Joel Mathis

For the 25th anniversary of STAR TREK: FIRST CONTACT, my personal ranking of best Trek movies. Top Tier Classics: * Wrath of Khan * First Contact Really Good:  * The Voyage Home * The Undiscovered Country Reasonably Entertaining: * The Search for Spock * Generations * Nemesis (I realize I'm on the short list of people who would even rank it this high.) * 2009 reboot What fresh hell is this? * The Final Frontier * The Motion Picture * Into Darkness Nope * Insurrection * Beyond

Nerdery ahead... Like everybody else, we're binge-watching family favorites -- comfort TV -- during the pandemic. We've started watching an episode of DEEP SPACE NINE most nights with supper. It's not the first time we've watched this show together -- I believe this is the best of all the Star Trek shows -- but we're doing it differently now. Last time, we basically confined ourselves to episodes that directly involved the Dominion and the wars that occupied the last few seasons of the show -- which means we mostly skipped over the standalone episodes that constituted the bulk of the first few seasons. This time, we're watching them all. What else are we going to do? Go to the movies? What I've discovered is this: The standalone episodes are pretty good, too. I'm not sure I realized that on my previous viewings of the series. Season Two, in particular the show really establishes itself with a three-episode arc involving the villainy of Frank Langella --

Today marks the 50th anniversary of Star Trek, and I guess I’ve been paying close attention for about 35 or so of those years. When I was a kid, the routine was to rush home from school, turn the TV — pre-cable — to the “independent” TV station, watch cartoons for most of the afternoon, then finish with an episode of “Star Trek” before dinner. The show shaped my imagination to a remarkable degree. “Star Wars” had all the good toys in the late 1970s and early 80s, but I found I could fashion a captain’s chair of sorts in my bedroom, use a flashlight to simumlate a phaser — and, occasionally, I could get my sister Rachel to make up “Star Trek” adventures with me. I wanted to be an astronaut growing up, and “Star Trek” was part of that passion. The ambitions changed, but my love for the show didn’t. Scratch that: My love for the show has evolved. I can see now that much of The Original Series was cheesy — how, in fact, much of The Next Generation was pretty bad, too. There’s