Year of Trek

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Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. It's 5 year mission, to explore strange new worlds, seek out new life and new civilizations. To boldly go where no man has gone before.

Those words spoken by William Shattner over 50 years ago have inspired me, and multiple generations to look up to the stars. They have provided children and adults alike a vision of what our future could be. In those 50+ year Gene Roddenberry's vision has given us 7 TV series and 13 full featured movies spanning over 550 hours. And I am going to watch them all, in 2019.

In September I wanted to start watching a Star Trek series again, but I had a hard time choosing. Do I go with the classic TNG, or revisit the Delta quadrant in Voyager? I have never seen the original series in its entirety, but can I stomach sitting through it? Then I had this crazy idea to challenge myself to watching the entire Star Trek catalog.

To put some perspective of what this will entail, there are a total of 742 episodes of Star Trek aired so far. That means if I were to watch 2 episodes a day I would be 11 short of watching them all. And that excludes the movies and any new episodes that release next year. Here is a break down of the challenge.

  • Watch every episode and movie officially released in the order it originally aired.
  • Read at least one Star Trek Novel, suggestions welcome.
  • Read a Star Trek comic arc.
  • Play at least one Star Trek video game.

I have compiled a spreadsheet that breaks down every piece of known content so far. Star Trek episode/movie list. I also plan to do weekly blog entries where I will talk about how things are going, what I watched and what my favorite episodes are.

I welcome anyone who wants to join me in this adventure. Even if you don't want to commit as much time, I will curate a list each week of the episodes worth watching. I am also keeping a blog about the experience at www.yearoftrek.com

I wish you good luck and great fortune on your endeavor. What I want to know, is, around this time next year if you finish your project, will you ever watch any Star Trek again?

Painful!

I listen to The Greatest Gen podcast where they do this exact thing and they have made it through TNG and are on DS9 right now. 90s Star Trek is definitely a product of its time!

karmajay wrote:

Painful!

I listen to The Greatest Gen podcast where they do this exact thing and they have made it through TNG and are on DS9 right now. 90s Star Trek is definitely a product of its time!

Ooof, especially that first season. I'm trying to decide if "Angel One" is more sexist than "Code of Honor" is racist.

Good luck! I've been slowly making my way through DS9 over the last year or more, and as much as I enjoy and appreciate it, I can only take the 90's cheese so much before I have to take a break. I hope you don't burn out on Trek forever after this.

I more concerned with getting through the 60s cheese. I have never been able to get through TOS completely because of it. The first month will probably be the hardest.

I'm making my way through all of trek and currently on Voyager. The fun part is noticing actors playing different parts that I didn't notice before.

I still remember the first time I realized that Ashley Judd played Wesley's love interest.

I find TOS much easier to watch than early TNG. Both are a product of their time, but the 60s are far enough back that it's an interesting artefact, not something embarrassing from my own lifetime.

Best of luck though.

I always liked TOS because it has such a high camp factor. I don’t have the time to join you on your full mission, but this is probably a good time to check out DS 9 which I never watched the first time around.

Don't forget to listen to The Greatest Generation podcast!

So the challenge does not include a play through of the board game with the VHS. I mean, I guess that's okay if you're okay with a challenge made for casual Trek fans.

If you want a Trek book you can always go with Imzadi to give you waaaaay more back story for the Riker/Troy relationship.

Danjo Olivaw wrote:

So the challenge does not include a play through of the board game with the VHS. I mean, I guess that's okay if you're okay with a challenge made for casual Trek fans.

This is fun. I could jump in and watch DS9 again with you. To me it's the only complete series worth revisiting. There are great episodes of TOS and some whole later seasons of TNG, and a handful of Voyager. But DS9 is just good all the way through.

I've seen everything pre-Enterprise, and much of it multiple times. I might jump in for a few key ones when you get there.

MrDeVil909 wrote:

I find TOS much easier to watch than early TNG. Both are a product of their time, but the 60s are far enough back that it's an interesting artefact, not something embarrassing from my own lifetime.

Best of luck though.

I find this to be correct. I tried to rewatch Babylon 5 a few years ago... Talk about tarnishing childhood memories.

I just found an Android mobile game called Star Trek Fleet Command, but I don't think it has a plot you can finish. More like an MMO.

I have never finished a full series run of any trek. Best of luck and looking forward to your posts.

Ooh Ohh don’t forget Star Trek: Borg with Q! That’s canon right?

trichy wrote:
karmajay wrote:

Painful!

I listen to The Greatest Gen podcast where they do this exact thing and they have made it through TNG and are on DS9 right now. 90s Star Trek is definitely a product of its time!

Ooof, especially that first season. I'm trying to decide if "Angel One" is more sexist than "Code of Honor" is racist.

Last year I realized that as someone who generally enjoys sci-fi media, I really should have seen at least some Star Trek stuff. So I started watching TNG and I'm about half way through season 2 at this point and it's been surprisingly entertaining. Early S1 was pretty rough, and often embarrassingly so, but I thought it picked up nicely towards the end of the first season. The first half of season 2 has also had some clunkers, but nothing anywhere near as bad as the stuff that was occasionally present in S1.

As far as Trek games go, it's Bridge Commander and then a giant pile of shovelware. I think there was some sort of fps game that was pretty well regarded but didn't sound very trekky.

I have a real soft spot for Star Trek Enterprise, which I watched for the first time a few years ago and found to be a lot better than its reputation.

Elite Force was great, it was playing in a actual episode. They also tied it into the tv show. The squad was created on Voyager.

kazooka wrote:

I have a real soft spot for Star Trek Enterprise, which I watched for the first time a few years ago and found to be a lot better than its reputation.

I never watched much of it as it aired, but I did a complete watchthrough of all the Trek shows (minus cartoons) a few years ago and it was much better than I expected up until the last episode which was as just as bad as it was the first time.

I have a line up of game ideas. I bought Star Trek: Judgement Rites and Star Trek: 25th anniversary from gog.com which are two point and click adventure games from the early 90s. I played Judgement Rites to the end. It actually had voice acting if memory serves which was rare for a 90s game.

For TNG, I want to try to get Star Trek: Away Team. I finished it twice, but I don't know if I can get it working on a PC. I never played Elite Force II so I may see what is involved in getting that. For DS9, The Fallen was a fun third person game. I remember it having a few parts that were really frustrating though. Voyager will definitely be Elite Force.

IMAGE(https://nerdist.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Star-Trek-Crew.jpg)

It is almost time. The hours are counting down. The past month has been spent looking for deals for Star Trek content in preparation. I already had season 1 of The Original Series and three of the six original movies. I found a great deal for The Next Generation on blu-ray for $60 on cyber Monday. I just need to get my hands on season 2 and 3 of The Original Series and I should be good for the first few months.

What I haven't yet mentioned is that when Jan 1st, 2019 starts in the Pacific Time Zone I will be an hour or two away from landing in Paris. I will be somewhere between 35,000 and 45,000 feet in the air. I have the first 16 episodes of The Original Series on my Fire HD Tablet ready to go so I plan to start the adventure on time. And I will be as close to outer space that I have and probably will ever be.

They're all on Amazon Prime... and Netlfix... and Hulu... and some others

I mean unless you want commentary, or don't have any of those services... why buy the discs?

I wish you well in your noble endeavour, and I look forward to hearing about your progress over the coming year.

Kinda feel like digging up my copies of Elite Force 1 and 2 to play along if/when you get to them. I remember enjoying them both when I first played them. I'm also (slowly) making my way through a curated list of DS9 episodes that Stele gave me, so we might cross paths there too.

Stele wrote:

They're all on Amazon Prime... and Netlfix... and Hulu... and some others

I mean unless you want commentary, or don't have any of those services... why buy the discs?

Other then slightly better video quality, no reason. For anything I don't get on Blu-ray I'll probably use steaming services. DS9 and Voyager are both DVD only.

I’ve played Elite Force (perfectly average FPS for the Trek-inclined), and Klingon Academy - Christopher Plummer in FMV form!

Wow. Good luck, Kazar. I recently rewatched all of TNG and Voyager. Couldn't bring myself to make it through the first season of DS9 though. Maybe this year, I'll give it another go.
What I do plan on doing though, is rewatch the first season of Discovery before the second season hits. I need to rewatch Star Trek, the 2009 version, and the two movies that followed, because I never actually saw those... Yeah. I know. The 2009 film just didn't do it for me, and I never watched the other two as a result.

Also... Dude. You're in Paris? S&T?

Eleima wrote:

Couldn't bring myself to make it through the first season of DS9 though. Maybe this year, I'll give it another go.

Dooooo it... It's the best of the Treks, or at least the most ambitious. It takes risks, challenges some of the more problematic versions of Star Trek (humans warp to a planet, cluck their tongues at how primitive the aliens are, and condescendingly monologue as they warp away), and has the most diverse cast, bar none.

Yeah, if you made it through Voyager, DS9 is a masterpiece. Even the first season.

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