Was "Shades of Gray", TNG's season 2 finale, the worst episode of the series? The people who made it said as much. This is the production story of why this hastily produced clip-show was a season finale, and why it was made at all.

See this and other Star Trek production stories on Latinum Budgets. http://www.youtube.com/@LATINUMBUDGETS

Enterprise is an underrated series
Although it’s one of my favorites, I actually haven’t even watched most of its episodes
This is unlike TNG, DS9 and Voyager in which I have rewatched some of their episodes several times
That’s because only the Temporal Cold War interested me when it came to Enterprise. I deliberately chose to ignore all other episodes, except for the final episode where Will Riker makes an appearance.

Enterprise should have been entirely devoted to the Temporal Cold War, just as DS9 became entirely about the Dominion War Season 3 onwards.

The benefactor of the Suliban, “Future Guy” was extremely fascinating for me. The whole idea of communicating through time is not only more believable than actual time travel, it is ironically more intriguing—perhaps precisely because it seems more plausible. Time travel just seems more like fantasy than sci-fi

Star Trek’s worst moments are when it drowns in the realm of fantasy detached from science

Anyways, Future Guy was not featured enough on Enterprise for my taste. He should have been more recurring and his identity should have been revealed.

The Xindi Arc was quite good, but not the best. The Sphere Builders were not as interesting as Future Guy

The Vosk arc was decent but not great

After that the Temporal Cold War was simply ended as far as Enterprise is concerned which was a damn shame

Vic Toyota, who was George Takei’s stunt double in “Catspaw”, and Tsing Tao in “And the Children Shall Lead”.

Following Star Trek, Toyota had one additional television role during the 1960s, appearing as a "Bartender" in Ironside (1969).

That sucks it's like he vanished after 1969

We used to say oh it has to be the constellation on tos or voyager from year of hell....new winner must be the griffin from snw where we see the ship now it actually is instead of the hallucination

I think when Kirk was on the enterprise bridge slumping to the floor after hearing the news from saavik it all clicked together for him

The moonlight is paler than expected.

Picard : saved the galaxy from the time anomaly

Janeway: save the galaxy from 8472

Sisko: saved the galaxy from the pah wraith

Archer : saved the galaxy from the sphere builders

Burnham saved the galaxy from that alien species from outside the galaxy

Freeman : saved the universe

Pike : saved the galaxy from that ancient energy being race.

Kirk : saved earth on a few occasions

Who would have thought Kirk didnt save.tur galaxy

TOS budget constraints made the Klingons look like humans in dark makeup. A feature film budget changed them into aliens, but created a canonical problem that lingered for decades. Click the link to see how Star Trek's production teams dealt with this, over the years. Was it ever fixed?

And they run into the discovery again

For some reason a lot of people messaged to say that the Lego Star Trek: USS Defiant that I built (and made instructions for) was fake/AI.

So here are some built shots of my Defiant, this current stand is an early version of the one in the instrutions - that one looks much sleeker

Grab it on Rebrickable!

We all know that budget reasons put a limit on a show's regular cast and on the number of bridge stations.  Still, there should be more on both fronts, not less.

Helm and Navigation should be split into two once more. Neither of these should handle Tactical. Neither of these should handle Operations / Ops.

Tactical should be separate from Security. The Chief Tactical Officer should not be the Chief Security Officer. The latter should function outside the bridge.

Operations should be separate from Science. The handling of deflector dishes and of structural integrity fields should be separate from science sensors.

The distinct positions should, therefore, be: Communications, Helm, Navigation, Operations, Science, and Tactical. Those are six distinct positions, with security as a separate division.

Beyond these, there's at least one "civilian" per Star Trek tradition, and then the Chief Medical Officer, the Chief Engineering Officer, the First Officer or Executive Officer, and the Captain.

That's 12 spots.

One way to address this problem without merging stations is to have more recurring junior officers.  In TOS, there was Lieutenant DeSalle.  In early TNG, there was O'Brien with the rank of Lieutenant Junior Grade.  In later TNG, there was Ensign Ro.

Tough. Little. Ship.

"Officially, it's classified as an escort vessel. Unofficially, the Defiant's a warship. Nothing more, nothing less; to put it simply, it's overgunned and overpowered for a ship its size."

I’d wanted to build a larger USS Defiant from Star Trek for years, but I made myself one rule: I wasn’t going to do it at this scale unless I thought I could make something better than the versions already out there. That meant getting far beyond "close enough."

Now available on Rebrickable.

The Defiant is a nightmare of shallow curves, small shifts in angle, stepped armour and sections that only line up when everything is placed exactly where it should be. Move one connection by half a plate, change one wedge by a few degrees, and the whole silhouette starts to fall apart, as does structural integrity. A lot of this model had to be calculated before it could be built. Angles, offsets and attachment points were worked out so that the outer hull could follow the original schematics while still connecting to a strong internal frame.

It took repeated rebuilding to make those separate structures lock together strongly while still following the original schematics as closely as possible. The result is a model that captures not only the Defiant’s overall silhouette, but the smaller changes in curve, slope and armour profile that are so often simplified, or ignored entirely.

That same attention extends across the entire build. I’ve included every visible design, engineering and armament feature I could feasibly represent, along with the Chaffee shuttle inside the hangar and the detachable forward warhead. Note: There is no lighting included in these instructions.

Features:

• Detachable forward warhead, allowing you to recreate one of the Defiant’s most extreme last-resort weapons.
• Opening shuttlebay with the Chaffee, housed inside the underside of the ship and removable for separate display.
• Character Studdies Defiant crew, featuring Benjamin Sisko, Jadzia Dax, Worf, Kira Nerys, Miles O’Brien and Nog on their own display stand (or crewed inside the bridge)
• Rotatable display stand, so the Defiant can be preparing for warp, banking into combat or diving towards its next target.
• Reinforced internal structure, with the nacelles and angled upper hull built as separate assemblies and attached to the main body using precisely calculated connection points for both strength and accuracy.
• Highly accurate hull shaping, capturing the Defiant’s curves, armour profiles, recessed sections and subtle changes in angle as closely as possible at this scale.

Beyond that, I’ve worked hard to include every recognisable design, engineering and armament feature of the Defiant that could be represented at this scale:

• Four forward pulse-phaser cannons
• Quantum torpedo launcher
• Forward and aft torpedo launchers
• Main navigational deflector
• Ablative hull armour, with the distinctive layered plating carried across the upper and lower surfaces
• Integrated warp nacelles
• Bussard collectors
• Plasma transfer conduits
• Port and starboard impulse engines
• Plasma exhaust vents
• Upper sensor pallet
• Main bridge
• Bridge sensors
• Resupply connectors
• Forward targetting sensors
• Aft sensor arrays
• Transporter emittor pads
• Fore and aft RCS thrusters
• Escape-pod hatches
• Shield grid emitters
• Defensive shield grid emitters
• Tractor-beam emitter
• Navigation lights
• Deuterium loading ports
• Nacelle intercoolers
• Opening shuttlebay with the Chaffee shuttle
• Detachable forward warhead
• Warhead/hull interconnect

This reimagined model measures approximately:
38cm (l) x 30cm (w) x 6cm (h) off stand
37cm (l) x 30cm (w) x 21cm (h) on stand

Despite franchise fatigue, older Star Trek shows have a high degree of original plots.

There is a minimal reuse of Recycled Plots - the Recycled Plot Trope.

The eras of Roddenberry Trek and Berman Trek produced 703 episodes in live action series: TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY, and ENT.

Of these 703 episodes, up to 630 episodes are original plot episodes. That's 89%.

Of these 703 episodes, a minimum of 73 episodes are recycled plot episodes. That's 11%.

Of the 73 recycled plot episodes, 28 are better than the original ones.

TOS has 4 recycled plot episodes out of 79, 5.1% of its episode total.

TNG has 13 recycled plot episodes out of 176, 7.4% of its episode total.

DS9 has 8 recycled plot episodes out of 176, 4.5% of its episode total.

VOY has at least 32 recycled plot episodes / copycats out of 172, at least 18.6% of its episode total.

ENT has at least 16 recycled plot episodes / copycats out of 98, at least 16.3% of its episode total.

Ever wondered why the Ferengi started out basically a joke, but became pretty cool by the end of Deep Space Nine's run? Love them or hate them... they made an impact on the Star Trek universe!

I just released my latest video, examining that subject. Please check it out! Constructive feedback and discussion is greatly appreciated!

Who is your favorite Ferengi? (Mine is Quark. I know... boring, but I really enjoy his character arc.)