It wasn’t the best of times, but even as bad as some of those endless nanobot episodes got, it wasn’t the worst of times.

My brother sent me an email today! In it, he poses a thoughtful philosophical question, one that I believe many of the greatest minds of our generation have struggled with:

Good advice on Star Trek Enterprise… that’s turning out to be pretty entertaining background stuff during my model painting. I’m somewhere in season 2 right now.

I’m also watching Star Trek Voyager. UGHHH. These episodes are tough to make it through (exception for species 4572 episode was awesome). I realized pretty early on that I don’t find any of the characters compelling (possible exception for Janeway herself), and several of the characters (Paris, Neelix, Kess) are actually really annoying. But I figured, hey no problem, at least the ship battles will be cool with one technologically superior starship against hordes of Kazon and whatnot.

Except, no, the ship battles are NOT awesome, because Janeway always lets herself get shot at for 10 minutes and does nothing except get thrown around the bridge while shouting “Evasive maneuvers!” and “Damage reports!” And then when she finally remembers they have phasers on that ship, poor whiny Tom Paris informs her that all the phasers are burnt out and engines are offline, and they’re about to be boarded by aliens who can’t go faster than warp 4 and don’t even have transporters or shield technology! AAAGH!

So here’s the thing. I’m in the middle of season 4, probably near where I stopped watching when I left for college. Does this thing get any better?

Gentle readers, thoughts?

Dude, don’t blame me. All my best pick crew got killed in the first episode, leaving me with nothing but C-Team-Should’ve-Been-A-Redshirt-Kim, I-Was-Just-Waiting-For-Him-To-Betray-The-Maquis-So-I-Could-Summarily-Execute-Him-Paris, Beggers-Can’t-Be-Choosers-Torres, Kept-Around-To-Serve-As-A-Meatshield-Neelix, and I-Double-Crossed-The-Borg-And-All-I-Got-Was-This-Catsuit-Wearing-Twit. And Chakotay was an eyecandy decision that I never regretted and refuse to apologize for.

A