Personal – Trekking with Dennis

A Year In Review

Spoiler Warning: Beware spoilers for Star Trek: Discovery.

Six years ago, on the 30th of November 2019, this website went live for the first time with a short, simple test post. The anniversary has always seemed like a good moment to reflect and take stock – so if you’ll forgive me the indulgent waffling, that’s what we’re gonna do today. This isn’t my “end of the year” piece, looking at the entertainment highs and lows of 2025, and it annoys me to see publications putting those out before Christmas, or even in November! I’ll publish my annual End-of-Year Awards in late December, so be sure to check in to see which films, games, and TV shows will win an imaginary statuette!

Well… where to start?

It’s been an interesting year. In November last year, I learned that my sister was going to have a baby, and my niece was born in the spring. This prompted me to do something I haven’t felt able to do in a long time: undertake a significant journey. I’m disabled, as you may know, and for a long time – basically a decade now – I haven’t really felt up to leaving the house very often, let alone travelling. But I had to meet my niece! So I managed a difficult and painful journey and made it to the hospital a few hours after she was born. And I’ve been back to visit about half a dozen times since then. These trips are still uncomfortable for me, but I think – I *think* – I’m doing a little better each time… or just getting more used to it.

Stock photo of a train at a railway station. — I’ve been on several expeditions this year!

Last year, when I marked the website’s fifth anniversary, I talked about how I felt some sense of pride at having stuck with it for half a decade, and how I’d be happy to keep going to see if I could make it to the ten-year mark in 2029. Immediately after writing those words – literally within a few days – I had a major health scare. I’ll spare you the gory details, but suffice to say that one of my regular blood tests came back with some alarming news, leading to a series of scans, a biopsy, and some treatment. But because I’m me, and because my head always goes to the most catastrophic extremes when such things arise, I was definitely thinking about and planning for the worst as last Christmas and New Year were approaching!

My health is poor, and it’s been in what I’ve half-jokingly referred to as a “managed decline” for years at this point. I’ve known that things are going to get worse rather than better, but I admit that I’d been somewhat lulled into believing that I could continue coasting; that I was relatively settled. Last year’s bad news, because it wasn’t directly related to my ongoing health issues, felt like a lightning strike coming from nowhere, and it definitely unsettled me. Perhaps that’s why, after I got the all-clear on that front, I was so keen to do things like visit my niece earlier in the year; it felt like something had shifted and I had to try, for once, to get out of my safety zone. Or maybe I’m doing another thing I always do and I’m overanalysing it!

Stock photo of an MRI machine. — Being loaded into an MRI machine for a scan made me feel like a torpedo…

But those visits to my niece, sister, and brother-in-law – the first of which was the first time I’d visited them in their “new” home – gave me the confidence to do something else. You might remember this if you’re a regular reader, but in late August I made the journey to Blackpool to attend a Star Trek convention for the first time in almost fifteen years.

Although the journey was long (three trains and a tram), and it ended up being a ridiculously long day for me, I had a whale of a time. I met several actors from The Original Series, Deep Space Nine, Enterprise, and Strange New Worlds, shaking their hands and getting my picture taken. How often, these days, can one claim to have met an actor who appeared in *the first-ever* episode of Star Trek? That’s definitely something neat that I can add to my résumé as a Trekkie! And as I said in my piece, sitting down with Chase Masterson (Leeta from DS9) for a script-reading session was an absolutely wonderful experience. My thanks, once again, goes out to the folks who organise Destination for making the event accessible and for offering extra support to disabled folks like myself. I simply wouldn’t have been able to attend, or to have any of those experiences, without that additional support.

And yes… I’m still eyeing next year’s event and seriously considering attending!

Photograph of the Blackpool promenade with Blackpool Pier in the background. — I snapped this photo on the way to the convention.

On the home front, I got my hands dirty with some DIY for the first time in a long time. I’ve lived in this house for more than twelve years, but I’ve never redecorated the living room, if you can believe that! My cat tore a big hole in the wallpaper just after Christmas, and after living with it for a while I finally took the plunge and began working on redoing the walls. And, as with any job, it took longer, cost more, and was more complicated than I originally hoped!

There’s still some work to do, but I’m quite proud of the results. I managed to replace some broken drywall that had been hiding beneath the wallpaper, swapped out the old cream/beige colour in the room with something a bit brighter and more cheerful, and even put up some small hooks for hanging Christmas lights and other decorations. Next year, finances permitting, I’ll replace the old carpet, too, completing the refurbishment of the room where I spend most of my time!

Stock photo of a paint can and paintbrush. — I’ve been doing some redecorating!

Here on the website, there have been a few changes that you may have noticed. When I started writing lots of articles and reviews about modern Star Trek, I gave each of the new shows its own static webpage, just for ease of organisation if nothing else. But the older shows, pre-Discovery, were all lumped together on one “Classic Trek” page. As time wore on, though, the Classic Trek page had become massively long and unwieldy. It was overladen with so many articles and pieces about those older shows that it had become too difficult to navigate. So I deleted it and have replaced it with individual pages for every Star Trek show. As you can see in the menu above, they’re currently categorised as “Older Treks,” in contrast to the “Newer Treks” of the CBS All Access/Paramount+ era.

I think this change has been for the better, and it was a bit of fun to put the new static pages together, as it gave me another chance to talk about some of those shows. I still haven’t done individual episode re-watches for DS9 or Enterprise, but I did finally get around to The Original Series this year, when I wrote up my thoughts on the classic episode Arena. Stay tuned for more of those episode re-watches in the weeks and months ahead. If – as I’ve predicted – Star Trek might go off the air again before the end of the decade, re-watching older episodes will be all we’ve got!

Still frame from Star Trek TOS showing the Gorn captain. — I wrote up my thoughts on *Arena* earlier in the year.

While we’re talking of pages being changed, you might notice that my old Jedi: Fallen Order page and my newer Mass Effect page have been taken down. The reason for that is a bit complicated, and I lay out my thoughts in more detail in an article you can find by clicking or tapping here. But the long and short of it is that, now that Electronic Arts (the publisher of those games) is being taken over by the Saudi government’s investment fund, I no longer feel I can purchase or support their games. EA has been a shady and ugly company for a long time, but this change in ownership would mean I’d be putting money directly into the hands of people and organisations that I feel fundamentally conflict with my values. So that, rather unfortunately, means no Jedi: Survivor sequel and no Mass Effect 4 for me – unless something changes on that front.

It isn’t easy to be an “ethical consumer” in this late-stage capitalist marketplace, and some folks say it’s so far out of reach that there’s no point even trying. Again, I’ll direct you to my longer piece on the topic, linked above, but suffice to say that, when something is relatively clear-cut, I think it’s worth *trying*, at least, to refuse to purchase from a corporation or organisation that conflicts in such a fundamental way with our own personal beliefs and values. So if you hoped to hear more from me on Fallen Order and Mass Effect… sorry.

Screenshot of Jedi: Survivor showing a visual bug. — I won’t be picking up the sequel to *Jedi: Survivor*.

The final change to the static webpages saw me shift the old Starfield page to the more broadly-titled “Bethesda Games,” as I’ve been talking more about the likes of The Elder Scrolls and Fallout. I have no plans to return to Starfield, quite honestly – especially now that I no longer use PC Game Pass (more on that in a moment!) – so this change, again, seemed like the right move. It means that page can include my coverage of the Fallout TV show, the upcoming Elder Scrolls VI, and more.

That leaves the “Video Games” section of the website with just three pages: Bethesda, Mario Kart, and my sometime Video Game Spotlight series – which I really ought to do more with! Truthfully, I haven’t played as many games this year as I planned to, and some that I had been looking forward to and might’ve expected to sink a lot of time into (*cough* Civilization VII *cough*) turned out not to be as engaging or as time-sinky as I expected. Still, I played and reviewed Dynasty Warriors: Origins, Indika and South of Midnight this year, all of which were excellent and all of which I thoroughly recommend! With winter sales coming up in the next few weeks, it might be a good time to wishlist them.

Screenshot of South of Midnight showing the player character approaching a river. — *South of Midnight*.

But those webpages aren’t the only things to have changed around here! If you’re on a mobile device or tablet, you might not’ve noticed this, but the website’s background image changed in July. I used to have a fairly plain grey gradient as a background, but I changed it to be a black background with white stars. It reminds me a little of some of the Star Trek fanpages that I used to frequent in the ’90s, when I was first getting started with using the internet, and I think it’s on theme for the website! Is it super basic? Yes. Is it modern? Absolutely not! But I like it, so it’ll stay for now – at least until I change my mind again!

You can’t see it, because the current logo is my Christmassy one, but I also redesigned the website’s main banner and logo in July at the same time. That change wasn’t as extreme, basically just a change of font and a slight change in colour, but again, I liked the end result. I’d be absolutely awful if I had to run a major brand, because I’m *constantly* changing my mind when it comes to what I like and what I don’t, and how I want things to look! For a website of this size, though… let’s just say it doesn’t matter in the slightest!

Trekking With Dennis main website banner July 2025. — The redesigned banner/logo as of July.

I mentioned a moment ago that I’ve cancelled my PC Game Pass subscription. I’d been a subscriber to PC Game Pass (the PC version of Xbox Game Pass) since it was in beta, and I’d really enjoyed having access to the library of titles on the service. But earlier in the year, Microsoft hiked the price significantly – on top of a similar price rise just twelve months earlier. Taking the two together, I’d have been paying 70% more for my Game Pass subscription in November 2025 than I had been in the summer of 2024, and that kind of price hike is just unacceptable to me. As I wrote in my piece about Game Pass, a subscription model like this *should* be the “wave of the future” in gaming, as gaming moves ever closer to an all-digital model. But Microsoft’s greed messed it up, and I won’t be returning to Game Pass unless and until it feels like good value again.

Game Pass wasn’t the only subscription I cancelled in 2025. For years, I’ve only been picking up the likes of Netflix and Paramount+ for a month or two at a time, in order to watch specific shows and films. I’ll take advantage of my subscription at those times, binging some shows and catching up on some of what I might’ve missed! But for a while, I’ve retained Disney+ as an ongoing subscription. But I cancelled that this year, after realising I hadn’t been using it anywhere near as much as I thought. I’ll still pick up Disney+ sometimes, but I’ll do what I’ve been doing with Paramount+ and Netflix and use it for a month or two to watch a few things before pausing it again. That leaves Amazon Prime as my only subscription, and that’s not really because of Prime Video! It’s because I like the next-day delivery.

Promo graphic of Xbox Game Pass for PC. — I’ve cancelled Game Pass thanks to the 70% price hike.

Let’s talk traffic! Back in January, the website ticked past the 250,000-hit mark. That’s a quarter of a million visitors in just over five years. And later in 2025, it passed the 300,000-hit mark, too. At time of writing, we’re sitting at just below 330,000 hits, which is a pretty staggering number if you think about it! That’s *almost* a third of the way to one million since November 2019. And after 2024 had seen a bit of a dip in clicks as the year wore on, 2025 has seen a significant uptick. The website had eclipsed 2024’s total numbers by the summer, and has kept on growing since.

In terms of individual articles and posts, I got a ton of hits last December for my piece titled Uh, Guys? Star Trek: Discovery Is Still Canon, which I wrote in response to some awful clickbait that I’d seen doing the rounds. January was also a good month for traffic, as my piece about the unfinished novel The Winds of Winter picked up some attention. My coverage of the Section 31 TV movie also did pretty well, despite being interrupted by Storm Éowyn and a days-long power cut! My review of Futurama’s recent season in March got quite a bit of attention, and through the summer, my reviews of several Strange New Worlds episodes were racking up the clicks. More recently, the top-performing piece on the website since its publication has been my review of the popular Netflix film KPop Demon Hunters, which I wrote back in August.

Still frame from KPop Demon Hunters showing Rumi singing Golden. — And yes, I’m still listening to *Golden*.

I’ve added three pieces to my “Greatest Hits” collection over the past twelve months. First was my look back at the classic Dreamcast game Shenmue, which I wrote to celebrate the 25th anniversary of its launch back in December. Shenmue remains, to this day, one of my all-time favourite video games, even though its story remains tragically incomplete all these years later. Next, I finally wrote up my “Borg teasing theory,” which is something I’d been kicking around for a long time! And not long after that article went live, I wrote up my thoughts on Star Trek: Discovery’s “post-apocalyptic” setting, and why I felt it didn’t work as intended after Season 3.

2025 has also been a year in which artificial intelligence has been on my mind – as I’m sure it has for a lot of folks. I wrote two pieces about A.I. this year, the first of which considered one possible future for generative A.I. in the film and TV space, and the second of which was my response to a paper titled A.I. 2027, which was quite an alarmist take on a possible future “rogue A.I.” scenario. This technology seems to be moving quite quickly at the moment, so there may be more to say on the topic in the months ahead. Although technology is a little outside of my usual wheelhouse, I think it’s kind of on-brand for a website where Star Trek, sci-fi, and general geekiness are the order of the day!

Still frame from Star Trek: TOS showing the M5 computer. — The M-5 Multitronic Unit from *Star Trek*.

So that’s all for now. If you made it to the end of this waffling ramble (or rambling waffle), thank you! The past twelve months have been more hectic than I expected when I last sat down to write a piece like this, but we made it here in the end. I appreciate your support, your visits to the website, and you taking the time out of your day to share in some of these geeky topics with me. Writing about Star Trek, video games, and everything else continues to be a source of fun and enjoyment for me, and getting the chance to spend a bit more time thinking about some of these fictional universes is just fantastic.

As to the future… well, I’m still hoping to hit that ten-year milestone, which is now just four years away. If I made it this far, surely I can keep going till the end of the decade! And maybe, health and finances permitting, I’ll be heading back to Blackpool in August to celebrate Star Trek’s 60th anniversary with my fellow Trekkies. But until then, I’m going to kick back in my newly-redecorated living room… and maybe indulge in a mug or three of mulled wine, since it’s that time of year!

Thanks again for all of your support, and I hope you’ll join me through December and into 2026 as I continue to geek out about Star Trek, gaming… and so much more.

-Dennis,
Sunday, 30^th November 2025

All properties mentioned above are the copyright of their respective broadcaster, studio, developer, distributor, company, etc. Some stock images may be courtesy of Unsplash. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

It’s My Fifth Anniversary!

Sat 30.11.24Dennis

Today is a special occasion! Five years ago, on the 30th of November 2019, I made my first post here on Trekking with Dennis, kick-starting a writing project that’s now been running for half a decade! I can scarcely believe it’s been five years already, but as I do every year, I wanted to step back for a moment and reflect on the website’s progress as well as talk about a few personal things that don’t really fit in anywhere else.

Firstly, I want to make note of the fact that this website is now my longest-running project… ever. I’ve been writing here on Trekking with Dennis for five whole years – which is longer than any individual job I’ve ever had, and longer than any other side-gig or hobby I’ve ever had. In many ways, five years doesn’t seem like a lot of time. It feels like it passed in the blink of an eye, to be honest with you! But at the same time, five years is half of a decade, more or less one-eighth of my life to date, and a pretty decent amount of time to be occupied by one thing! I’ve taken a few breaks here and there, sure, but there’s always something in my writing pile and I’ve usually been able to find something that interests me to talk about.

A photograph of a fountain pen. — I still enjoy the process of writing here on the website.

Beginning in late 2022, I definitely found myself writing less often than I had been when I started out – and that trend has continued this past twelve months, too. The first couple of months of 2024 saw eight pieces published in eight weeks, and I guess it’s beginning to stretch the truth to say that I write “several new articles and columns every week” – a boast that’s still on the homepage at time of writing! But I’m happy doing things this way, and as I said last year: writing what I want to write about at my own pace was the entire point of this website.

This past year I’ve had a pretty big problem with my internet connection. I’ve been disconnected for weeks at a time on two occasions – in December 2023 and June/July 2024 – and I’ve had shorter disconnections lasting anywhere from a few hours to a couple of days seemingly at random throughout the year. I’m still not convinced that my ISP has solved the problem; there seems to be confusion about whether there’s a “software” or “hardware” issue at the core of these repeated disconnections. I was able to work around it, getting back online using my phone’s hotspot and mobile data. But it’s been a pain in the backside to say the least – and probably a minor contributing factor to writing fewer posts this past twelve months.

A photo of a smartphone displaying a wi-fi symbol on the screen. — I’ve had some internet connectivity problems over the past twelve months.

Back in June, I published my 800th piece here on Trekking with Dennis. At time of writing I’m now at 828 posts… which is a pretty decent amount in five years! I’m still slowly chugging away toward that 1,000-post milestone – but barring any major problems, we’ll get there eventually. Though on current form it might not be until 2026! Still, it’s fun to look back on some of these articles and columns, sometimes. I remember most of them… though occasionally a piece will pop up that seems to have been entirely wiped from my memory, for some reason! I put that down to a combination of age and my general mental health!

With all of this looking back comes some reflection. There are several pieces in my writing pile that I haven’t completed this year for one reason or another, and a couple that proved more personal or more difficult to tackle than I initially expected. Sometimes, when the website may appear to be on hiatus, I am actually still working… but with no real deadlines to force my hand, articles and columns don’t get rushed to publication. There are a handful that I’d like to think will make it in the next couple of months… but watch this space, I guess. I don’t feel a huge amount of pressure.

Still frame from Star Trek: Enterprise showing the Enterprise-J. — It’s some kind of spaceship…

As we come to the end of the first half of the 2020s, that sense of time marching on that originally inspired me to carve out a small slice of the internet for myself has returned. But this time, I feel a little different about it. I have an archive of my own to look back on thanks to Trekking with Dennis, and as self-indulgent as it may seem, stepping back to re-read some of the pieces I’ve written over the last five years – most of which I’ve not returned to since their original publication – has been genuinely interesting.

Time catches up with all of us in the end, and although my health has been in what I’ve jokingly called a “managed decline” for a while, these moments of reflection re-emphasise that things aren’t static. Day to day, it can feel like not very much changes. But looking back over a short five-year span, I feel different. In some ways, I’ve grown and improved: I had the confidence to build my own computer for the first time, and running Trekking with Dennis has undoubtedly helped both my writing and design skills (though the latter is still lacking, for sure!) But in others, I notice a decline. My arthritis has worsened, and that’s having an impact on things like my ability to play games – especially for long periods of time. And my general health is noticeably worse than it was five years ago; some basic tasks are more difficult now than they were then, even though the difference day to day means it hadn’t really registered until I took a step back.

A photograph of colourful wax crayons. — I’m still not the best artist or designer in the world…

I mentioned that this website is the longest project I’ve ever had, and I confess that I feel a sense of pride in sticking with it for five years already. I’ve always been a “jack of all trades” in some ways; I dabble in different hobbies, activities, and even career paths without ever really settling. These things seem like fun at the time… but again, when reflecting and looking back, what I see is a succession of half-finished ideas, failed projects, and the debris of various hobbies that never got off the ground.

As a couple of examples, back in about 2015 I built the base-boards for a model railway, spent some money on pieces of track and the like, but only ever modelled a very small section of it before drifting away. I bought a guitar in 2006 that I played for about a year, on and off, but I was never satisfied with my progress and never took it any further. During my career in the games industry I moved several times, never sticking in one position or at one company for longer than a couple of years – before quitting altogether to focus on being a freelancer. That also didn’t last for very long.

A photograph of a guitar chord being played. — I never learned to play the guitar…

I guess what I’m saying is that I feel like I’ve finally settled on… something. Trekking with Dennis may not be the best website in the world. It may not have the most consistent output, nor even really stick to one theme or type of content. But it’s mine, and I’ve stuck with it longer than I’ve ever managed to stick with anything else. I haven’t been perfect; there are Star Trek episodes, seasons, and plenty of other things I should’ve reviewed or talked about that I didn’t get around to. But despite that, there’s something here that I can look back on with… well, some semblance of pride. And that’s kind of a new feeling for me.

When you’ve lived a bit of an itinerant life, never settling in one place for very long, never sticking with a job or even hobby for very long, and when you’ve got a divorce and other broken relationships in the past… having some consistent thing running for this long feels like an accomplishment. And maybe this is nothing but self-congratulatory drivel from someone who still has no real achievements to speak of. But I’ll take what I can get!

Photo from the first Oscars ceremony showing an award being presented. — Am I giving myself too much credit here?

So here’s to five years – the first five, at least. I don’t like to set goals, but having completed five years of writing and reviewing… why not push for five more? Why not try to make it to November 2029 and see how much more accomplished I’ll feel with an entire decade under my belt instead of just half? Why not make this article something I can look back on in another five years’ time and reflect on how much more progress I’ve made? Maybe that’s my next objective: to stay alive long enough to reach that milestone!

And there are plenty of things to look forward to over the next five years. Obviously there’s gonna be more Star Trek: two new seasons of Strange New Worlds for starters, as well as Starfleet Academy, the Section 31 TV movie, and the untitled comedy series. There are films on the horizon that I’m looking forward to, and remakes of a couple of great games from years past: Max Payne and Knights of the Old Republic. I’d love to still be here when all of these projects are released to be able to talk about them and share my thoughts on them with all of you.

Still frame from the KotOR Remake teaser showing Revan. — I’m still looking forward to the *KotOR* remake!

I should’ve mentioned this at the beginning, but this isn’t my “end-of-the-year” piece. I find it so frustrating to see publications putting together their “best of the year” lists or articles summarising the events of the year this early! There was one I saw a few days ago – in late November – that claimed to be a “summary” of the events of 2024… while there’s still almost five weeks left! That’s bonkers to me, so if you’re new around here please rest assured that my review of the year’s entertainment experiences will come at the end of December! That’s when I like to hand out some made-up awards and imaginary statuettes to my favourite entertainment experiences of the year.

So that gives me a few weeks to catch up on some of the projects I’ve missed, eh?

If you’ve stuck with me this far through this awfully indulgent stream-of-consciousness ramble, thank you! I hope you’ve enjoyed at least some of what I’ve had to say over the past twelve months. Whether you’re here as a fellow Trekkie, a gamer, or just as someone who enjoys blogs and websites about the wide world of geeky entertainment, I genuinely hope that I’ve written something this past year (or over the past five years) that you’ve found interesting or enjoyable. Thank you for your support, for clicking on the website, and for coming back to check out my totally unsolicited opinions on some of my favourite entertainment topics. See you… out there!

– Dennis
Saturday, 30th November 2024

Yet another year in review

Thu 30.11.23Thu 30.11.23Dennis

It’s the 30th of November – so it’s time to take stock and look back at the progress that Trekking with Dennis has made over the past twelve months. If you’re new around here, this is not my “end of year” post in which I’ll talk about some of the highs and lows of 2023. It’s far too early for something like that – and it really irritates me to see publications putting together their “best of the year” lists or retrospectives before Christmas! I mean, there’s still an entire month of 2023 left!

On the 30th of November 2019, I made my first post here on Trekking with Dennis. That was just a short test piece to make sure everything was up and running – but it kicked off a project that is now celebrating its fourth anniversary. Every year, I like to take a few minutes to look back at the past twelve months and just see how things have been going. It’s my way of marking the occasion, and I’ll share my thoughts with you today.

A girl holding a birthday cake with lit candles. — Happy 4th Birthday to Trekking with Dennis!

The past twelve months have been a series of ups and downs both personally and for the website – I think that’s indisputable at this point! I’ve written fewer articles and columns this year than I did last year, and some of the pieces that I did write – and felt pretty good about – haven’t been as widely-read as I’d have hoped.

Firstly, I’ve had some personal disruptions over the past twelve months that have impacted how much I’ve been able to write. I’ve had some major work done to my home, which involved having builders in for several weeks. There are still a few things left to finish from that particular project! Having a lot of construction and destruction going on – as well as making all of the plans and arrangements beforehand – definitely meant I wasn’t able to do as much as I’d hoped for several weeks.

A house being demolished, an excavator, and a man operating a hose. — Thankfully it wasn’t quite *this* extreme…

Also this year, I suffered an injury to my dominant hand. I broke several bones in my hand due to an unfortunate fall, and while it didn’t leave me entirely out of commission, it certainly made things like typing a bit more tricky for a while! I already suffer from arthritis in my hands and fingers, and this injury certainly hasn’t helped in that regard.

And then there’s the elephant in the room: burnout. I haven’t found myself wrangling with burnout in terms of writing here on the website – and there have been times when I’ve been especially pleased to be able to sit down and talk about some of my favourite entertainment subjects. I’m instead talking about the way in which I’ve felt burned out on the Star Trek franchise – something I detailed in a piece a few weeks ago.

Anson Mount as Captain Christopher Pike in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. — I’ve been feeling burned out on Star Trek for a while now.

One thing I’d like to do in the coming weeks and months is “pre-write” a handful of articles and columns, perhaps on topics that aren’t time-sensitive like older films or video games. That way I’ll have a handful of pieces in reserve that I can publish in the event that I find myself overwhelmed, unable to write, or suffering from a case of writer’s block! It seems like a good idea, at any rate – though whether I’ll actually be able to manage it is another matter entirely!

In housekeeping news, I’ve made a couple of changes to the website. If you look at the menu above, you might’ve noticed that the old “Let’s Play” page has been replaced with the more generic-sounding “Video Games” page. I’ve also added individual pages for four video games, titles that I’ve had a lot to say about. The Starfield page may not be a permanent fixture, though… because I doubt I’ll be playing that game again any time soon!

A screenshot of Starfield featuring a customised spaceship and a planetary body. — I’d been anticipating *Starfield* this year.

In mid-2020, I wrote a series of articles documenting my playthrough of Jedi: Fallen Order. That “let’s play” series was fun to write – but also pretty time-consuming. I made abortive attempts to write up playthroughs of other titles, but none really managed to get off the ground. The old “Let’s Play” webpage had therefore become outdated, and while I’d definitely consider returning to that format in future, it’s very much something that’s on the back burner for now. The page that replaced it is just an up-to-date list of my most recent gaming and games industry coverage, but the addition of pages for games that I talk about has been fun. I like to think it’s added a little something to the website, particularly as I’ve stepped back from writing as many pieces about the Star Trek franchise.

Just last month I published Trekking with Dennis’ 750th article! That was a pretty big milestone, three-quarters of the way to 1,000 pieces since November 2019. That piece was the first part of my Mario Kart 8 Deluxe tier list – a format that I had a lot of fun with and plan to return to in future.

A screenshot from Mario Kart 8 Deluxe showing Dry Bones on SNES Rainbow Road. — It’s Dry Bones!

We’ll talk more about stats and numbers in the new year, but the website passed the 200,000-hit mark in May of this year – before experiencing a significant decline in traffic in September! I’m not entirely sure what the cause of that drop-off has been. After the website saw a surge in hits during Star Trek: Picard’s third season, with my reviews and theories picking up some attention, things seemed to calm down going into the summer. I kind of expected things to remain relatively flat for a while – at least until the next big “viral” article – but in mid-September there was a sharp decline in traffic from which the website hasn’t recovered.

I’m not one to obsess over stats, but I think it’s worth being aware of the mid-September drop-off, at least. I’ve said repeatedly that I’d still be here writing and sharing my thoughts even if nobody was turning up… and who knows, maybe I’ll get the chance to prove that someday soon! Jokes aside, though, I have felt a little disheartened that some of the pieces I worked hard on this autumn haven’t picked up much attention or many hits. I don’t know what the cause of this is – but it seems reasonable to assume that changes to search engine results could be responsible.

A tumbleweed on a dirt road. — It must be some kind of visual metaphor…

Although I’ve had some moments of writer’s block this past year, by and large I still enjoy the process of writing here on the website. I said in the beginning that my goal was to carve out a small slice of the internet where I could share my thoughts and opinions about some of the entertainment topics that I’m passionate about or interested in – and crucially, do so at my own pace without needing to worry about things like word limits. The website still serves that purpose for me – even if there have been fewer things to write about over the last twelve months when compared to the website’s first couple of years in operation.

If you’ll permit the indulgence, I’ve picked out three pieces I’ve written over the past twelve months that I’m particularly pleased with. Firstly we have my critique of the rollercoaster year that the Star Trek franchise endured in 2022, in which I took Paramount to task for some pretty big failures – and noted a few successes, too. You can find that by clicking or tapping here.

Action figures based on the animated TV series Star Trek: Prodigy. — Toys for *Star Trek: Prodigy*.

Secondly, I talked about Rey’s potential return to the Star Wars franchise… after a relatively short break. I’m not sure that’s a project that I’d have given the green light to… but you can read my full thoughts by clicking or tapping here! And finally, I’d like to draw your attention to my two-part review of Baldur’s Gate 3 – which will almost certainly be my pick for “game of the year” when I dish out some made-up awards next month! That game is truly outstanding. You can read the first part, which is spoiler-free, by clicking or tapping here. The second part does contain spoilers, including for the game’s ending, and you can find it by clicking or tapping here.

All that remains to say is this: thank you for your support and attention over the past twelve months! If you’ve made it this far into this rather self-indulgent recap, I can only assume you’re a regular reader, and I really do want to thank you for that. I’m a bit of a hermit, both online and offline, and I don’t have a lot of people to talk to or interact with. This website is my stand-in for that, and sharing my opinions and thoughts with you (and anyone else who happens to turn up) continues to be a fun hobby and a source of enjoyment in what can be a dark, frightening, and uncaring world. Knowing that some folks are interested in what I have to say – and in a way, share these experiences and hobbies with me – is a source of light and inspiration.

Take care out there – and see you soon!

– Dennis
Thursday, 30th November 2023

All properties mentioned above are the copyright of their respective broadcaster, studio, developer, distributor, company, etc. Some stock images may be courtesy of Pixabay. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Stats and analytics for 2022

Tue 03.01.23Dennis

Happy New Year! As 2023 gets underway, I think it’s fun to look back at the past year and see how the website performed. Thanks to my web host and Google Analytics, I have quite a lot of data to dive into for measuring such things.

My annual caveat applies: this whole thing is just for fun! Running this website is a hobby for me, not something I endeavour to take too seriously, and even if no one was tuning in I’d still be writing because it’s something that I enjoy doing. I’m not intending to turn this website into a full-time job, nor am I interested in chasing “internet points” or going viral. So everything we’re about to discuss should be considered with that in mind!

A lovely stock photo of a man reading on a tablet.

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s reflect on the progress Trekking with Dennis made in 2022. This past year has been much less consistent on my side, with long breaks in between posts and a general slowdown in my writing. I wrote far fewer pieces for the website this year than I did in both 2020 and 2021, and the second half of the year in particular was much more sparse in terms of new articles, lists, and other posts.

That isn’t something I plan on addressing, at least not intentionally. As I said back in November when I last talked about this: the point of Trekking with Dennis for me is to talk about the subjects I fancy or that pique my interest at my own pace. In 2020 and 2021 I obviously found more things to talk about than I have this past year… and I’m actually okay with that. That doesn’t mean I don’t have regrets – there are films, television shows, and at least a dozen Star Trek episodes that I wish I’d found or made time to review in 2022. But I’d rather pace myself, take breaks when I need to, and continue enjoying what I do here instead of forcing myself to write to arbitrary, self-imposed deadlines and end up feeling burned out – or worse, no longer enjoying the creative process.

In short: if I find more time and energy to write in 2023 than I did in 2022, that’s great! But if not, that’s okay too.

The website saw some significant milestones in 2022. The final post of the year – my annual “End-of-Year Awards” piece – was the 650th article that I’ve published here since I began the project in November 2019. That’s quite a lot of writing! The total number of visitors that the website received in 2022 was just over 67,000 – which is an absolutely incredible number! That makes 2022 the best year on record for Trekking with Dennis, beating 2021’s visitor numbers by a little over 6,000. That may not sound like much (especially considering the massive year-on-year improvement from 2020 to 2021) but it’s an increase of almost 10%, which is pretty darn good. I’m running at almost the same level as inflation!

Another big landmark came on April Fool’s Day, when the number of total hits ticked past the 100,000 mark for the first time. That means that, since November 2019 when Trekking with Dennis first went live, more than 100,000 people had visited the website. I marked the occasion with a banner at the top of the website for a few days!

Readers once again came from all over the globe – from Tanzania to Finland and from Japan to Peru!

All that being said, I feel that 2022 was rather “front-loaded” in terms of visitors! Thanks to a couple of big posts about Star Trek: Discovery’s fourth season (which we’ll look at in more detail in a moment) the website did impressive numbers in January, February, March, and into April as well, before things started to tail off in the spring. Don’t get me wrong, even the quietest month of 2022 was still nice and busy, but we definitely saw the majority of visitors in those first few months.

In total, I wrote 471,500 words in 2022. That’s as many words as Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick and James Joyce’s Ulysses combined! It is, however, significantly less than my word counts for 2020 and 2021, but again that’s because I wrote fewer pieces for the website this past year. It’s still a lot of words, though!

So let’s count down the top ten most-read articles that I wrote in 2022!

Number 10:
Diablo Immortal is a monument to everything wrong with modern gaming

My piece about the truly awful Diablo Immortal takes the number ten spot, partly thanks to being published within a couple of weeks of the mobile game’s release. I detest not only Diablo Immortal itself, but what it represents: the worst excesses of an incredibly greedy video games industry. And I held no punches in my tear-down of the appalling little game, calling out publisher Activision Blizzard for one of the worst, scummiest mobile games of the year.

Significant line: “I was surprised when I began seeing ads for the game all over my social media pages, and even more surprised to learn that Activision Blizzard has only just finished pushing this absolute turd of a game out of its corporate anus.”

Number 9:
The classic Star Trek dilemma: Kirk or Picard?

I had a ton of fun writing up this tongue-in-cheek clash between Star Trek’s first two captains – a debate that has persisted in the Trekkie community since The Next Generation premiered all the way back in 1987! I also had fun mocking up a poster for the article’s key image, basing it on the famous “Rumble in the Jungle” boxing match poster that I think a lot of folks would be familiar with. I end up sitting firmly on the fence at the end of the article after considering the cases for both Kirk and Picard – because I like them both too much to say that one is definitively “better!”

Significant line: “Most Star Trek captains who have followed embody elements of both Kirk and Picard’s styles of management and leadership while remaining distinct characters, but when it comes to the franchise’s first two captains, there seems to be a major clash of personalities.”

Number 8:
Video game spotlight: Banished

In 2022 I kicked off my “video game spotlight” series, in which I plan to take a look back at some of my favourite games of all time. The first title to get the full write-up treatment was Banished, an indie town-building game that makes regular appearances on other lists here on the website. Since I’m far too late to reasonably call a piece like this a “review,” I settled on “spotlight” as a name, and I had a lot of fun talking about why Banished is such good fun. Hopefully I’ll add to this series in the new year; there are at least a dozen games I plan to shine a spotlight on in future!

Significant line: “The fact that I’m still playing [Banished] almost eight years later should tell you how I feel about it!”

Number 7:
Ten “comfort episodes” of Star Trek for difficult days

I wrote this piece at the end of February, just days after the war in Ukraine kicked off. I wanted to highlight a few Star Trek episodes from different parts of the franchise that, at least in my opinion, make for great escapism. The episodes I chose are almost all lighter in tone, with themes of humour, family, and coming together front-and-centre. If I were doing the list all over again there are certainly more episodes I could include, but overall I’m happy with my picks. And if the list helped even one single person find something to watch when they were feeling low, then it’s been a rousing success.

Significant line: “A future where humanity has succeeded at conquering not only the problems of today but also many of the baser, more primitive aspects of our own nature holds an appeal that can be difficult to put into words…”

Number 6:
Ten games to play instead of Hogwarts Legacy

As the title suggests, this list – which was also my most-read piece about gaming in 2022 – shows off ten games that I consider to be decent alternatives to Hogwarts Legacy for anyone who doesn’t want to play or support the game. I wanted to contribute something to the discussion around Hogwarts Legacy that was a little more positive and that didn’t just consist of saying “J.K. Rowling is a horrible bigot who hates the Harry Potter fan community.” She is, and she does… but that isn’t what this piece was primarily about. As above, if it helped even one person find something to play, I consider it a success.

Significant line: “Hogwarts Legacy, just like the rest of the fictional setting that J.K. Rowling created, is not irreplaceable.”

Number 5:
Strange New Worlds Season 2 theory: Una Chin-Riley

It’s hard to say what this piece is about without spoiling Season 1 of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. Suffice to say that I came up with several theories about Una Chin-Riley – a.k.a. “Number One” – and where her story may go when Season 2 rolls around. I had fun putting the list together, as well as stepping back to consider her role in The Cage, where she might be during the events of The Original Series, a connection to Star Trek: Enterprise… and much more besides.

Significant line: “I’m looking forward to welcoming back Captain Pike, Una, and the rest of the crew – and getting a satisfying end to this storyline, too!”

Number 4:
Star Trek: Picard Season 3 theory – who is Captain Vadic?

This theory – that I only wrote in November – has been racking up a lot of views! Without spoiling anything, a new character named Captain Vadic is being billed as a villain in Star Trek: Picard’s upcoming third season, and I took the opportunity of her appearance in a trailer shown off at Comic-Con to consider a few possibilities for her origin and what her mission might be. If my current track record with theories is anything to go by I’m going to be wide of the mark by miles… but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a ton of fun to speculate!

Significant line: “As much as I like the idea of Vadic having a major connection to an event in The Next Generation or one of the films, if you forced me to place a bet right now, in November 2022, I’d have to put my money on her being someone brand-new…”

Number 3:
Star Trek: Discovery Season 4 – So who is Ruon Tarka’s “friend?”

This theory did huge numbers in the first quarter of the year – while Discovery’s fourth season was running. I was ultimately disappointed by the way this storyline ended, but it was still fun to delve pretty deeply into the history of Star Trek to consider some potentially interesting character possibilities. It isn’t possible to say too much more without getting into spoiler territory! I had fun making up a rather jokey key image for this piece, too!

Significant line: “With Discovery taking an unplanned six-week break, we’ve got a little time to settle in and collect our thoughts.”

Number 2:
Twelve Star Trek episodes to watch before Picard Season 2 arrives!

Shortly before Star Trek: Picard Season 2 premiered, I put together this list of episodes that I felt might have a connection of some kind to the upcoming story. I focused on what we knew about the season from pre-release trailers and marketing material, and selected stories that focused on time travel, the Q Continuum, Guinan, and the Borg Queen. I like to think that basically all of the episodes that I put on the list did something to inform the story of the season, even if I’d probably make a few changes in hindsight!

Significant line: “I think we’ve hit most of the key subjects – at least, those that we’re aware of at this early stage – and got a good mix of stories…”

Number 1:
Star Trek: Picard Season 2 theory – what happened to Q?

So we come to the most-read article that I wrote in all of 2022! Blowing all of the others out of the water by several thousand hits, this theory about Q that I wrote in the aftermath of Picard Season 2 is clearly of interest to Trekkies! Partly, I must say, that’s because of how poorly-explained parts of the story of Season 2 ultimately were (the season isn’t one of my favourites, if you didn’t know). But regardless, I found it interesting to take what feels like an incomplete, muddled story as the starting point for another of my Star Trek theories, and even if we’ll never know what really happened, I hope that my guesswork at least makes sense and feels consistent with what we know of Q and the Q Continuum. I can’t say more without seriously spoiling the story of Picard Season 2.

Significant line: “As Trekkies and as fans who’ve followed Q’s journey over the span of more than three decades, it definitely feels like there’s a missing piece of the puzzle.”

So those were the most-read pieces of 2022!

But wait, there’s more! There are posts on the website going all the way back to November 2019, and some of them had a pretty big year too! Before we wrap things up, let’s look at the top five most-read posts from previous years.

Number 5:
Star Trekkin’ – a number one hit!

Although it seemed not to light up the board when I first published it in August 2020, this piece about the 1987 pop hit Star Trekkin’ has since become one of the most consistent performers here on the website! It was one of the most-read pieces in both 2021 and 2022, and I look forward to seeing if it will make the cut again this year! In the piece I talk about the history of the song and its composition, as well as my own thoughts and personal connection with it. The song is a fun one, and well worth a listen for any Star Trek fan.

Significant line: “The song was – perhaps understandably – rejected by several record labels…”

Number 4:
Star Trek: Discovery Season 2 theory: The abandoned Borg origin story

Another piece that didn’t seem to get a lot of attention at first, my theory about Discovery Season 2 gained a lot of traction in 2022. It’s hard to get into specifics without spoiling things, but suffice to say that one of the main storylines in Discovery’s second season felt like it was setting up an origin story for the Borg – one of the Star Trek franchise’s biggest and most iconic villainous factions. In this piece I consider why it felt that way and whether it’s possible such a story was attempted and then abandoned, leaving behind clues in its wake.

Significant line: “I know for a fact that I’m not alone in having speculated that Discovery Season 2 was setting up an origin story for the Borg…”

Number 3:
Five things to watch at New Year (instead of fireworks)

This piece kicked off 2022 with a bang – and saw the year end on a high note, too. In 2020, with practically every major New Year event both in person and on television being cancelled, I put together a short list of things to watch instead, as well as time-stamps for getting a specific scene or line on screen at the stroke of midnight. The post did exceptionally well at New Year in both 2020 and 2021, and the same thing happened again in 2022, even with many in-person and televised events returning. This is one of those pieces that gets practically no views all year long, but then sees one massive spike over a relatively short period of time!

Significant line: “I’ve never been particularly impressed by fireworks. A professional display can be fun to see if you’re there in person, but on television much of the impact is lost.”

Number 2:
Mass Effect: Legendary Edition – what’s the best ending?

I’m not surprised to see the most-read article of 2021 continuing to do well. But I stand by what I said last time: I think a lot of folks are clicking on this piece looking for a “how-to” guide or walkthrough to achieve a specific ending to Mass Effect 3 – and that’s not what it’s about! The article takes a look at the different endings of the Mass Effect trilogy from a narrative point of view, and I tried to consider which would be the “best” – subjectively speaking, of course.

Significant line: “Like it or hate it (and my god do some people hate it) Mass Effect: Legendary Edition retains the three-and-a-half possible endings present in the Mass Effect 3 Extended Edition DLC from 2012.”

Number 1:
Star Trek: Discovery Season 4 – Unknown Species 10-C: The Suspects

Earlier I talked about how 2022 was kind of “front-loaded” in terms of hits… well, here’s one of the main culprits! My theories about Unknown Species 10-C – a faction from Discovery’s fourth season that was shrouded in mystery – did absolutely huge numbers while the season was running, as many Trekkies were clearly just as interested as I was to learn more! I put together a whopping list of some twenty-six possibilities from past iterations of Star Trek, and if nothing else it was a lot of fun to speculate about how any of them could potentially connect with the story of the season.

Significant line: “Right now, this is one of the biggest mysteries in Star Trek: Discovery’s fourth season – and one of the most tantalising storylines that the series has ever teased us with.”

So that’s it!

Those were the most-read articles and columns of 2022 – and with that, I think that about wraps up our look back at the year. I tend not to go back and re-read things that I’ve written very often, but once a year it can be fun to take a step back. Taking a look at the pieces folks are most interested in doesn’t necessarily mean I’m going to try to write more of that type, but it’s certainly interesting to see what people are most likely to click on!

As I said, 2022 was a year of ups and downs. The website broke records and passed milestones, but at the same time I definitely felt the need to take a break and to write less frequently. That doesn’t mean I’m not still having fun – but in order to preserve the enjoyment and not feel like I’m under pressure or in danger of getting burned out, I need to recognise my own limitations and take a step back when necessary. Perhaps that’s the lesson of 2022 – at least for what I do here on the website!

Stay tuned, because in the days ahead I’ll be looking forward to some of the entertainment experiences that lie before us in 2023 – some of which, all being well, will get the full review or write-up treatment here on the website when they’re ready! And if you missed it, you can take a look at my annual End-of-Year Awards, in which I dished out a few make-believe trophies and medals to some of my favourite films, games, and television shows of 2022.

I hope this was a bit of fun, or at least a mildly interesting look back!

– Dennis, Tuesday 3rd January 2023

All titles mentioned above are the copyright of their respective studio, owner, corporation, distributor, broadcaster, etc. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Stats and analytics for 2021

Wed 05.01.22Wed 05.01.22Dennis

Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Star Trek: Discovery Seasons 3-4, Mass Effect: Legendary Edition, and Star Trek: Voyager.

Now that 2021 has come and gone, I thought it would be interesting to look back on the progress the website made over the course of the year. Thanks to my web host and other analytics I have a fair amount of data to measure the website’s performance.

A big caveat: this is just for fun! Running Trekking with Dennis is my hobby, not a serious job, and I don’t write here because I’m desperately chasing huge numbers of readers or “internet points!” I enjoy having a space of my own where I can share my thoughts and review some of the films and TV shows that I’m interested in – and I’d still be here even if no one showed up to read any of it!

It’s time to look at some stats and numbers for 2021.

If 2020 had been a year of slow and steady growth, 2021 was a wild rollercoaster! A couple of articles went “viral” – or at least as close to going viral as I’m ever likely to get – and those two posts accounted for significant spikes in views in June and again in December. Other articles generally did well, and I saw decent views for most of my Star Trek episode reviews, which was great, but those two pieces in particular seemed to get a lot of attention.

Overall, more than 61,000 people visited the website in 2021 – up from 14,000 in 2020. That’s a year-on-year increase of more than 300% – meaning the website more than quadrupled the number of hits this year. That’s astonishing, and the fact that so many people showed up to read articles that I’d written is actually quite a humbling feeling.

The number of visitors to Trekking with Dennis in 2021 could fill London’s O2 Arena more than three times over!

Visitors came from all corners of the globe, too. Trekking with Dennis picked up readers from the heart of Africa, every nation in South America, India, Russia, and even China! I guess I’m allowed through the Great Firewall (at least for now)! Every country in Europe was represented in the stats, including smaller countries like the Faroe Islands. Hi, Faroese readers!

Of course, the majority of views came from the Anglosphere, with the United States being the number one country. The UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and South Africa were all well-represented, too. Considering the website is in English and deals with a lot of American-made films, games, and television programmes, I’d expect to see most of the views coming from those regions.

In early November, the website’s name changed – and so did the URL. This change was disruptive, but far less so than I had initially thought. Though the number of hits definitely dropped following the change in URL, things actually got back to normal pretty quickly, and in December I saw the second of those “viral” posts I mentioned – something I definitely wasn’t expecting!

Across 2021 I wrote 263 articles – slightly more than in 2020. And those articles contained a combined 649,000 words! To give you an idea of how much that is: it’s the equivalent of approximately eight “average-length” novels, 100,000 more words than Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables, or roughly the same number of words as Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. That’s a lot of words!

So let’s take a look at the top ten most-read articles in 2021. These are the ten pieces that I wrote in 2021 that scored the most hits.

Article #10:
Preliminary Star Trek: Strange New Worlds predictions

This was the third part in an unofficial series that I ran in the early part of the year, looking ahead to several upcoming seasons of Star Trek. In this article I looked ahead to Strange New Worlds and made a few predictions – guesses, really – about elements the show might include. As luck would have it, later that same day came the announcements of five new members of the main cast! That was some strange timing, especially considering that this was the first piece I’d written about Strange New Worlds in more than six months at that point.

One of my predictions has already borne out: I said in this piece that I was sure there’d be a redesign of the uniforms, and the teases we saw at Star Trek Day proved me right! With the show still a few months away, though, we’ll have to wait to see if I was right about anything else!

Significant line: “I’m really looking forward to Strange New Worlds. It seems to be offering more of a “classic” take on Star Trek when compared to recent projects, and I’m 100% there for that!”

Article #9:
(When) Will Marvel reset the MCU?

I don’t talk about Marvel a lot here on the website. Comic books and their cinematic adaptations aren’t usually my first choice, and while I’ve enjoyed some Marvel films as popcorn entertainment, I just don’t have the nostalgia or connection to the world of comics that many folks have. Regardless, on this occasion in June I talked about the Marvel Cinematic Universe and its growing complexity – and asked whether a potential reboot or reset might be coming any time soon.

Keeping up with all of the goings-on in the MCU can feel like a full-time job sometimes! And because of Marvel’s love of crossovers, the shared fictional universe that its films and TV shows inhabit can feel intimidating or even offputting to the newbie or casual viewer. As the MCU has moved away from being “the real world plus superheroes” into a connected, shared setting with its own lore and almost fifteen years’ worth of history, it’s become dense and complex. Not every MCU title is inaccessible as a result – but some are getting to that point. Just like the worlds of comic books have been reset (such as in DC’s famous Crisis on Infinite Earths series), I feel it’s inevitable that Disney and Marvel will eventually do the same, rebooting the MCU for a new generation of audiences.

Significant line: “The legacy of characters like Iron Man, Captain America, and the Hulk could pass to new iterations of those characters with new actors taking on lead roles in stories inspired by earlier films, but remaining distinct from them. New backstories could be created, perhaps based on different versions of the superheroes from other editions of their comic books.”

Article #8:
YouTube channel spotlight: Cruising the Cut

Back in February I took some time off from sci-fi and fantasy to highlight one of my favourite YouTube channels from the past few years. Cruising the Cut is part-travelogue, part-documentary, part-lifestyle vlog, and follows the journey of a man who lives aboard a canal narrowboat here in the UK. When I first started watching, Cruising the Cut only had a few thousand followers, but the channel has recently passed the 200,000 mark – a milestone that is thoroughly deserved.

I’ve always had a fascination with the canal network – a series of artificial waterways made in the early years of the industrial revolution. Cruising the Cut often has fun and interesting canal facts, but it’s also the kind of slow, gentle viewing that I think we all need sometimes. High-octane action and tense drama is great – but sometimes taking a break from that and slowing down is just what the doctor ordered!

Significant line: “Canal narrowboats only have a maximum cruising speed of around four miles-per-hour, so don’t expect Cruising the Cut to be zipping all across the country in each video.”

Article #7:
Mass Effect: Legendary Edition – Death by a thousand cuts

“Death by a thousand cuts” was the somewhat dramatic title that I gave to my review of Mass Effect: Legendary Edition in June. I felt it encapsulated my feelings about the so-called “remaster”: that there wasn’t one single overwhelming fault, but a plethora of little ones that built up and contributed to a sense that it was far less than it could have been.

I adore the Mass Effect games, and I went into Legendary Edition hoping to get a good version of the original trilogy. But unfortunately, BioWare and EA took the path of least resistance, putting together a pretty crap “remaster” that I felt was not worth the asking price. There were bugs that had been present in the original versions of all three games that hadn’t been fixed – and I couldn’t excuse such extreme laziness and such a lack of care. I recently crowned Legendary Edition my worst game of 2021.

Significant line: “Legendary Edition represents a phenomenal missed opportunity to take these games and do more with them.”

Article #6:
Star Trek: Voyager – The torpedo and shuttle “problem”

I have to admit I was surprised by the response to this one! In the late ’90s, some fans argued very strongly that the USS Voyager had used “too many” torpedoes and shuttlecraft over the course of its journey through the Delta Quadrant, and the argument did the rounds in some parts of the Trekkie community for a while. Though I hadn’t really seen many people discussing it in recent years, the argument always bugged me – so I finally wrote out my response.

In short, I argued that a combination of resource gathering, trading, and building replacements was more than acceptable as a counter-argument, and in particular the fact that the crew were resourceful enough to build not one but two Delta Flyers was proof of this. Obviously “it’s just a story,” and the number of torpedoes fired or shuttlecraft used was at the whim of the writers. But from an in-universe point of view, I don’t see why it has to be considered a big deal. It seems at least some people are still interested in this argument after all!

Significant line: “It stands to reason that, contained within Voyager’s databanks, are the designs and schematics for both torpedoes and shuttles.”

Article #5:
Star Trek: Discovery – Was there a last-second change for Tilly?

All the way back in January, shortly after Discovery’s third season finale, I wrote this relatively short piece looking at Tilly. This focused on the short epilogue at the end of That Hope Is You, Part 2, specifically the scene in which Captain Burnham arrived on the bridge to assume command for the first time. Amongst the assembled officers and crew was Tilly, but for some reason her uniform colour had been digitally changed – and pretty badly, too!

Tilly was originally supposed to be wearing the red colour of the command division, but seemingly at the last moment her command red had been changed to science blue via some pretty awful digital effects. She was only on screen for a few seconds, but this was pretty noticeable on a re-watch. Now that we know Tilly’s destination in Season 4, I wonder if the original plan at the end of Season 3 had seen her character go in a different direction? Maybe the original intention was for Tilly to remain on the command track, or perhaps even to serve as Burnham’s XO? We may never know!

Significant line: “It’s possible that this literally was a last-second change; the low quality of the texture used for the blue stripe may mean it was something thrown together in a matter of days…”

Article #4:
Star Trek: Discovery – eight “gravitational anomaly” theories

I wrote this list-article shortly after Star Trek’s “First Contact Day” digital event. Sonequa Martin-Green had introduced the first trailer for Discovery’s fourth season, and it was in this trailer that we first got wind of the “gravitational anomaly” – unnamed at the time. I put together a handful of theories based on what we’d seen and heard in the trailer, and even as we’ve hit the halfway point of the season, at least a couple of those remain plausible!

This was the first opportunity I’d had to talk about Discovery Season 4 outside of pure speculation, and the trailer had dropped some hints as to the anomaly that we now know as the DMA. I had fun putting the list together, and going back to past iterations of Star Trek for inspiration – and it seems a lot of people found it interesting, too. This article did well throughout the year, but really saw an uptick in hits around the time Season 4 premiered, and has continued to perform well as the season has progressed.

Significant line: “Star Trek’s past didn’t provide the key to understanding the Burn last season. Will something we’ve seen before come into play in Season 4?”

Article #3:
Mass Effect theory: unlucky humans

Replaying the aforementioned Mass Effect trilogy got me thinking about a theory I’d kicked around when the games were new. In short, my theory was that humanity was particularly unlucky to emerge as a spacefaring race only around forty years before the Reapers attacked. Had the Reapers’ invasion come earlier, or had humanity’s progress toward faster-than-light travel been slower, it might’ve been possible to avoid the Reapers altogether and to emerge into a galaxy with no other sentient spacefaring races.

Had the extinct Citadel Council left behind plans and warnings, humanity could have had a 50,000-year head-start on preparing for the next Reaper War! This was just a fun one, an idea I’d had when the Mass Effect trilogy was new. Giving it the full write-up treatment was fun, but in all honesty I didn’t expect it to gain much traction. Being timely helped this article a lot, though, coming only a few days after the launch of Legendary Edition. I guess there’s a lesson there about getting my articles written on time!

Significant line: “If humanity hadn’t encountered the Mars archive when they did, or if the Ilos scientists hadn’t prevented Sovereign from contacting the Reapers in dark space when it originally intended to, it seems plausible to think that humanity might have been overlooked by the Reapers – at least in this cycle!”

Article #2:
Star Trek: Discovery Season 4 – Unknown Species 10-C: The Suspects

This is the first of the two “viral” articles that I mentioned. Published in mid-December, shortly after the episode The Examples confirmed that the DMA is artificial in nature, this piece really took off! I put quite a bit of work into this long list-article, considering twenty-six different possibilities from past iterations of Star Trek – from The Original Series to Picard – as possible culprits for creating the DMA.

In the aftermath of The Examples, my head was swimming with half-formed theories about Unknown Species 10-C. It took a while to write it all up, but what resulted was definitely one of the more fun and engaging writing projects of the past few months. Discovery’s fourth season – like the third before it – seems determined to go in an unpredictable direction, but even if that’s the case I can still say I had fun considering all of these different possible connections to past iterations of the franchise. And apparently, at least some Trekkies were just as interested in Unknown Species 10-C as me!

Significant line: “I keep thinking back to Season 3 and the Burn storyline, and how the ending to that story was something completely unpredictable and brand-new to the franchise. It wouldn’t surprise me to see Discovery go down that road again.”

Article #1:
Mass Effect: Legendary Edition – what’s the best ending?

So we come to the most-read piece of the year! Published in late May, a couple of weeks after the launch of Legendary Edition, in this article I considered what the “best” ending of the Mass Effect trilogy might be from an in-universe point of view. I tried to consider the pros and cons of the synthesis, destroy, and control endings to Mass Effect 3, giving my thoughts on each.

I suspect that the reason this article got so many hits is that players were looking for a guide to achieving a specific ending to the game – something the article doesn’t provide! So unfortunately, despite this being the best-performing article of the year, I suspect many readers came away disappointed having not found what they were looking for! However, I hope those that stuck around found an enjoyable and thoughtful piece, one in which I did my best to consider how the various endings to the trilogy might impact the Mass Effect galaxy, and the friends Commander Shepard made along their journey.

Significant line: “I have a hard time making this choice – it’s by far the most difficult in the entire trio of games, even though the short epilogue that follows is anticlimactic at best.”

But wait, there’s more!

Those were the top ten most-read articles that I wrote in 2021. But the year also saw several articles from 2020 pick up a number of views, and I thought it could be fun to briefly look at a few of those. We’ll just do the top five, since this article is already running long!

Article #5:
Introducing someone to Star Trek for the first time

This article, from back in June 2020, didn’t pick up much attention at the time it was written. By the standards of the website at the time it did okay, but even then I didn’t feel it was breaking the bank in terms of its view count. But for some reason it did much better in 2021, picking up dozens and then hundreds of views in a slow trickle throughout the year.

In this list-article I picked out fifteen episodes and films that I felt could make for a great “first contact” for a new viewer; someone unfamiliar with the Star Trek franchise. I tried to avoid the obvious ones, like The Wrath of Khan, and suggested a few different stories that showcase the varied nature of Star Trek, and how the franchise can dip its toes in some very different genres. I’m glad that it found an audience in the end – and if it helped even one person introduce a friend or loved one to Star Trek, then it’s more than done its job!

Significant line: “I tried to pick a few examples of stories that hopefully show off not only the franchise at its best, but that it can be different to the preconceived notions many people have.”

Article #4:
Star Trekkin’ – a number one hit!

This is an article that I had a ton of fun researching and writing in August 2020! If you’re a big Trekkie you’ve probably at least heard of The Firm’s 1987 song Star Trekkin’, which, as the title of my piece suggests, topped the charts here in the UK. The song is ridiculously silly, and the music video that accompanies it is even more so, but it’s a weird and wonderful piece of Star Trek’s history that I wanted to acknowledge. It’s also a curiously British thing, in some ways.

I had this song on cassette many years ago, and I can remember listening to it through headphones on the school bus with the volume turned down – just in case anyone could overhear! I also bought the mp3 of the song again when I transitioned to digital music, and I confess that I still put the song on occasionally for both a bit of fun and a blast of nostalgia. Star Trekkin’ is a weird song, but it was fun to write about – and I’m glad that Trekkies are checking out what I had to say about it!

Significant line: “It’s well worth a listen for any Trekkie who hasn’t heard it, and while I don’t promise you’ll enjoy it as a piece of music, you might just crack a smile.”

Article #3:
Can we PLEASE stop calling things we don’t like “objectively” bad?

From the silly to the serious! I wrote this piece after getting sick to death of hearing so-called critics using the expression “objectively bad” to refer to things that they personally didn’t like. I’m not trying to nitpick or get mad about a technicality, but when I hear the word “objectively” used in the context of basically anything in media, and narrative choices in particular, I feel there’s a conscious attempt to try to shut down any counter-arguments. Media criticism is practically always subjective, not objective – no matter what anyone may claim.

There is no such thing as a film, video game, or TV programme that is “objectively” bad – nor “objectively” anything else. There are certainly works of entertainment that don’t follow established rules or precedent, but in every case opinions will vary from person to person. There are myriad examples of works of fiction that I personally hate that I know other people adore. Neither opinion is “objective” – and that’s that.

Significant line: “It’s got to a point where it’s been proclaimed so often that any time I see or hear the phrase “objectively bad,” I stop reading or listening. Any critic making such a statement has lost my respect and lost the argument.”

Article #2:
Five things to watch at New Year (instead of fireworks)

This one is pretty straightforward! In 2020 – and sadly, again in 2021 – many New Year events that are usually televised were cancelled due to the pandemic. For several years in the second half of the 2010s I’d spent my New Years Eves with the London fireworks display on TV basically by default, but with the event cancelled due to covid in 2020 I got thinking about what I might watch instead – and this list was born!

Beginning on the 30th of December 2020 and running through to the early hours of New Year’s Day, this post saw a huge spike in views, and the same thing happened this past New Year. Due to the huge number of hits it had got in the wee hours of the 1st of January it was already quite high on the list, but the extra attention it got in December 2021 propelled it to becoming one of the best-performing pieces of the year!

Significant line: “Hopefully by the time we’re thinking about the next New Year’s Eve, things will be much closer to normal.”

Article #1:
It’s time for Deep Space Nine and Voyager to get the HD treatment

This article was the most-read of 2020, so I’m not shocked to see that it continued to perform well in 2021! In this article I called on ViacomCBS to remaster Deep Space Nine and Voyager, both of which remain in standard definition at time of writing. I argued that the move to streaming should be the reason why the shows get remastered, because the process will be less expensive this time around due to improvements in technology and far less of a need to produce and ship optical discs.

It doesn’t seem like ViacomCBS cares about Deep Space Nine and Voyager right now, sadly, and even though Paramount+ is playing host to both shows (in regions where it’s available), there’s still no sign of a remaster. I think it could be a good investment, because a lot of Trekkies who remember the shows fondly would be interested to see a remastered version; it would certainly drive some sign-ups to Paramount+. There are some decent fan-made remasters that you can find online, though… so that’s something!

Significant line: “A lot of folks seem to have given up on the idea of ever seeing those series in HD given the move toward online streaming and The Next Generation’s lacklustre performance on Blu-ray, but CBS All Access should be Deep Space Nine and Voyager’s ticket to a full-HD remaster.”

So that’s it!

Trekking with Dennis exceeded all of my hopes and expectations in 2021, with more than 61,000 people showing up to read the pieces that I wrote. I’m thrilled with how well the website has been performing, and I hope 2022 will be another good year.

To those of you who joined me in 2021, thank you. I hope I was entertaining, informative, or just a fun way to kill some time! You can look forward to more of the same in 2022, as I have no immediate plans to shake things up or make changes to the kind of things I do here.

2021 was a wild ride in so many ways, and it wasn’t a great year for many of us. Entertainment experiences – like films, video games, and TV shows – are some of the things that keep me going, and writing my thoughts or reviews of some of them is an extension of that. A chance to spend more time thinking and writing about Star Trek and some of my other favourites continues to be an enjoyable hobby, and a great escape, at times, from some of the less pleasant things going on out here in the real world.

Thank you for your support over the past twelve months – and here’s to 2022!

– Dennis
Wednesday, 5th January 2022

Making a few changes… please bear with me.

Thu 30.04.20Sat 02.05.20Dennis

Just a very quick update today. I’m in the process of making a few changes and alterations to the website. Hopefully nothing will be deleted and none of the content will change, but I want to get a slightly different and more modern look going forward, especially on the homepage.

Previously every blog post was just represented with a title and a short quotation, but I’m looking at adding images too. At the moment these images aren’t displaying exactly how I’d like – you might have noticed a huge image at the top of this post and other more recent articles. Fixing that is a work in progress!

So please bear with me while I make these changes and updates over the next few days, and if things look janky for a while please know that I’m planning to fix it – just as soon as I figure out how!

It’s been that kind of week!

Thu 20.02.20Sun 20.11.22Dennis

I usually try to write at least two or three posts a week, and with Star Trek: Picard being so prominent on the website at the moment, I’ve been trying to manage at least one non-Picard article in between my reviews and theory posts. The latter has become an unexpected weekly series! But this week I’ve had some technical issues with my computer, and honestly it’s been so frustrating!

I’m not a tech expert. I dabble in the tech world, sure, but when it comes to the details of programming and such I’m well out of my depth, and I rely on Google searches to fix problems when they arise. The most frustrating thing is when something absolutely should work… but it doesn’t. This is the situation I’ve been in this week.

I use a television as my main PC monitor. I know that’s a little unusual, but I like to have things displayed on the biggest screen in the house – and since my PC is also my DVD/Blu-ray player, gaming device, and all-round entertainment centre, even a “large” PC monitor is too small for my preferences. Ever since I got this TV, though, I’ve experienced a certain amount of screen tearing and flickering. I tried changing my graphics card (currently an AMD Radeon 560; we’ll come to that in a moment) but to no avail. I eventually realised that the television will only display 50Hz and the graphics cards I’ve used were – for some inexplicable reason – set to 59Hz by default. So I scaled it down to 50Hz and some of the screen tearing and flickering, but not all, went away.

That was a few months ago and it had been ticking over more or less okay since, running in 4K at 3840×2160 pixels. But this week the flickering got worse, and eventually the graphics card I’d had – a GTX 1060 that was a couple of years old – crapped out on me and stopped displaying any picture at all. I couldn’t get it to work so I swapped in the Radeon 560 I mentioned above. The Radeon 560 is a slightly weaker card, and draws a little less power, but nevertheless should be able to output the same 4K picture. The key word there being “should”.

I can accept that components eventually break down, and while I was disappointed in my 1060’s demise, it’s not the end of the world. But the replacement card just isn’t working right, and despite hours of work and searching I just can’t find any solution.

Firstly, around half the time, the card just fails to display any picture at all. I get a blank screen when I turn on the display; the only solution being to forcibly restart my computer. Secondly, it stutters when switching to and from full-screen mode for videos. And thirdly, when it tries to display a 4K picture, it does so in a “letterbox” mode, with black bars at the top and bottom of the screen. Nothing has fixed these issues. Uninstalling the card, uninstalling the drivers, reinstalling everything, rolling back the drivers to an older version, using AMD’s Radeon software, not using the software, and of course searching online for answers. The Radeon 560, for some reason, will not output a full screen 4K picture, and has those other issues. So I’m stuck with a downgrade to 1080p, which looks fuzzy on my large display – when it works at all. So frustrating!

Because I’m not an expert, when something doesn’t “just work”, and playing around with its settings and looking online doesn’t fix it, it really irritates me. As a disabled person, I rely quite heavily on my computer for contact with the outside world and obviously I need it to work right! It’s also very difficult to open it up and fiddle with components inside, despite me keeping the computer in an accessible place. And as someone on a fixed income, I don’t have money to waste on barely-functional components.

It is partly my fault for choosing a screen that was only 50Hz. I genuinely didn’t realise how much of a problem the television’s refresh rate would be for modern graphics cards. I hope to upgrade the screen later in the year – something similar in size, but I’ll make sure it’s a 60Hz panel instead of 50Hz. Having now essentially busted two different graphics cards with different chips from different manufacturers, the only consistent thing that could be causing these graphics problems is the television itself. I’m hoping a different model will lead to the situation improving.

This isn’t the only frustrating “shouldn’t-be-a-problem” that I’ve had in the last few months, either. I’ve had issues with my phone syncing to my PC and downloading photos and videos, problems with my mail app and client not sending push notifications, bugs in Windows 10 which, upon investigation, were reported to Microsoft up to three years ago and still haven’t been fixed, and others besides. When something has been working, and no settings have been changed, and then for some unknown reason it just ceases to work, I just have no idea why or what to do. The graphics thing is just the latest example – why on earth is it behaving that way? Why do I have to reboot my machine to get it to display a picture? Why does it stutter when going to and from full screen mode? Why can it only display 1080p properly?

Honestly, messing around with this has been so annoying and taken up so much time the last few days that I haven’t felt like writing much. I hope to get something sorted out at the beginning of March as a stop-gap to get me through to later in the year when I can perform some much-needed PC and television upgrades! For now I’ll soldier on, and try not to lose my temper and break the damn thing! I know, I know. First world problems. “My moderately expensive graphics card won’t display an ultra-HD 4K picture on my big screen TV” is not the worst thing in the world. And I’m grateful for what I have.

The internet has been absolutely huge in just my lifetime – I remember when I first got an email account having to ask people if they even had a connection to the web, and having to say to friends I could only be online at certain times because my dial-up connection was tying up the phone line! And now look at where we are, practically everyone has an internet-enabled computer-phone constantly connected via wireless or mobile data about their person at all times. My PC, even though fibre-optic broadband isn’t available, is still connected at speeds I couldn’t have dreamed of back then. And 1080p would have seemed amazing then too, even if it feels like a downgrade this week.

And again as someone with health issues, being able to stay connected and keep up to date with what’s going on in the wider world, as well as shop and organise aspects of my life online, are really important things. As disappointed and frustrated as I’ve been, I try to remember that! It could be worse, after all. And I’m lucky to have the knowledge of computers that I do, so that I can perform some tasks myself. I shudder to think how much it would have cost to have a computer repair person visit, or how inconvenient it would be to send the machine away for repairs. As things stand, it works in a roundabout way, and I know how to get around the bugs that are present. Hopefully in the next few days I’ll get my stop-gap solution up and running so that things can get back to normal. I just wanted to share this little “life update”, since it explains why there’s been more of a gap than usual between articles.

Until next time!

This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.