The Enterprise is answering a distress call when they encounter a Dyson Sphere, not a hand dryer but a gargantuan ball built around a sun designed to house a vast population. They find the source of distress, it’s a transport vessel, the Jenolan, that crashed 75 years earlier. An away team investigates and discovers that the transporter has been rigged to store a pattern over the long term. They dematerialise and it’s Captain Montgomery Scott. You know Scotty? He was in Star Trek. The original Star Trek. No, not Simon Pegg. After the ship crashed, he worked one of his miracles to try and survive, but his friend Franklin didn’t make it. On board the Enterprise, he wants to help in engineering, but his knowledge is out of date and his lack of professionalism annoys everyone. So he gets drunk and visits the holodeck, which is what most people in the 24th century are probably doing at any one time. Speaking to Picard, he confesses that he feels obsolete, so the captain asks Geordi to take him down to his old ship and try and fix it to get the scans. Look, it’s busy work but it’s better than nothing. While they’re down there, the Enterprise then gets sucked into the sphere and is propelled towards the sun? Can Scotty prove his worth once again and save the Enterprise-D?

Listen to more season 6 episodes

• Time’s Arrow
• Realm of Fear
• Man of the People

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The Enterprise transports Ambassador Alkar and his elderly mother to a mediation on a warring planet. The man is clearly a bit sinister and so Troi is obviously drawn to him so he can do something nefarious to her. That’s really just her role in this show. After his mother dies, he performs a ceremony with Troi and after that, she just camps it up and puts on some fabulous outfits. But she’s also ageing rapidly and sleeping with younger crew members like she’s Riker. It turns out that he’s such a good negotiator because he channels all his negative emotions into women and that makes them age for some reason. The best way to stop him is to kill Troi and everyone seems fine with that. And before he can perform the ritual on a new woman, Troi is resuscitated and he starts to age like he drank from the wrong grail cup but much cheaper. And then Troi gets young again and everyone is relieved because older women don’t belong in the workplace.

Listen to more season 6 episodes

• Time’s Arrow
• Realm of Fear

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The Enterprise investigates a missing ship, the USS Yosemite, which is stuck in a plasma streamer with the crew unaccounted for. With weird space rays making a shuttle trip or use of the transporter impossible, Barclay suggests tying the two transporter systems together so that they can get through. But the trouble is, that will make the process take double the time and Reg has a fear of transporters this week. While in the beam, he sees some unconvincing special effects and starts to question his sanity. But when he starts glowing all blue, the crew work out that there are lifeforms in the plasma (aren’t there always) and that they’ve been caught in the transporter. Going back in and being terribly brave, Reg cuddles the giant transporter worm and beams back a missing crew member. And we all learned something about facing our fears.

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