Star Trek Christmas in July? It’s only logical to celebrate!
This summer more than most, I’ve noticed advertisers leaning into the concept of Christmas in July.
The phrase apparently may be almost a century old but I’ve never heard as much about it as I have this year. From major online retailers to the Hallmark Channel (naturally) to my local radio stations, everyone seems to be telling me I should need and want a little Christmas halfway through 2021.
But how should Star Trek fans best celebrate Christmas in July?
In the northern hemisphere, it’s not cold enough to break out the ugly Star Trek holiday sweaters. It’s too early to string up the Hallmark Star Trek Christmas tree ornaments (assuming you ever took them down—some sit on my shelves year-round).
Fortunately, any season’s a good season for watching Star Trek episodes and movies.
So put on your Santa hat, pour yourself a glass of nog (eggnog, that is, not the first Ferengi in Starfleet), and enjoy this watch list curated for a very merry Star Trek Christmas in July!
Beamin’ down to winter wonder worlds: “Breaking the Ice” (ENT)
Gentle snowfalls feature prominently in Christmas movies and TV shows.
Many songs on the standard Christmas soundtrack feature the white stuff: “White Christmas,” “Winter Wonderland,” “Jingle Bells,” and more.
Even some Christmas hymns imagine Jesus being born “In the Bleak Midwinter,” or when “The Snow Lay On the Ground”—though shepherds in first-century Judea would not be in the fields of Bethlehem, keeping their sheep, in the winter.
For most of the continental U.S., “white Christmases” turn out to be historically rare. But the meteorological data doesn’t stop us from thinking of the holiday season as a time when Jack Frost is nipping at our nose as we sing, “Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!”
If you’re celebrating Christmas in July to conjure some relief from the summer heat, you may want to check out snowy and icy worlds in Star Trek.
Rura Penthe comes to mind. No doubt there are cheerier places to spend Christmas than the Klingon penal asteroid “known throughout the galaxy as the alien’s graveyard.” But even if you’ve been sentenced to hard labor for crimes against the Empire, as Captain Kirk (William Shatner) and Dr. McCoy (DeForest Kelly) were in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, or as Captain Archer was in the second-season Star Trek: Enterprise episode “Judgment,” at least you won’t be hot!
But if it’s an adventure, not lifetime imprisonment, you’re after, try walking on the surface of a comet as Lieutenant Malcolm Reed (Dominic Keating) and Ensign Travis Mayweather (Anthony Montgomery) did in the first-season Enterprise episode, “Breaking the Ice.”
Before their harrowing experience falling into an ice chasm, they had the chance to build a snowman.
They didn’t have an old felt hat to put on its head, as the kids who built Frosty the Snowman did—but they did, not long after this clip, ultimately give it Vulcan ears!
Star Trek Christmas in July—in the Nexus: Star Trek Generations
As long as we’re pretending it’s Christmastime, we might as well go ahead and talk about the one of the “make-believes” in the franchise: The Nexus.
In Star Trek Generations, Guinan (Whoopi Goldberg) describes being inside the energy phenomenon as “being inside joy, as if joy was something . . . you could wrap yourself in . . . like a blanket.”
When Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) finds himself in the Nexus, his joy takes the form of a Christmas morning that could have been lifted straight from the pages of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol were the scene not set, presumably, in Picard’s native France. Given Sir Patrick Stewart’s long association with Dickens’ Yuletide ghost story, what could be more fitting?
The Generations writers and artistic designers packed as many traditional Christmas trappings into this short sequence as they could.
The Picards have hung their stockings by the chimney with care. We see not one but two beautiful, fully trimmed Christmas trees. We see Picard’s children happily playing with such holiday classics as dolls and teddy bears. And Picard’s late, lamented nephew René invites him into a dining room where the table is set for a splendid holiday feast.
Fortunately, Picard’s dogged devotion to his duty, along with a nudge from Guinan, means the captain isn’t content to bask forever in the warmth of an illusory Christmas morning with a wife and children he never had.
But anyone who’s ever grumbled and groaned over heading “back to reality” after the joys of the holiday season can relate to Picard’s initial reluctance, even if the post-Christmas tasks awaiting us aren’t as high stakes as saving the galaxy from a madman with a missile!
Whether you watch the Nexus sequence alone or the whole movie, Generations is a must-watch for your Star Trek Christmas in July festivities.
The notorious science lab Christmas party: “Dagger of the Mind” (TOS)
One advantage of Christmas in July? No company Christmas parties.
It’s disappointing to discover the mandatory holiday mirth making that is the office holiday party persists into the 23rd century. Make too merry with your co-workers, and coming back to work afterward can be awkward.
Just ask Captain Kirk.
In “Dagger of the Mind,” Kirk beams down to the Tantalus Penal Colony—where we’ll soon learn Dr. Tristan Adams is up to psychological shenanigans—with Dr. Helen Noel, an Enterprise psychiatrist at “the science lab Christmas party.” Judging from Kirk’s reaction to Dr. Noel in the transporter room, their office party tête-à-tête must have taken place under some mistletoe.
When Kirk and Noel test Dr. Adams’ neural neutralizer, she implants in Kirk’s mind a false memory of the Christmas party. In this scenario, Kirk literally swept her off her feet and carried her back to his cabin for some private holiday cheer.
You can watch it all in the clip above if you like. Seeing a professional woman who’s also quite an action hero spin out a fantasy involving her commanding officer is problematic by modern standards.
On the other hand, Noel’s fantasy is her fantasy (in-universe—yes, a man wrote the episode). Much as the once-beloved but now-controversial song “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” may be “actually about a woman trying to exercise sexual agency” in a man’s world, Noel’s amorous fancies about Kirk could be seen in the same light.
Whatever you think about the scene, there’s no doubt Marianna Hill created a memorable character in her sole Star Trek appearance.
And there’s no doubt any episode with a character whose last name, in French, is “Christmas” deserves a spot on any Star Trek Christmas in July watch list!
Hang a shining starship on the highest bough: “Death Wish” (VOY)
A story about a divine-like being’s wish to die may seem an odd choice for a holiday on which Christians celebrate the birth of one they worship as divine.
But in its second season, Star Trek: Voyager gave viewers just such a “Christmas story” with the episode “Death Wish.”
Granted, neither the holiday nor its themes, religious or otherwise, figure prominently in the episode. But as Quinn (Gerrit Graham), a member of the Q continuum who wishes to escape tedious immortality, seeks to hide from the Q we know best (John de Lancie), he transports the Voyager to a trio of unfathomable hiding places: the Big Bang, the space between atomic particles, and the branches of a Christmas tree, on which the ship has become a hanging ornament.
As Tom Paris (Robert Duncan McNeill) reports to Captain Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) in the clip above, “We seem to be tethered to some kind of large plant!”
By coincidence or design—I suspect the latter—Hallmark released its Voyager Christmas tree ornament in 1996, the same year this episode aired. Since Voyager appeared early in Hallmark’s still-going-strong line of Star Trek ornaments, fans did still need to literally “tether” it to their trees’ string of lights in order to see its warp nacelles and deflector dish glow.
Turning the Voyager into a Christmas tree bauble couldn’t stop Q from finding Quinn. But after Janeway conducted a hearing about Quinn’s wish for death, the Continuum granted Quinn, not death, but mortality.
As Janeway tells Quinn:
"Now that you’re mortal, you have a new existence to explore. An entirely new state of being filled with the mysteries of mortal life, pleasures you’ve never felt before. I like this life . . . You might too. Think hard before you give it up."
A divine-like being who becomes a mortal?
For Christians, at least, “Death Wish” may be a more appropriate story for Star Trek Christmas in July than it first seems!
Data connects with a spirit of Christmas: “Devil’s Due” (TNG)
The finale of our Star Trek Christmas in July watch list comes from Star Trek: The Next Generation.
In the fourth-season episode “Devil’s Due,” the android Commander Data (Brent Spiner) continues his quest to crack the human equation by playing Ebenezer Scrooge in a holodeck production of A Christmas Carol.
(British-born and Shakespearean-trained actor William Glover, uncredited on-screen, played Marley’s Ghost, making this episode one of his final TV appearances.)
After his performance, Data tells Picard he believes convincingly playing Scrooge’s fear will bring him “one step closer to truly understanding humanity.”
Students of the human condition could do worse than scrutinizing Ebenezer Scrooge. Over the course of A Christmas Carol, he moves from exemplifying humanity’s worst traits to embodying its best.
When Charles Dickens’ classic tale begins, Scrooge is “a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner.”
But after his visitations from the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future, he becomes a new man, overflowing with mirth, mercy, and love.
The narrator tells us Scrooge “knew how to keep Christmas well if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us!”
In 1999, talking about his own approach to playing Scrooge—as he had done for years in his one-man stage show, and as he did that year in a TV movie—Patrick Stewart told the Christian Science Monitor:
"[T]he lessons that the spirits [teach] Scrooge are as applicable at the end of this millennium as they were in 1842: the personal desirability of each one of us learning how to open our hearts to the world; to love and to receive love, not to be afraid, [and] to learn also that we do have a responsibility for others in our society who are not perhaps as fortunate as we are."
Sounds like Sir Patrick believes A Christmas Carol has lessons those of who want to see a future more like the one we see in Star Trek should take to heart—not just at Christmas in July, but all year, every year.
And so, as Tiny Tim would no doubt have said had he been a Star Trek fan, “May the Great Bird of the Galaxy bless us, everyone!”
A very merry Star Trek Christmas in July to you all!