trekking with dennis anniversary – 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.

One more year in review

Wed 30.11.22Dennis

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 Worlds was 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.

However, I’m quite proud of my breakdown of Et in Arcadia Ego, my analysis of the Short Treks series and its potential, my review of The Matrix Resurrections, and my two-part look at being a Star Trek fan that I wrote back in February. I also added to the Greatest Hits page my “Kirk versus Picard” tongue-in-cheek debate, and stepping back to years past, I added one piece from 2020 about the survival prospects for brick-and-mortar video game shops as the medium goes increasingly digital. You can check out all of those by visiting the Greatest Hits page.

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

Another year in review

Tue 30.11.21Fri 11.03.22Dennis

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.

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.

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.

That being said, my essay on Star Trek: Discovery’s Season 3 Burn storyline is one of the best things I’ve written all year, and I’m happy to show off that one! I’m also proud of my character study of The Next Generation’s Dr Pulaski, and my examination of Luke Skywalker’s characterisation in The Last Jedi that I wrote back in December. I’m sure I’m forgetting or overlooking a few others as well, but those are three of the essays that come to mind when I think back over the past twelve months.

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.