Casual Trek

Charlie is a lifelong X-Men fan. Miles is a lifelong Doctor Who fan. If ANYONE can objectively rank every single episode of Star Trek on a big list, it’s gotta be the two people who think that Star Trek is “Pretty Decent.” (Citation Needed)

Casual Trek updates every fortnight.

Casual Trek

82. Holodickery

Put on your best private detective hat and prepare to get into character as we talk step into the Holodeck and prepare ourselves for inevitable disappointment. In ‘The Practical Joker,’ the Enterprise computer gets wacky while Bones, Sulu and Uhura fail to enjoy a primitive Holodeck. In ‘My Way,’ Odo uses AI to make girls like him and we get a lot of song and dance numbers (and the best IDW comics pitch) as we meet Vic Fontaine. And in Strange New Worlds’s Space Adventure Hour, La’an gets to beta-test the Holodeck and nearly kills everyone on the Enterprise doing so. Typical. Bloody Typical.

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Casual Trek

81. Neelix’s Kitchen Nightmares

Welcome to Neelix’s Kitchen Nightmares you doughnuts! I’m Gordon Ramsey and we’ve got three meals for you to shove in your face from three questionable kitchens. Neelix’s kitchen’s covered in fluff and filth and seems to have been made in a large office meeting room. Will his food help Seven of Nine in “The Raven” or will it bring back dire flashbacks? I think we all know how it’s going to go. Next up is the unnamed chef of the Enterprise who actually has a full kitchen. Hoshi Sato comes in and takes over, does she think she’s me or something? She gets the job done, possibly a bit too much in “Singularity”. Also there’s some delightful nonsense with a chair. Finally William T Riker’s got the midlife crisis giant pizza oven out for a visit from his space dad, JL Picard in “Nepenthe”. Has he got what it takes, or will this episode and pizza both be undercooked? Whatever it is, it’s better than the replicated cake that gets thrown up all over La Sirena! (This is actually Charlie, I’ve no idea what Gordon Ramsey sounds like, I hope you enjoy the show!)

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Casual Trek

79. The Naked Time is Naked Now

Our brave Casual Explorers are showing their emotional age by watching the infamous ‘everyone gets drunk, horny and crazy’ episodes of Star Trek. We start with TOS’s The Naked Time where George Takei shows off his impressive sword, followed by TNG’s less impressive ‘The Naked Now’ where Charlie asks the most important question ‘if Data has no emotions, why did his creator build him to be fully functional, sexually?’ (and Miles asks the second most important question ‘Why have this as an second episode?’). Meanwhile, Guest-Star Cele from ‘Celeste is Best’ gets to talk about Lower Decks’ own ‘everyone goes drunk and crazy’ with ‘Empathalogical Fallacies’ and has no real important questions to ask except ‘why is this so delightful?’

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Casual Trek

75. The Hero of the Bajoran Resistance

Grab your tastiest sandwich and try not to spoil Twin Peaks as we return to Deep Space 9 with an all-DS9 extravaganza. We’re talking about the opening three-parter of season two of Deep Space Nine which, unlike the Augment three-parter of Enterprise we covered (in “We Have Wrath of Khan at Home”), we’re discussing and placing on the Big List as one single entry and not three seperate ones. Watch as in ‘The Homecoming,’ Kira goes off to rescue Bajor’s greatest resistance fighter and gets no end of grief for it, then we see that Odo has an actual friend while Kira has one of those awkward naked dreams while uncovering Bajoran nationalists in ‘The Circle’ and then the simmering Bajoran nonsence ends up in some Die Hard antics on the Station as our heroes must endure ‘The Siege’ where this should hopefully wrap up. No Vedek Winn’s were harmed during the making of these episodes for which we are deeply sorry.

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