To explore strange new worlds...

December 3, 2016 1:44 AM

I received Star Trek TOS and TNG box sets for my birthday and have been slowly working through TOS with my husband. I would really love to do some supplemental reading/listening to enhance this, so I'm looking for blogs, articles, and podcasts which discuss the episodes, themes, background info, whatever.

Ideally somebody has written a smart and witty blog episode by episode, but I'll take whatever others have enjoyed reading. Thanks!

posted by catch as catch can to Media & Arts (18 answers total)

Best answer: Oh man. I envy you, getting to watch these for the first time? TOS is great. I bet you're going to really love TNG, at least after three seasons or so. Once you're more invested in the characters and ideas, you might really enjoy some of the many novels. I'm sure some others will soon step in to give you some great pointers on those. And I'm sure others will offer up lots of great online resources, too.

I can only really meekly offer Memory Alpha and Memory Beta to get you started.

There are some other specific things I would like to link, but they are all related to TNG rather than TOS, and I don't want to spoilers.
posted by teatime at 1:57 AM on December 3, 2016

Best answer: AVClub has a good and sensible one.
posted by johngoren at 2:29 AM on December 3, 2016

Best answer: TOR also has a series of articles.
posted by radwolf76 at 2:32 AM on December 3, 2016

Best answer: Star Trek TOS is here on FanFare (all three seasons). The episodes' posts (nearly all created by Benway) have brief helpful summaries; they often also include some background info about the episode, and/or links to reviews (such as A.V. Club or TrekToday) and usually the episode article at Memory Alpha.

FWIW, these posts are categorized as "Rewatch" so spoilers for all episodes are allowed. I haven't done a full rewatch yet, but when I'm ready it'll be interesting to follow along in FanFare.
posted by rangefinder 1.4 at 2:53 AM on December 3, 2016 [2 favorites]

Best answer: It's generally too much of an in-depth literary analysis approach for me, but Eruditorium Press covers TNG and (I don't think all of ) TOS. And there is always the rabbit hole of TV Tropes, which has some trivia and background for some episodes.
posted by Vortisaur at 2:56 AM on December 3, 2016

Best answer: Trek author Keith DeCandido's TNG rewatch series entertained me greatly when I first read it a few years ago, and has been an indispensable asset as I run through the series with Mrs. Lumensimus. Handy (and fairly spot-on) ratings make navigating the rocky waters of the first few seasons as easy as can be.

He does TOS and DS9 as well.

I see that's what radwolf76 mentioned above. Suffice it to say that it's very good, and also offers some unobtrusive authorial insight into extended Trek canon - novels, mostly - that's pretty neat.
posted by lumensimus at 3:36 AM on December 3, 2016 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Jammer's Reviews and Ex Astris Scientia are both good.
posted by bryon at 3:44 AM on December 3, 2016

Best answer: I used to listen to the Mission Log podcast. I haven't listened lately but they're pretty deep into TNG now, I think. They have a pretty structured discussion format: intro, ep trivia/history, ep summary, thoughts/comments/etc. They also do occasional interviews with former cast and crew. One of the more interesting discussions involved privacy and general surveillance in the 23-24th centuries, something that I'd never considered amidst all the "computer, do xyz."

Warning for spoilers on their site; eps are in chronological order of the show.
posted by pepper bird at 4:55 AM on December 3, 2016 [2 favorites]

Best answer: You might like watching the summaries that sfdebris gives. He does episode reviews on all kinds of sci-fi shows and gives a score from 1-10 for each episode in context of the rest of the series at the end of each review.
posted by Gosha_Dog at 5:39 AM on December 3, 2016 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Seconding Mission Log podcast. I really like their approach. They are supposedly going to do an episode for every Trek episode and movie. As of now they're completely done with TOS and are about seventy five percent done with the TNG episodes. They are sponsored by Roddenberry Entertainment and Rod Roddenberry is the executive producer. Give it a shot.
posted by dave*p at 5:47 AM on December 3, 2016

Best answer: Memory Alpha has episode-by-episode recaps which include production notes, and I've found it quite interesting during my Voyager rewatch. It is also hyperlinked Wikipedia-style, so you can easily look up characters and other things.
posted by ficbot at 7:05 AM on December 3, 2016 [1 favorite]

Best answer: When you get to TNG, and if you need something irreverent and snarky, consider The Greatest Generation podcast. Pretty critical but somewhat lovingly so.
posted by Knicke at 7:10 AM on December 3, 2016 [7 favorites]

Best answer: Nitpickers guide to start trek the next generation!

It's a fun book, although I think published after season 6 so season 7 isn't covered but he did write volume 2 later however I haven't read that.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 7:49 AM on December 3, 2016

Best answer: Mark Oshiro has been watching all of Star Trek (currently he's on DS9 and Voyager). TOS starts here.
posted by Shmuel510 at 7:59 AM on December 3, 2016

Best answer: Once you get to TNG you should check out Fashion It So, which features episode recaps focused on the ridiculous clothing and overall aesthetics of the 24th century.
posted by fox problems at 9:32 AM on December 3, 2016 [2 favorites]

Best answer: Well, not to realign my own warp core or anything, but I've been running Trekabout for over four years. A Trekkie ropes a non-Trekkie into watching all of Star Trek, from the very beginning. Since my cohost is not a Trekkie, he has very strange and insightful reactions, many of which I've never heard in over 25 years of Trek fandom. We've completed all of TOS and TNG.
posted by Automocar at 10:02 AM on December 3, 2016 [3 favorites]

Best answer: Wil Wheaton did some very funny and enlightening essays about the first half of TNG season 1 from his POV in the cast. They're collected as Memories of the Future, Vol 1 (http://amzn.to/2gNHLLF). He read some excerpts as podcasts, called Memories of the Futurecast, which should be on iTunes.
posted by NumberSix at 2:32 PM on December 3, 2016

Response by poster: Jeepers, you guys are the best! These all sound like exactly what I wanted, so thank you! Can't wait to dig in.
posted by catch as catch can at 3:04 PM on December 3, 2016 [1 favorite]