This is one of my posts where I “review” Star Trek episodes. I will be giving each one a star rating. I sometimes will make some comments about non-political parts of them that I like or don’t like. I’ll sometimes use the issues raised in the episode to discuss similar issues in real life. And I will sometimes simply high-light the progressive politics of ST. ST is in-line with the three original themes of this blog, as I explain in the first ST post where I offer some general thoughts about ST.
I’m not very familiar with The Original Series and there might be some small amount of material there that would affect what I say about Star Trek (i.e. how often religion is mentioned)
Lastly. multi-culturalism is such a pervasive theme in ST that I only comment on it when it goes beyond the norm (i.e. inter-species partners).
“The Perfect Mate” See this for a plot summary.
At the beginning there’s some good political talk as they discuss whether or not a woman is being transported on the Enterprise as some kind of property.
I give it two stars out of five.
“Imaginary Friend” See this for a plot summary.
A non-political episode. I give it one star out of five.
“I, Borg” See this for a plot summary.
The main political question for this episode is, is it okay to completely and totally wipe out the Borg? Some would call that genocide. But most of the main and recurring characters in this episode are okay with doing that, until they saw that Hugh was becoming an individual and was rejecting what the Borg are about. I also would be okay with wiping out the Borg- they are inherently incapable of co-existing with other races and assimilation by the Borg is horrible, as we learned on Voyager.
There is one line which indicates that testing products on animals is a thing of the past.
After the crew start changing their minds about using Hugh as a weapon, Picard, says that if they did use him, they would be “no better than the enemy that we seek to destroy.”
I give this episode three stars out of five.
“The Next Phase” See this for a plot summary.
The only sort of political thing to mention here is that some of the dialogue indicates that Ro and perhaps Geordi as well, are better described as agnostic instead of atheist. That’s a welcome, small departure from the generally atheist position on religion that ST takes.
I give this episode four stars out of five.
This blog is mostly about 3 themes- Irish Republicanism, Star Trek, and opposition to bigotry, primarily in America (racism, homophobia, anti-semitism, etc.). It is mostly about Northern Ireland. It will mostly be about these issues in general and past events and will only sometimes touch on current events. Feel free to comment on the earlier posts.
About My Blog
My blog is about history, popular culture, politics and current events from a democratic socialist and Irish republican perspective. The two main topics are Northern Ireland on one hand and fighting anti-Semitism, racism and homophobia on the other. The third topic is supporting the Palestinians, and there are several minor topics. The three main topics overlap quite a bit. I have to admit that it’s not going to help me get a graduate degree, especially because it’s almost always written very casually. But there are some high-quality essays, some posts that come close to being high-quality essays, political reviews of Sci-Fi TV episodes (Star Trek and Babylon 5), and a unique kind of political, progressive poetry you won't find anywhere else. (there are also reviews of episodes of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit and reviews of Roseanne)
(my old blog was not showing up in Google search results AT ALL (99% of it wasn't being web-crawled or indexed or whatever) and there was another big problem with it, so this is a mirror of the old one although there will be some occassionnal editing of old posts and there will be new posts. I started this blog 12/16/20; 4/28/21 I am now done with re-doing the internal links on my blog) (the Google problem with my blog (only 1% of this new one is showing up in Google search results) is why I include a URL of my blog when commenting elsewhere, otherwise I would get almost no visitors at all)
(The "Table of Contents" offers brief descriptions of all but the most recent posts)
(I just recently realized that my definition of "disapora" was flawed- I thought it included, for example, Jews in Israel, the West Bank and the Golan Heights, and with the Irish diaspora, the Irish on that island. I'll do some work on that soon (11/21/20 I have edited the relevant paragraph in my post about Zionism))
(If you're really cool and link to my blog from your site/blog, let me know) (if you contact me, use the word "blog" in the subject line so I'll know it's not spam)
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