#trekmatch

TREKMATCH! # 789 - Star Trek's "Space Seed" vs 1957's The Seventh Seal

THE SEVENTH SEAL aka DET SJUNDE INSEGLET

A medieval Swedish knight returns home from the crusades all disillusioned and whatnot only to discover his whole home is covered with plague. Well he gathers up a group of misfits and plays a lil game of chess with Death and ponders whether or not there's a god or a satan or an afterlife or etc. Hey pal you're playing chess with Death, that probably means there's something! Oh, unless it's a dang metaphor for like how we're all playing chess with death lower case every minute of our lives... nahhhh!

GRADE: A+

STAR TREK - "Space Seed"

The Enterprise finds a 300 year old Earth ship adrift in space and decides it's a good idea to wake up its whole frozen crew. Turns out they're a buncha war criminals from those Eugenics Wars we all remember from the 1990s, ulp! Their leader, a dude named "Khan" or something tries some rude shenanigans and Kirk puts them all on a nice little world never to be heard from again the end.

GRADE: A

TREKMATCH! # 815 - TNG's "Schisms" vs 1989's Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure

BILL & TED'S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE

A couple wealthy California kids who dream of being rock stars have to pass a big oral exam or one a them is getting sent to military school but luckily a future dude gives them a time traveling phone booth. Well hijinx ensue and I guess they don't screw up history by stealing all these historical figures?

GRADE: C+

STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION - "Schisms"

Riker falls asleep during Data's poetry reading so who's to blame? Aliens, that's who. I mean even more alien aliens than usual.

GRADE: C+

TREKMATCH! # 755 - Voyager's "Blink of an Eye" vs 1936's Dodsworth

DODSWORTH

A rich factory owner retires and goes on a cruise with his wife where they each learn to love other people (The Hays Code makes the wife get punished for it though). Gotta say the movie lost me in the first couple minutes where the dude wistfully looks back at his factory.

GRADE: D

STAR TREK: VOYAGER - "Blink of an Eye"

Voyager shows up at a planet that's in a time swirlie that causes like a year to pass on the planet for every second Voyager is in orbit. Well too bad people start worshipping Voyager as a sky god for millennia! I know, I know - Twilight Zone did this first, then The Original Series did it, then The Simpsons did it parodying The Twilight Zone, but this is still my favorite Voyager episode.

GRADE: A+

TREKMATCH! # 756 - DS9's "Tacking Into the Wind" vs 1982's Blade Runner

BLADE RUNNER

In the distant future of 2019 (am I the first person to make that joke???) robot clones called replicants do all kinds of dirty work for humans except sometimes they dream of electric sheep and want a better life. When that happens it's time to call in robot hunter (and robot hunter???) Deckard to kill the robots. Nobody takes a movie punch quite like Harrison Ford!

GRADE: A+

STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE - "Tacking Into the Wind"

Kira and Damar have some tiffs over the best way to run a terrorist cell. Like, listen to Nerys, she's the experienced terrorist! Meanwhile on the station Worf tries to talk Martok into doing a little coup against Gowron.

GRADE: A-

TREKMATCH! # 745 - Voyager's "Flesh and Blood" vs 2021's Spider-Man: No Way Home

SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME

When we last left Spider-Man he had finally asked out MJ and life was going good til uh oh! One obsessive muckraking podcaster outs Peter's identity to the world thanks to D-Lister Mysterio! Well that messes up him and his friend's college aspirations and also his Aunt May has to move out of their co-op. Good thing he knows a magician who can alter the whole universe and its memories, or is it?

GRADE: B+

STAR TREK: VOYAGER - "Flesh and Blood"

Voyager responds to a distress call from the Hirogen because they turned up the holodeck difficulty too high like an older sibling swooping in to beat the oil boss from Sonic 2. It's an unnecessary two-parter common to the seventh seasons of Voyager and TNG since that let em save money for the finales.

GRADE: C-

TREKMATCH! # 780 - Voyager's "Bride of Chaotica" vs 1965's A Patch of Blue

A PATCH OF BLUE (Nominated for Best Drama Golden Globe, lost to Doctor Zhivago)

An abused blind girl (I think she's technically an adult) meets a Sidney Poitier businessman in the park and they fall in friendship and maybe even love. Well the park is cool but at home her mother wants to turn her into an involuntary sex worker which is bad parenting in my opinion even though I don't have any kids. There are plenty of heavy handed love is blind metaphors and everyone learns a little something about life in 1960s America (or at least as was allowed to be depicted in late code Hollywood).

GRADE: C+

STAR TREK: VOYAGER - "Bride of Chaotica"

Tom and Harry accidentally forget to pause their little space video game and then some holographic aliens beam aboard Voyager thinking all the weirdo 30s sci-fi characters are actually alive. You know what that means - holodeck dress up time!!!

GRADE: B

TREKMATCH! # 738 - TNG's "Manhunt" vs 2002's Chicago

CHICAGO

A buncha ladies in a jail back in the roaring twenties (the other roaring twenties) sing about murder and their exes and murdering their exes. Hey how come none a these women are falsely accused huh? It's a Bob Fosse musical so women in fishnets and little top hats abound, even if all the best songs are in the first half.

GRADE: B

STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION - "Manhunt"

Lwaxana Troi shows up to woo dear ole Jean Luc, because it turns out Betazoid women just get hornier and hornier the older they get. Hm maybe that's why Will waits til Nemesis to marry Deanna!

GRADE: C

TREKMATCH! # 777 - TNG's "Ethics" vs 2021's West Side Story

WEST SIDE STORY (Nominated for Best Picture Oscar, lost to CODA, won Best Musical or Comedy Golden Globe)

In the 50s a couple of street gangs get wild over each other and do rumbles and musical numbers. Meanwhile there's a Romeo and Juliet situation happening and only one bad song in the whole thing! I always thought the gangs were supposed to be high schoolers but the internet says they're in their 20s. Weird they're going to sock hops or whatever then! Is it better than the 60s one? Well, no, but at least it's not a buncha white people in brownface and the actors sing their own songs (with a teensy bit of help from digital pitch correction).

GRADE: B+

STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION - "Ethics"

Worf has a big bouncy hollow barrel fall on him but it still destroys his spinal cord and he is maybe never gonna walk again. Well for a Klingon that's dishonorable so he wants to have Riker kill him with a knife! I guess it's a complicated question because of course in our real human planet of Earth we want disabled people to live full cool lives but like it's Worf's imaginary Klingon culture that demands this ritual or whatever. Anyway the metaphors don't work!

GRADE: D+