157: Star Trek TOS Season 1, "Shore Leave"

https://youtu.be/Y7KRwWH5I4g

Matt and Sean talk about yelling action while still hitting the keyboard in Star Trek: The Original Series. This episode is a tough one to watch, but are there any redeeming qualities to it?

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Creators & Guests

Host

Matt Ferrell

Host of Undecided with Matt Ferrell, Still TBD, and Trek in Time podcasts

Host

Sean Ferrell 🐨

Co-host of Still TBD and Trek in Time Podcasts

What is Trek In Time?

Join Sean and Matt as they rewatch all of Star Trek in order and in historical context.

In this episode, we're talking about rewriting. That's right everybody, we're talking about Star Trek Season 1, Shore Leave. This is episode number 17 in shooting order, just in time for Gene Roddenberry's nervous breakdown. And 15th in broadcast order. Welcome everybody to Trek in Time, where we're watching every episode of Star Trek in chronological stardate order.

We're also taking a look at the way the world was at the time of original broadcast. So we are also talking about 1966. And who are we? Well, I'm Sean Ferrell. I'm a writer. I write some sci fi and I write some stuff for kids. And with me, as always, is my brother, Matt. He is that Matt behind Undecided with Matt Ferrell, which takes a look at emerging tech and its impact on our lives and that Matt, how are you today?

I'm good. I'm looking forward to talking about this episode, Sean, because my wife watched the first half of it with me and she sounded like Homer Simpson going. Boring. Absolutely. Constantly.

Yes. As you may have noticed in the show notes, I suggested that the text for the image of this episode is more like snore leave.

So your wife and I, yes, we both get it. Before we get into this episode, we always like to visit the mailbag and see what you've been talking about from our previous episodes. So Matt, what did you find for us this week?

We have one from AJ Chan who said the Menagerie is the Trek in Time of Star Trek, the original series.

Kirk, Mendes, and Spock watched the episode, The Cage, and then discussed the story they saw and what it means. Was the Menagerie the inspiration for the podcast?

I wish I could say yes. Yeah, I think, I wish I could say yes. It is quite the observation. And, uh, Yeah. It makes me feel a little bit like we're kind of as cool as Captain Kirk and watching the screen and thinking, Hmm.

It makes me wish, Sean, we could actually do like a Mystery Science Theater 3000 style of watching these where we could actually show the episode and the two of us together commenting as it goes.

Yeah. That'd

be my favorite. Of course. We'd be sued out of existence if we did that. That's right.

Um, so we also have a comment from, uh, Annoying Critic, uh, who said, The cage is great. This, not so much. Among the plot holes Sean mentioned, critics say this violates Spock's sense of duty by, one, having him commit mutiny, two, presumably putting the ship in danger, Three, acting emotional and not logical.

This episode also requires you to suspend your disbelief that there are not loads of people who are injured, disabled, or who just like turkey dinners, like in the Matrix, who would love to live in Talos IV. To which Dan Sims replied, yes, sign me up, chronic pain sucks. Yeah. I, I like this take that, uh, Annoying Critic brought up because it's like, yeah, of course.

It's like. Why would you criticize somebody's choice for doing this? Because you could totally understand why some people would actually really, really want to do that. Mark Lovis also brought up his, uh, wrong answers only about Shore Leave. The plot is, a new android called Wilson is going through beta testing on the Enterprise.

When Wilson accompanies some of the crew on Shore Leave, On a lovely Earth like planet, a trip down to the beach causes problems as Wilson interprets the term shore leave, literally, and because shooting lasers at crew members, killing two, injuring others on the beach. Loudly proclaiming, shore leave! Kirk has to explain the entire thing to Wilson, who now understands, feels guilty, and tries to commit robot suicide by walking into the ocean.

Kirk is left yelling, Wilson! over and over, and Wilson dies. As an aside, this episode actually inspired the movie Castaway, to which Dan Simms again replied, easy clap.

Yes. Mark is quickly pulling ahead in the race to have the most wrong answers only read aloud during the recording. Uh, tip to you, Mark.

That is fantastic. That noise you hear in the background. Well, it can mean only one thing, that's right, Matt's recording studio is under attack. No, that's not what it means. It means that it's time for Matt to read the Wikipedia description. And after several weeks, Of him basking in the glory of IMDB Writeups.

This one's straight from Wikipedia. Good luck. Oh, okay.

my heart just sank. Captain Kirk orders shore leave for the enterprise crew on a seemingly uninhabited planet in the Omicron Delta system. The landing parties begin to see strange sights, such as a white rabbit a la Alice in Wonderland, Don Juan, and a sword wielding samurai.

Also Kirk sees and fights an image of Finnegan, a rival from his Starfleet Academy days. Spock discovers that the planet seems to be drawing a large amount of energy from the ship's engines, placing the Enterprise In Danger.

Bum, bum, bum. Directed by Robert Sparr, written by Theodor Sturgeon, and Theodor Sturgeon was a king of pulp sci fi and of the original series storylines.

He was born in 1918. He died in 1985. He wrote primarily fantasy, science fiction, and horror, and he was also a critic. He wrote approximately 400 reviews, more than 120 stories, 11 novels and several scripts for Star Trek, the original series. In this episode, we have William Shatner. We have Leonard Nimoy.

DeForest Kelly gets a lot of screen time. In fact, DeForest Kelly even gets some romantic storyline. And here we were saying all this time that it wasn't all that often that the Doctor got a love story. Well, here we go again. We also have George Takei as Sulu. It has been a while since we've seen Sulu. And having him back really underscores the fact he's a much better member of the bridge crew than any of the people who were there during the episodes when he wasn't around.

He's just a more charismatic actor and brings a lot of charm to it with his kind of swashbuckly and at the same time nerdy take on things. He's looking at the vistas with the doctor and is just like, now I'm going to go take some bio readings. And he's really excited about it. And we also have some guest stars in the form of Emily Banks as Yeoman Tonia Barrows, Oliver McGowan as the caretaker, Perry Lopez as Rodriguez, Barbara Baldavin as Lieutenant Angela Martine, whom, is referred to by Kirk when he first sees her as Teller.

She's also referred to as Teller in the short story, which I read. I am diving into the James Blish, uh, books that are the fictionalization of the teleplays. And interestingly, by the time this one was released, It was the mid 1970s. It took that long for the books to all come out. So the short story of this episode came out in the 70s.

And here's, I think, a good sign of what the publishers thought about this episode. There were 12 volumes of Star Trek episodes converted into short stories. This episode is the last short story of the last volume. It was written at this point in the 70s by James Blish's widow, because James Blish, unfortunately, had passed away in the earlier 70s.

So his widow is the person who finished off the conversion of a lot of these stories. So the very last one was Shore Leave. I think that in the casting and writing of this episode, they cast Barbara Veldhoven, who played the woman getting married. In the episode with the Romulans, I think that the name from that episode stuck, even though they weren't intending it to be the same character, which presents an interesting conundrum.

We know that this woman recently lost her fiance, and now here she is on this planet with Rodriguez, and now we see her die on camera. She's called by a name that the script doesn't use, and this actress will portray a Different person in the final episode of the original series. So they are reusing this actress in all these different ways, but not consistently.

So she was this close maybe to having a regular role in the show, but just. We're not quite self sliding off into other things. We also have Bruce Mars as Finnegan, a character that I'm sure Matt and I will chat about quite a bit. We have Shirley Bonne as Ruth, we have Sebastian Tom as the Warrior, and we have Marcia Brown as Alice.

This episode, and again, maybe reading between the lines a little too much. This episode dropped on December 29th, 1966. Matt, when was the last time that you watched a new episode of a program that was dropped two days before New Year's?

The networks used to make goofy decisions, or maybe they used those as the days where they were like, well, this one's not that great. The number one song at the time was Winchester Cathedral by the New Vaudeville Band. This is a song we've mentioned before. And this is a song that Matthew has sung before.

So Matt, do you want to reprise it one more time?

Great!

And at the movies, another one we've talked about before. This is Walt Disney's Follow Me Boys. This is the confusing tale of a group of Boy Scouts who are led in a fight against the US Army. What more of a feel good story do you expect from Disney?

I mean, come on. And in television, we've been talking about Star Trek, which earned a 12 in the Nielsen's against programs of that era that we're doing quite a bit better, topping out with Bonanza at a 29, and this week earning a 22 is, well, pretty much a foundational comedy show of a lot of our current comedy.

That would be the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour was an American comedy and variety television show hosted by the Smothers Brothers, airing from 1967 to 1969. Originally on CBS, it, the dates here don't correspond with what we know. They were introduced actually in 1966, so the series was a major success considering it was scheduled against Major NBZ television series Bonanza.

So for it to earn a 22 against Bonanza's 29 was actually considered impressive and they did mainly political satire and had musical performers such as Buffalo Springfield, Pete Seeger, Cream, and The Who. They ended up getting thrown off the air by CBS after they refused not to bring back A comedian who performed a bit that previously had gotten hundreds of complaining letters at the CBS studios.

So when they went to bring this person back for another go, the network instead canceled them, breaking a contract that over a period of five years, the Smothers Brothers would sue CBS, eventually winning and getting Damages for it. They would return to television later in a much less popular show on NBC, but the longevity of their style of comedy, the political satire, the variety aspects, if you take the Smothers Brothers And you combine it with a bit of laugh in, you get Saturday Night Live.

That's effectively what their fingerprints are all over. They were a very foundational political satire and counterculture program in the late 60s, where they were one of the comedy programs that was actually going directly, as opposed to programs that we've talked about before, like The Ed Sullivan show or the Dean Martin show.

Those programs were not going to be running, running any comedy built around Vietnam or Richard Nixon, but the Smothers Brothers did. So that is the, that is the style of comedy that they were responsible for. And that's the legacy that they hold. And in the news. Well, a little light news story for a post Christmas, pre New Year's Day.

Hmm. Who doesn't want to read about, oh, let's see, about 6, 000 Southern Vietnamese paratroopers attacking North Vietnam. The articles here, I think are very, very telling. Because we've had in our previous episodes, we've talked about things like Johnson making a surprise trip to Vietnam, Johnson coming back and talking about how great South Asia is going to be once Vietnam is over, how the Pentagon is releasing information about how the war of attrition in Vietnam is just going to be super duper terrific and everything is going to be fine.

And now we have, in late December, this news story about what is presented in the New York Times as a major Southern Vietnamese offensive in fighting the communists in North Vietnam. You dig into the article, though, and it refers to the soldiers of North Vietnam who are captured or killed, and it's less than a hundred.

Not a super efficient use of your military prowess and strength to send in literally thousands of people and end up capturing or killing about 89. That is going to be a wild difference from in the future when we get to the new stories around the Tet Offensive, when North Vietnam will stage a major offensive that would be Incredibly destabilizing to the war effort and changed the tone of the war permanently.

So this is the kind of era that we're looking at. The Smothers Brothers are over here talking about the counterculture and they are presenting an idea that things aren't going so great while mainstream media is pushing a very different story at a very harrowing time for the United States in its war efforts in Vietnam.

On now to our discussion about this episode and Matt, I've got some interesting background information and I don't know if I should share it now or if I should share it after we've talked a bit. Do you think that you'd like to hear some of these tidbits, these little nuggets? Let's share, share, share them now.

All right. Gene Roddenberry, and to put it into, uh, summarize it as quickly as possible. Gene Roddenberry was exhausted. He had been writing Working two years nonstop without a break, starting with trying to produce the Lieutenant, which would be the program that was immediately before Star Trek. It fell apart as he was putting Star Trek together.

Working on Star Trek, we know having to do two pilots to sell it to the network and then making the show. We already know from previous episode in the Menagerie that one of the reasons the Menagerie was such a enticing pair of episodes to do is that it repurposed an already filmed pilot, which would save time and money because production was always falling behind because of special effects.

So here we have, this episode is going into production and Gene Roddenberry. He is convinced by his doctor and his wife that he needs to take a vacation. He needs a break. So on his way out the door, he has a screenplay that has been written by Theodore Sturgeon, which is Shore Leave. He turns to incoming operational producer Gene Coon, who is a name we should all recognize from when we've watched Star Trek, Gene Coon's name appears on the screen.

He is a Major player in Star Trek and he was on his way in to helping because effectively the network was like Gene Roddenberry is burning himself out. We're always falling behind in production. We need somebody who's there to keep things flowing. So he needs an operational producer. So here comes Gene Coon.

Gene Coon is handling the script and there's some sort of miscommunication. Roddenberry in looking at Sturgeon's script. It was like, this goes way too far into fantasy. We need it tightened up and brought back into the sci fi realm. Goes on vacation. Miscommunication. What do they hear? Uh, something, something, rewrite fantasy.

So they work on the script and they ended up pushing it deeper into fantasy. Roddenberry comes back from vacation, discovers that this is what has happened. So what does he do? Well, the only thing you can do in television. While they're shooting the episode, he is madly typing away and rewriting the episode, creating altered pages that are being handed out the day of shooting.

He's barely keeping ahead of the shooting schedule. There were things that were supposed to be used in this episode, and this is my favorite anecdote about it. Even with Roddenberry's rewriting, Many of Coon's and Sturgeon's fantasy aspects remained, from an encounter with a samurai, to meeting a tiger, though the idea of Kirk wrestling the tiger was deleted, initially to the annoyance of, but later to the relief of, William Shatner. And a scene using an elephant

was cut before filming. Greg Peters newly promoted to the rank of assistant director, had been detailed to take care of the elephant. During the shoot, the cast and crew teased him about the pachyderm asking when it would be used. For many years thereafter, when Peters attended Star Trek conventions, fans would greet him with a chorus of say, Greg, when do you get to use your elephant?

That's why at the beginning of this episode, I said, we're gonna be talking about rewriting. This episode is a mess and a little fun fact. I mentioned to Matt, I've got a nugget of information. Do you want that nugget now? I've got a second nugget of information that Matt is aware of, and I'm going to share it now with you, the viewers and the listeners.

We have a bonus episode we're going to talk about in this episode. So at a certain point, we'll let you know. And here's where you should pause this if you want to go watch this thing and then come back and watch the rest of it, but you don't have to, really. There was a point during this that I thought, you know what?

This episode could have been so much better if it had been about something else. And you know what? They made an episode of the animated series. It was literally that something else. That's right. In the Animated series, the episode Once Upon a Planet, they return to this planet and they have the adventure that I think they should have had in this episode.

I found that really remarkable. So what did you see when you got into this episode? How did this episode strike you? Big or small, like whichever perspective you want to take. Big picture, what were your thoughts? Or was there something at the beginning that was just like, hmm, what are they doing here? Okay.

Okay. Can't say something nice. Don't say something at

all. Thanks everybody for tuning in to watch or listen. I was going to say, I do have something nice to say. Well, this is not nice. The show, the episode's a hot mess. It's just a hot steaming pile. It is not super entertaining. It's not very good. It's, character wise, it's all over the map, but there are some really good character moments.

In this episode, I loved, like the whole thing with Sulu at the beginning and the beautiful vistas and then he's like, he loves his plants, he loves his botany, and he's going to go off and take some samples of the plants and he's going to do a whole thing about the biosphere and he's like geeking out.

He's outright geeking out and it's like, so charming. And then there's also a scene with Kirk. He geeks out a second time too, when he finds the gun. I mean, it's just like, there's, yeah, he's geeking out all over the place. He's just a big nerd. Then there's the scene where Kirk is walking through the forest with, I can't remember if it was Bones.

It wasn't Bones. But he's walking through the forest with somebody, and he's talking about his time at Starfleet. It is Bones, yeah. It's before, yeah, it's before Flanagan, or Finnegan. What was his name? Finnegan. Finnegan,

yeah.

It's before Finnegan shows up. But he's talking about this, and it's like, this is awesome.

This anecdote, this thing he's talking about, it's giving us insights into him as a character, as a person, reminiscing about something in his past. Awesome. Just like, I'm like, eating that up. And then there's also the very first scene of Kirk on the bridge. Oh, my back. Oh, my back is killing me. And it was like, it was like, felt like a different show than a typical Star Trek thing, but it was funny.

It was amusing. A little quirky moment. Those things, I was like, wow, we need more of this just in the show in general. Everything else about this episode, Sean, is a dumpster fire. And I got to talk about Finnegan because it's this mildly racist stereotype of, you know, the magically delicious mush, uh, you know, candy in this cereal.

It's like, it was like, Like, so on the nose, like, leprechaun like Irish accent crap, and it was just like, who thought that was okay for the portrayal of this character, um, who's also just obnoxious. Oh, Jimmy Boy. Yeah. Oh, Jimmy Boy.

Oh, Jimmy Ray. Right here, Jimmy. You owe me one.

Yes. I don't know about you, Sean, I've met Irish people, they don't sound a thing like that.

So it's like, it's one of those, what are you doing? Yeah. Yeah. Uh. Also, the other part was, um, Bones turning into a lecherous old man. There's no chemistry of any kind between Bones and, uh, what's that character's name? I'm blanking on her name, Lieutenant. Yeah. No chemistry. Sonia. And then he gets a little lecherous and kind of like makes this like really kind of like gross like innuendo to her.

Tonia. And then she's like receptive to it. And it's like, what is happening here? He's like twice her age. They're on a, they're on a job. They're on a job. They like worked. They're on the freaking job. And this is gross. It's just gross. I don't know who thought it was okay. Well, there's a

layer of grossness to her that's even, I think, worse is that she, when she's by herself and she ends up getting attacked by Don Juan.

Yes. Yes. It effectively sets it up like she has a rape fantasy. Because she says like, Oh, a girl would think about meeting Don Juan and then Don Juan shows up and tries to rape her and then later shows back up to try and kidnap her. And it sets up this whole thing of like, she's to blame for the fact that her fantasy attacked her and it's really gross and that yes, the doctor's response to all of this is another layer of Oogie and there is.

In the short story version of all of this, that is even more magnified because you get some internal stuff of him saying, Mm-Hmm, . Like, how come he never noticed how attractive she was and how, you know, it's like she was always just a patient before. And then there's a line added when she's changing into the princess costume of like, well, like, I'm a doctor, I, it's nothing I haven't seen before.

And it's just like every like red alert ,

well

stop

it. On the creep factor though, it got worse for me. By the end of the episode, it just hit me like a wave of like this planet. is so screwed up because the captain's like, I'm going to go back to the ship. And then he sees his love interest from his past come walking over.

And I'm like, Oh, this is gross. She's basically a sex bot. And he's about to go have a weekend with her. And what about the real woman? Like when he bumps into her next time, like, I screwed the hell out of you on a planet with a robot. It's like, it's, it is creepy. Like the whole aspect of what they're doing, like with Bones, when he comes back alive and he's got the two girls on his arm, it's like, whoa, this is, this is a bad touch.

This is, this is not cool. But the thing that really bothered me was, It's portraying a real woman from his past, and let's say they had a horrible breakup, and he's still, like, doing things with her because it's this sex bot fantasy thing. It's like, there's so many things about this episode, Sean, that are just Yeah

kind of horrifying in a weird kind of like retrospective way that at the time it's kind of shocking nobody thought of that or cared about that. But today it's like so obvious when I'm watching it. Um, the bottom line, my high level view of this episode was I feel dumber for having watched it. I wish it didn't exist.

It's absolutely horrendous. And I can't wait for us to talk about the animated episode because I have. I know you feel like that was a good retelling of this. I do not. I think even the animated version is a hot mess, has interesting ideas. More interesting ideas are conveyed in it, but I don't think it's executed well either.

Yeah, my point about the animated one, and again, if anybody's interested in like re watching it, you can just pause this here and then go re watch the animated episode, but I don't think it's critical that you do. Um, what I liked about the animated episode is that it did what I thought this one should have done, which is, I don't think this is a redeemable story, but if you were going to try, the entire episode is effectively a feint.

It is, the entire thing is, our fantasies are coming to life. For 40 minutes, our fantasies are coming to life. And the novelty of that wears off the first time you recognize this is their fantasies coming to life. Having Alice in Wonderland show up, we already know, like Bones had just mentioned Alice in Wonderland.

And it's the thing about all the references that they make vocally so that we can connect them to what's happening visually are things that nobody says. Nobody wanders around a beautiful park and says it's like something out of Alice in Wonderland. No, if you ran into a talking caterpillar, you might say that, but just a pond, you're not going to say that.

So it feels forced and a spotlight is on every line of dialogue that they say. The only one that doesn't do it is when the handgun shows up. If the handgun had shown up and Sulu's just like, bang, bang, bang. This is great. I don't have anything like this in my collection. Look how beautiful this thing is.

You'd be like, what's going on here? That would be more mysterious than having Bones say, this is like Alice in Wonderland. Holy, holy cow. Look at that giant white rabbit and that little girl. Like it's so on the nose.

Yeah. There's an element of, how dumb are these characters? Because like, Sulu finds that gun, he picks it up, he's shooting with it, and he's acting like a moron.

He's pointing the, he's like shooting it, and like, this is fun. Uh, why is there an, a earth gun on this strange planet? That'd be the first thing you'd say of like, this is weird, but nobody cares. He didn't, Sulu doesn't say it, nobody else says it, it's, they're all like, have the IQ, like an IQ of 5. It's like, they're just dumb as a post, this entire episode, and it's like, you, as a viewer, we're not one step ahead of what's going on, we're like 10 steps ahead of the characters

in this episode. And that's what's just so frustrating. It's like, these are supposed to be the best of the best of Starfleet. And yet they're coming across as morons this entire episode. It's almost like they're, at times it was like, are they being drugged? Like, like the way Sulu was shooting the gun, it was almost like he was somewhat high.

You know what I mean? Like, hey man, do you have any snacks? It was like, it was just like, are you kidding?

Yeah. And it's, and there's an aspect to it too, which is a little bit like, for me, I kept thinking for this to be a setup should have been the reveal, the recognition and the correct analysis on all the players very quickly in the first act, culminating with McCoy getting killed.

And at that point it should have been, Oh, this is supposed to be fantasy for fun's sake, but how come somebody can die? And then it becomes figuring out what's gone wrong. They should have been put in a position of this isn't what's supposed to be happening. Why is it happening? They should have met the caretaker right away.

He should have met them. They should have been like, there's no life on this planet other than the vegetation. They go down and there's a gentleman there wearing red robes who says, welcome to the amusement park. And they're like, What? And they start having these adventures, and very quickly, one of them dies.

And the caretaker's response is, that's not supposed to happen. And then you have the story become, why is it happening, and what is going on? And that's what I like about the animated episode, which is effectively, they go back to the planet, they discover that the caretaker has passed away, and in his absence, this super computer, that runs everything, has

reached consciousness and is basically under the misguided assumption technology is the life form. Life forms are the slaves and it wants to get off the planet to go meet other computers and the crew has to convince it. No, you're a computer and you can stay here and interact with beings from other worlds because if you serve them by amusing them in this way, they will want to come here and you will learn from them.

It is not a great story, but it is, I think, a better version of the original series story. I think it does things in a better way and is in some ways more compelling because it becomes about something. I feel like this episode, Shore Leave, isn't actually about anything. It is about people running away from dangers.

And yeah, it's, it's a snooze fest. It is in my notes I put down, it is simultaneously overloaded and too slow. It is a remarkable feat of production to have so much stuff happening. And at the same time, you don't feel like there's any progress being made.

Two points on this. I'm going to get to the animated thing in a second.

Uh, the slowness of it, I don't know about you, what came to my head during, there was a fight scene between Finnegan and Kirk that reminded me of the movie, I love this movie by the way. Yeah. They Live. John Carpenter's They Live. And there's a fight scene in an alley between Roddy Roddy Piper and this, his friend that goes on for, it's like eight minutes, I think it's like eight minutes long.

This slugfest in the alleyway, it is epic. It is amazing. It's so over the top, so unnecessary, but you love it. You love it for its idiocy, its lowbrow entertainment, but it has it all. It also has a purpose. It does have a purpose. This, he fights Finnegan for what felt like an eternity. And there was no value in it.

It went on forever. They're beating the living crap out of each other. I was never concerned. I was never like, there was, it was like, what are we getting out of this? There's no character development coming out of this fight. There's no story coming out of this fight. It's just two dudes beating the living crap out of each other.

And it's that same thing where different camera angles, it's like, well, that's not Shatner. Well, that's not Finnegan, and that's not Shatner. Yeah. So it didn't look, I mean, it was obvious when they were stuntmen, but the choreography was fine. It just had no point, and it felt at a certain point, like, did they have to hit, like, specifically they're going for 44 minutes, and they'd only written 38 minutes, and they're like, okay, let's fill this up with six minutes of fighting.

Yeah. It was absolutely idiotic. It was, it was ridiculous how long it went on, but what the boredom thing, yes, this was boring as my wife said. I felt the same way in the animated episode, Sean. I was bored out of my mind, even though, it had more interesting ideas conveyed. It was so slow paced. It was so slow paced.

And the other thing about the animated episode that drove me nuts, we just watched all these characters on the planet in the live action show, Bones gets killed. But he's not killed. He's back. So they all know this is a fantasy. You can't get hurt. In the first minute of the episode of the animated episode, he runs into the Queen of Hearts.

And they go after him to like to try kill him and he runs and he yells, beam me up emergency beam up, beam me up, ah, he's scared. Why? Why is he scared? His experience that we just watched would say, hey, come at me, bro. Cause he's, he shouldn't have been concerned. So why is he concerned in the animated episode, which is a direct, they click, we're going back there for more shore leave.

It's a direct continuation. And yet it's like, they went into amnesia of you can't get hurt on this planet. So why did he suddenly turn and run? That's why I was kind of like. It made no sense. So I had problems with the episode from that point of view, but I agree with you on if the original live action episode had leaned into the whole idea of Here's a computer system that's become sentient and it doesn't want to entertain people anymore.

That wasn't, that was a cool concept that could have

executed on. Yeah. Yeah. The, the animated series ends on a note of, well, somebody needs to talk to this computer now to prep it for like how to investigate other life forms. And it's the only time that Spock is like, this, this would be shore leave for me.

This would be pleasant for me. So he goes to do that. It's it's the, the animated episode has nuggets in it like that, that are conceptually more interesting than what's going on in the live action. What I think it, the live action has, as far as the silver lining here, I really like William Shatner's performance in this one.

I think he does some things that are actually really kind of compelling in two ways. There's the romantic stuff, which as you point out, like the idea of creating a sex bot for your own enjoyment in the future, um, is gross. But his interaction with her is Not like his smarmy ness toward other women when he meets them during an adventure where he's just like, Hey, you're attractive.

It's just like, this is a different type of performance. And the other part of it is his exhaustion. And that's the other part that I think is really well rendered in the short story, which is it goes into his internal side. And he is, as you mentioned, the anecdote about his academy days, he refers to himself as having been insufferably serious.

I was just saying, I liked, um, William Shatner's performance here, especially from the aspect of the anecdote where he talks about himself in his academy days as being insufferably serious. And it kind of belies a part of the swagger in him as a captain. We see glimpses of how seriously he takes being captain, and that anecdote fits beautifully within that.

Is a nice nugget of writing. Another part that I think stood out as being a really good aspect was his exhaustion. It is even better in the short story because in the short story it goes into it in an internal way that they can't do on television. But it is a depiction of him as he is truly struggling in this moment to be the captain he wants to be.

And I think that is an interesting aspect to have. It's not often that the show will go into the wear and tear on the individual in that way. That's an aspect that I wish had been blown up better in the series episode. In this original episode, I think if it had worn more of a, the captain is burnt out, a little bit of the Pike from the pilot, like in Kirk in this moment would have been interesting to see.

But it's just an episode that is lost in the fantasy, and Roddenberry was not wrong to try to rescue it, but it was beyond rescuing, I think. I think the episode just feels like it was a one note idea. They rang that note at the beginning and then it's just supposed to carry you through and it's just, there's nothing there to carry you.

There's no, it doesn't feel like there's any weight. And as you mentioned, when you get to that fight sequence, good Lord, like Finnegan, please stop running. Just like turn around and come back and fight him. I found this magically delicious. Yeah. I found myself, I found myself in a position where I was watching with one eye and scrolling on my phone.

It was that kind of episode. So not a good one from my perspective. And I'm sure I'm speaking for you as well. A hundred percent. So viewers and listeners, what do you think about this one? Do you agree with us that this one was a bit of a hard pill to swallow? Or did you find that this one really scratched the Finnegan itch that you didn't even know you had?

Let us know in the comments. Jump in and let us know what you think. Also don't forget that next week we are going to be talking about the Squire of Gothos, which is an episode I actually looking forward to. Yes.

It's not next week. Cause we'll be, we're going to be skipping a week cause we're not going to be around to record next week.

I should

have said next episode in two weeks, but it's actually, yeah. So I hope you'll be interested in checking that one out and please jump into the comments. Wrong answers only. What is Squire of Gothos about? I can't wait to see what you all do with this one. Cause this one's going to, this is not just a phrase like shore leave and you kind of kind of wrap anything around it.

Like this is Squire of Gothos. Good luck. Before we jump off, Matt, is there anything you want to share with our viewers about what you have coming up?

Uh, I, I'm in the middle of this break on videos we're making, but the one that's going to be starting back up after we're back from break is about the world's largest wind farm in the world, which is shockingly large!

It's in China, of course, but it is fascinating how big it

is and what we can learn from it. As for me, if you're interested in finding out more about my books, you can jump to my website, seanferrell. com, or you can just go to wherever it is you buy your books. My books are available everywhere, so that includes everything from Amazon, right down to your local

small bookstore or public library. And thank you so much if you're interested in checking those out. Don't forget if you want to support us, you can support us very easily through leaving comments, liking the episode, subscribing, sharing with your friends. Those are very easy ways for you to support us.

If you'd like to more directly support us, you can go to trekintime. show. Click the join button there. Not only does that allow you to throw some coins at our heads, which I know some of you are just scrambling for a chance to do that. It also makes you an Ensign, which means you will be signed up for our podcast Out of Time, in which we talk about things that don't fit within the confines of this program.

And I hope you'll be interested in checking that out. Thank you so much, everyone, for taking the time to watch or listen. We look forward to talking to you next time.