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Recap / Star Trek

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A listing of all the recaps that covers a part of the Star Trek franchise. Includes the movies' Works pages, as those essentially cover what went on during the movies. Years covered by each installment are in parentheses.

Prime Timeline (8 Live Action Series, 3 Western Animation Series, 1 Shorts Series note  Star Trek Short Treks - Unlisted below due to episodes being spread across the timeline. , 10 Films)

22nd century.

• Star Trek: Enterprise (ENT; 2151-2155, & 2161 as a holo-archive seen in 2370)

23rd Century

• Star Trek: Discovery (DIS; Seasons 1-2; 2256-58)
• Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (SNW; 2259-) note  SNW still airing as of 2023, so this time-frame is subject to change.
• Star Trek: The Animated Series (TAS; 2269-70)
• Star Trek: The Motion Picture ( c. 2273 )
• Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (2285)
• Star Trek III: The Search For Spock (2285)
• Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (2286, & 1986 via time travel)
• Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (2287)
• Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (2293)

24th Century

• Star Trek: Generations (2293, & 2371 via time travel)
• Star Trek: First Contact (2373, & 2063 via time travel) note  The effects of this film appear in Enterprise above
• Star Trek: Insurrection (2375)
• Star Trek: Nemesis (2379)
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (DS9; 2369-75)
• Star Trek: Voyager (VOY; 2371-78)
• Star Trek: Lower Decks (LD; 2380-) note  LD still airing as of 2023, so this time-frame is subject to change.
• Star Trek: Prodigy (PRO; 2383-) note  PRO still airing as of 2023, so this time-frame is subject to change.
• Star Trek: Picard (PIC; Season 1; 2399)

25th Century

• Star Trek: Picard (PIC; Seasons 2-3; 2401-02, & 2024 via time travel)

32nd Century

• Star Trek: Discovery (DIS; Seasons 3-5; 3188-) note  DIS still airing as of 2023, so this time-frame is subject to change.

Kelvin Timeline (Reboot; 3 Films)

• Star Trek (Sections from 2233 note  This timeline evidently diverges from the Prime Timeline in this year , c. 2243, c. 2251, 2255, 2258, & "flashbacks" to 2387 of the Prime Timeline)
• Star Trek Into Darkness (2259-60)
• Star Trek Beyond (2263)
• The Slender Man Mythos
• Recap/Franchises
• Stargirl (2020)
• Recap/Live-Action TV
• Star Trek: The Original Series

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10 Best Sci-Fi Tropes Star Trek Popularized

Star Trek changed the face of science fiction, and opened up previously obscure genre tropes to a wider audience. Here are ten of the most memorable.

Star Trek changed the face of science fiction forever. Even before its popularity took off during the reruns and conventions of the 1970s, Star Trek: The Original Series endeavored to talk about more than just rocket ships and ray guns. It posited something extraordinary -- a viable vision of human utopia -- and slowly built it into a pop-culture bedrock.

In the process, it embraced a number of sci-fi tropes that other movies and TV shows came to emulate. Star Trek’s popularity elevated the profile of such notions, which had previously been limited to a few novels and short stories. Below is a list of ten classic sci-fi tropes that Star Trek helped make popular, presented in subjective order.

10 Controversial Star Trek: TOS Episodes That Wouldn't Fly Today

Ray guns were certainly nothing new when Star Trek came along, having served as a sci-fi staple since the days of H.G. Wells. The Original Series draws on the likes of Fantastic Planet and the Buster Crabbe Flash Gordon serials for inspiration, which invariably made copious use of the weapons. It's only natural that Star Trek would deliver its own version, with the slightly more innovative title of phasers.

What really sets the weapon apart from other ray guns, however, is the stun setting, allowing targets to be neutralized without permanent harm. The phrase “set phasers to stun” has become one of Star Trek’s signature lines . More importantly, the weapon’s nonlethal qualities speaks to the franchise’s values: envisioning a future in which violence has been tempered.

9 The Alien Non-Interference Clause

Better known as The Prime Directive, the alien non-interference clause states that no member of Starfleet can interfere with a planet’s natural development. That includes anything from providing advanced technology to revealing the existence of off-world life. It makes for a strong moral dilemma, as figures like Jean Luc-Picard must stand by while terrible things happen to innocent people.

Not surprisingly, the Prime Directive is noted more in its breach than its keeping. James T. Kirk, in particular, is quite cavalier about it, but it remains an easy fulcrum for good storytelling. The Prime Directive is also a way to talk about more down-to-earth issues like colonialism and environmental devastation.

10 Star Trek Phasers, Ranked

8 human/alien hybrids.

The existence of humanoid aliens precludes the ability to cross-breed, producing children with the genetics of both parents. With Star Trek , the notion goes all the way back to Mr. Spock: the product of a human mother and a Vulcan father. The other prominent canon examples include Star Trek: Voyager’s B’Elanna Torres, the child of a Klingon mother and a human father, and Worf’s son Alexander on Star Trek: The Next Generation , who also has human blood.

Such characters help science fiction explore the exchanges between different societies, as well as the unique challenges faced by the children of two or more cultures. That can lead to simplification or dismissal of complex issues. The trope is only as strong as the TV show using it, but it also gives creators a safe space to discuss those issues before a wider audience.

7 Fantastic Racism

Racism is a weighty issue and addressing it head-on won’t always fly on a series intended primarily as entertainment. Instead, Star Trek talks about racism in a more general way, using alien cultures as a stand-in for various kinds of prejudicial oppression. In the simplest terms, it helps point out the fundamental absurdity of racist beliefs, most notably in The Original Series Season 3, Episode 15, “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield,” which features Frank Gorshin’s black-and-white alien at war with this white-and-black cohort.

Fantastic racism isn’t a perfect trope, and can often whitewash real problems by casting them in the realm of fiction. But it also allows shows like Star Trek to address those issues while still retaining a vision of a more mature humanity who has set such petty hatefulness aside. For good or ill, it certainly allowed other science fiction projects to follow its example.

6 Alien Empires

Humanoid aliens necessitate an essentially human political process, which Star Trek uses as one of its narrative bedrocks. Other entities such as the Klingons and the Romulans don’t necessarily embrace democracy, and have their own agendas that often conflict with the Federation’s. This leads to various schemes, conflicts and outright wars: generating easy storylines and culminating in epic clashes like Deep Space Nine’s Dominion War.

Alien empires predate science fiction movies, going back at least to H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds and the John Carter novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs. The Original Series uses them as thinly veiled stand-ins for contemporary geopolitical foes like the Soviet Union or China under Chairman Mao. Star Trek: The Next Generation and subsequent series have developed their aliens more fully, while providing new narrative material in concepts like the Klingons’ Great Houses and The Romulans’ Qowat Milat.

10 Best Television Universes, Ranked

5 alternate history.

Star Trek originally used the Stardate notion to get around the question of exactly when the story was taking place. It took 1982's Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan to pinpoint its 23rd century setting. Even before then, however, it built its own future history without the slightest inkling of the franchise it was helping to create in the process.

Star Trek's alternate history comes complete with developments like the Eugenics Wars of the 1990s (swapped around to account for the passing of real time) and Zephram Cochrane breaking the warp barrier. The timeline allows new projects to develop their own stories at different points on the timeline. Subsequent franchises like Star Wars and the Marvel Cinematic Universe have done much the same thing.

Star Trek's 10 Greatest One-off Characters

4 parallel realities.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe has made the notion of a Multiverse widespread, and written works such as Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle form the foundation of the idea. But Star Trek brought parallel realities to popular attention long before more modern projects, most notably with Season 2, Episode 4, "Mirror, Mirror." That episode introduced the notion of the sinister Mirror Universe, which the franchise has used in other projects as well.

Star Trek continues to play with parallel realities, and indeed the concept has created some of its finest moments such as Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 3, Episode 15, "Yesterday's Enterprise." The Kelvinverse series of movies similarly exist in a parallel reality, allowing them to tell their own stories without risking undue continuity errors.

3 Rogue AI/Robots

Rogue AIs go back to the foundation of science fiction, as Mary Shelley’s Victor Frankenstein creates a being he can’t control. Star Trek’s utopian setting makes fertile ground for stories of science to run amuck, with each new era adding its own distinctive touch. The Original Series has the berserk robot Nomad and the M-5 "ultimate computer." Star Trek: Discovery uses the AI Control as its primary antagonist during Season 2, while The Next Generation may have topped them all with the Borg Collective. Even Star Trek: Lower Decks has gotten into the act with the likes of Badgey and Peanut Hamper.

The trend certainly didn't begin with Star Trek , but it made the public increasingly familiar with the notion, while removing it from the more literal image of a Boris Karloff-style monster. As technology has advanced, it's allowed the franchise to continue using it: making pointed comments on contemporary issues behind the veneer of science fiction.

Star Trek: 10 Best Captain Pike Quotes

2 cool starships.

Before The Original Series , sci-fi spaceships tended to come in two types: rockets and flying saucers. The original USS Enterprise manages to look like both at the same time, while giving Star Trek a singular visual image that sums up its entire zeitgeist. It becomes a character in and of itself during the first crew’s adventures, to the point where its destruction in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock initially elicited cries of grief among the faithful.

Subsequent series have made distinctive ship design a priority: giving them a brand identity distinctive from the rest of the franchise while still being resolutely Star Trek . Other creators took note, as 2001: A Space Odyssey's Discovery and Star Wars's Millennium Falcon emphasize visual distinctiveness to sell their worlds. The flying saucer is well and truly dead, and The Original Series' Enterprise may have killed it.

Star Trek’s best known piece of future technology arose out of a logistical necessity. Having created an iconic spaceship in the USS Enterprise , series creator Gene Roddenberry realized he had no way of landing it on the surface of the different planets the show was supposed to visit. Teleporting down via the ship’s transporters made an elegant solution, avoiding the clumsy logistics of a shuttle and providing a nifty effects shot to boot. It also allowed for easy drama, as Scotty invariably pulled the away team up from the planet's surface in the nick of time.

While it never caught on with other science fiction projects, that kept it a singular part of the franchise itself: never duplicated lest the presented be accused of imitating Star Trek . The rest of the public need not act with such care, of course, and "beam me up" has become a short-hand term for the desire to escape any unpleasant situation.

Star Trek: 10 Most Overused Plot Tropes

Let's take a look at some recurring plots that've come to define Star Trek!

Star Trek has been around for so long that it's forgivable for it to slightly reuse plots from time to time, such as the Voyager episode Author, Author that plays out very similar to the Next Generation episode The Measure Of A Man, both episodes featuring an artificial lifeform (Data and The Doctor) fighting for their freedom as sentient beings, not the property of Starfleet. In Star Trek: Picard we see the continuation of this story with other synthetic lifeforms.

However, there are certain plot ideas that have been reused so much that they have become tropes. Moments that define Star Trek, and can be found across nearly all shows of the franchise.

From things that prevent their technology from easily saving the day, to rehashed ideas for conflicts, to repeated filler moments, this list will be counting down ten of the most egregious examples of Star Trek plot tropes throughout the franchise's history.

10. Characters Meeting Alternate Versions Of Themselves

Most fans are familiar with the mirror universe. This alternate reality where humanity rules the galaxy with an iron fist and subjugates all alien life has appeared on Star Trek: Enterprise, The Original Series, Deep Space Nine, and Discovery, and shows audiences a darker, more sinister reality devoid of Starfleet's morals.

There are also many other alternate versions of characters that pop up throughout the franchise. In the Next Generation episode, Second Chances, we learn that Riker was inadvertently duplicated through a transporter glitch. His duplicate was left alone on the planet as the ship warped away carrying the other Riker and was forced to survive on his own for eight years. Another example is the clone of Picard, Shinzon, created by the Romulans, who assassinated the Romulan senate and made a plan to annihilate Starfleet.

Other notable copies include Admiral Janeway from the alternate future in the last episode of Voyager, all of the characters from the reboot movie timeline, and many more. This trope appears constantly in Trek and gives us insight into how the characters we know and love would've been different if they'd had different lives.

Marcia Fry is a writer for WhatCulture and an amateur filmmaker.

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In the 23rd Century, Captain James T. Kirk and the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise explore the galaxy and defend the United Federation of Planets. In the 23rd Century, Captain James T. Kirk and the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise explore the galaxy and defend the United Federation of Planets. In the 23rd Century, Captain James T. Kirk and the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise explore the galaxy and defend the United Federation of Planets.

• Gene Roddenberry
• William Shatner
• Leonard Nimoy
• DeForest Kelley
• 277 User reviews
• 99 Critic reviews
• 16 wins & 31 nominations total

Episodes 80

Photos 1964

• Captain James Tiberius 'Jim' Kirk …

• Mister Spock …

• Lieutenant Leslie …

• Nurse Chapel …

• Ensign Freeman …

• Yeoman Rand …

• Announcer …

• Beta 5 Computer …
• Security Guard …
• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

Stellar Photos From the "Star Trek" TV Universe

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Did you know

• Trivia In the hallways of the Enterprise there are tubes marked "GNDN." These initials stand for "goes nowhere does nothing."
• Goofs The deck locations for Kirk's Quarters, Sickbay and Transporter Room vary (usually between decks 4-7) throughout the series.

Dr. McCoy : "He's dead, Jim."

• Crazy credits On some episodes, the closing credits show a still that is actually from the Star Trek blooper reel. It is a close-up of stunt man Bill Blackburn who played an android in Return to Tomorrow (1968) , removing his latex make up. In the reel, He is shown taking it off, while an off-screen voice says "You wanted show business, you got it!"
• Alternate versions In 2006, CBS went back to the archives and created HD prints of every episode of the show. In addition to the new video transfer, they re-did all of the model shots and some matte paintings using CGI effects, and re-recorded the original theme song to clean it up. These "Enhanced" versions of the episodes aired on syndication and have been released on DVD and Blu-Ray.
• Connections Edited into Ben 10: Secrets (2006)
• Soundtracks Star Trek Music by Alexander Courage

User reviews 277

• Jun 9, 2002

Lovable Creatures: Our Favorite Screen Pals

• How do they maintain Gravity on the the U.S.S. Enterprise ? .
• All aliens on all planets speak the English language?
• What does "TOS" mean?
• September 8, 1966 (United States)
• United States
• Star Trek: The Original Series
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• Norway Corporation
• Paramount Television
• See more company credits at IMDbPro

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• Star Trek: Starfleet Command
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A series of space combat/strategy games initially developed by Interplay/Taldren and later by Activision that took Star Trek ‍'‍s Space Is an Ocean sensibilities and ran with them full-steam ahead. Initially inspired by the pen and paper/board game Star Fleet Battles during Interplay's time as developer. When Activision took over for Starfleet Command 3 , the game shifted from the period of The Original Series to the Next Generation era , and took an approach to the ships and gameplay that more reflected Trek Canon.

The first and second entries focus on conflicts from the various Star Fleet Battles campaigns, while Starfleet Command 3 is a prequel to Star Trek: Nemesis .

As with many games/franchises, Your Mileage May Vary .

• 2-D Space : No Z-axis for you!
• Aborted Arc ( tarfleet Command 2: Orion Pirates was originally intended to include campaigns for all the major empires fighting against the Andromedans , which were all dropped. Likely due to serious financial troubles faced by Interplay and Taldren at the time.)
• Aliens and Monsters ( Space Monsters, to be precise.)
• Aliens of London (The Hydrans.)
• Alternate Continuity (Starfleet Command 3 is set in the same 'Verse as Bridge Commander , The Armada, and the Elite Force games (All also published by Activision). On the other hand, Starfleet Command One, Two, and Orion Pirates are set in the continuity of the Starfleet Battles pen and paper roleplaying game.)
• All the Myriad Ways (A story mission in Starfleet Command 1 has the player hunt down their Mirror Universe alternate .)
• All There in the Manual (The Sovereign's description connects the events of SFC 3 to Star Trek: Bridge Commander )
• Apocalypse How (Pops up occasionally, this being Star Trek and all.)
• Barrier Warrior (The Lyrans ( That's pronounced Lear-uhns! ) have the ESG field. Basically a ring of death that surrounds a Lyran ship and damages everything that gets too close, it's practically a death sentence if used against a smaller ship. Gets stupidly useful in Starfleet Command 2 and its expansion when dealing with carriers .)
• Big Bad (The Interstellar Concordium in SFC 2 and the Romulans in Starfleet Command 3. The various races each had their own troubles to contend with in Starfleet Command 1, but by far the greatest of the various threats was the Terran Empire's plans to destroy the Federation with a fleet of Planet Killers .)
• Big Damn Heroes (A few times in the first game. Quite a bit in Starfleet Comand 3. There are also random missions where the player must come to the aid of another ship, starbase, or planet.)
• BFG (Your mauler has come equipped with a ship.)
• Cherry Tapping (Both subverted or played straight depending on the occasion. Fights, especially against larger ships, usually tend to end in massive alpha strikes .)
• Color Coded for Your Convenience (Phasers A and B in Orion Pirates. The Ph A is colored blue and effective against shields, but piss against hull. The Ph B is colored red and devastating to an exposed ship hull, but won't do jack against shields.)
• Cool Starship (Too many to begin to list. Collectively, thousands of models have been made for these games from Star Trek to Futurama .)
• Chekhov's Gun ( The USS Incursion and the technology behind it play a massive role in Starfleet Command 3's plot )
• Chekhov MIA (The Organians.)
• Critical Existence Failure (Starfleet Command 3)
• Crew of One (Played straight. In SFC 1 &3 you can gather a crew, but they only affect your ships performance (a more skilled helmsman will make your ship handle better, ect.)
• Deadly Upgrade (The Phaser X in Orion Pirates is a more powerful, overloadable version of the Phaser 1.)
• Death in All Directions ( And it works this time, too . Also the entire point of the ship's Self-Destruct system.)
• Not to mention rage when you encounter said light cruiser. Expect to scream at your monitor while you watch your hull strength drop by a quarter with each fucking barrage.
• Dynamic Difficulty : Related to the above Demonic Spiders example, the enemy ships you face in each mission are (most of the time) scaled to the strength of your ship(s). In SFC 1 the system works just about perfectly (though it does have a tendency to spawn fleets that are slightly too strong for your fleet when you're flying multiple ships, such as spawning three cruisers when you're flying a cruiser, a light cruiser and a destroyer, but in SFC 2, as is mentioned under Demonic Spiders above, the D.Difficulty is all over the bloody place, being perfectly happy to spawn frigates against your battleship and battleships against your cruiser. Part of this is to do with the fact that the game will sometimes pit you against the enemies that are already present on SFC 2s hex-based galaxy map (as on this map there are NPC ships flying around all over the galaxy flying missions of their own in the background), which can easily be much stronger or much weaker than your ship(s), instead of spawning fresh ones, but other times the computer simply (and inexcusably) gets it horribly wrong.
• Earthshattering Kaboom ( Oh so many . Even the smallest frigate is capable of producing one given enough time.)
• Establishing Character Moment (The Interstellar Concordium, upon arrival, demands half the galaxy surrender and cease hostilities with each other or they'll kill everyone present and everyone they've ever met.)
• The Lyrans, whilst felinoid like the Mirak/Kzinti, are not an expy. They were, in fact, cut from whole-cloth by the makers of Star Fleet Battles (on which SFC is based) and are quite different to the Mirak/Kzintis.
• Not quite. The only weapon that can be destroyed by overloading it is the Hydran Fusion Beam, and only on "Suicide Overload" (it also has a normal "overload" mode, which cannot destroy the weapon). Photon Torpedoes, Disruptors, etc cannot destroy themselves no matter how many times they are fired on "overload", Sulu's line in the first game's tutorial about "overload" mode on photons causing "significantly more wear on the photon torpedo launcher" being purely for flavour. Also, High Energy Turns can only cause damage if they cause the ship to break down. "Engine doubling" on Orion ships (which, as the name suggests, doubles the power output of the ship's engines) in the Orion Pirates expansion will, however, damage the ship's engines over time.
• Faster-Than-Light Travel (Players can warp around 'till their hearts content in Starfleet Command 3. Not so much in the first two.)
• Five-Man Band (In Starfleet Command one and three, you assemble your own senior staff who will be under your command throughout the game. Subverted (sp?) in Starfleet Command 2, as the code and text strings remain in the game, but are inactive.)
• Game Mod (Not nearly as many as Bridge Commander . But definately present.)
• Gatling Good (The Ph G. It literally stands for Gatling Phaser . It's one of the weakest weapons of the game, however: When you consider that it fires three times per charge, and the maximum charge for any weapon is four, that means that this one phaser can fire twelve times almost in the blink of an eye before it's exhausted. And if that hits someone's bare hull...)
• Heroic Mime (Subverted. The player character speaks often, though usually only in the form of text on the screen.)
• (If you're playing a mod involving the Borg though, expect this trope full stop, unless you're rolling with a fleet of Excaliburs .)
• Knight Templar / Blood Knight (Again, the Interstellar Concordium, Starfleet Command 2's Big Bad .)
• Late to the Party (What kicks off the plot of Starfleet Command, and later Starfleet Command 2 .)
• Macross Missile Massacre (Many of the races can use missiles, but the Kzi- Mirak specialize in them. That was until Orion Pirates upped the ante to levels of insanity never before dreamt with the multi missile . Essentially, it's one missile that splits into six, which is bad enough. But keep in mind, a ship can only guide so many missiles at once up to a maximum limit of 12, but as the six smaller missiles register as only one it is possible to fire up to 72 missiles at one target !)
• Mighty Glacier (Gorn ships, in general, are flying mountains with every weapon you can use in game pointing in every direction imaginable. You do not screw with a Gorn light cruiser unless you have backup, and forget it if theres a fleet of them.)
• Mirror Universe (The Federation plot in Starfleet Command 1 has the player battling their mirror universe alternate and mirror Commodore Decker to prevent them from destroying the Federation with a legion of Doomsday Machines .)
• More Dakka (The Ph G, or "Gatling Phaser" in Starfleet Command 1 and 2. The entire purpose for the Pulse Phaser in Starfleet Command III.)
• Names to Run Away From Really Fast ( Mauler , Hellbore Cannon , Fusion Cannon , Gatling Phaser , Plasma Type R .)
• Nuke'Em (Orbital bombardment is a common mission objective. Also, Starfleet Command 2 has the player in one mission beam an away team down to an enemy base to plant a massive explosive device. Fully weaponized and Frickin Laser Beam'ed by the Hydrans with their Fusion Cannon.)
• Planar Shockwave (Everything above the fighter class generates one upon it's demise. A very cool one , too.)
• Ramming Always Works (Subverted, no it doesn't. Unless you're out of Nova Mines facing an army of Planet Killers, in which case you had better start your engines if you want to get out of there alive .)
• Shout-Out (One of the missions in the Romulan campaign is named "The Secret Of Romulan Fury". This is a shout out to a cancelled game called "The Secret Of Vulcan Fury", that was being developed by Interplay at the time.)
• Shows Damage : In SFC 1, you'd start leaking glowy purple plasma trails. In the sequels, you'd see scorch marks, electrical cracklies, and bits of your ship on fire.
• Simulation Game (Spaceflight/Naval combat)
• Space Compression (A massive offender here.)
• Space Is an Ocean (The game is built on this trope.)
• Space Pirates (The Orion Syndicate )
• Space Whales (More like Space Sharks . Things. Hideous killer death monster beasties. In Space . You get the picture.)
• (Spaceflight and space combat in Star Trek Online looks like it borrows quite a bit from Starfleet Command 3. This is in no way a bad thing.)
• Standard Sci-Fi Fleet
• Nah, they're basically shrunken versions of William Christophers "Masters" (From the Tripods Trilogy), so of course they got the British hat.
• Subsystem Damage (Your ship has multiple systems and weapons that can and will be damaged during combat. As you have a limited supply of repairs, a major part of the game is strategically repairing your ship to give you the best possible advantage. Unless you're playing Orion Pirates, in which case you're likely screwed no matter what if an "X-ship" is involved.)
• The Captain (The player, for the most part.)
• The Empire (Plenty of actual Empires abound in both the Interplay and Activision continuitys. But the in the trope's sense, the Interstellar Concordium is pretty much The Federation 's Evil Twin .)
• The Federation ( Of course .)
• The Plague (The Romulan campaign in Starfleet Command 1 revolves around checking the spread of a hideously contagious disease called "The Traveler's Death", which is essentially the Black Plague In Space .)
• The Problem with Licensed Games (Blessedly averted, for once.)
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill (Target's hull is down to one point? ALPHA STRIKE .)
• Tim Taylor Technology (Usually justified by the fact that on average, not one of the systems on your ship will be functioning at their limits, ever. This is because you only have a limited amount of power that must be divided amongst dozens of subsystems at any given time. However, the Mauler in Orion Pirates takes this trope Up to Eleven , as unlike the other weapons it doesn't do fixed damage. The damage the Mauler does is based purely on your ships power output, and does greater or less damage accordingly.)
• Units Not to Scale (The little planets. Oy vey , the little planets!)
• Black Holes Suck (Blue funnels that blow up your ship if your engines can't boost you away. Since Space Is an Ocean , black holes are the whirlpools.)
• Video Game Caring Potential (The Player's fleet, depending on whether or not they're only intended as meat shields. Captured ships as well.)
• You can set your phasers for disabling strikes and knock out the enemy's engines. A gentle nudge with the tractor beam towards the nearest black hole, and kaboom . Even more dickishly, you can hold the disabled ship in front of you and blaze full speed aheard towards the sun. You may get a little crispy, but it's totally Worth It .
• Wave Motion Gun (The Mauler in Orion Pirates fits the trope to a T. In both Starfleet Command 1 and 2 we have the Phaser 4 (Ph4), which is an insanely powerful weapon that can only be mounted on space stations or planets.)
• We Come in Peace, Shoot to Kill (See Video Game Cruelty Potential above.)
• Well-Intentioned Extremist ( The Organians dissapeared in the first game to bring back an enemy in Starfleet Command 2 that could force the major powers from the first game to unite, in an effort to prepare them to repel a massive invasion from the Andromeda galaxy that would have completely wiped them all out otherwise, had they not learned to put aside their differences for a common cause . At least that's what would have happened .)
• What Happened to the Mouse? (That ship you just blew up had about twelve marines from your own on it, What the Hell, Hero? ?)

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Still, there are a handful of interesting components here. When Bev prays, a video game-playing Black Jesus appears, responding to or ignoring her pleas. This visualization is a direct callback to Florida from the original series calling out to God. In Episode 2, “Black of Focus,” viewers are offered an “Inside Out” visual into Junior’s mind, which directly unpacks his academic failures and artistic talent. However, Episode 3, “Grey’s Anatomy,” offers the most compelling storyline. It chronicles Grey navigating her first period as everyone, including the school nurse and Bev, tries to shame her about menstruation. In a “The Wiz”-like sequence, this chapter addresses the hypersexualization of Black girls as fast and womanly while taking direct shots at the end of Roe v. Wade through a Trump-type character, Grady Oscar Piles, aka “G.O.P.”  

Despite these few highlights, “Good Times” is overrun with issues. Some of these have already spilled into the public. The original creator, Carl Jones, wrote on Twitter/X that he left the project during development due to creative differences. Moreover, Yvette Nicole Brown, who voices Beverly in the series, is being attacked on the social media platform for just being a part of the show. The late Norman Lear, BernNadette Stanis and Jimmie Walker, who played Thelma and J.J., respectively, in the original series, have minor roles. Stanis has spoken publicly about watching the new show’s trailer. “I did a little voice for them, but I did not know it was going to be the way it is. I thought it was going to be different,” she told The Hollywood Reporter. She continued, “It’s just a little here and there. But I think that they did that because they knew what their show was going to be like. So I guess they figured, if you put us in there, it wouldn’t look so bad or whatever.”

Black creators and talent have vast experiences across political, social and economic backgrounds. Like our white counterparts, we can express our experiences as we see fit. Yet, amid the recent shuttering of numerous Black-led shows, including “Rap Sh!t,” “South Side,” and “The Wonder Years,” just to name a few, it’s pathetic Hollywood is championing depictions that reduce Black people, racism and systemic issues into one-dimensional minstrels lacking present-day relevance. What’s worse is that the writing in “Good Times” just isn’t funny.

Reimagining “Good Times” for a 21st-century audience could have been done brilliantly. Animation allows for a wealth of creative freedom, enabling viewers to see characters and their experiences in ways that live-action doesn’t. While the series’ predecessor captivated viewers some five decades ago, these modern-day Evans are stuck in the past, unable or unwilling to connect with new generations who are still navigating so much and have so much to say.

All 10 episodes of “Good Times” are streaming on Netflix .

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