Star Trek - "A Private Little War"

In this analogy for the Vietnam war, Kirk must grudgingly arm a peaceful, preindustrial civilization with guns because the Klingons are arming their enemies. Works best if you don't automatically presume the Federation and it's reluctance to engage is supposed to represent some idealistic illusion of America in the cold war.

RATING: 93%

Star Trek - "The Doomsday Machine"

The Enterprise runs across the debris of some planets who one day found themselves doomed by a machine and also there is a busted up starship and its unhinged captain.

RATING: 90%

Star Trek - "The Slaver Weapon"

Like, points for only (and I mean only) featuring Uhura, Sulu, and Spock, but this episode's notorious insertion of Larry Niven's sci-fi universe into the world of Star Trek is just so clumsy.

RATING: 22%

Star Trek - "Bread and Circuses"

Kirk and friends wind up on a planet obsessed with reality tv, and it also has Romans and Christians and cars and machine guns.

RATING: 60%

Star Trek - "Journey to Babel"

Spock has some family drama to work out while the Enterprise ferries some ambassadors and one murderer to a conference.

RATING:79%

Star Trek - "Mirror, Mirror"

Kirk, Uhura, McCoy and Scotty wind up in the evil, goatee universe and the question about whether or not Starfleet uniforms could be any skimpier for women is finally answered.

RATING: 80%

Star Trek - "The Apple"

The Enterprise finds a beautiful planet with happy citizens whose every whim and desire is taken care of by a computer but nope! That's not free enough for Kirk so he destroys their computer and peaces out.

RATING: 77%

Star Trek - "Obsession"

Kirk encounters a living smoke that clouded his early twenties into a haze of bad decisions. Hey, I completely understand!

RATING: 68%

Star Trek - "Wolf in the Fold"

The Enterprise has to fight Jack the Ripper's ghost and also Sulu gets stoned again.

RATING: 79%

Star Trek - "The Changeling"

A killer robot thinks Kirk is its mother so Kirk is like "Um, I've sort of got too much going on in my life right now to raise a robobaby?" and talks the robot into blowing itself up.

RATING: 68%

Star Trek - "Friday's Child"

McCoy slaps a pregnant woman which, and I'm no expert, may be grounds for a malpractice suit.

RATING: 41%

Star Trek - "The Deadly Years"

Everybody on an away team gets infected with a disease that makes you turn old and die (the disease called LIFE peut etre???) so Kirk, Spock, and McCoy have to cure themselves before an unrelated Romulan attack destroys the ship.

RATING: 63%

Star Trek - "Who Mourns for Adonais?"

One of my first memories is being two or three and being petrified when the giant hand comes out of space.

RATING: 72%

Star Trek - "This Side of Paradise"

Some kind bud makes everybody super chilled out but of course Kirk has to bring down the whole party.

RATING: 61%

Star Trek - "Amok Time"

Spock gets super horny Vulcan style and winds up having to fight his best friend to the death.

RATING: 78%

Star Trek - "Operation: Annihilate!"

Hundreds of people at a colony, including Kirk's brother, have been killed by flying fried eggs, and it's up to the Enterprise to save the rest. And don't worry about Kirk - he's cracking jokes the very next day so I guess he's a champ at internalizing his grief.

RATING: 67%

Star Trek - "Metamorphosis"

Turns out Zephram Cochrane has been living on a barren planet for a century as the love slave of a cloud alien.

RATING: 53%

Star Trek - "The Gamesters of Triskelion"

Uhura, Chekov, and Kirk are suddenly whisked away to a magical planet where talking brains bet on cage matches.

RATING: 63%

Star Trek - "The City on the Edge of Forever"

:(

RATING: 100%

Star Trek - "Errand of Mercy"

I always felt the Organians were a super sloppy deus ex machina. Cool to see Sulu get the conn for the first time though.

RATING: 53%

Star Trek - "The Devil in the Dark"

A sentient rock is killing miners so Kirk and Spock must  convince the miners to take it easy with murdering its rock babies.

RATING: 75%

Star Trek - "A Taste of Armageddon"

A couple of planets have been having a computer simulated war for 500 years except the casualties are required by law to kill themselves (under punishment of...?). Anyway, Kirk decides to upend their whole way of life by destroying their one and only computer because in the future there's no such this as backing up important files.

RATING: 79%

Star Trek - "The Return of the Archons"

Kirk decides a peaceful society doesn't have the right kind of freedom so he kills their computer leader, destabilizing their whole culture, and then he peaces out.

RATING: 73%

Star Trek - "Space Seed"

Running across a derelict ship full of frozen strangers, Kirk decides to wake up their leader, a nice man named Khan.

RATING: 78%

(Alternate ending)

Star Trek - "Arena"

Kirk. Lizard man. Gunpowder. You know the drill!

RATING: 86%

Star Trek - "Tomorrow is Yesterday"

The Enterprise is accidentally slung back to 1960s Earth but doesn't do anything fun like interact with hippies or The Temptations or anything.

RATING: 65%

Star Trek - "Catspaw"

The crew meets some really gothy aliens into witches, ghosts, curses, dungeons, black cats, etc. Lots of great spooky moments.

RATING: 72%

(Alternate Ending)

Star Trek - "The Alternative Factor"

So a guy from an alternate dimension made of antimatter is trying to find another guy who might also be from another dimension except he's made of normal matter. This episode is terrible but I like the weird dimension quakes.

RATING: 32%

Star Trek - "Shore Leave"

A hallucinatory silly episode with tigers, WWII planes, talking rabbits, and an old bully of Kirk's.

RATING: 89%

Star Trek - "The Menagerie"

Captain Pike has been completely paralyzed in an accident so Spock kidnaps him in an excuse to show a bunch of footage from the unpaired pilot. It works better if you didn't watch The Cage only a week ago.

RATING: 68%

Star Trek - "Court Martial"

Kirk gets accused of murdering a disgruntled crewman so they get to have one of those fancy court room dramas that are way more interesting than any real world trial in all of human history.

RATING: 77%

Star Trek - "The Galileo Seven"

Spock leads an expedition in a shuttle that winds up crashing on a planet of giant gorilla men, and everybody hates on Spock the whole mission long. Like, didn't you have diversity training at Starfleet Academy?

RATING: 83%

Star Trek - "The Conscience of the King"

A former mass murdering dictator faked his death and reinvented himself as a famous actor traveling the cosmos performing Shakespeare's second most violent play, which if you ask me is a little conspicuous.

RATING: 65%

Star Trek - "Dagger of the Mind"

Kirk beams down to a space prison with a lieutenant he drunkenly slept with at the ship's Christmas party but it turns out the prison is engaging in some cruel and/or unusual punishment. Bonus points for Kirk getting rescued by a woman for a change!

RATING: 71%

Star Trek - "Miri"

The Enterprise comes across an exact duplicate of Earth (never questioned, never explained) in which all the adults died so space brats run the show. It's a really creepy episode (uh, especially when Kirk uses a little girl's crush on him to his advantage but that's a different creepy than I meant).

RATING: 79%

Star Trek - "The Squire of Gothos"

The Enterprise meets another near omnipotent space brat, this time one who is majorly into cosplaying 18th century (sorta) Europe.

RATING: 85%

(Alternate ending here)

Star Trek - "What Are Little Girls Made Of?"

While meeting up with Chapel's ex, Kirk gets duplicated (again?) and fights some androids including Lurch from the Addams Family.

RATING: 51%

Star Trek - "Balance of Terror"

A Romulan ship is attacking Federation outposts so the Enterprise gets into a space-submarine battle with it. Also a bridge officer (one of those disposable navigators pre-Chekov) has to work through a major case of space racism.

RATING: 91%

Star Trek - "The Naked Time"

The crew gets infected with a space cold that makes them super drunk, which is super fun.

RATING: 88%

Star Trek - "The Enemy Within"

There's some good Kirk vs Kirk fighting in this one, but the premise that we each have a meek "good" half and a strong "evil" half is pretty morally repugnant. Everybody's cool on the ship with the notion that a deep down part of Kirk wants to rape Yeoman Rand?!?! Spock even makes a joke about it!

RATING: 36%

Star Trek - "Charlie X"

A superpowered space brat comes on board and fs up everybody's s big time. Kirk tries to teach him not to make unwanted advances on women but Charlie's like "not all men" and throws a big tantrum that endangers the whole damn ship.

RATING: 80%

Star Trek - "The Man Trap"

Hey now, this salt monster traps women too!

RATING: 77%

Star Trek - "The Corbomite Maneuver"

The Enterprise meets a big giant disco ball ship piloted by a crazy child with a space puppet but everybody ends up relishing some tranya (Fanta?) so it's cool!

RATING: 83%

Star Trek - "The Magicks of Megas-Tu"

The Enterprise takes a trip to the center of the galaxy and wind up meeting the actual biblical devil who turns out to be a pretty nice guy.

RATING: 76%

Star Trek - "Mudd's Women"

Intergalactic swindler Harry Mudd comes on board with some women he's got addicted to drugs in order to sell them to some super misogynist miners. Yipes, it's a pretty dated episode!

RATING: 66%

Star Trek - "Where No Man Has Gone Before"

Kirk's best friend Gary Mitchell accidentally gets god powers including godlike dickishness. Kirk's got some tough choices to make including but not limited to whether or not he should kill his pal!

RATING 87%

Star Trek - "The Cage"

Captain Pike gets captured by some testicle headed psychic aliens who want him to make them some slave babies. It's wildly sexist, but then sometimes seems almost progressive because of how badass Number One is.

RATING: 68%

Enterprise S4E22 - "These Are The Voyages..."

Ok I can see why this episode is so reviled as a conclusion.

RATING: 26%

Enterprise S4E21 - "Terra Prime"

Archer and friends have to go to Mars to stop the space racists from using their Marvin the Martian style raygun from blowing up San Francisco. Hoshi also gets the bridge, which is p rad!

RATING: 84%

Enterprise S4E20 - "Demons"

Travis finally finds romance but something tells me he's gonna Harry Kim the whole deal. Also the crew must stop some xenophobic crazies led by Robocop playing his default villain mode (see Into Darkness).

RATING: 80%