I think we can all agree is VERY SUBTLE INDEED.

But second, I actually like this solution even more from where I sit, in the bog of gamer culture. They all want to be true gamesters so bad they fall for this obvious ploy, and the thing is, if you’ve ever been on a WOW server, you know it would probably work. Except they’d just log off instead of paying up and it’s fairly unclear why these bobblebrains DON’T, given that they’ve regularly killed the shit out of who knows how many underperforming “thralls.” Kirk and his buddies aren’t any less in fetching electrocution dog collars at the end of it, they could just kill him and continue on with their more compliant toys. But apparently everybody has honor in 1968 instead of screaming YOU CAN’T MAKE ME WEAR A MASK/COLLAR and yeeting themselves into that super cool and not at all dated-looking arena armed with their coughs alone.

Kirk also just kills a lot of people in this episode! People who are very firmly presented as enslaved, not in control of their actions, and just trying to save themselves. COOL JOB, CAPTAIN. You can really see the difference between TOS and everything that followed in this story. Picard and virtually everyone else except Janeway would ultimately do the same thing, but they would feel super bad about it and tear themselves up inside over issues of consent, forced labor, the concept of entertainment, and maybe a dash of caring at all about women (but not too much), and if anyone ever brought it up again they’d have the decency to look sad in the clip show episode. Whereas Kirk is basically like YOLO WATCH THIS.

How does it all end? I’m so glad you asked. Shahna is all I want to see the stars and be part of this progressive space society where I don’t have to spend every day killing people in an arena while a brain watches me! And Kirk patronizingly informs her that not only is he here for a good time, not a long time, because monogamy is for ensigns, but she and everybody else he’s about to abandon needs to learn about freedom…by hanging out on this garbage planet with no resources for awhile. Left unsaid? They will likely instantly start these games again for the Providers because there doesn’t seem to be any farming or other way to obtain food or resources on this sporty shitheap without prostituting yourself to an amygdala in its mom's basement. COOL FREEDOM, CAPTAIN. WELL DIPLOMACY’D.

Kinda want to meet that mom, though.

Drink when they say gamester.

Drink for double-fisted super punch.

Drink every time a Provider says something you’ve literally heard someone say in multiplayer chat.

Finish your drink for TKO’ing a nice green-haired girl who was just trying to be nice to you.

More in October!