Mission Statement

Welcome to Put On Your Picardigan, a blog in which I will be revisiting Star Trek: the Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. I plan to watch both series again, from their first episodes, and write reviews of each. I am doing this for one reason: I have opinions about Star Trek, and I feel the urge to let them out. Actually, I think that should be one of the defining criteria for whether someone is a nerd, geek or dork, as opposed to a general member of the public: 'has opinions about Star Trek.' (The plural is important here.)

'Picardigan' is a fan nickname for the variant captain's uniform sometimes worn by Captain Picard, featuring a rather dashing little jacket that is the TNG equivalent of Captain Kirk's Slimming Wraparound Top For Fat Days. I chose it for the blog because going back to a show that I love as much as TNG (my first Trek) is as warm and comforting as putting on a favourite cardigan. Also, I wanted to call it something at least a little distinctive, as opposed to 'Some Person's Star Trek Reviews.' I focus on TNG because it was my first Trek, and on DS9 because I think it is the best Trek (for reasons that should become clear as I review it). I honour TOS as the source of all things, and I kind of prefer to pretend that Voyager and Enterprise didn't happen. Or Insurrection. Or Nemesis. 

I discovered in a recent conversation that some poor little people don't actually know what a cardigan is, so in case you're confused by the attempted pun, it's a knitted jacket, or to put it another way, a sweater that buttons up the front. They're named after the Seventh Earl of Cardigan, in honour of his service in the Crimean War, because there was a time when if you were enough of a British Empire Badass, you could get something soft and woolly named after you. Or something; I think the Charge of the Light Brigade was his fault, but at least that made a good poem. Cardigans are often called 'cardies' for short, meaning that the Cardassians have the distinction of the most incongruously cosy-sounding racial epithet in the known galaxy (except perhaps 'fuzzy-wuzzies,' which is mercifully pretty obsolete). If you already knew what a cardigan is, I hope that at least some of the stuff about the Crimean War in that paragraph was news to you.

I intend to follow a rigorous update schedule of 'when I feel like it.' Regarding content, it is fair to inform you now that there will be swearing, there will be inappropriate slang for a person of my demographic profile, there will be a lot of references to other things I like, including but not limited to Mary Poppins, Top Gear and H.P. Lovecraft, and there will be a lot of silliness and idle speculation. I should also mention that to me, making fun of Star Trek is part and parcel of loving it. When I point out things that I think don't make sense, or take the piss, it should never be taken as an indication of not liking the show (all right, I may not like some individual episodes, and will never review 'Profit and Lace'). 

Rules of the Blog
  1. I welcome your comments but will delete any that I think are stupid or mean; my definition of stupid or mean is the only one I accept for this purpose. This particularly applies to comments being mean to other commenters. Disagree politely. The fact that I feel the need to say this as Rule 1 goes to show how unpleasant the Internet can be.
  2. Data is awesome. 
  3. Beards make everything better. 
  4. O'Brien must suffer.
  5. Shut up, Wesley.
I hope you will enjoy the blog.