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Matt and Sean talk about the end of Star Trek Strange New Worlds season two … and what lurks next week. Does the season cliffhanger work or fall flat?
YouTube version of the podcast: https://www.youtube.com/trekintime
Matt and Sean talk about the end of Star Trek Strange New Worlds season two … and what lurks next week. Does the season cliffhanger work or fall flat?
YouTube version of the podcast: https://www.youtube.com/trekintime
Follow us on X: @byseanferrell @mattferrell or @undecidedmf
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Creators & Guests
What is Trek In Time?
Join Sean and Matt as they rewatch all of Star Trek in order and in historical context.
In today's episode of Trek in Time, we're talking about a cliffhanger ending and boldly going forward without part two. That's right. Unfortunately for us, we are looking at the final episode of season two. It's the final episode available of Strange New Worlds, Hegemony, which means we are jumping off next week.
Spoilers. To the original series. That's right, everybody. You've been waiting for it. We've been waiting for it. We finally got there. And as I was watching this final episode and realized it was a cliffhanger, I thought, well, Damn it. Anyway, welcome everybody to Trek in Time where we're watching every episode of Star Trek in chronological stardate order.
And we're also taking a look at the world at the time of original broadcast. So we're currently looking at episode 10, Hegemony of Strange New Worlds season two, which means we're also looking at 2023. And who are we? Well, I'm Sean Ferrell. I'm a published writer. I have a couple of novels for adults, some stuff for kids, and I'm just happy to be here with my brother, Matt, who is the guru and inquisitor behind the channel Undecided with Matt Ferrell, which takes a look at emerging tech and its impact on our lives.
Matt, how are you today?
I'm good. I forgot that this was the first part of a two parter. And when it was coming to the ending, all I had flashbacks to was watching Next Generation with Will Riker on the bridge and Locutus Borg is on the screen and this dramatic music and he goes, fire. And then it cut to black and it was like, no, it's made to wait an entire year until the next season.
Yeah. It's like, I forgot that this basically had the same exact cliffhanger of Pike on the bridge looking like, what the hell do I do? Yeah, it is unfortunate. We've talked about two parters on this program before and we had made the promise we're going to treat two parters as one episode. We'll put them both together.
Everybody can watch both and then we'll just talk about it as one thing. I don't regret that we didn't do that here because what were we going to do? like just yeah ends at season two episode nine and then say yeah we'll talk about that at some point in the future like no we couldn't do that so we're going to talk about this episode and then we'll visit part two in the future when season three drops and we will do what we've promised which is we are going to be moving forward now with the original series and as season three of strange new worlds appears we will pause the original series we'll drop back to do strange new worlds finish that season we'll do that moving forward and we'll figure out some creative numbering exercise in order to Keep things in a pattern that makes sense for people.
I don't know what that'll look like, but we'll find out. Uh, also a little bit later in this episode, before we close off for people who are curious, we will be discussing how we're going to include not only the original series, because spoilers, it's not going to be broadcast. Order. So, little teaser for people there.
And the other part we're going to talk about is how are we going to include the animated series. And I have landed on a solution that I think will work. So, as we always like to do, we like to visit your comments before we move on to our conversation for the newest episode. So, Matt, what did you find in the mailbag this week?
Okay. So, these are all from episode 139, Subspace Rhapsody. The musical episode, the one that I was dying to talk about with Sean because I knew he would hate it and he hated it. Um, it was a fun conversation and we, I was really interested to see what the, the viewer's reaction was to this episode. And there was way more I mean, there was people right there with us, Sean, but I was surprised at the number of the people that loved this episode.
So I wanted to kind of go through some of those comments. Uh, but the first one who sounds like he's in the same camp with us is AJ Chan, who wrote, I am not normally a fan of musicals. So this episode was a rare time that I enjoyed watching a musical. Also, an hour of musical is about my limit anyway. So this was fine as a Star Trek episode.
I put it in the same category as the time Voyager took inspiration from the lost world, Jurassic Park, trying to capture the zeitgeist at the time, though, it won't age all that well. So he enjoyed it. More than I think you did, but he still has those, it's not going to age well kind of uh, vibes to it.
That's a very good contextualizing, I think. Yeah. Yeah. And then we have, how would you say this username, Sean? Do you see it in the comments? I would say it's Prolithin. Yeah. Prolithin. So Prolithin wrote, I absolutely love this episode. I'm a huge fan of both Star Trek. And musicals. This is an unbeatable combination.
I've watched the episode several times and listened to the music on Apple Music on repeat for days. It provides a unique opportunity to see into the characters personalities and thoughts. The actors are absolutely fantastic. Additionally, knowing that the ensemble themselves were instrumental in making this episode happen just makes it better.
This is my favorite episode of all. I thought that was like, you don't get more polar opposite. Yeah, that's, I mean, that's great. I mean, that's, yeah. And that's what, I mean, there's a point where you want. a great show to hit the right notes for a really wide audience without doing that by just watering itself down so that it is nothing like yes like you think of some of the most major dramas and show sitcoms that are wildly popular with a huge audience and very often i don't know if you've ever seen this they uh on youtube you can find clips of sitcoms where they take the laugh track out And if you watch it without the laugh track, you see, oh, this isn't actually funny.
There's nothing here that it has no voice. It has no point of view. A show like Star Trek comes with a point of view. It has to. It's sci fi. So it already has a certain vision of what it's trying to do. For it to be able to hit different notes. No pun intended regarding a musical conversation, but for it to hit different notes and have different parts of the audience say, ah, this didn't work for me, but I'm still going to come back next week.
And another part say, this is my favorite episode of all time. That's great. I absolutely love that. So, so thank you, Perlithon, for jumping in and sharing your love of this episode. Richard Gould Blue Raven continued on that train. I'm not a fan of musicals, but when I saw that the Klingons were coming, I found myself looking forward to an extended song and dance routine.
I wanted them to go full Bollywood with the Klingon.
And then there was David T. Rex, who simply said I loved this episode. So thank you all for chiming in. It was great to see these different points of view on this episode where Sean and I kind of like really ragged on it. Uh, it's nice to see that people really do appreciate it. Diversity was great. Yeah, the diversity of responses is terrific.
I appreciate all those thoughts and thank you so much for jumping into the comments. On now, that noise of course means the read alert is going off, which means it's time for Matt to buckle up and tackle the Wikipedia description and I will let you know, Matt. Moving forward, the descriptions for the original series are either incredibly brief because there are summaries that are just one sentence, or overly long.
So moving forward, I think I'm probably going to have to write most of them for you. So I don't know if that's better or worse. We'll find out. Batel's ship, the USS Cayuga, is ambushed by the Gorn while resupplying a human colony Parnassus, Beta. Chapel is aboard the Cayuga enroute to her fellowship and survives the attack.
Okay, that was Yep. All right. The Enterprise arrives to find the wreckage of the Cayuga and the Gorn device jamming communications and transporters. April orders them not to cross the Gorn claimed space, but Pike secretly leads Ortegas, La'an, M'Benga, and Sam Kirk to the surface. They find Batel and other survivors, including Starfleet engineer Montgomery Scott, who has built a cloaking device to hide from the Gorn.
Pike learns that Batel has been infected with Gorn eggs. Following a strategy suggested by Uhura and Pelia, Spock installs
rockets on the Cayuga's wreckage so they can crash it into the Jammer. This description is fantastic. He kills an attacking Gorn with help from Chapel. The Jammer is destroyed, allowing the Enterprise to transport up Pike, Scott, and Batel, who is taken straight to medical.
The Gorn capture La'an M'Benga, Ortegas, Sam, and the other survivors. Pike is forced to decide whether to follow orders and retreat
or stay to rescue his captured crew.
Dot, dot, dot.
Yeah.
This is episode number 10 of season two, Hegemony, directed by Maja Vrvilo and written by Henry Alonzo Myers. It originally broadcast on August 10th, 2023.
And our cast, as always, Anson Mount, Ethan Peck, Christina Chong, Melissa Navia, Rebecca Romijn, Jess Bush, Celia Rose Gooding, and Babs Olusanmokun, along with Martin Quinn as Lieutenant Montgomery Scott, Adrian Holmes as Admiral Robert April, Melanie Scrofano as Captain Batel, Dan Jeannotte as Lt. George Samuel "Sam" Kirk and Carol Kane as Pelia.
And the world on August 10th, 2023, if we close our eyes, we can almost see it like it was just last year, can't we Matt? I know that when you close your eyes, you can't help but hear Once Again, Last Night by Morgan Whelan. Yes, it's back at number one of the downloads thanks to Matt saying, Damn it, I'm not gonna let this song go down without a fight.
And at the movie theaters, we were still lining up to see Barbie, which added 93 million more to its coffers. And it would go on. If we had an episode about this show next week, it would add another 53 million. So Barbie was the movie that just couldn't stop making money. And on television, our last visit of the streaming shows of 2023, we've seen Suits, Bluey, NCIS, Grey's Anatomy, Cocomelon, The Big Bang Theory.
Gilmore Girls, Friends, and Heartland. And at number 10, another show with an insurmountable number of episodes, Supernatural on Netflix with 328 episodes getting a cool 22. 8 billion minutes viewed. This is a show that of course set some records for its longevity on the CW. It was a, it was a remarkable program and it was one of my favorites, although I joined it.
in its 12th year. So I played catch up. I tried to get you to watch it. You did. And I wouldn't do it because damn it. I didn't care. This is a
show about brothers, Sean. Watch this show about brothers.
I was like, it'll be a cold day in hell before I watched that. And then I discovered that the show was about a cold day in hell.
So I watched it. And. Caught up to it and then ended up finishing the 15th season in real time. Uh, I'm not going to bother synopsizing it for anybody because I have a feeling everybody who watches this program, this podcast of ours, is familiar with Supernatural, so you know what I'm talking about. And in the news, well, we had lots of election interference cases coming to a boil.
Special counsel obtained search warrant for Trump's Twitter account is one of the main headlines in the New York Times. There was also a article about. President Biden ordering a investigation into the high tech industries in China. And that has continued to this day where, as we're recording this, the U. S. House of Representatives has just passed legislation that will have an impact on TikTok. And China and China's ability to continue to own TikTok if it is going to operate in the United States. There was also an article about the wildfires that had devastated Hawaii that we will remember that people died as a result of early warning systems.
Not actively working in the way intended, and if I remember correctly, investigations from this point forward determined that one of the key factors of the early warning systems is that they were not typically designed for cases where people should flee from high level To lower level. They were actually designed in cases of storms where people would have to move to higher ground.
So when people heard the alarms going off, they did not know what they were supposed to be doing, and it led to some deaths. There was also an article that connected to global warming. Heat singes the mind, not just the body. Referring to increases globally of temperatures has an impact on mental stability and mental health.
People feel stress more when it is hot, and as a result, not only can that impact your overall physical health, but mental anguish and mental strain can lead to more disruption between people. In other words, the hotter it gets, the more cantankerous we all get, and that can lead to conflict. On now to our discussion about this episode and where would you like to start?
Because there's a lot going on in this one. Uh, maybe we take the approach of what did you find surprising about this one? And then I'll talk about what I found surprising. Surprising? That's a good question. I don't think it would be surprising, but I really loved the use of the Gorn. The exploration of the Gorn.
It reminded me of the movie Aliens, where we've seen the Gorn one on one, or just a handful of them, and they behaved a certain way. And then it's like, now we're seeing them like, wait, why are they all kind of working together? It's like, it's like this unraveling, this multi layered, you know, making them far more interesting with the, the solar flare that comes out with the coronal mass ejection.
And they come up with this whole thing of like, oh, that's why they're here, because it's like Insects to a flame. It's like they've been drawn here because of that. So like explaining the whole kind of Gorn backstory and explaining from a science point of view, why they're here, what they're doing, discovering how their society actually may work a little bit more.
Um, it's, it's, I thought that to me was the most interesting part of all of this. Um, it, they're not just a big bad. It's helping you to understand why they are the way they are. It's not like they're mustache twirling villains. They're trying to procreate and eat and they're being drawn to different parts of the galaxy from, you know, these massive solar ejections.
So it's, I, I love that. I thought that was a really interesting, um, path they went down for the, uh, The, the kicking off point of what this episode is. I think, uh, I agree with what you've just said. It is interesting to take a enemy that in the original series was presented for one episode but presented in that episode as, oh, these guys are bad news.
And then they never use them again. And so it was this, like, why are they such bad news if. They're put into this one category and then they're quickly put to the side. What about them is so intense? And now to see the introduction of this everything from there's an aspect of them that is still treated as animalistic they seem to operate with yeah it's almost like the showrunners said like let's literally just make them all reptilian brain So, it is whatever stimuli hits them, they respond to it.
And so, here comes this coronal ejection, they respond to this thing bringing them to a place because there's something about it that triggers them in that way. And then when it comes to egg laying and eating and the young, we have in this one the first time where The young are responding to each other in a collective fashion, which disturbs La'an, who says that's not how they should be behaving, this isn't what they should be doing, raising the questions of do we even know now what is driving them?
So I think it does some really cool stuff for this particular story, while also adding layers of beauty. more mystery for us to explore deeper. And it will be interesting, I think, for us moving forward to consider all of that as we reach the original series episode about the Gorn. And we may just end up saying like, yeah, this was a 1960s TV show with a guy in a costume.
That may be what we say, but I'm also curious, will we be able to take some of this and say, it's interesting to look at that character from this perspective now? So I wanted to. Also, talk about, like, elements of surprise in this one, um, for me, there was a moment where I got absolutely giddy when I realized Scotty was making an appearance.
And I said this the last time that they introduced, you know, we have Uhura and like, I get it. Okay. And then Kirk was introduced and I was like, wow, I wasn't expecting that. And like, even though I should be expecting original series characters. pretty much at any time at this point. I'm like, why am I surprised that they're going to keep introducing these people?
But to be given Scotty in a way that everything we've said about the actor playing Kirk, and we have said this every time Jim Kirk appears, we've said he is not doing a impersonation of of, uh, he's not doing an impersonation of William Shatner. He is doing sort of his own take on the character, but it's reflective of some of the nuance in how a line is given.
So it's evocative of Shatner's Kirk. I would say the exact opposite here. for Martin Quinn and how he is playing Scotty. I feel like he went into this to say, I'm going to do a James Doohan. I'm going to like bring that Scotty to life by doing James Doohan. And it works. It worked for me. I found myself watching this and being like, The way he crossed his arms and kind of like collapsed his chest and leaned back.
I was like, I'm, Scotty is here. Scotty is making an appearance in this show and making the appearance as you see how other people respond to him. It was kind of reawakening what it means for Scotty the Miracle Worker. to have the position he has on the Enterprise in the original series because it is we've seen in the original series we know that this is a engineer who when push comes to shove will have conversations with Spock and is on par with Spock in his understanding of the physics and the quantum mechanics and everything that's going on so we know that that's who Scotty is we also know Scotty from a much further forward storytelling of the next generation where he says to Geordi Uh, you gotta triple your estimates.
Otherwise, how are you gonna come across as a miracle worker? Like, he's kind of a swashbuckler. He is, it fits within, uh, Picard's response to Spock. There is no place for cowboy diplomacy anymore in the quadrant. And that was the model. And he's a cowboy engineer. He is this, uh, uh, uh, yeah. Sort of swashbuckler keeps coming back.
I keep thinking about the episode of the original series where he has to drink somebody under the table in order to stop them from doing something. That's who Scotty is. And this is the Scotty who would do that. And I thought once again, they've hit the target for me of what would a younger Scotty look like right down to as His character comes across Pelia.
Before that even happened, I thought, oh, Pelia would have been one of his teachers, and I bet he wasn't a good student. That was my, that was my internal before they ever showed that scene. So when that scene occurs, and she's like, he was one of my best, and he got all of my worst grades. I absolutely loved that.
It felt so spot on for Scotty to be the guy who's like, maybe we try time travel. Like he's that character. Like he's going to just kind of like when he has the device that he's created to keep himself invisible. And he's like, I'm going to need your help pulling this apart and then I'm going to need to get a hold of a thing.
Did I already use that? He doesn't even remember what's gone into building this device that could effectively save the day. So for me, the surprise that came out of this episode was the appearance of Scotty and how perfect I thought it was. What did you think about his appearance in this and did you like it or did you think it didn't work?
Oh no, I loved it. I mean, I, I, you paid a lot of compliment to the actor and it's rightfully so. He did a great job. But for me, what I thought was more impressive was the writing of his character, not just his portrayal. And you just hit on it. It's one of the first things that jumped in mind was that Star Trek Next Generation episode where he's on that shuttle and he's basically been there kind of in a time warp.
So he's still alive. Um, it's because he's this wicked engineer and he figured out how to basically save himself. And he just, Did something astounding and he's so down to earth. He's so kind of off the cuff. That portrayal of Next Generation was so true to everything we've seen from the series through all the movies.
I thought that was a great representation of the character in the future. And this, clearly, the writers understand Scotty, who he is as a character, because every word coming out of his mouth felt like it could have been James Doohan saying it. And it's not just because of the actor. It's like the actual words written were true to form.
So for me, it was a home run. For his portrayal, the way the character behaved, the way he talked, the way he was so informal, like when he had them trapped and he's like talking to them and then like one of them is like, could you let us out? He's like, oh, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like he's, he's so kind of, he has a genius, but he's kinda wrapped up in his own head.
He's, he's kind of like off the cuff. Everything about that portrayal I thought was fantastic. It was also in the introduction to that room before they get into the trap. La'an sees the blood splatters everywhere. She sees that somebody has been killing Gorn and she's like, somebody's not being careful.
They, they stumble into the trap and it's like, that's why he's not being careful. He's done a thing that is so bold. as to let you know, you know, like, yeah, somebody's here because he himself is the bait. And that's, you know, like, that's who, that's who this character is. So I loved all of that. There was something about this episode that I thought was a little disappointing.
Um, in the last episode, when Pike was professing his love via song to Uh, Batel and ends the song on his knees and then communications are cut by La'an and he's sitting there and he looks around and says, like, why was I just doing that? I thought in that moment, oh, Batels going to die. And so here we are in this episode, part one, obviously there's still time to rescue her, but the Putting her in a position of, um, being in distress in this way, needing to be rescued, having the potential death of this character and what it would do for Pike, uh, feels a little telegraphed to me.
And I was curious, did you go into this with the same kind of sense of, oh, she's going to play that kind of role for him by, Her destruction in some fashion. Yes. Um, it didn't bother me though. I mean, she is a bit of a Chekhov's gun. Yeah. The storytelling and that's where it's like, you're talking, she is there.
You're referring to the old, you show you in filmmaking, you, you show an object, that object is going to be used in some fashion. So if you see somebody take something and hide it in the desk, it's like, that's going to be an important part later. It's like, you know, they're telegraphing. So they telegraph her.
Clearly because he's truly in love with her and you know they're going to use her as some kind of fulcrum or some kind of lever for his character development in a later episode. And here it is. I don't think they're going to kill her, Sean. I really don't. I think they're going to figure out a way to save her.
They're going to figure out a way to get the eggs out, which means it's going to make it less of a daunting, holy crap, of the Gorn's. They're going to figure out a way to get the eggs out. Ooh! Get the eggs out of her. They're going to get the eggs out of her. Ooh! That's a completely different episode.
Unintended! Um, but you
get what I'm getting at. It's like, I, I don't think they're going to kill her. I think they're going to save her and that's going to I think what we're going to see in the second part is Pike's hopefulness towards peace I think is going to be the ultimate thing here where they start to understand the Gorn more he's able to communicate with them in some fashion in a way that they can Get behind and they're going to save her at the same time.
I have a feeling they're going to wrap all this up in a nice way. So it's not going to be some tragic him moping off into the space because his true love died. I don't think they're going to do that. Um, again, to me, that feels telegraphed. What I think, and maybe this is an interesting point, point of conversation for an episode about a two parter in which we aren't talking about the second part.
I think that the conclusion of this will be he does sever his relationship with her because he will say, I realize now that my relationship to you made me second guess myself as a captain because he doesn't know what to do. And a couple of key points in this episode He stands there frozen and that's not what we are accustomed to seeing in our heroic lead in Star Trek.
So having, I mean, you mentioned it earlier, uh, Riker standing on the bridge of Enterprise D and looking at Locutus and saying fire. That's a key moment for Riker as a character that he looks at the man he admires more than anybody. And is actively trying to kill him because he knows that's what he has to do in that moment.
No hesitation. Uh, this two parter ends with not the bold, heroic action taken. It ends with Pike frozen in the headlights. Una behind him saying, orders captain, like she's trying to push him out of that frozen state. And it is a compelling thing to see. in a cliffhanger where it is not just the physical danger that they are in.
That is creating the threat. It is his inability as a captain to lead in that moment. How did you feel about that as a conclusion to this episode? It felt to me not completely true to his character to me because I mean, they kind of have set it up as he's the boy scout. He's always hopeful. He's always stretching his hand out to try to find peace and diplomacy where there was that whole episode with the alternate history where he Screwed up the timeline because of that.
Um, the problem I have was we had that episode. He saw that his unending hopefulness screws up the entire timeline and yet here he is in this moment. And it's like, you need to be Mr. Decisive right now. You can't be, woe is me, I'm totally overwhelmed. You can't do that. This is kind of what you did before that screwed things up.
So to me, it kind of feels a little off because they've already explored this with his character and to do it again, it's kind of like, oh, come on, it's, we've already seen this. Um, but this is part of why I don't think they're going to kill Batel, because I think you're right. I think the end result is going to be him trying to close himself off a little bit because he has to evolve to understand I'm too emotionally tied to Battelle.
I'm too emotionally tied to my crew. I think he's going to have a Come to Jesus moment, bad phrase, but like, you know what I mean? He's going to have that moment where he kind of realizes I need to kind of close myself off a little bit because I can't make decisions. I think it's interesting to think of that not only comparison to his own story arc, but to think of it in terms of The Cage and to think of it in terms of Kirk.
There are in the cage. He starts off one of our big conversations in that episode was how angry he was. And his anger was born of what had happened to his crew. He's had, he's limp. The crew, we find out, is limping back to Starbase having had the terrible away mission on Rigel where they eventually revisit.
Uh, in this series, and he is angry and feeling burnt out. And this I feel like is another version of that. It is not anger this time. It is panic of a level that is like, I need to save everybody and I can't. And I'm not. In my mind, I keep going back to, they keep calling him the Boy Scout. There is a line about Kirk when Carol Marcus in Wrath of Khan, the man who is Kirk's son and does not yet know that this is his father, refers to Kirk as, you're gonna go around with this Boy Scout.
And Carol Marcus response is to chuckle and say, Jim Kirk was never a Boy Scout. And Jim Kirk in the original series is presented as. He makes the decisions, understanding the gravity of the lives of the crew that works underneath him. There are some fascinating episodes that go directly to that point.
But ultimately, he views the ship as the thing that he needs to keep because the ship is the thing that keeps the crew. So there's a subtle difference in how Kirk approaches a dilemma and Kirk's a little bit more shoot from the hip, a little more willing to go into conflict, a little more willing to put people in.
And we see that again and again where it is, uh, there's a, in the episode Space Seed where Khan is first thought out and having dinner and is debating with Spock and then stops and pulls back and says to Kirk, you're a brilliant tactician. You let your number one attack me while you sit back and look for weaknesses.
It is a different model of captain in Kirk than we have in Pike. And I think they did a really good job of making it very, very subtle where if you put the two of them standing next to each other on a stage, they kind of look alike. Picard doesn't look like them. He's not of that model, but we end up with a pattern that we can see, which is, oh, you get the quintessential boy scout followed by the shoot from the hip cowboy followed by The quintessential model of a captain who has a background that looks a little bit like Kirk, but he ends up more like Pike in Picard.
So we have a pattern developing of what the captains look like. And Pike is currently proto quintessential stage. We see Picard from the very beginning presented as this is the quintessential captain. This is what Starfleet would say. It's our flagship. We need our best. He's our best. Pike arguably has been there for that exact same reason, but we know him as a character as having flaws and weaknesses that we are watching him probe and explore.
It's hard to do that from a production and writing perspective to say, yes, this is your best. He's not really that great. And I think they do an interesting job of he is loved and respected by his crew. It's this found family story more than anything else. But he's not the prototype yet, even though people thought he was when he got the job.
Yep. And I think that's really interesting. Before, before we get to the Spock chapel aspect, I just want to take a quick tangent because it is somewhat related because it's their storyline. The on the surface storyline is the movie Aliens, and then in space we have Armageddon.
I really enjoyed, this show blows me away every time for the special effects, for the adeptness at action, and the way they construct everything from a filmmaking point of view. I'm always blown away by, and this episode, to me, was phenomenal for this aspect of the sci fi ness. I don't know how you felt about it, but I was giddy watching it a second time for it is so cool that their tactic was, we're going to take that half a saucer section and we're going to attach some rockets to it and make it just naturally descend towards the planet.
And then we can say, Hey, we didn't cross the line and we helped our crew out. And from a outsider point of view, it's like, Oh, it just space debris, falling down. I thought that was. Such a cool concept and the way they executed it, I thought it was pretty cool too. It was a little ham fisted. The way they, Spock explained, I'm the only one that could do this.
It's them like, yeah, you could say, you could, you could send, you could send two people. It doesn't have to be one person. What whatcha are you doing? You can only send one person. Come on. And it's like, you was, I think somebody else could correct, like, you know, figure out where to put those rockets. But it was, uh, I would've appreciated that more if it was.
Una saying there's only one person I would trust to do this. That to me would have been a better moment because what Spock was effectively doing was very strangely vocally arrogant while being character correct. We have a Spock in the future that we will see and we will talk about it a lot. Spock does a lot of things that come across as arrogant but are him logically reaching the conclusion I am the only one who can do this.
Which is fine. Yes. Which is fine. So that's one of the things I wanted to bring up. Go ahead. So this, this whole storyline I thought was great action. I thought it was a really fascinating sci fi kind of like approach to solve this problem. I thought it was. Very creative, really well executed visually.
Special effects were astonishing with the gigantic saucer section just kind of floating in space and flying into it. All that kind of stuff was fantastic. What I really enjoyed about the Spockness of this was, like you just said, it's still true to his character. And we've watched him be explored in season two of him embracing his human side and being very emotional, getting into a relationship with Chapel.
And then the relationship ended now and we're seeing him kind of work his way back to his Vulcan ness. And I thought we were seeing the beginning of that in this storyline where he is, he thinks he's just lost Chapel and he's using his Vulcan ness to kind of clamp that down. And there's stuff that has to get done.
Don't have time for that now. Got to focus. He's being very Vulcan in his response, which I thought was really cool to see him just like strap that Vulcan backpack back on. And like, I'm going to become Spock, you know, he's still seething underneath, but it was still interesting to see them starting that path back, which makes me excited for season three.
Cause I have a feeling in season three, we're going to see more of that storyline of him becoming more and more Vulcan again over the course of season three. So I'm excited to see that kind of story. What would you think about that? I liked, I liked that storyline, even though it was the most, um, I mean, you called it Armageddon.
It felt like the most pop culture y of the storylines. But I still liked it. It's the simplest one. I agree with you. The special effects are so good that you become blasé when you see terrific special effects. That's how often this show does remarkable things. That saucer section floating in space, the debris, the amount of debris, the way they float various things through the debris.
We have Gorn ships flying around searching for things. We have shuttlecrafts that have to masquerade as debris. We have an individual flying in his spacesuit. We have another. person in a spacesuit coming out to meet him eventually as Chapel comes out with him. We have them flying dramatically through the broken dome of the saucer section.
We have the saucer section itself beginning to propel through space. We have that saucer section coming in to crash with Scotty very casually saying, I think we might want to take cover. Like, The humor of that, that like, all of that special effects and when they're in the ship, when they're in the saucer section and the Gorn, I loved that the Gorn is trying to break into the computer again and again and again and again.
Yes. This code is not working. This code is not working. And it's not giving up. This code is not working. This code is not working. And it's not giving up. And I was just like, that is fantastic because it's not like the Gorn is prowling around and hunting her. It is, the Gorn is doing what an invading species would do.
I'm trying to get a hold of, there's probably stuff in here we can use. We can find more weaknesses. We can like, so it is doing its job. And I loved that because we usually at this point are seeing the Gorn as super hungry babies, which I'm now thinking of Jim Henson's Gorn babies. So we're seeing them as very hungry babies most of the time, which is the alien storyline.
Here we see it as like, this is a intelligent Species that is looking for weakness. This is trying to take advantage of a situation. So Chapel's and Spocks being hunted and eventually fighting on the bridge is so well done from a special effects perspective that it literally was until we started to record this that it occurred to me like, Oh yeah, that wasn't a person.
in a suit. That was really well done. The fact that it uses a tail whip as a weapon. I mean, come on. This thing is wearing a space suit. It's a lizard. It knows the cold is going to be its first weakness. You know, you puncture a human's helmet and they're gonna be like, my oxygen. And you puncture the Gorn's helmet.
It's like, if the temperature gets any colder than it currently is, it's probably going to end poorly for me. Yeah. That fight, the conclusion of it, when you see Spot grab that debris and get ready to bring it up. And then like, like, this is terrific. This is a terrific, uh, Adventure being shown in this section of the storyline.
The other part that I wanted to talk about that we haven't visited yet. We get a moment with Ortegas that a lesser program would have given us in the first episode so that we would say, Oh, she's the hotshot pilot that has a lot of swagger. We see her up to this point flying The ship. We see a couple of episodes where Pike says, you're supposed to be this great pilot.
Now prove it to me. And she proves it the way that like Geordi did in Star Trek Next Generation or Sulu did in the original series, like kept the ship alive, kept, you know, kept everybody out of danger enough to be able to get away. And we hear in the episode where the Lower Decks characters come that as soon as Boimler sees her, he just goes, You're a war hero.
We don't get any details. We just hear you're a war hero. And she's not surprised, like this is future knowledge. She knows she's a war hero. Which left me in that moment thinking, what did she do? And in this episode, they show us. They give us two full seasons before they say, oh yeah, this, this woman who's supposed to be this hotshot pilot, we're going to show you what she can do.
And she does something. And the way they did it was genius. It is perfect. I love the way they did it. That sequence, the whole thing about, we're going to be dropping like debris. Until I get to about, what did she say, 150 meters is the, she says 150 meters so that we're underneath their sensors. And then we see the sequence where Pike, who has been referred to again and again and again and again, I was a test pilot, and they bring that up in the conversation in beautiful dialogue.
But not everybody, everybody on that shuttle looks like they're either going to vomit or they're, yeah. Or they're have, or they're trying not to black out. It's like everybody's freaking out. And then her in this smiling in the pilot seat, she looks, she's riding a rollercoaster. She's having the time of her life.
Yeah. She loves this. And that was just that visual. It tells Yes. A thousands words. And she's so says, well done. I've done this a hundred hundred times during the war. And I'm like, that's why she's a war hero. . How many troops did she get on top to the surface safely? Because she was able to fly like that.
And I thought. What a terrific sequence. There's, and there's two things to that, that moment, that bookend it for me. On the ship, when he turns to her and says, we need you to do this. And she's like, really? She looks like, I don't want to do this. This is terrifying. And he says to her, you've been begging me.
forever to go on a way mission. And now it is here. And she makes that joke. I haven't been asking for that. Yeah. Like, I'm regretting that.
Why did I ask for that? And then after the maneuver, she, he, Pike says to her, You were born for this, Erika. And she just is beaming. She looks like, you know, the father figure is giving her that, you know, adulation she's been wanting.
And she's played a pivotal role. And then later in the episode, when she's standing in, I don't know if you picked up on this, when she's in that like diner and all the survivors are there, everybody's doing stuff. What am I supposed to do? Yeah. And she's standing around like pulling her thumbs like What am I supposed to do?
And then she goes over to M'Benga and says, can I, can I help? And he's like, yeah, absolutely. Please help out. And so she kind of found her way in. So it's like, she's being part of the away team and figuring out what she, what you would do on an away team because she doesn't do this. So I thought it was a nice way to build her character up a little bit and just like a 30 second scene.
It was like really quick. But it did a good job. They have a number of different quick, quick moments that do a lot to reveal character in this one. They have M'Benga when people are like, we are going to go down and we're probably going to have to fight some Gorn. We see Sam Kirk volunteer because he's like, the last time we, we interacted with the species, I froze.
And I want another chance to study them up close, in particular, perhaps, studying what kills them. And M'Benga says I'd like to take part in that research, too. So we're seeing M'Benga in this moment, like, leaning in a little bit more with, you've all seen me now as basically, I'm a space ninja. I am I am that guy.
I've got that background where I can go do the hard thing and I'm also a terrific doctor. And, and on top of which, as we discussed last time, he's Mr. Sexy and we'll probably see him with a shirt off again. I'm sure there's a lot of people excited about that. I'm looking forward to that. Um, yeah. But little bits like that.
Line from Kirk, I want to rectify the panic I had the last time. Line from M'Benga, I'd like to take part in that research. Ortegas, I did this a hundred times during the war. Like these little lines that are revealing so much about who these characters are and it works. So nicely in, in all of this. So we end up with an episode that I was disappointed it was a two parter, even though I know I won't be disappointed when the third season does begin, that there is more of this storyline, but I was so impressed by all the notes that it hit.
So perfectly and really came together in a way that made me feel like we're seeing the program firing on all cylinders in a way, even though like literally last week was an episode where it was just like a musical. Come on. And you referred to it as a jump the shark moment. I don't know that it is a jump the shark moment because to me, jumping the shark is you jump the shark and can't get back.
They got back. They got back. They, like, this, this is a show where they know what they're trying to do and they know how to do it. And it's really, really remarkable and I'm very, very impressed. Is there anything about this particular episode that you wanted to jump on that we didn't talk about yet? Nope.
I loved it. We covered all the stuff I had in my notes that I wanted to cover. This is to me, this is a A+ episode. So listeners, viewers, what did you think about this episode? Is there anything about it that we didn't talk about or that you wanted to weigh in on? Jump into the comments and let us know what you thought.
We would love to hear what you have to say. Moving forward. As I mentioned, we are here. We did it. We got through so much Star Trek. I forget which episode number we're on, a hundred and something, 140 something. Next week, that will be our first dipping of our toe into the original series. And. Which was basically the impetus for this entire podcast.
When I originally pitched this to Matt, I said, let's do a Star Trek where we take it all in chronological order and also take a look at the way the world was when it broadcasts. Wouldn't that be an interesting way of looking at it? Because think about all the stuff the original series did. And then we've been doing this for almost
three years now and we're, and we're finally getting to the point where we're going to be talking about history that Matt and I did not actually live through. So that should be fun. The original series, there are some quirks at the beginning of season one where episode order does not match production order.
So we talked about this just yesterday and landed on sticking with. The production order, the Stardate order, which means the original series, original first episode was not the one we are going to be talking about. We're going to be talking about the one that was the first produced and was intended to be the second pilot.
You'll remember that the pilot, The Cage. was created. NBC took a look at it and said, go back to the drawing board, which had never happened before. They came back with a second pilot, which is where no man has gone before an appropriately titled episode. And we will see Kirk, Spock, And the crew that we know from the original series, almost all of them, uh, on, on the scene, and they'll be wearing the costumes that look like the costumes from the cage.
So they'll be wearing things. They kind of look like they're in cozy sweaters most of the time, uh, which is, which is kind of fun. And it will be then the following episodes where we'll see the uniforms evolve into what we expect from the original series. But where No Man Has Gone Before will be the first episode we're gonna be talking about.
I think in broadcast order it was, I think, the sixth episode broadcast. So don't make the mistake of watching The Man Trap. Watch where no man has gone before and moving forward, Matt and I also talked about how to incorporate the animated series into the podcast and we landed on picking six episodes of the animated series and we will couple them into three pairs and we will have one episode of appear at the end of each season of the original series.
So after we finish season one of the original series, we'll have an episode of the podcast where we'll talk about two episodes of the animated series. We'll do the same thing with season two and season three. So we'll cover six total that way. I also didn't mention this to Matt, but I'm going to mention it here.
It's a little surprise for him. Uh, there are a couple of episodes of the animated series which have direct tie ins to episodes. of the original series. There are, there are direct lines between this episode of the original series and a character or a location in the animated series. I'm going to suggest to Matt that we include some description about that animated episode When we get to those particular episodes, it will be two episodes.
Yeah. It'll be two episodes in particular. We can treat them almost like two partners. We can like talk about like, here's the original series and here's what we thought about the episode. And then there's also what they did with the animated series. To kind of follow up on it. I think that'll be a fun way to do that.
I like it. So that's what is going to be in the offing. Matt and I talked about it yesterday. We are looking at, I forget exactly how many, was it a year and a half or so of original series episodes? It's going to
take a year and a half to go through the original series.
And I am not complaining about that.
I think it's going to be a lot of fun. And for people who are curious, two things, uh, we, we have a website for this podcast, don't we? Trek in time. Trekintime.Show. Why don't we put a episode list up on that so that people, if they are curious about the order that we're going to be doing things in and how we're going to be handling where we're going to be planting various animated episodes, they can take a look at that if they're curious.
The second thing is you will see on that list that, and it is a large spreadsheet, um, we will be doing the movies. Matt and I talked about this yesterday. In my mind, the films are canon, so we're including those in this as well. So we'll go through the original series, we will include those animated episodes that we are going to be reviewing, and then we will also be doing the movies before we move on to Next Generation.
So that is the next year and a half plus for Matt and me. We hope you will be interested in joining us on that journey. If you've made it this far in the podcast, I cannot imagine why you would say, original series, no, get out of here. I'm out of here. I would be stunned to have anybody make that response.
So, uh, this has been a lot of fun for us. I'm looking forward to moving forward with the original series starting next week. And thank you so much, everybody, for joining us on this trip. Before we sign off, Matt, is there anything about your main channel that you want to share with our listeners and viewers?
Yeah, I have a episode out at about the time of this episode dropping. Um, it's a type of video I normally don't do. It's a response video on my Undecided channel where I'm responding to a bunch of the comments that I got on a recent solar panel video I did. I got a lot of hate, a lot of solar panels are a scam.
You got ripped off, those kinds of comments. And I thought instead of replying to each comment individually, I'm just going to put out an episode. Responding to them collectively and kind of going through them kind of like in groupings. So I picked out kind of the top five themes from the comments and then I addressed them one by one.
Um, it was a fun one, very different. So check it out. As for me, if you'd like to find out more about my books, you can go to my website, seanferrell. com. You can also go to your local bookstore, your online bookseller, or your public library. My books are available everywhere and thank you for your interest.
If you'd like to support the show, don't forget jumping into the comments. That's one way to support us. Subscribing is a great way to support us. Recommending us to your friends is a great way to support us. And beyond all of that, you can go to trekintime. show. Click the become a supporter button there.
Allows you to throw some coins at our heads. We appreciate the welts. And then we get down to the hard business of making a podcast about a sci fi show from the 60s. If you do that, you also automatically become an Ensign, which means you will be subscribed to our spinoff show Out of Time, which is a monthly podcast in which Matt and I talk about things that don't fit within the confines of this program.
So it might be other sci fi, fantasy, horror, films, books, whatever it is that's caught our eye. We hope you'll be interested in checking that out.