Star Trek movie rankings

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

DS9 binge-watching

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 -- DS9 had a pretty impressive roster of guest stars, actually -- and it's off to the races.

Some highlights so far:

* "Progress," where Kira realizes that she has transitioned from being a rebel to being the one rebelled against, with Brian Keith playing an old coot.

* "Necessary Evil," a murder mystery featuring Odo. 

* "Blood Oath," where Jadzia joins old Klingon friends to take vengeance against an enemy.

*  "Past Tense," where Sisko, Jadzia and Julian get transported to dystopian Earth in 2024.

* Any episode featuring Garak.

* Any episode where O'Brien is made to suffer. (There were a lot of those.)

A couple of thoughts on all this:

First, it's really true how much this show differed from its predecessors. In Star Trek and Star Trek: The Next Generation, you knew the good guys from the bad guys, and everybody tried to do the right thing all the time. In DS9, the lines aren't always so clear, and the endings are often ambivalent. 

Second: Serialization has become a feature of "prestige" TV, even dramas that aren't so prestigious. DS9 was an early adopter of the trend. But there are pleasures in standalone episodes, too.

Anyway, that's where we are. Going forward, I'll be blogging our binge-watch because ... what else am I going to do? Go to the mall?

How 50 years of Star Trek changed my life.

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 probably more bad Trek than good Trek, in all honesty, but bad Trek is like bad pizza. It’s still kinda awesome.

My favorite series, these days, is Deep Space Nine. It was the first to use serialization, and though its run ended before 9/11, the themes that emerged during the show’s war between the Federation and the Dominion — about war and the toll it takes on our highest ideals — turned out to be startlingly prescient.

I dated a woman in college who went to see “Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country” with me. She was the first woman I ever thought I could marry. The woman I did marry? We celebrated our 10th anniversary by going to see “Star Trek Beyond” on opening night.

And all this has affected my son. When he was just three years old, I heard him playing in his room, having all sorts of conversations and making all sorts of noises. Suddenly, he yelled out: “CAPTAIN, WATCH OUT!” And I knew he was playing Star Trek, like I had as a kid.

I sometimes wonder about myself, whether it’s right that the stuff I loved as a kid is the same stuff I love as a middle-aged adult. But I love Star Trek. I imagine I always will.