Episode 321 - TNG - Interface
Geordi La Forge uses an experimental interface to his VISOR to try to reach his missing mother! Will Riker fall over?
Episode 317 - TNG - Descent - Part 1
Rachel and Chris wrap up season 6 with the Borg! YAY!
Episode 307 - TNG - Birthright - Part 1
Data Dreams and Worf's dad might be alive? What is going on?!
Return of the Comments!
Chris is joined by Rafe Ball to read your comments! And they are all brilliant! PARTY ON!
Episode 281 - Move Along Home
Rachel finds this dubious episode delightful. Find out why by hitting that play button!
Episode 279 - Dax
Rachel and Chris discuss why no one in the Star Trek has ever had any legal issues with Trill symbiotes before.
Episode 268 - DS9 Continues!
Rachel and Chris talk more about the Prophets, Quark and all types of Deep Space Nine madness!
Rachel and Chris talk more about the Prophets, Quark and all types of Deep Space Nine madness!
Episode 267 - DS9 Begins!
Rachel watches the first part of the Deep Space 9 episode - The Emissary! Will she love it? Will she hate it? Will she fall asleep? Only one way to find out!
SNW’s The Broken Circle
Strange New Worlds is back for its second season and Rachel and Chris are HERE for it!
Save Star Trek: Prodigy!
Save Star Trek: Prodigy!
If you haven’t heard the news, Paramount have cancelled Star Trek: Prodigy as part of a tax write-down - they're pulling season 1 off Paramount+ and will not be showing the practically already complete season 2
Help Prodigy find a new home by showing how much you want more! Check out this thread by Prodigy Exec Producer Aaron J. Waltke for details of how you can help - start by signing this petition.
We’re also making our normally Patreon-exclusive bonus ep on Prodigy, featuring Junior Cadets Albert and Fini Lackey, FREE in support of the Save Prodigy campaign! If you’re not familiar with Prodigy have a listen, or feel free to share the link to spread the word of the Protostar’s mission!
TNG’s The Cost of Living
Lwaxana is back! Time for Grandma to play by Grandma’s rules.
As undetectable parasites devour the ship, Deanna's mother arrives, taking young Alexander under her wing en route to meeting a man she's blindly agreed to marry.
TNG’s The Outcast, with Matt Baume
By Season 5, letter writing campaigns were coming at Star Trek TNG thick and fast. They still had not offered any gay representation, despite an episode being written (and abandoned) in season 1. We’re joined by writer and pop culture critic Matt Baume, who specialises in queer culture and is a huge Trek fan, to examine TNG’s attempt to make a gay episode - and what they accidentally did instead.
Want more of our discussion with Matt? We’ve got a 30 minute bonus content interview for you here which is free for everyone on our Patreon - no need to sign up, though we’d love it if you did! We talk about 'The Host', Dax, George Takei, Discovery, Fraggle Rock and lots of other great stuff!
Check Matt out here:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnSFwk_mZPnUuh0m7Z6T-4g
https://www.patreon.com/mattbaume
And pre-order his upcoming book ‘Hi Honey, I’m Homo!’ here
Episode 247 - TNG - Masterpiece Society
This week we're joined by anthropologist Professor Ben Auerbach to talk about a bunch of cool stuff in this very provocative episode! Ben has a special interest in eugenics and helps us to answer the question '‘does the eugenics presented in this episode make any sense?’ Spoiler alert - it doesn’t.
Rachel and Chris disagree strongly about Troi’s love interest, the scores vary wildly this week about the entertainment value of the episode and more.
Thank you to our producer Rafe Ball and to all our patreon supporters. For lots more episodes on TNG season 5, our comments show and bonus content (this month, Rafe and Chris on Picard Season 2), join us at www.patreon.com/rachelwatchesstartrek
Picard’s ‘Red Lady’ Revisit - Yesterday’s Enterprise
Wow, so many references to Treks past in Picard S3E1! One was the reveal of the 'Red Lady' - if you don't know why Captain Garrett deserved a statue, check out our previously Patreon-only episode from Dec '21 on "Yesterday's Enterprise"!
TNG - Unification 1 - Spock’s on TNG!
Rachel gets her first taste of Spock on TNG and Chris re-lives the excitement of 1991. Spock’s on TNG!
Picard gets tough with the Klingons, Lenard gives the performance of a lifetime as a dying Sarek and Data gets a wig from Mot, in this classic Star Trek TNG episode!
Join us on Patreon for 4 episodes per month plus bonus content!
Episode 236 - TNG - Darmok
This month’s free episode is the beloved TNG Season 5 classic ‘Darmok’. Picard is kidnapped by a Tamarian captain, to bond over an Arena-like situation in the universe’s wackiest language immersion programme.
This one sneaked up on us and we made the mistake of watching it separately. Or was it fate? Rachel, when her tears fell.
If you’d like to support the show and get 4 TNG episodes per month, please head to our Patreon page
Some comments from our Patreon supporters:
Ruth Dunmire - It's not, strictly, a metaphor, but "Beam me up, Scotty" is a phrase that tells a story that everyone understands--at least in Western culture. Even my 98-year-old mum knew what that means.
Peter Larsen - An author I follow has a son with autism who communicates almost entirely via song lyrics and dialogue from TV. He can make his needs known, but only because his parents have spent his entire life learning the context of the quotes. So there are people out there who communicate like this, but it doesn't work very well for a society where people might assign different meanings to the same phrase.
Jake Wilson - It's impossible for us to infer the complexity of their language, just as it is for someone reading the Chinese/Japanese 'alphabet' to infer the meaning of the character for sun/light/masculinity/etc by looking at the brush strokes and figuring out what they depict. And impossible, without education, to know that placing it next to the character that represents the concept of harmonious natural balance creates a name that sounds nothing like the characters individually.