The Star Trek Project Explained

I have been thinking about the Star Trek Project for several years, but until now have never bene able to determine exactly how I wanted to go about doing what I have created this page to document. I must admit to being vain enough to be concerned with how rabidly geeky this would make me out to be, but in the end, my enjoyment of Star Trek and my desire to write about the series overrode my fear of the nerd label.

This project was born out of my tendancy to watch and rewatch the various Star Trek series as I did other things. Normally I would be studying, playing a computer game, surfing the internet, or some other activity and I would almost always pop in a Star Trek DVD to watch. I usually would do it in order, so that I had to watch all of The Next Generation in a row or all of Deep Space Nine in a row and so on before I switch. At one point I think I even watched them all chronologically.

The last time I was going through Deep Space Nine I had an epiphany of sorts. I knew I wanted to write about Star Trek for some time but couldn't decide how, and then I realized that almost every time I watched an episode I found something new, or made an observation to myself about something. Often it would be a new found apprecaition for the episode, consistency errors, plot holes, or implausibility of some sort. Each time I wondered why I didn't just write it down and make a project of it. Thus the Star Trek Project was born.

I know that there are at least a few websites that have reviews for every episode of Star Trek ever aired. One person who ran such a project even had his name used for a character in Star Trek: First Contact. My goal is not to replicate that feat. While some episodes may be "reviewed" and most will have a synopsis written by me or copied from the official site, my desire is neither to summarize the events of each episode nor provide a review or score per se. While I do want to talk about the relative merit of each episode, I also want to create a sort of running lof of thoughts on each series, the continuity, the errors, and have the opportunity to discuss the episodes that truly moved me.

After some deliberation, I have decided that the best way to start is chronologically in the order that the series aired. I think this will be the best for continuity as the project will end with Enterprise, allowing me to tie in issues of continuity easily with all the other series that came before it. Thus, I will start with The Original Series and the corresponding feature films in order, move on to TNG, DS9, and Voyager with the movies in the correct order, and end with Enterprise. I have not yet decided whether to include The Animated Series, although I will make that decision sometime prior to ending the work on TOS.

This project will consist of, at a minimum, 704 episodes of Star Trek spanning approximately 528 hours and 10 movies totalling just over 20 hours. I have no idea how long this project will take to complete as I have never watched the entire series straight through in this fashion. At the absolute minimum it will take a full year-I frequently watch 4 episodes a day on the weekends while doing other things, and as long as I am careful enough to note the specifics of each individual episode I can likely watch most of them while multi-tasking (especially for the episodes I have seen countless times). While it would be tempting to skip the episodes I actively dislike (not a tremendous number, but at least a dozen or so episodes for the longer series), I intend to watch each and every one with no fast forward or any other aid. Furthermore, I will not multi-task to the point where I am watching them just to list them. If I don't have something constructive to say, I haven't paid enough attention to the episode.

Finally, I am not sure exactly how I will format this page or whether the project will remain here or find its way to a real website. At the least I will try to make each episode recap its own post for clarity. I hope the few of you that have found your way to this website enjoy the idea and eventually enjoy the work that will go into making this project happen. At the very least I can finally say that I did something odd and extravagant with one of my hobbies just because I wanted to and I had fun doing it-no matter how geeky it may be.