Project Enterprise: Supersize TNG

9. Star Trek: Insurrection (1998) This wasn't bad. But it felt more like a supersized TV show than an actual movie. A fine adventure for the Next Generation crew. But nothing special.

Overall: B- My husband came in toward the end and commented that this is the one where everyone seems like swingers. The Ba'ku don't quite strike me that way -- more like a slightly annoying New Age commune. And they are just way too clean for an agrarian society.

Plot: B+ This would have been one of the great TNG episodes on TV. For one thing they started out violating the Prime Directive -- one of their favorite things to do. For another, Fountain of Youth and all that. And a love interest for Picard is always nice. They went almost light enough on the comic relief, too. The only one who can really pull it off is Worf.

Costumes: B- Nothing new on the Starfleet side, the New Age Ba'ku have Renaissance Faire peasant garb. Which is way too clean. The So'Na's clothes are OK but nothing special.

Extra cast members: B F. Murray Abraham does his usual good job. He's no Ricardo Montalban, of course.  I was struck this time by Anthony Zerbe, playing Admiral Dougherty, don't know where I know him from.

F/X: B+ This is almost entirely for the skin stretching and stapling the So'Na go through -- gross! And new to the series.

Series ranking: 1. Wrath of Khan 2. First Contact 3. The Voyage Home 4. Insurrection. 5. Generations 6. The Undiscovered Country 7. The Search for Spock 8. The Motion Picture 9. The Final Frontier

Project Enterprise: Seeing Double

10. Star Trek: Nemesis (2002)This movie is all about the doubles. Data's got a clone. Picard's got a clone. If I'm Riker or Geordie, I'm like hey how come I don't have a clone?

Overall: B Better than the last one. At least this felt like a movie, with some real scope and a big-screen villain. They should get docked, though, for calling the bad guys' ship a "scimitar."

Plot: B+ Doubles. B-4 is Data's "little brother." Shinzon is Picard's Romulan-engineered clone. All about mortality? Sure, why not? It worked for Wrath of Khan.

Costumes: B Romulans OK, Shinzon OK, Starfleet no change.

Extra cast members: A- Really only one but he's a good one -- Tom Hardy is Shinzon! And he's good, too -- way skinner than he is as Bane. But the same gravelly menacing voice.

F/X: B- Shinzon's deteriorating face isn't bad, but that's really all there is.

Series ranking: 1. Wrath of Khan 2. First Contact 3. The Voyage Home 4. Nemesis 5. Insurrection. 6. Generations 7. The Undiscovered Country 8. The Search for Spock 9. The Motion Picture 10. The Final Frontier

Project Enterprise: A New Hope

11. Star Trek (2009) Woo hoo! I've reached the J.J. Abrams era! Kirk is hot again! In fact, Kirk is even hotter than he was when Kirk was supposed to be hot! Though it is a little unsettling that I watched the original Star Trek series as re-runs in the '70s saying "eeeewwwww" every time Kirk got it on with a babe (because I was, you know, six) and now I find it a tad creepy to find Chris Pine hot (because I am, you know, not quite old enough to be his mother but too old to be ogling a 29-year-old). I guess I should have had a crush on Riker back in the '90s but I just couldn't quite get there. Too bad Voyager never got a movie because that rebel first officer guy was definitely …

But I digress. What I meant was, woo hoo! It's a new day, a new cast, a reboot and finally another Star Trek movie that bears repeated viewing.

Overall: A I will admit openly that if this movie had come out when I was 13, it would probably be my favorite of the bunch, with the possible exception of Into Darkness. But it didn't, and my heart still lies with Wrath of Khan.

Plot: A Excellent and creative reboot, and our first look at an origin story, too. I'll admit here that the opening scene, with Kirk's father sacrificing himself for the ship's crew including his wife and newborn son, actually brought me to tears.

Costumes: B Nice references to the old TV show in the uniforms, especially the miniskirts for Uhura. Nero and his crew? I can't remember what they were wearing, other than I think it was black.

Extra cast members: A- Eric Bana as Nero is the only one of note but he's awfully good. First of all, because I've been a huge Eric Bana fan since Black Hawk Down and he never quite seems to get the love (he was just fine as the Hulk, dammit!). Secondly, because he goes for out-and-out villain but puts a nice twist of pyscho in there -- my favorite moment might be when he's first onscreen with Capt. Pike who identifies himself and Nero says, "Hi, Chris. I'm Nero." As if they were meeting at some kind of networking forum. Beautifully done. Just watch it.

F/X: B+ CG has gotten so much better it almost doesn't seem fair. And I kind of wish they had referred more to the old show in the look of the computers, etc., even though that would be hard to do without a high cheese factor.

Series ranking: 1. Wrath of Khan 2. Star Trek 3. First Contact 4. The Voyage Home 5. Nemesis 6. Insurrection. 7. Generations 8. The Undiscovered Country 9. The Search for Spock 10. The Motion Picture 11. The Final Frontier

Project Enterprise: The pre-return of Khan

12. Star Trek Into Darkness (2013) OK, it's my Wrath of Khan thing again. I know this movie got raves and deservedly so -- I was into it every minute in the theater. It's got great pacing, good performances, a formidable villain -- everything you want from a Star Trek movie. But. It just doesn't have the heart of Wrath of Khan. This could be because once, again, I'm way too attached to that movie. I understand the reboot thing. I applaud it. But something about replacing the gloriously over-the-top Ricardo Montalban with the cerebral Benedict Cumberbatch just didn't quite work for me. To wit: Kirk's big death scene in the warp core chamber? I didn't take that seriously at all.

Overall: A- It's a good movie. It's just the second-best Star Trek movie featuring Khan, that's all. And it's the second-best of the Abrams era -- I love an origin story.

Plot: A- It's one thing to tamper with the text. It's another to change the whole nature of an iconic character. Admiral Marcus as an opponent wasn't bad. So, yeah, good movie.

Costumes: B+ I liked the references to the velour-y uniform jerseys from the show's early days. Otherwise -- nothing special.

Extra Cast Members: A- Cumberbatch -- adore him as Sherlock. Just don't see him as Khan. But it's still fun to watch and, even better, listen to him. Admiral Marcus was fine, Carol Marcus quite good -- even  though in this timeline she has inexplicably acquired a British accent.

F/X: B+ Khan's attack on Starfleet headquarters was good. Ship crashing into Starfleet headquarters better. Big finale fight scene on the hovercraft? Just a top-of-the-train fight, set in the not-too-distant future.

Series ranking: 1. Wrath of Khan 2. Star Trek 3. First Contact 4. Star Trek Into Darkness 5. The Voyage Home 6. Nemesis 7. Insurrection. 8. Generations 9. The Undiscovered Country 10. The Search for Spock 11. The Motion Picture 12. The Final Frontier

Reading Differently

I was, like many readers, delighted and pleasantly surprised when Alice Munro was named the winner of this year's Nobel Prize in Literature. For one thing, I had actually read her. For another, she is one of the great examples of a woman writing about what are commonly considered women's concerns -- relationships, the domestic sphere and the everyday lives of women -- and proving beyond doubt that these are indeed literary matters, even from the woman's point of view. One of her story collections is even titled Hateship, Friendship, Loveship, Courtship, Marriage -- you have to wonder if that's almost a sly dare on her part to go ahead and try to restrict her to some literary ghetto. There's also the fact that she writes short stories, a form that no longer has the attention it once did from the reading public, and that she is a realist. Maybe that's what got my attention when, one day in the late 1980s as a college student who had never heard of Alice Munro, I picked up a copy of The New Yorker and read a story called "Differently." It changed my world, at least as a reader. I immediately got my hands on all of Munro's previous works and became a devoted fan. Images from that story have stayed with me and Munro's world in general felt both familiar and expansive -- the world of intelligent women navigating stifling economic and family backgrounds, reaching for something, doing things they are ashamed of or defiantly going out on their own. I didn't always like her characters but I always found them interesting. More than interesting -- compelling.

Munro spoke to me in a way that the writers who were cool at the time just didn't. I never got into that minimalist school, like Robert Coover. I wasn't blown away by Pynchon or Delillo. I read the White Male Narcissists, as David Foster Wallace famously called them (Updike, Cheever, Mailer) but they didn't do it for me the way Munro did. Of the young writers of that era who were allegedly going to be the voices of my generation -- Bret Easton Ellis, Jay McInerney, Tama Janowitz -- only Michael Chabon won my devotion and I've been glad to see he's the one with staying power -- and that he has managed to avoid the Franzenian gender wars, or whatever they are.

So thank you, Alice Munro, for writing "Differently" all those years ago (you can read it in her collection "Friend of My Youth" or in the "Selected Stories"). And thank you, Swedish prize committee people for recognizing her. She already has a broad and devoted readership, but this can't help but lead more readers her way, maybe some of them young women who are wondering why the literature she is supposed to admire just doesn't work for her.