My march through all of the #StarTrek series and films, in air date/release date order, has reached its three-year anniversary. I'm now watching episodes that aired in early 1999, so the final season of DS9 and 5th season of Voyager. Some thoughts:

The final season of DS9 is pretty darn good. I've recently watched 'The Siege of AR-558,' and that single episode depicts war in the Trek universe in a far more compelling fashion than the entire first season of Discovery.

I've also watched 'Take Me Out to the Holosuite,' which is the best holodeck episode in the canon. And, honestly, holodeck episodes comprise their own weird and surprisingly expansive subgenre under the #StarTrek umbrella, but that's a different thread.

I've seen fans make two criticisms of the final season of DS9. One is that there's too much Ezri, and the other is that there's too much Vic Fontaine.

I'm prepared to state unequivocally that Ezri > Jadzia. And that's just science.

Now, the Vic Fontaine stuff, on the other hand, is pretty nauseating. All of the characters getting really into lounge music creeps me out. It's probably THE least compelling musical genre I can think of, and I respect my heroes less for becoming infatuated with it.

Voyager has been super inconsistent for me lately. 'Timeless' is a high point of the series for me. It fits squarely in the Trek lineage that started with TNG's 'Cause and Effect' where the writers play around with time travel is some really fun ways.

And 'Timeless' gives us Captain Geordi LaForge commanding the Galaxy-Class USS Challenger. AND THAT'S FUN AS HELL

However, right alongside gems like 'Timeless,' Voyager was also giving us stuff like 'Bride of Chaotica!' And maybe it was just the mood I was in when I watched it, but that episode bored me nearly to death. Like, I'd rather watch 'Threshold' a hundred times over.

I mean, I understand the writers wanted to have fun with the tropes associated with old pulp and serial stories. And there's even some clever commentary about how Star Trek storytelling conventions are super similar to many of those older pulp sci-fi tropes.

But, in doing so, they gave us a handful of supporting cast members who are literally generic pulp sci-fi cliches. Literally nothing interesting about Dr. Chaotica. He's just a rip off of Ming the Merciless. And I guess that was the point?

Ok, but man they gave a lot of lines to a character they knew was just a walking talking cliche. The black-and-white scenes just seemed interminable to me.

I watch Star Trek to see characters I like and care about solve exciting sci-fi problems, and 'Bride of Chaotica!' was like the writers experimented with taking that stuff out of the episode as much as possible. Dreadful.

The next episode on my rewatch is Voyager's 'Bliss,' which first aired Feb. 10, 1999. My memory of that episode is that it's pretty good.

Computer, end thread.