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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I may or may not write more this year!
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!
Hello, Tanzania!
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!
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.”
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.”
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!”
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…”
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.”
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!”
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…”
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.”
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…”
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.
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…”
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…”
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.”
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.”
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!
Click!
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.
It’s the 30th of November, and that means it’s Trekking with Dennis’s third anniversary! I published my first article at the end of November 2019, kick-starting the project that would eventually become this website, and I think it’s worth taking a moment to both mark the occasion and look back at the past twelve months. No, this isn’t my “end of year” article looking at some of my favourite films, games, and television shows (that’ll come around New Year), but rather this is a more personal reflection on the events of the past twelve months.
Back in April, Trekking with Dennis passed 100,000 hits, which is a pretty huge milestone! And – touch wood – we’re on track to make 2022 the most successful year so far in terms of visitors, which is also fantastic news. Although visitor numbers and traffic aren’t my main focus, and I’d still be writing about these subjects even if no one was tuning in, it’s still a rewarding feeling to know that so many people have been interested in my take on some of these topics.
Check back in January for a more detailed look at stats and numbers!
But the past twelve months have also been a bit of a rollercoaster ride. This time last year I was posting at least one article every other day, and that carried on until the spring. But as we headed into the summer I found it difficult to keep up that schedule – I began to lose motivation and suffer from a case of writer’s block. By the time the September rolled around I was only managing a few posts a month, and I ended up taking an eight-week break from late September through to early November.
That break is the longest I’ve taken since starting the website, and truth be told I probably needed it. I’d begun to feel that I was writing some articles (and especially some Star Trek episode reviews) less for enjoyment and more out of a sense of obligation, and I think that comes across in at least some of the pieces I published this past summer and autumn. I’m not sure that those articles and reviews represent my best work, and they’re nowhere near the bar that I aim to reach.
Some of the reviews I wrote this year aren’t as good as I’d want them to be.
So if that’s what happened, what should the takeaway be? What lesson should I be learning from that period of burnout and of writing to deadlines out of a sense of obligation? I guess “don’t do that” is a pretty basic one! Perhaps I’d become a little too interested in sticking to my “every other day” writing schedule, and perhaps I’d lost focus on what this website was supposed to be achieving for me.
When I created Trekking with Dennis, what I wanted was a space on the internet where I could discuss the topics that I was interested in at my own pace. I could choose what I wanted to comment on, which films or television programmes I wanted to review, and talk about them in an open-ended way without word limits. Earlier this year, perhaps fuelled in part by a couple of posts that picked up a lot of attention, I started to forget that, and trying to chase the next big “viral” article became a distraction.
I need to remember why I like writing here!
Speaking of distractions, regular readers may recall that I recently jumped out of the toxic mess that is Twitter. I have an article that goes into more detail about why I thought it was the right time to bring an end to my two-year experiment with the platform, and I’d encourage you to check it out if you haven’t already. But suffice to say that I don’t feel Twitter was a good fit for me, I wasn’t really getting out of it what I’d hoped in terms of traffic to the website, and the general atmosphere on Twitter is one of division, toxicity, and embarrassingly childish behaviour. Dumping the platform has been good for my mental health – even though I occasionally find myself composing a pithy Twitter post in my head and now have nowhere to put it!
Earlier this year I stepped outside of my comfort zone and built myself a PC for the first time ever! As I said at the time, it’s increasingly rare to find wholly new experiences these days, so it was definitely an interesting project. The PC that I built back in March is working great, and it’s my hope that it will continue to serve as my main device for years to come! Constructing it wasn’t a completely smooth experience, but if nothing else that just gave me even more of a sense of accomplishment; tracking down a particularly troublesome issue and figuring out a solution was the icing on the cake of an interesting and fun experience… even if it didn’t necessarily feel that way at the time!
Building my own PC for the first time was a new and interesting project.
In housekeeping news, the website’s old URL is finally going offline. By the end of the year, only the current URL (trekkingwithdennis.com) will be functional, so if any of you still haven’t updated your bookmarks, now is the time! One unexpected consequence of last year’s decision to change the website’s name is that many links within posts and articles didn’t update – and I couldn’t figure out a way to change that! As a result, I’ve had to go back into basically 90% of all the pieces I’ve ever published here – more than 600 of them – and manually edit or remove URLs that are about to become outdated. What a hassle!
Naturally, doing that took a long time! But it was actually interesting to step back and re-read some of the articles and columns from the earliest days of the website. I don’t regularly re-read things that I wrote two or three years ago, so it was fun in a way to take a nostalgic trip back in time! Doing so also gave me the opportunity to fix a few issues with some of those older posts. Some of the earliest pieces that I wrote here didn’t have images, or if they did the images were low-quality, misaligned, or cropped poorly. I took the opportunity to update some of them while fixing the URL issue, and I have a short list of a few other pieces that need improved header images or other corrections.
Manually changing hundreds of links was an annoyance in some ways, but provided an interesting look back in others.
As we take a moment to look back to that day in 2019 and reflect on how far the website has come, it’s genuinely interesting to me to catch a glimpse of that pre-covid world. The pandemic has turned so many things upside down, and looking back to 2019, it feels like there was a brief window of optimism that came in between a decade that had been dominated by austerity and Brexit and the pandemic that was about to bowl us over. That moment coincided with the creation of Trekking with Dennis; it now occupies a strange space as we look ahead to a “winter of discontent” that could see blackouts, food shortages, and even a general strike!
This past year has seen a lot of Star Trek! In fact, there hasn’t been much of a break from Star Trek at all, although my enjoyment of it has been hampered by Paramount’s poor scheduling – putting two episodes on the same day for several weeks running makes no sense. And that’s before we get to the awful decisions Paramount has made that have denied new Star Trek shows to millions of fans around the world.
A lot of Star Trek episodes have been broadcast over the past twelve months.
Star Trek being cut off from much of its international fanbase has damaged the brand immeasurably, and as Paramount Plus continues its painfully constipated rollout, that damage isn’t going away. Looking at the big picture and considering how these decisions have impacted the brand and the fan community are things we’ll have to consider in a future article I think, but on a purely personal level, I felt deeply disappointed in Paramount this year. The Discovery Season 4 catastrophe last November rumbled on for a while, and then came the lack of a broadcast for Strange New Worlds.
Paramount Plus finally arrived here in the UK earlier this year, but having already seen most of Strange New Worlds – and with the series running weeks behind on the UK edition of Paramount Plus – I didn’t bother to sign up. It’s something I will consider in the new year, depending on how things go, but it’s by no means a given. Money is tight and getting tighter – I had to cancel my plans to pre-order Starlink (Elon Musk’s satellite internet service) because it was unaffordable given inflation and other price hikes, and that’s just one example. I don’t have a lot of other expenses that I can see myself cutting back on, so Paramount Plus may not win a new subscriber any time soon.
Paramount Plus is now available in the UK.
The sad thing with the Paramount and Star Trek situation is just how good much of Star Trek has been this year. There were issues with Picard Season 2 and some of the sub-plots in Discovery’s fourth season, but by and large it’s been a good year for the franchise. Strange New Worldswas thoroughly excellent – who knew that making an episodic, exploration-oriented Star Trek series might be a good idea?
Star Trek has continued to be the main topic here on the website over the past twelve months, accounting for roughly two-thirds of the pieces that I’ve published. But there have been some other interesting films and television shows that I’ve checked out, some of which I encountered in the process of doing research for the website. As I said last year, Trekking with Dennis continues to broaden my experiences of media! Television shows like 1899 and Five Days At Memorial, films like The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent and Morbius, and games like Stray and Sniper Elite 5 all came onto my radar as a result of seeking out new and different things. While I haven’t found time to write a full review of all of them, I have included some on lists and as parts of other projects. In a general sense, I find myself thinking more about what kind of films, games, and television shows I want to check out, and sometimes trying out something quite different, all because I have Trekking with Dennis and I’m on the lookout for things to write about and discuss.
There have been some… interesting films this year!
I’ve added a few items to my Greatest Hits page, but fewer pieces made the cut over the past twelve months than in previous years. Partly that’s because of the burnout I talked about earlier; writing fewer pieces, and some of them being of noticeably lower quality, has meant that there haven’t been as many that I would consider to be among my best work.
So I suppose that’s it for now. The website’s third year in operation has been one of ups and downs in some respects. I didn’t plan on taking any time out, let alone being gone for almost two months, but that’s the way it goes sometimes! As I’ve said before, this is a project for fun, not something that I view as a serious job, so I try to pace myself and not overdo it. There are definitely things that I haven’t written about that I feel I should have – reviews of the second half of Lower Decks’ third season being first and foremost in my mind at the moment. However, my current attitude is one of “I’ll get around to it when I feel like it,” and it’s in that spirit that the website will operate in the immediate term!
If you’re a regular reader, thank you for sticking around. Some of the pieces I’ve written over the past twelve months have really taken off and done some impressive numbers (by my standards, at least) and I’m grateful to everyone for tuning in, clicking on my posts, and checking out this old Trekkie’s takes on Star Trek, gaming, and the broader world of geeky entertainment. I have no immediate plans to go back on hiatus, nor to change in any major way what I do here. You can expect more Star Trek reviews and theories, re-watches of older episodes, analysis of the video games industry, and discussion of television shows, films, and games. If you’re new around here, I hope you’ll stick around – or at least check back from time to time to see what’s new!
Here’s to another year. Cheers!
– Dennis Wednesday, 30th November 2022
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.
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.
Hello, Faroe Islands!
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.
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!”
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.”
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.”
“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.”
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.”
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…”
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?”
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!”
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.”
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!
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.”
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.”
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.”
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.”
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
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.
This isn’t my end of year article summing up some of the highs and lows of 2021. It irks me no end to see people writing those pieces long before Christmas! If you’ve been a regular reader for a while, you might recall that the 30th of November is the website’s anniversary – it has been two years to the day since I published my first article at the end of November 2019. How time flies, eh?
Last year I commemorated the occasion by writing about the website’s first year in operation, and this time I wanted to do something similar. I’ve had two full years of talking about Star Trek and other entertainment subjects now, and it’s always helpful to step back and take a moment to reflect.
It’s been an interesting twelve months!
The biggest change for the website itself came just a few weeks ago. At the beginning of November I changed the name to Trekking with Dennis, ditching the old name and establishing a new identity for the website. This is something I’d been thinking about a lot for several months, and finally being able to pull the trigger and get it done has been incredibly cathartic.
The website’s name changed a few weeks ago.
There have been some immediate repercussions for the name change, though. Traffic to the website took a nose-dive in November, significantly down on where it had been for much of the rest of the year. I’m putting two and two together and assuming that the change in name, branding, and most importantly the website’s URL is responsible for the drop in readership. I’m optimistic that in the longer term, however, that decline will be reversed. Even if not, I don’t write here because it’s my job or because I’m chasing “internet points” and high numbers of clicks! This is my hobby, I do it for fun, and I’d still do it even if readership dropped to absolute zero!
Conversely, twice in the past year I’ve had articles go “viral” – or at least as close to viral as I’m ever likely to get!
The first article was one I’d written in early December, listing Five things to watch at New Year (instead of fireworks). The list is fairly self-explanatory; I put together a handful of New Year-themed films and shows that could’ve made for entertaining New Year’s Eve viewing in lieu of the usual fireworks shows and parties – many of which are usually televised but which were cancelled in 2020. This list was responsible for a massive spike in views which began on the 30th of December, then ran all the way through the 31st and into the early hours of the 1st of January.
This post got a lot of attention around New Year, which was neat to see.
The second article began getting huge numbers of clicks in late May, then in June absolutely rocketed up to become the most-read post I’ve ever written. More people read that one article than read everything I wrote in all of 2020 combined. And I think it’s possible that many of them came away disappointed!
The article in question was titled Mass Effect: Legendary Edition – What’s the best ending? and it was an examination of the three-and-a-half endings to Mass Effect 3, looking at the pros and cons of each. However, I think that the title may have been unintentionally misleading, judging by the search engine traffic! I think folks may have come upon the article while looking for a guide to achieving the “best” outcome to Mass Effect: Legendary Edition – namely the version of the “destroy” ending in which Shepard is implied to have survived. I talk about this in the article, but it isn’t what the focus of the piece was.
This article has become the most-read ever!
I didn’t expect that article to get so many hits when I wrote it. My Mass Effect commentary in general did quite well, though, and I think that’s because I managed to get out several pieces about the series around the time of Legendary Edition’s launch – which is when there was significant interest in the games. Being timely brings rewards, it seems!
This year I’ve made significant improvements to the images used across the website. Some of the images used even as recently as March or April now feel incredibly amateurish and low-quality in comparison. I’ve been doing more with paint.net – a freeware image editor that has become my go-to for any and all image work – and I’ve learned how to do things like add a shadow or outline to text. That has allowed me to make huge improvements to the header images/banners at the top of articles, giving them a more modern, professional look.
The website’s main banner – a core part of the site’s identity – has also been massively improved. Firstly, now that I have significantly more web storage I’ve felt more comfortable using higher-resolution images. Beginning earlier in the year the expanded storage allowed me to use larger, more detailed images for article and page headers, something I feel makes the website as a whole look a lot more modern and professional than it did even at the beginning of the year. The new banner was added earlier this month as part of the aforementioned change of name, but earlier in the year I tried out a variety of different banners with different sci-fi and fantasy-themed backgrounds.
The website’s main banner.
I’ve also added quite a few different “spoiler warning” images – most of which are based on the Star Trek franchise! Again, the quality of these has improved a lot as I’ve become more comfortable with my image editing software, and I think some of the recent spoiler warnings look pretty great! I like to err on the side of caution when it comes to spoilers, so I use spoiler warnings a lot at the beginning of articles and reviews.
Filling time over the past twelve months has led me to research and learn about shows, films, and games I’d never have heard of otherwise. I reviewed titles like Space Jam: A New Legacy, Zack Snyder’s Justice League, and even The Falcon and the Winter Soldier after learning about them in the course of researching topics for the website. Trekking with Dennis has, to a certain extent anyway, broadened my experiences of media this year.
I’ve seen (and reviewed) several different films and television shows over the past twelve months.
I’ve also finally got around to playing a couple of games that had been on my ever-growing list: Control and Red Dead Redemption II. I’ve written up my first impressions of Red Dead Redemption II already, and in the days ahead I’ll hopefully be writing up my final thoughts as I’m close to finishing my playthrough of the game.
Speaking of playthroughs, I didn’t get around to doing another complete “Let’s Play” series of articles. Though I’ve had a number of ideas for games I could choose, I just haven’t committed to one nor kicked off a playthrough in the way I did with Jedi: Fallen Order last year. It’s still an idea that I’d like to revisit in future, so… watch this space, I guess.
I’ve been playing Red Dead Redemption II – but I didn’t write up the whole experience.
During the website’s first year in operation, I’d post articles and columns somewhat haphazardly. Sometimes I’d post daily for a couple of weeks, and at other points I’d take almost an entire week off while writing nothing. Over the last twelve months, however, that has changed. Going back to November 2020 I’ve been posting at least every other day – so there hasn’t been a long gap in between posts in more than a year. Occasionally that schedule has felt challenging, but I’ve been proud of the fact that I haven’t had any significant posting gaps for an entire twelve-month period.
April saw my most intensive posting schedule to date, as I wrote a post every single day for an entire calendar month for the first time. It wasn’t exactly planned, but once I got about halfway into April and I noticed I hadn’t skipped a day, I made it my mission to complete the month! I can keep up that kind of schedule for a while, but not indefinitely. I need occasional breaks, and being able to write articles in advance and schedule them has meant I have actually been able to take breaks across the year without interrupting my posting streak.
In April I published an article every single day.
In December 2020 I joined Twitter. I did so at first because I was having a hard time keeping track of the various franchises and their social media pages, and as I’ve never had a personal Twitter account I couldn’t follow them that way. In February I made a very tentative first post, and across the year I’d sent out a handful of Tweets to promote newly-published reviews and other articles. But as I said last year, social media isn’t really my major focus.
This should absolutely be the subject of a longer essay sometime, but Twitter in particular is a very difficult platform for me to navigate. I’m sure you’ve noticed, but I have a particularly long-winded writing style! Condensing an argument, article, or even just a fan theory into 280 characters or fewer is difficult for me. I also find that, partly as a consequence of the abbreviated posts, the conversation on Twitter can lack nuance. It’s very hard to articulate a complex thought or position on the platform because such short posts don’t easily allow for shades of grey – you can either be on one side of a debate or the other. For someone who occasionally likes to straddle the fence and acknowledge the merits and demerits of both sides of a discussion, or just to explore different interpretations and points of view, Twitter isn’t the best place for me sometimes!
That being said, I’ve recently stepped up my Twitter use. It’s been an interesting world to step into for the first time, and I’ve found it quite fun and occasionally exciting to be able to engage directly with brands and companies – or at least their social media teams. Toward the end of my time working with a large video games company, social media was just beginning to take off as a marketing tool. I had some involvement with social media campaigns in the late 2000s and early 2010s at companies I worked for or was freelancing for, so it’s been interesting in a way to be on the other side of the screen for the first time!
If you don’t follow me on Twitter I don’t just post links to articles and columns that I write here on the website. I do post other occasional Tweets, mostly about Star Trek and the other subjects I cover. I don’t get political, so don’t expect any of that, but if you want to follow me on Twitter you’re more than welcome to do so.
Feel free to follow me on Twitter: @TrekkingwDennis is my Twitter handle.
But Twitter wasn’t the only social media platform that I found myself involved with over the past twelve months. Beginning in July I planned to record audio versions of some of the articles here on the website, using YouTube and Spotify to host these audio files. I later expanded my audio offerings to include what might generously be called a “podcast.” However, I wasn’t very happy with the quality of both the audio recordings themselves, as I lack the technical know-how to make decent-sounding audio, and also, to be blunt, my own vocal performance. Upon re-listening to several audio versions of articles I sounded very wooden and stilted; the kind of performances I’d give 1/10 to if I were to rate them.
So after a sum total of four podcast episodes and about ten audio articles I scrapped the project – at least for the time being. It’s a fun idea, and a concept I’d certainly like to revisit one day, but between the audio quality, my own poor performance, and the rebranding of the website making all of the audio clips and YouTube videos out of date, I think it’s for the best that I shelve the project for now.
Audio recording isn’t my strong suit.
That being said, I did enjoy the podcasting format. Having the opportunity to talk about smaller news stories and topics that wouldn’t necessarily make for a good standalone article was fun, and it certainly broadened the range of things I discuss here on the website. Revisiting the podcast concept is something I might consider in 2022.
It was in June this year – Pride Month – that I first discussed my sexuality and gender identity. Those twin posts were among the most difficult I’ve written over the past twelve months, not because they were technically challenging but because of how personal they were. When I created the website two years ago I intended to remain wholly anonymous, with details of my personal life kept to a bare minimum. By this time last year I’d changed my mind and I’d decided I wanted to openly discuss my asexuality and my struggles with my gender identity – but it took months before I’d be able to finish writing those pieces and feel brave enough to publish them.
In June I finally felt able to discuss my sexuality and gender identity for the first time.
I now proudly display the asexual and non-binary pride flags in the upper-right corner of the website. These symbols are present no matter what page or post someone clicks on, even if the piece has nothing at all to do with asexuality or being non-binary.
Writing these pieces, though incredibly difficult at times, was deeply satisfying and cathartic. Only a few people in my offline life knew these things about me, so having a space where I could openly discuss things that I’d struggled with for decades was a truly incredible experience. It gave me the confidence to be more open in my offline life too. I don’t have a lot of friends or surviving close relatives, but I’ve been able to direct a couple of people to the website where they were able to read my words to gain more of an insight into my personal life. I’ve said before that I’m better at writing than I am at speaking – having these pieces to direct folks to is so much easier than having to explain out loud what it means to be asexual or non-binary.
It’s been a difficult process, but I finally feel comfortable referring to myself as non-binary.
I haven’t added as many articles to the Greatest Hits page this year as I did in the previous twelve months. I think that’s partly because I had some article/essay ideas in mind when I started the website and I slowly worked my way through them over the course of that first year. While I’ve had plenty to write about this year, I guess I’ve just written fewer of those long-form essays.
This is one of the best essays I’ve written in the last twelve months. Give it a read if you haven’t already!
So I think that’s enough self-congratulation for this year! As I look ahead to the next twelve months, I can’t really say that I have any major plans or changes in mind for the website or the kind of pieces I write here. I’d like to do another playthrough series at some point, and I’m certainly open to more creative projects in addition to my reviews, theories, discussion topics, list articles, and the rest. But watch this space, I suppose!
The website is very different now compared to twelve months ago. I like to think that, for the most part, these changes have been improvements – and certainly from a purely visual point of view I think the website has never looked better! As we move into the holiday season and 2022 I’m looking forward to keeping up with my regular posting schedule and writing about the subjects I’m most interested in: Star Trek, gaming, and the wide world of geeky entertainment.
Thank you for your support over the past twelve months.
-Dennis Tuesday, 30th November 2021
All properties mentioned above are the copyright of their respective broadcaster, studio, developer, distributor, company, etc. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Starting today, this website has a new name! There’s also a new URL to match, so be sure to update your bookmarks! From now on, you’ll be able to find me here: https://www.trekkingwithdennis.com/
Why the change of name and branding? That’s a great question, and I’d like to take a moment to address this.
When I began working on the project that would ultimately become this website in the autumn of 2019, the name was one of the last things I settled on. And almost from the beginning I wasn’t thrilled with the name that I chose. The original light-hearted intention was that the website’s content would be akin to reading something that your proverbial “Crazy Uncle” might’ve said; sharing rambling opinions on geeky entertainment topics.
Making the website’s name a bit of a joke was, in retrospect, a mistake. It wasn’t the worst name I could’ve chosen, but I’ve had regrets about it almost from the moment the website went live.
Then there are the two constituent parts of the old name. “Crazy” is a term that many people have used to describe me in the past. I have mental health issues, and I’ve been up front about that on a number of occasions. In a way, I kind of felt as though I was reclaiming the word from critics by using it here, but on reflection I’m not sure that’s the way it comes across. The word “crazy” has been used for a long time to malign and marginalise people with mental health issues, and I don’t want to contribute to that in any way.
While I had good intentions with the use of the word, I now consider its usage here over the past couple of years to have been a mistake. Rather than compounding that mistake by doubling down, I’m choosing to drop the word “crazy” from the website’s name entirely.
Then we have the word “uncle.” As I’ve been exploring my own gender identity over the past few years, I’ve accepted myself for who I am: I’m non-binary. Masculine words and terms have no place here, because I’m not male. As I’ve explored more of what it means to be non-binary and to not be male, I’ve become more confident with my own gender identity and my gender expression. Dropping a masculine-sounding noun just makes sense for me now. As we approach 2022, I want my website to better reflect the person I am and the person I’ve become over the last few years; keeping such a masculine title has felt wrong for some time and I’ve been increasingly uncomfortable with it.
So from now on, your favourite(!) website will be known as Trekking with Dennis.
Obviously I chose the first part of this new name based on my love of the Star Trek franchise, not because I’ve suddenly become a long-distance hiker! Star Trek has been a huge part of the website and will continue to be a major focus as we move forward, but I will of course continue to talk about other topics as well. I’m not just a one-trick pony, after all! And if past precedent is anything to go by, some of the most popular articles and columns that I’ve written have been about subjects other than Star Trek!
The old URL – https://www.crazyuncledennis.com/ – will continue to work in the short term, simply redirecting you here, but by the end of 2022 at the very latest it will most likely be permanently shut down. So there’s time for everyone to update their bookmarks and for Google’s web-bots to find the new address and start their trawling!
Thank you for your support over the past couple of years. The website has grown to become so much bigger than I ever expected, and I’m having a great time writing about some of the franchises and subjects that I love and that I find the most interesting. I hope you’ll enjoy Trekking with Dennis as much as you enjoyed Crazy Uncle Dennis.
Trekking with Dennis 