Shmegalamonga: Star Trek season 4 and 5.

Okay, the fuzzy blurry shape of this has floated in my mind for a couple years, and, someone did it as a message board thread, and that kicked me in the pants.

So, here it is.

Every geek worth his salt wishes there had been all 5 seasons of Classic Trek.

(Y'know, this one)

But, there wasn't.....so...what's the next best thing?
Can season 4 and 5 be cobbled together?
I say "yes", or else, there wouldn't be this post.
So, here we go.

So, what equals a season?

Well, season 1 was 29 episodes, season 2 was 26 episodes, and season 3 was 24.
So, add 'em up, divide by three, and it averages out to...well, calculator says 26 and a zillion threes...
Eh, let's say 27.
Times two, for two seasons, 54.
That's how many "lost episodes", we have to fill in.

Easy-peasy.
Looking around, I've even got all the stuff that does it.

Here we go....

The animated series.
22 episodes, and that whittles it down to 32.

The classic movies.
(See here and here)

They've got the cast, they continue the story, "Wrath Of Khan", is the sequel to "Space Seed", two-parter episodes count as tele-movies, so movies must be episodes, so, these flicks must count as a season.

All right, animated, and films, there's seasons 4 and 5 right here.
That's always satisfied me.
But, for the sake of this thing, let's fill in the episode count.
So, 26 to go....

The first two Next-Gen films.
(See here and here)
One's got Kirk, the other loops all the way back to Cochrane.
Totally TOS crossovers.
If Freddy vs Jason is Freddy 8, then crossovers equal entries/episodes.
So, bada-bing, bada-bang, and, we're down to 24.

Star Trek, and Star Trek Into Darkness.
(See here and here)
Natch.
And down to 22.

Okay, so crossovers count, that tosses in...

..."Trials and Tribble-ations", and...

..."In A Mirror Darkly".

And we're down to 20.
That was all the easy ones.
Now, we gotta get creative, and picky.

No two ways about it, we gotta do novels.
Well, obvious standouts...

The Lost Years Quadrilogy.
"The Lost Years", "A Flag Full Of Stars", "Traitor Winds", and "Recovery".

Fills the gap from the end of TOS, to "The Motion Picture".
Include these, and the movies really do continue smoothly along as episodes.

And, down to 16.
They're dropping away, told you it would be easy-peasy.

"Strangers From The Sky".
By my friend, Margaret.

"First Contact", written before "First Contact".
And, cooler, IMHO.

Kirk from just before "Wrath Of Khan", flashes back in a Spock mindmeld to lost memories of a timewarp adventure before "Where No Man Has gone Before", where he went back to the 2020's, and took part in Vulcan first contact before the historically recorded one by Cochrane.

It's epic, and still works in continuity with minor dent hammering.

"Burning Dreams".

The life story of Captain Pike.

Old-TNG-Era-but-pre-JJTrek-Spock re-encounters the Talosians, who give him a flashback of Pike just after "The Menagerie", and within that flashback, Pike flashes back to his whole life.
Then, when it catches back up, we get filled in everything that happened to him after "Menagerie".
So, there you go, back to TOS-era.

"Dwellers In The Crucible".

Somewhere between "The Motion Picture", and "Wrath Of Khan".
I'm thinking closer to "Khan".
Definitely a prequel to "Strangers", cuz Cleante from this pops up in that one as a cameo.

So, we get a look inside a Klingon prison camp through the eyes of two female protagonists, while Kirk and crew race to save them.
It's really all in the execution, you gotta read it.
I dunno why, this one messed me up for a couple days.
And, you can see from the sorts of things I'm desensitized to, that's no minor feat at all.
Well done.
Bravisima.
Magnifico.

You WANT a story that sticks to your brain, doncha?
Who the hell wants something you forget about?
Watch "Honey boo Boo", if that's what you want.

Anyhoo, that's the Bonanno TOS-era trilogy, and we're down to 13.

"Federation".

Wow, this one...I've yet to see the time travel epic that compares in any sf universe.
It's tangled.

TOS-era Kirk's Enterprise falls into a blackhole, and TNG-era Picard's Enterprise falls into the same black hole, and they meet at the event horizon.

Meanwhile, a post-WWIII villain from Cochrane's time has survived into Kirk's time with nanites, and into Picard's time as a computer virus that's possesses Data, and both incarnations are in the blackhole with Kirk and Picard.

Meanwhile, post "Metamorphosis", Cocharane's on Kirk's ship flashing back to post "First Contact", and what led to all this.

Afterward, pre "The Motion Picture", Kirk sends a sealed telegram to Picard in regards to this adventure.

Afterward-afterward, post "Generations", Picard gets the telegram.

Meanwhile pre "Generations", Kirk is being telepathically shown all this by The Guardian Of Forever, and then forgets it all.
Else, he wouldn't fulfill destiny by dying in "Generations".

So, it's basically a prequel to "Generations", that's better than "Generations".
I dig it.
And it makes a good trilogy with "Generations", and....

"The Return".

Shortly after "Generations", Kirk is regenerated and revived with Borg tech, and used as a weapon against the Federation, and, here we get the crossover we thought we were gonna get with "Generations".

Kirk fights Picard, Kirk reunited with Spock and McCoy, Spock mindmelds the captains together, Kirk and Picard meet up on DS9, Kirk and Picard fight the Borg, everything you wanted to see.

And, it reveals a link between V'Ger and the Borg, thus looping it back to "The Motion Picture".

And, by blowing up the Borg homeworld (hey, the book is 17 years old, and it's spoiled on the fuckin' cover) it gives a good reason for the Borg counter-attack in "First Contact".

So, it not only bridges "Generations", and "First Contact", it enhances them.
And, by linking it up with "First Contact", and "The Motion Picture", it connects to "Federation", and that enhances "First Contact", even more.

Finally, who are we kidding?
The Shatner books are by the Reeves-Stevens.
This is a sequel to "Federation".

Which brings us to....

"Prime Directive".

I think it's the first one by the Reeves-Stevens.

The last adventure before "The Lost Years".
From Kirk's point of view, after "Federation".

Kirk's crew gets framed for destroying a world, and the galaxy sees them as Hitlers, and they have to clear their names.
In the process, the Enterprise gets fucked up, and rebuilt, and explains the refit for The Animated Series.

And, that's the best and most popular Reeves-Stevens ones, and that's a trilogy, and we're down to 10.

Invasion!
"First Strike", "The Soldiers Of Fear", "Time's Enemy", and "The Final Fury".

So, Medusas and other monsters and boogeymen are real, and based on this alien race called The Furies from the Delta Quadrant, and all 4 shows fight them.

Kirk runs into them, and just barely gets them to tumble back into their magic space door (I forget the technobabble) and gets them to go fuck off for a century.

A century later, they come back, and Picard is waiting for them with better preparation.

DS9 is attacked by these robot bug-men things that The Furies called "the unclean", and Sisko toilet flushes them into the wormhole, but it goes on the fritz, and sends them to the Delta Quadrant, and centuries in the past, where they fight The Furies, and the horror of their conflict makes The Furies go crazy in the first place, and causes this whole thing.

Finally, Janeway fights The Furies in their home quadrant, and has to stop them sending the giant invasion fleet to the Alpha Quadrant, and you can guess it, at the price of loss of a doorway home.

"Enterprise", didn't exist yet, so they didn't get to play.

Eh, it's fun.
And, we're down to 6.

"Final Frontier".

A prequel about Captain Robert April.
Ties into "The Counter-Clock Incident", from TAS.

"Best Destiny".

A sequel to "Final Frontier".

The framing device is a post "Undiscovered Country", Kirk flashing back to being a 10 year old kid on April's Enterprise with his dad.

This version of history is kinda-sorta hinted at in JJ-Abrams Trek.

And that's the Diane Carey duology, and we're down to 4.

"The Eugenics Wars", and "To Reign In Hell".

The framing device of the first two is TOS-era Kirk reading the history files of the Eugenics Wars.
These volumes show how Khan's 1990's match up with ours.
Largely, the loophole was the world governments classifying an awful lot, and then it all became declassified in Kirk's time.
Also, we meet up with every 20th century Trek character, and what they were doing at the time.
Gary Seven, and Roberta Lincoln figure heavily.

The framing device of the third volume is post "The Voyage Home", Kirk and Spock reading Khan's diaries of what happened after "Space Seed".
So, altogether, we get Khan's whole life.
Neato.

And we're down to 1.

"First Frontier".

Star Trek versus dinosaurs.

I dunno, this just tickles me for some reason.
Came a couple years after the "Jurassic Park", movie, so, America still had dinosaurs on the brain.
Dino-mania goes in cycles.
When we get goodies like this out of it, I'm a happy camper.

Not one of the big hoo-hah epic ones publicity wise like "Strangers From The Sky", or "Federation", but...it should have been.
It was really bigger than the generic filler-book cover suggests.
Would have been a good movie.
Fun stuff.

And, that kills the episode count.
There's your lost episodes, kids.

...numbers wise, but I got some I could throw in.
Let's call these "extra goodies".
Or, season 5.5.

The Yesterday Saga.
"Yesterday's Son", and "Time For Yesterday".

Sequels to TOS's "All Our Yesterdays".

Spock learns he sired a son with Zarabeth, and uses The Gaurdian Of Forever to reunite with him.

Complication and misfortune ensue.

That kills off the novels, let's do comic books.

Star Trek/X-Men.

See here.

"Star Trek/Legion Of Superheroes".

Ditto.

"Infestation".

See here and here.

I gotta wonder if that title is a deliberate hearkening back to "Invasion".

And, what the Hell, let's throw in....

...the Nintendo game for good measure.

It's set up like an episode, it wants to be an episode, let's let it in the clubhouse.

And while we're letting in games....

"Star Trek Online".

Particularly this bit, where they use The Guardian Of Forever to go back to TOS-era, and Leonard Nimoy voices Spock.

And for good measure, let's toss in...