This week, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine starts again — with a second pilot episode two and a half years after the first one. It’s The Best of Both Worlds, but much faster, funnier and more confident. And this is only the beginning. Again.

The quintessential odd-numbered Star Trek film, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier roared onto our screens in 1989, delighting and enthralling basically no one at all. Still, despite the glacial pace, the lack of incident and the horrendous special effects, it has something to say — something about the love and friendship between weird and grumpy old men who have known and annoyed one another for decades. And if you’ve got that, who needs Sha Ka Ree?

Tom, Harry, Neelix and Chakotay somehow return from a space mission with PTSD — and with memories of an armed conflict which might not even be theirs. All this goes just about as well as you’d expect, with inexplicable flashbacks, studio sets pretending to be outdoor locations, some odd gurning by Ethan, and some characteristically unpleasant shouting from the Worst Robert. But in spite of it all, there’s a point to be made, and some last-act location work lifts the whole thing considerably.

This week, a seminal moment in the history of television appears to be taking place at 0.5× speed.

“Terrible beyond terrible.”

“Here lies a colossal mess of a show, mixing serious (albeit unrealized) science fiction with broad, less-than-funny comedy.”

“Sometimes you just have to bow to the absurd.”

“That was fun.”

“Yeah, I thought that was great.”

This week on Deep Space Nine, Dukat (Kathy Bates) and Sisko (James Caan) crash land on one of Star Trek’s less convincing standing sets, and then have a proper talk about their Feelings and Values. (Antipathy, and for one of them, Racism.)

This week in Star Trek: Slow-Witted White Men, no one turns into a salamander, gets trapped in a board game or has sex with a ghost. In fact, no one does much of anything at all — at least not anything that anyone will remember 23 years later.

This week, we are properly introduced to Voyager’s latest Intransigent Alien Antagonist, in preparation for a thrilling two-part epic in a couple of weeks’ time. And things go pretty well, on the whole, despite (or perhaps because of) some interpersonal conflict between two important cast members and their characters.

An unexpected but not unprecedented miracle turns water into booze on board the Enterprise-D, and soon the entire crew is horny, depressed, or facing an awkward meeting with HR on Monday. After all this, Joe can’t see how this show becomes a hit, but Nathan thinks he can. Bottoms up, everyone!

Gornfest 2025 continues this week on Untitled Star Trek Project, as we head back to 1967 — when the Gorn were just a single rubber lizard in a spangly minidress and the Federation was barely a glint in Gene L. Coon’s eye. Iconic, memorable and visually striking — this is why nerds still podcast about the show 58½ years later.