u/CitricThoughts

There's been a murder in the small town of Murderville! Shock and horror! Fortunately there's a detective convention ongoing at the time and several legendary detectives were all in appearance.

Since so many of them have solved so many murders, they propose a competition. The first to solve the case wins.

-Detective Columbo (Columbo)

-Jessica Fletcher (Murder She Wrote)

-Ben Matlock (Matlock)

-Hercule Poirot (Poirot)

-Dr. Mark Sloan (Diagnosis: Murder)

The case takes place in a generic town in the USA, but involves European immigrants, legal and medical fraud and arrogant rich Americans. While we as the audience know that the Butler did it, none of the detectives know this from the start.

Which of the detectives would be the first to solve the case?

An alien warlord summons a perfect copy of every single great Trek captain across time and uses mind control to bloodlust them. They'll fight to the death. Temporary team ups are allowed, but everyone has to turn on each other in the end and they all know it.

The participants are:

1: Captain Archer

2: Captain Pike

3: Captain Kirk

4: Captain Picard

5: Captain Sisko

6: Captain Janeway

7: Captain Freeman

We're going to pretend Discovery doesn't exist.

They're scattered around a vast citywide arena covered in ruined and derelict ships. They've all got a phaser from their era, which is enough to kill each other in any event. All phasers are set to kill. The wrecked ships are a mixture from across the timeline. There's no third option that lets them all leave or make peace or something like that. It's just a fight.

Seven enter, only one can leave. Who takes it?

I've been rewatching Star Trek over the last few months. I made it through TNG, DS9, lower decks and Voyager. Now I'm on Enterprise. While Enterprise is one of my least favorite series of the lot, it's not because the cast or ship are bad. The ship is cool and the cast are great actors. It's mostly because the Temporal Cold war devours the series and I hate that plot. My favorite episodes are ones like the Andorian Incident where the show is actually setting up the federation. They make the show great, though there's far too few of them.

Still, as I'm going through season 3 there's one big highlight: MACO's. It's still early enough in Earth's history that they remember what special forces are and actually have and use them. They are freaking badass! I forgot just how good and effective they were at their job. When they go down to the mining colony and just outright win a fight and do it handily I was like, YES! They're so freaking good the Federation had to nerf them.

Personally it's one concept I wish never disappeared from Trek. While the Federation is definitely not a military with its giant fleet of warships science vessels, there are way, way too many times where a team of elite, trained fighters would just solve their problems. Granted, they're so cool and effective that the bridge crew wouldn't be able to get kidnapped as often as they do. That'd be like, half of Trek plots right there. Still, the concept makes so much sense and they're so damn cool. They'd also make way more sense to send down to some Cardassian planet than, say, a random brand new ensign that immediately gets killed. I just wish that at least one series decided to bring them back.

I mean why not have MACO's during the Earth-Klingon war? Why not have them during the Dominion War? Sure, Trek humans seem embarrassed by their skill at combat, but that's no good reason to bury the concept of a team of well trained badasses. They're cool!

Anyway I don't expect we'll see them ever again, I just wanted to express my appreciation for one of the most underrated parts of Trek.

(Also Enterprise had some of the best mirror universe episodes.)