Okay, just seen the #StarTrek #30DayStarTrekChallenge thingy -
https://mastodon.social/@AndorianSoup/109792740824234718
- and figured there's no harm in joining in a week or so behind everyone else.
Day 1: Favourite TOS Episode.
This was banned in the UK for a while (scenes of disease, madness, and torture, don't you know!?) but I still saw it, possibly on VHS, probably right when Kim Darby could have an effect on my growing body. I was a bit smitten, to be honest. Love the story premise too.
Day 2: Favourite Federation Race
It has to be the #Andorians and that's mostly down to the brilliant depth to the character of #Shran brought by Jeffrey Combs in #Enterprise.
Day 3: Favourite Starship
I'll go with #Discovery because there's something about that sleek design that appeals to me. It's the same reason why I love the NX-01 and post-D #Enterprise designs; the other models are a bit chunky. Discovery's got a lovely aesthetic inside too. Plus, why warp when you can spore?
Day 4: Best Captain
I'm decidedly anti-authoritarian, much more a fan of collaborative working rather than dictatorial, hierarchical leadership, and yet, in #StarTrek the best captain for me was Captain Edward Jellico, and for all the reasons in this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09TySF0FN6Y
The fact that he just so happens to be hilarious too and on Mastodon is a bonus: @STDeltaShift
Day 5: Saddest Event
(Doing a day early because we're "socialising" tomorrow)
One word: "No." Quietly. As if an entire lifetime of friendship is exhaled. It's Kirk's reaction to Spock's death in Wrath of Khan that brings tears to my eyes every time.
Day 6: Happiest Event
A very tricky one. There are fun or amusing episodes and events, certainly, but happy? For someone who finds people having babies or getting married tolerable but not terribly enjoyable this has been the toughest one to choose something for, but I'll pick Sisko meeting Kirk at the end of the excellent Trials and Tribble-ations DS9 episode.
Day 7: Favourite TNG Episode
Parallels
Everyone likes multiverse stories - I know I do - and this one gave us a chance to see some subtly different, and wildly different #StarTrek universes, whilst also being a Worf-centred story that didn't bore me to tears (sorry, Worf). A story that spun a Worf and Troi relationship into the mix for a while too, but still mostly memorable for the universe where crazy, homeless man Will Riker somehow commandeered a starship.
Day 8: Favourite Federation Enemy
Xindi-Reptilian
(I know: technically pre-Federation)
Aggressive, powerful and power-seeking, cruel, but with flashes of questioning their mission against Earth, it's mostly the Xindi-Reptilians' fashion sense that warrants this entry in my list. Shiny purple is so in right now, and the practicality of being able to dry up your plates or store your vinyl albums on your shoulders? Genius!
Day 9: Favourite Character
A few candidates across the various series, but I'll go with Garak for reasons that probably don't need explaining to any #StarTrek fan. An intelligence agent, an outcast forced to live among people who hate him, at turns vicious then charming, a storyteller, source of some of the greatest quotes, and, in his own words, a very good tailor too.
Day 10: Most Shocking Moment
I've gone with this small scene from The Motion Picture. A genuinely disturbing minute of the movie that's stuck in the memory since first viewing just from the sound of that scream and the implication of how much pain is being felt. I can't think of another death in the franchise quite so horribly drawn out.
Day 11: Crew Position You'd Want
No, it's not the captaincy, despite the photo. It's something in the science division, preferably a planetary, geological, or biological specialist so I could be among the first on any new planets.
"Why are you drinking in that alien bar?"
"For science!"
and:
"No, stop, Commander! Don't kiss that attractive alien until I've gone first. For science!"
Also, blue's more my colour.
Day 12: Favourite DS9 Episode
I've picked a two-parter with Improbable Cause and The Die Is Cast because it's got a lot of the things I like: some of Garak's secrets revealed, the sneakiness of the Dominion, unusual alliances, great space battles.
Day 13: Favourite Time Travel Episode
Year of Hell
Is it time travel? The timeline does a reset at the end, so it maybe just counts, but perhaps it's just an alternate reality episode instead. Although, the realities are generated from changes to the timeline. Yeah, I'm going to say it counts.
Similar to Equinox and the Enterprise Xindi season, I love these battered vessel, desperate crew, grey area, deadly dangerous sorts of episodes.
Day 14: Favourite First Officer
A role he had only briefly, but red looks good on Data and he was perfect for the position at precisely the time that egomaniac Riker wasn't during Chain of Command. Authoritative, efficient, capable of offering alternative options but not getting moody about what the captain chooses, and he'd been decorated enough and more than served enough time in Starfleet for the assignment by this point.
Day 15: Favourite Trek Book
Thankfully, the challenge doesn't require fiction because other than a few Shatner-written novels many years ago I'd be drawing a blank. I have to go with this original series book covering plots and behind the scenes information from every episode of the original series. I picked this up on my visit to the US back in 2011 and it's a hefty, gorgeously glossy piece of work.
Day 16: Favourite Non-Federation Species
Ferengi
They were pretty terrible as an enemy in The Next Generation, confusingly both technologically advanced and also bewilderingly incompetent, but in Deep Space 9 we got a culture, a society, a history, and individual characters developed, and even their own society changed with continuing peaceful relations with the Federation.
Day 17: Favourite Voyager Episode
Equinox
A great exploration of the darker side of humanity still present in the benevolent Federation that extends as far as Janeway herself who shows she's not above torturing to get her way. Those similarities with the Equinox's captain, Ransom, and the ensuing moral conflict between Janeway and Chakotay are great character dives and it would've been great to see more in later episodes.
Day 18: Character You're Most Like
Michael Eddington
Intelligent. Good at what he does. Loyal to a good cause defending the people treated like crap, and perfectly willing to disobey an order if it goes against his morals. Flawed. Heroic. Annoying enough to make Benjamin Sisko poison an entire planet just to seek some revenge.
Yeah, there's an awful lot of me in Michael Eddington. Not the receding hairline, though.
Day 19: Favourite Trek Film
Each film has something I love in it but really, there can be only one choice here: The Wrath of Khan. Themes of growing old, family, vengeance, sacrifice, loss. Incredible battle scenes. Superb soundtrack. Literal earworms. Scotty randomly carrying bodies from engineering to the bridge. What more could you want?
Day 20: Best Trek Tech
Warp drive. Without it there's no meeting other species, no exploring other planets, no shenanigans in nebulae or gaseous anomalies, no breaking the upper threshold of speed, no transforming into a salamander, no getting jiggy with your captain, and no abandoning your offspring in a swamp.
Day 21: Best Overall Space Vessel
Species 8472 Bioship
Not only are they powerful, and not only can they open quantum singularities between normal and fluidic space, but they also conjure up fond memories of the Vorlon ships from Babylon 5, and that's always going to be a good thing.
Day 22: Favourite Enterprise Episode
From its changed opening credits following the alternate encounter with the Vulcans by Cochrane at the end of First Contact, to the fun everyone has playing nasty, untrustworthy versions of themselves, to the vast array of midriffs on display, to the original series ships, sets, and uniforms, it's In A Mirror, Darkly.
Day 23: Planet You'd Most Like To Visit
As a fan of architecture, and as someone who can really appreciate the militaristic styles that imperial dictatorships are fond of, I'm going with Cardassia Prime. Feels like the sort of place you could get lost down alleys and discover great food places, illicit bars, etc., and there are bound to be some good museums filled with laughably transparent propaganda there, too.
Day 24: Character You Would Date
People may think opposites attract, but you get on better with people with similar personalities. Based on the fact that on day 18 I said I consider I'm most like Michael Eddington it should come as no surprise to see I've picked Ro Laren for today's subject. Argumentative, tough, fighting the good fight, prepared to disobey orders. Oh, we'd make a fearsome couple.
Day 25: Favourite Discovery Episode
A tricky one, because Discovery is the series that's had the fewest memorable episodes. It's not a series that's drawn me in to go back and watch again, which doesn't help, but I'll go for the season 1 episode What's Past Is Prologue as the Discovery escaping the mirror universe with Georgiou was pretty exciting.
Day 26: Favourite Crossover
The original series caught up with Deep Space 9 on a few occasions, but I loved seeing the trio of Kor, Kang, and Koloth again in Blood Oath.
Day 27: Favourite Animated Series Episode
As the only animated series we've watched is Lower Decks, it'll have to come from there, and I'm going with The Least Dangerous Game for just a lot of fun personality conflicts to resolve in this very sitcom-style episode. Boimler saying yes to everything and the Klingon version of Dungeons and Dragons were so entertaining.
Day 28: Favourite Kelvin Timeline Moment
The Kelvin timeline. Lovely designs. Great characters. Good one-liners. Horrible plot chasms in the stories that ruin each one of them for me. So very many plot chasms. Terrible, terrible plot chasms. So, back to one of those lovely designs, and the introduction of Yorktown in Star Trek: Beyond. Utterly ridiculous "snow globe in space" but immensely pretty.
Day 29: Favourite Trek Quote
"You'd shoot a man in the back?"
"Well, it's the safest way."
To be fair, I could've gone with any number of Garak quotes. He brought much-needed duplicity to the Star Trek universe.
"I believe in coincidences. Coincidences happen every day. But I don't trust coincidences."
Day 30: Favourite Trek Series
If we've learnt anything about me from this challenge - and we probably haven't - then it's that I'm on the side of the underdog, the people treated badly but doing their best against the odds. For the overall story and the off-screen pressure it faced I could only pick Enterprise. Gloss over the first season for the most part and what you've got, especially late on, are some of the best story arcs written.
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