Trekabout: A Star Trek Podcast

Okay folks. The second season of The Animated Series. They’ve worked out the kinks. The actors have gotten more comfortable with voice acting. We’re ready for some great episodes! So why the hell did they give us “The Pirates of Orion” and “Bem”? Did they think we wouldn’t notice? iTunes Google Play RSS

We vacillate over whether it was daring to name an episode of a 1974 children’s cartoon “The Jihad”, but we both agree that it’s not a great episode. “The Time Trap” is a bit better, with some interesting shades of “The Side of Paradise”, but ultimately it doesn’t add up to much. Also! Richard really ...

Wildly inconsistent, is The Animated Series. “The Slaver Weapon” is one of the finest episodes of the show yet, with an interesting if admittedly cliche premise and a strong statement about the rights of cat women. “The Eye of the Beholder” is so bad that Eric rants about the episode until Richard adopts a kitten ...

Star Trek has always had a relatively loose relationship with scientific rigor, and this week we have some of the shoddiest understandings of evolution this side of The Creation Museum. In “The Terratin Incident” everyone on board the Enterprise starts shrinking, for unknown reasons, and in “The Ambergris Element” Kirk and Spock get turned into ...

The Animated Series is sequel-heavy this week. In “Once Upon a Planet”, we revisit the shore leave planet from, uh, “Shore Leave”, and discover that they probably should have left well enough alone. In “Mudd’s Passion”, an animated Harry Mudd talks Nurse Chapel into slipping Spock some ecstasy. Plus! Richard is very interested in exploring ...

Seeing as how they couldn’t afford to include Walter Koenig in the cast of The Animated Series, it was super nice to buy the script to “The Infinite Vulcan” from him, even thought the episode is kind of pants. Later, in “The Magicks of Megas-Tu”, the crew of the Enterprise are menaced by a guy ...

This week, on Trekabout: Episode 23, Eric and Richard discuss “The Trouble… wait, what? That can’t be right. Everything is animated! Oh, this episode is called “More Tribbles, More Troubles”, and it’s… adequate? Then, on “The Survivor”, we’re faced with a member of the 1% who is actually a monster. Not that different from the ...

The Animated Series is hungry this week. In “One of Our Planets Is Missing”, a giant intelligent space cloud is eating planets–and the people too! In “The Lorelei Signal”, Amazon vampire ladies are luring men to their deaths because the women are infertile, or something. Look, Uhura and Nurse Chapel shoot people in this episode, so ...

You can’t tell, since this is an audio podcast, but in honor of our move into The Animated Series, we’ve replaced ourselves with cartoon facsimiles. And just in time, too, as “Beyond the Farthest Star” and “Yesteryear” assuage Richard’s fears about an animated Trek. The former provides a possible template for the show–trippy visuals with ...

Our 9-month mission is over, as we reach the end of The Original Series with “All Our Yesterdays” and “Turnabout Intruder”. If only we could go back in time to the first or second seasons–but no women, please, they’re nuts! Plus! Eric lays out a roadmap for the future of Trekabout. iTunes Google Play RSS

As we inch closer to the end of The Original Series, we’ve hit the brakes with “The Cloud Minders” and “The Savage Curtain”, two more episodes with intriguing premises that get bored with themselves halfway through. Plus! Abraham Lincoln dies again. iTunes Google Play RSS

It seems that Spock is getting restless. In “Requiem for Methuselah”, he surprises everyone by expressing a desire to get drunk while listening to some sick Brahms’ sonatas. Later, in “The Way to Eden”, he drops out, turns on, and tunes in with the cast of a 23rd Century traveling production of Hair. Plus! Richard ...

We’ve had some strong contenders, but, finally, we’ve found an episode of The Original Series that’s as terrible as “The Alternative Factor”: “That Which Survives”. The less said about it, the better, so let’s move right along to “The Lights of Zetar”, which isn’t much better, but at least features a strong and capable female ...

Ah, 1969. America’s Gandhi was dead. Race riots had broken out in many American cities. The Cold War was at full tilt. But don’t worry! Here is “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield” to browbeat us with the message that “racism is bad”! Later, “The Mark of Gideon” tries to convince us that mass sterilization ...

The third season of The Original Series has slowed its rate of terribleness with “Elaan of Troyius” and “Whom Gods Destroy”. While not classic episodes, they’re at least entertaining pulp nonsense, and at this point, that’s about all we can ask. Also! Richard can’t hear. iTunes Google Play RSS

The Original Series continues its problematic relationship with female guests stars this week. In “Wink of an Eye”, our female guest star’s personality switches multiple times over the course of the episode because plot. In “The Empath”, the show manages to one-up that treatment and give us a female character with literally no personality. Oh, ...

It’s not dead, Jim: The third season roars back this week. “The Tholian Web” features a new alien menace, growing madness among the crew, a disappearing starship, and Spock and Bones at each other’s throats. “Plato’s Stepchildren” features telekinetic jocks, the first (sic) interracial kiss on television, and a singing Spock. Plus! Scotty gets drunk ...

8 episodes into the third season of The Original Series, and we’ve cracked the code on why it’s so disappointing: everyone involved has decided to give us a steady diet of fight scenes, love scenes, and general half-assed pulp nonsense. In “Day of the Dove”, the Klingons and the Federation learn that the cure for ...

In “Is There in Truth No Beauty?”, the crew of the Enterprise wanders around for 50 minutes while a guest star does her best to convince everyone that she’s blind, and then she leaves. In “Spectre of the Gun”, the crew of the Enterprise wanders around for 50 minutes while guest stars do their best ...

Want some mild racism? Well you have it in “The Paradise Syndrome”! Want to feel a burning hatred for children? Well you have it in “And the Children Shall Lead”! Want to watch a better TV show? Well, you have to wait for us to get to Star Trek: The Next Generation in about six ...