Thursday 7 November 2019

Trek 365 Day Challenge...

Where the hell have you gone? I’ve been asked in comments, on social media and via my YouTube channel. Recently I had a bit of a brainsplosion with regards to Big Finish and the varying quality of what they have been releasing and questioning whether I have actually been enjoying trying to keep up with the hideous number of releases and reviewing them all in some depth. So I decided to take a break, and it happens to be one I have been enjoying quite a lot. At the same time I figured that I had been discussing Doctor Who in depth for over ten years and whilst it will always be my first love that perhaps I was getting a little immune to its charms at times and focussing too much on the negative rather than the positive. So I decided to take a break from Who as well. Or at least reviewing it. It’s astonishing how much enjoyment I have had simply enjoying some of these stories rather than examining them. I wonder when I stopped doing that.

However, I am a creature of habit and I love writing reviews. There are few things that give me more pleasure than to sit at the keyboard and let language flow from my fingertips when discussing something that I love. So I have spent an incredible amount of time lately prepping for a brand new feature that will be appearing on the blog shortly. I wanted to challenge myself to do something new and I wanted to give myself a chance to look at something old and something new…

Hence my 365-day Star Trek challenge is about to begin. Those that follow my FB page are probably aware that I have been watching Star Trek a fair amount lately thanks to the absurd photos I have been posting. Don’t get me wrong I come not to belittle Star Trek, but to celebrate it to the hilt.
After an absence of posting nothing for a few months, I will be posting a review a day for an entire year. The something old is going to be looking at TNG, DS9 and VOY episodes all over again, ten years after I last reviewed them. Of the episodes I have reviewed so far I have had some surprising results. Some I’m found far more enjoyable than on my initial rewatch and others have been found wanting this time around. The something new is that I am always going to be reviewing TOS, the final two and half seasons of TNG and ENT. The reviews I have written for those series have been truly enlightening for me. I’ve found far more to enjoy in Enterprise than I thought possible (which before starting this was nothing) and TOS proves to be extraordinary television in every way that word can be used.

I’m going to be looking at the characters, the plot, the production, the funny bits, the dramatic bits, the performances, the music…I’ll discuss the episodes in as much depth as my brain will allow and at the end (as ever) I will summarise whether this episode is worth watching again or not (a hint, pretty much all of them are for a variety of reasons). And I will be hopping between the series randomly to keep things interesting. 

I’m also going to be more present on social media throughout this year long challenge, I would love to be able to engage more with the audience reading, to hear what you think and to add some fun and quirky elements to the haphazard viewing experience.

I’m 30 reviews into this challenge already and I’m in two minds whether to kick start it now or to wait until the beginning of the new year but this is just an episode on my scribblings over the past few months…

…I hope you can come on the journey with me.