Part Two has an impressively cumulative impact, as Sellars cunningly weaves the dramatic strands together.On Friday, the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin under its principal conductor Kent Nagano, provided strong support for what was among the finest premiere performances of a difficult new stage work I have ever heard. This "oratorio" may be a hybrid, and its ability to stand unstaged as yet unproven. But El Niño is a much more powerful, multi-dimensional composition than this partnership's rock musical, Ceiling/Sky.. The best critical work comes from trusting one's own heart, one's own judgement. Michÿle and Duncan Barrett catalogue the various indictments levelled against the four series in the Star Trek franchise: neo-colonialism, a non-postmodern sexism, an altogether un-postmodern humanism.

Then they find themselves endlessly drawn back to the mythology of the Alpha Quadrant, the Federation and the Klingons, dilithium crystals... If, they almost say, contemporary critical discourse cannot cope with the merits of popular television series, so much the worse for critical discourse. The best critical work comes from trusting one's own heart, one's own judgement. Michÿle and Duncan Barrett catalogue the various indictments levelled against the four series in the Star Trek franchise: neo-colonialism, a non-postmodern sexism, an altogether un-postmodern humanism. Then they find themselves endlessly drawn back to the mythology of the Alpha Quadrant, the Federation and the Klingons, dilithium crystals... If, they almost say, contemporary critical discourse cannot cope with the merits of popular television series, so much the worse for critical discourse. The original Star Trek was a product of early-Sixties idealism with all the weaknesses and omissions of that idealism.

It may have talked of space as the final frontier, but its spirit was that of Kennedy's New Frontier - with race and gender inequality best dealt with by slow increments and by trusting the man in command. The Barretts intelligently pick up on an analogy drawn by the show's creator, Gene Roddenberry, between Captain James T Kirk and C S Forester's Hornblower - a man with the burden of command and the power to make his will obeyed.When, years later, the franchise was revived with The Next Generation, those assumptions were chastened. Captain Picard is a more interesting character than Kirk, partly because he is a more damaged one. The period of his life when he was captured by the mechanised hive-mind of the Borg has left scars.