Kevin: Hello and welcome to uh, Subspace Radio.
It's me, Kevin,
Rob: and me, Rob.
Kevin: And if I sound a little different, it's because I am coming to you from
a secret holiday destination and I don't have my regular mic with me.
But we're doing the best we can, Rob.
Rob: You can't stop the signal.
I know I'm using another reference from a different franchise, but
Kevin: Oh, is that
Rob: That is from Serenity.
So that
Kevin: Oh, of course it
Rob: The final in the Firefly series that they tried to carry on into movies.
It just couldn't, it couldn't stick even though it was a brilliant show.
Can't stop the signal.
Kevin: uh, We'll have to do a Serenity cast sometime when we
run outta Star Trek episodes.
Rob: There, look, there are some Browncoats out there who would, who
would be very excited to hear that.
Kevin: but this week we are talking about the season finale or finales,
depending on how you slice it, of Star Trek Prodigy season one.
Supernova parts one and two.
Rob: the real actual finale as opposed to the mid-season finale,
that seemed like the end of a season finale halfway through.
Yeah.
Yeah, they we're on track now, Nickelodeon, and you've done good.
That's how you do a season finale.
Kevin: Nothing is the same again after this
Rob: Nothing at all.
No.
But yes.
And how did you, in, in general terms and the, as a first impression, how'd
you find this as a season finale?
We've done so many seasoned finale's, you and I.
This is our third,
Kevin: Yeah, gosh, you're in such quick succession.
Yeah.
I really enjoyed it.
I thought it was a great culmination to the season.
The moment to moment watching of it, like having watched it
twice now, I enjoy it more as I'm watching it than reflecting on it.
I don't know if that means anything, but I think that's probably what you
want is to enjoy the actual watching.
And this is an enjoyable watch for sure.
Yeah, it was it brought a lot of, there were a lot of bookends in this where
that reached way back to the very first episode and I was like, wow, this is,
even though they gave it to us in two big chunks, it was clear they planned this
whole season out from beginning to end and planted some seeds at the start that
would only pay off in this final chapter.
And it feels like satisfying TV to me.
How about you, Rob?
Rob: Yeah, yeah.
Really loved it and really some really nice emotional beats in there that hit a
lot better than they possibly should have.
And um, really nice set up, not only paying off things that have been
established in the season before or leading up to it, but also some nice setup
for where we are going to go, which is,
Kevin: Gosh.
Yeah, some big promises.
Rob: Yeah, big promises and especially while I was watching this season,
I'm going, where do they go?
Where can this actually go?
Was cuz it's been defined by this structure of, you know, those uninitiated
embracing Starfleet from the outside.
So it's gonna be very interesting to see.
Does it just, Just a regular, another regular Star Trek show or does Yeah.
And lose what was so unique and special about it, or does
it go to that next level?
It's gonna be very interesting to see.
Kevin: Yeah, there was some moments in this where I was watching the action and I
was like, wow, there's a lot of spaceship eye candy here of ducking and weaving
and be in a dog fight with the Defiant.
Hello Deep Space Nine fans.
Rob: Very happy here.
We were, we went.
We did our nod.
We did our our classed hands together going Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Defiant's here.
We love you.
Kevin: The Enterprise E is buried in that armada somewhere as well.
You don't get a great look at it, but there are some freeze frames
online that spot the registry number on a rapidly passing nacelle.
And so they were there, which is good to see them post Nemesis as
Rob: Look now your influence over me is becoming more and more apparent.
The more we do this, Kevin, because it you dropped a little thought worm
into my head and it just stayed with me the whole time, especially when we had
the epicness of part one of Supernova.
I'm there going, logically and policy-wise, this wouldn't happen.
But because of the plot point of them needing to have all the Federation
ships and calling every Federation ship and they went, oh, this is Star,
star Federation policy, I'm going no.
Cuz it's just one ship.
There should've just been at least one or two ships to have the entire armada.
That's the only way the plot, and I'm doing inverted commas again, could happen.
So I was all the way through going.
Yep.
There's a lot of eye candy here, there's a lot of explosions
and a high body count as well.
Like for a Nickelodeon show.
I'm going the Star Trek execs shuffled in and went, okay, our time we could do this
Kevin: Oh yeah.
They bring in the Klingons.
I just thought those are the friendliest Klingon I've ever seen in
Star Trek that they responded, yeah.
Minutes later.
The Bird of Prey is like breaking apart in front of us.
I was like, oh, no.
Rob: Um, But yeah, I was just there going this is a dumb move.
It's just happening for plot purposes.
In reality, you would only have one or two ships there that would
be more than enough to outnumber.
Yeah.
This what they know of the Protostar and the gang there.
But it led to this incredibly dramatic and tense, well-written episode, one.
Like you had all hope was lost.
Then they used the ingenuity to come up with this great
idea, and that started to work.
And then the next kicker to bring to the cliffhanger brought everything down.
So I'm jumping ahead.
Kevin: That final sting of we got the Klingons and the other
races to come and rescue us.
It's like the classic friendship solves everything sort of Nickelodeon
solution, and then they, oh, no, the computers aren't playing ball.
The automated distress calls are bringing in more Federation
ships, and it's not going to work.
To be continued.
It was a yeah.
Gut
Rob: To end with the line, Total annihilation is a hell of a way to
finish off a Nickelodeon episode.
Can I just say, I dunno if Rocco's Modern Life ever finished
with an episode like that
Kevin: the, I feel like the first part was the ship battles
episode and Supernova part two was the character payoffs episode.
And it worked well.
Rob: and it definitely showed that it was like we were in the land of television
because they resolved it quite quickly.
Not conveniently, not in an easy way, as a very efficient way of
doing it and getting to that point and hitting those emotional points.
But then we had that luxury of the remaining half of the episode to be
like the epilogue of the episode.
A month later and the trial and the deliberation and then the goodbyes,
and then the, it just like where in a movie you'd like end with them,
being rescued and that was it.
But they went, no, we're television.
We can take that time to really explore their ventures, their
first steps on actual, on the on the streets of San Francisco.
Kevin: Yeah.
A highlight for me was the character puzzle in the hallway.
When our crew comes face to face with Drednok in the hallway, and he pins,
you know, he gives the gravity mine and he, he freezes Murf against the wall and
electrocutes Zero and pins Dal against the wall with the little boomerang thing.
And then they had to figure out how to work together to,
to extract themselves from it.
Lovely little moment of just here they are.
They only succeed together.
It was almost too cute.
But as a, like a reinforcing moment of just how much they've
grown together and work together well I really love that payoff.
Rob: balance it out when you've got that almost too cute for its own good
working as a team will solve everything.
And then you realize in the background, there's just a carcasses
of Federation ships everywhere.
And then they, so it's that balance that I think they got all right.
Kevin: Bringing back the translators failing and them not being able
to communicate with each other.
That's another example of the book ending of the series.
They, these characters started not being able to understand each other and
got a taste of that at the end here as
Rob: and not that much of a problem for them because it was quite, it was
solved quite quickly by Gwyn who's proving herself over and over again
to be a far more qualified captain.
Kevin: One of those camera passing over the shoulder into a non-literal
depiction of the events with Gwyn speaking in English to the Klingons,
even though we are to understand she is speaking in Klingon to them.
Um, yeah.
Really good.
Rob: So yeah.
And Ronnie Cox was back for a little bit as
Kevin: Yes, I now understand why Admiral Jellico is in this series.
He was here to make one poor decision in the finale, which is
to send the boarding party in.
And despite despite Janeway's uh, understanding of the situation,
Rob: Cox is fast becoming the uh, Jar Jar Binks of Star Trek.
We go who's gonna be the poor schmuck that lets the emperor stay on for this time?
Ugh!
Well, who's the poor schmuck who's gonna send the boarding party on.
Kevin: I assume Admiral Jellico does some good things too, but at least
on screen his career is not the most illustrious, but it doesn't seem
to have kept him from moving up in
Rob: Look, we are all the lead characters in our own story, in our own
life, obviously, and I'm sure Jellico has his incredible moments in his
own spinoff that he has in his head.
But will anybody tune in to watch the Jellico spinoff series?
I think not.
Um, And a shock death.
I didn't expect.
I knew that.
Like I knew the Diviner's death was probably gonna come,
but I didn't expect it to be.
I thought it was gonna happen in part two of Supernova.
But yeah.
Kevin: Yeah.
Spear to the spear, to the uh, offscreen, midsection.
Rob: Always gets you an animation, doesn't it?
That non-disclosed midsection
Kevin: He died pretty easy, I have to say, like given that he was found
floating in the remains of his asteroid by Janeway and crew and revived
the fact that one, one spear to the middle was enough to do him in fe.
Felt a
Rob: yeah, it was a little bit.
Kevin: easy.
Rob: They wanted to get rid of John Noble really quickly for some reason.
So I dunno what they've got against him.
But yes but we did get a very much relating back to Star Wars, a very
much a Darth Vader at the end of New Hope we had the Diviner flying off for
further missions or causing further mischief, which we will have to hopefully
Kevin: The Vindicator.
That whole, the whole like sword fight on the bridge with the like camera, often
panning outside of the bridge, seeing them jumping on the platforms through glass.
It did have a very Empire Strikes Back final battle with Darth Vader.
Like, it, It felt like the lightsaber battle to
Rob: And we had been building up for that because, the Vindicator had been getting
through, getting away with so much.
We wanted there to be some sort of, come on, Gwyn just kick her ass.
But,
Kevin: Oh, she's, she relishes being evil in just the right amount of punchability.
Rob: Yes.
Kevin: Like, you are gonna pay for this.
And she goes, ah, maybe but not today.
And steps back into the robot.
It was just like, Ooh, yeah, we're gonna enjoy her comeuppance.
Rob: She's enjoying putting a bit more pepper on those lines, especially in that
particular episode, like with beaming a board and she was knocking out the
Federation guy and all that type of stuff.
She was, oh, and and Drednok did a judo chop.
Kevin: Oh yes.
Chop
Rob: All the things he could have done, he does a judo chop.
But yes, we then get to how did you find the the solution in part two
of the only way to save the day is to use the weakness of the Protostar
and its strength at the same time.
Kevin: Yeah it works in the moment, but this is what I was talking
about before that on reflection, I find it a little unsatisfying.
Just that they could have done that at any point in the past
Rob: Yeah.
Kevin: If the goal is to save the Federation or save Starfleet from this
virus, yes, self destruct the ship.
Uh, apparently that was something available to them all this time, but they
didn't do it until they had no other
Rob: No other choice.
Kevin: Yeah, I guess is okay.
There was a lot of when Zero explains the plan and they on the bridge,
like summon the 3D wireframe image of the ship shooting and exploding
in pieces a along the route.
And then later in part two, Janeway when addressing the Federation Council,
just in the middle of a speech summons a hologram of the Protostar ship in
the middle of the conference room.
There's a significant amount of people summoning, improvised holograms to make
points in the middle of conversations, that I'm like, who d like who drew that?
Like, when did you draw that?
Rob: They did have a month between, so there's, clearly there's a lot
to do in star— there's a whole section to prepare every form of
every known hologram imaginable to be
Kevin: But I think it's just, I think it's an expediency of storytelling when you've
got a 30 minute cartoon and you've gotta get it through a certain amount of plot.
It's handy just to go look at this, it explains it.
Without going, please join me in the conference room so I can show you
a presentation I prepared earlier.
It's just the, let's get to it.
Let's get to
Rob: it's the old, problem, a conundrum within any sci-fi show
is that, is there going to be the whiteboard or the blackboard moment.
Like in Back to the Future II, where Doc Brown literally gets
a blackboard out to explain time travel and alternate dimensions.
So yeah, it was very much that case of Zero going here we go, right here.
And it just so happens to come out when I need it.
And and not only, and the two different wormholes comparing it
and they look exactly the same.
Cause of course they do.
Kevin: Yep.
Yep.
We're well into part two here, so I think it's probably worth talking about.
What to me is the heart of this two-parter is hollow Jane way's
sacrifice of herself to save the crew.
That the moment she realizes she doesn't fit on the Isolinear and you
see exactly what she's going to do, they don't have to explain it to you
until afterwards when they're explaining it to the kids, what has happened.
Really like great writing, great performance, great animation, all
working together there to create what even on second viewing to me
was like, a knot in my stomach of this emotional end of a character
that is just a training simulation.
But it pulled the heartstrings real, real well for
Rob: Well, it was, and definitely a clever use of time jumping within
narrative structure, because obviously Janeway finds out this, has enough
time to record the farewell message and then Dal comes in whereas it
jumps ahead to cut out that part.
So we don't know until that point.
But yeah,
Kevin: But as she's lying to them and saying, don't
worry, I'll be there with you.
Take the chip.
Mulgrew's like perha, I think maybe Mulgrew's best dramatic performance
that I can remember it right now anyway of the saying it'll be fine.
And walking that tight balance that we as the audience can spot the emotion
in her voice but the characters can't.
Beautiful dramatic tension there.
Rob: Look, it is a gift.
It is a gift that we as a star Trek fans have been given, Kate Mulgrew
and the fact that she has blessed us by coming back to do this shows that
we do not deserve her, and we should appreciate her for all that she is.
And she's always been overlooked.
And I'm so grateful that, Prodigy, this little quirky, weird show that
I had no idea about that I would get this invested into and a lot of other
Star Trek fans as well, is giving this platform to not only an incredible
character, but a wonderful performer and giving that chance to shine again.
And hopefully that gets people to appreciate, in retrospect to go back
and rewatch Voyager and see what they missed out on because yeah, just her
vocal work, as I've said before, she's done voiceover work with character work
before with animated series of Batman.
So she's showing her expertise not only as a performer, but
specifically as a voiceover actor.
Kevin: A master of the
Rob: Master.
Master.
We do not deserve her, but we have her.
So let's relish her and praise her.
Kevin: The scenes without dialogue of the crew jumping into the improvised
shuttle craft and being like, sucked out of the cargo bay, at an odd angle
and tumbling away from the ship.
It's all played without dialogue and the music is doing an amazing job there of
making us feel the moment, feel the loss,
Rob: And you feel the weight of the ship as well?
Cause like its front, it's it's front rudder is out and so it's being dragged
out cause it's, it's just a copy.
So it has no impulse engines or anything.
It's just the barest minimum.
They don't even have seat belts.
Grab onto a, hang onto a pole and grab onto your butts.
Kevin: Uh, it's so good.
What does it remind me of?
It reminds me, here's a deep cut.
It reminds me of Apollo 13 when the movie or the actual events, but the
depiction in the movie is certainly what tugged me at tugged my heartstrings.
Similarly, that the crew spends— it's not a perfect match, but in Apollo 13,
the crew retreats to the lunar module for life support in order to make their
way, their long way home to Earth.
And then at the end of the story, that lunar module is not designed
to get them down to Earth.
They need to leave it behind, so they pile back into the command module and
then cut it loose and it tumbles away.
And that same feeling of, it's an inanimate object.
It doesn't mean anything, but, oh, that thing was our home for all this time.
It has that same feeling as they're leaving the Protostar and looking around
at everything for the last time of this shouldn't hurt as much as it does, but it
Rob: Exactly, and especially they flip it right around, as all sci-fi
shows like this do, we've invested so much into the Protostar and we have
waited till the last possible moment for it to be destroyed when it could
have been destroyed at any point.
And then as soon as they get back to Federation and they're a part of it, they
just go, oh yeah, that was a prototype.
We got a, we got another, we only
Kevin: It's better.
It's better.
It's much
Rob: It's bigger, it's better, it's sexier, and I'll love you more
than the original one ever did.
Kevin: I gotta shout out to the artists for the nebula, the sparkly nebula
that forms when the Protostar explodes and just it's played in silence.
The music drops away.
The ship warps.
And, whew this sparkly vision appears in the sky, and surely they're gonna
call that the Janeway nebula or
Rob: It's gotta be, it's gotta be the Jane.
Kevin: But I was like, it's just like I want to freeze that and use it as my
desktop background for the next year.
It was just such a beautiful piece of eye
Rob: they've excelled themselves, haven't they?
And like, how do you create, like they showed it in, improvised hologram form
of sort of like, you know, spontaneously at the same time exploding and traveling
through warp or whatever, go through warp.
But to have like just these streams of lights and these sprinkles throughout
in this constant flow out into infinity was yeah was really divine.
And they outdid themselves.
Like we've been talking about the intergalactic vistas that we have
seen on these animated shows that have really stepped things up.
So the live action shows have got a lot to, and I dunno if they'll ever be able
to actually match what has been created on Lower Deck and definitely Prodigy.
Kevin: Getting to see San Francisco again in, in an animated form, and
Starfleet Command was an unexpected treat and we spend a good amount
of time looking around there.
There's a great website that I'll link to in the show notes.
It has been just keeping track of the glimpses of future San Francisco
and Starfleet Command that we've seen over the movies and the TV shows and
like comparing them to each other.
And where exactly is Starfleet Command?
Is it on the north side of the Golden Gate Bridge or the south side?
It and is it to the east or to the west?
Like where in present day does Starfleet command exist in the future?
Rob: Gotta be some tours in San Francisco.
There's gotta be some Star Trek tours where people take them down to the
bay and go, this is where this is.
There has to be, if there isn't,
Kevin: But the, yeah, but it's a great article, like comparing in
different iterations, the same buildings to each other, and is
this the same building or is it not?
Like it has got that full on, excessively nerdy look at this
stuff that I really appreciate.
And as far as I can tell they, Prodigy here has done a great job
of matching what we've seen before uh, of, of Starfleet Command.
You get the Golden Gate Bridge covered in solar panels and Starfleet command
is exactly where it should be at the northeast end of it, which is
the most common place for it to be.
And yeah.
Rob: Would I be correct in saying like in all the films though, the one that
spends probably the most time in San Francisco is probably the reboots?
Cuz I know you see a bit of it in The Motion Picture.
There's a little bit of it in two and three and four a bit, especially yeah,
the Genesis Trilogy as I'm calling it now.
Uh, But yeah the, would I say would the Pine films be the one
where you see most of it, cuz they're actually at the Academy.
Kevin: Into Darkness has the actual like sky ship chase with Khan and
Spock fighting it out on top of the ship that's hurtling through
the streets of San Francisco.
So that's a pretty extensive tour there.
But I don't know about you, I, first of all, alternate timeline.
Alternate San Francisco.
It doesn't really matter, right?
Doesn't
Rob: That's the multiverse.
Nothing matters.
Yeah.
If you
Kevin: But also those films as beautiful as they are, my memory of
them is that it's a lot of CG eye candy that does not necessarily ground
you in any place, any sense of place.
Maybe I need to go back and look.
Give them another shot.
Rob: do it to yourself.
Don't do it to yourself.
Why would you do that to yourself?
You used the word beautiful to describe them, aren't they going?
Why would you say that?
Why would you do that to yourself?
Look, there's no wrong way of being a fan, sometimes there's a wrong way
of doing a reinterpretation of Khan, and they did that in Into Darkness.
Kevin: Look.
Speaking of the Genesis trilogy, having the Protostar crew crash in
the bay below the Golden Great Bridge and get rescued from the water.
What a nice echo of the end of Star Trek IV.
Rob: Oh, look.
And if the ancestors of George and Gracie came up and gave him a bit of
a high five, I would've loved that.
But.
That's just me personally.
So after the trial and a wonderful, inspiring speech from Janeway about what
it is to be Starfleet and a beautiful line about, there are 150 species
members in the Federation and Dal has 26 of them within him, so he is more
Starfleet than pretty much all of us.
I'm there going great.
Okay.
Can Janeway go back in time and say that about, in Strange New Worlds
as well and all that issue will be
Kevin: It stood out to me in that speech that she used the words our
alliance several times in this speech.
And it's it's an interesting framing of Starfleet and the Federation.
There's always been that, that strange duality of what is
Starfleet, what is the Federation.
Like, the Federation is the alliance of planets.
Starfleet is the Navy for that alliance.
But the idea that it is an alliance.
That word to me, strikes me as particularly militaristic.
And I don't know if it was Janeway playing to the military brass and saying, remember
the alliance and value the alliance.
But that word to me just it rang like a bell a couple of times that she said it,
that it wasn't, it isn't a community.
It isn't a Federation.
It is an alliance which has this military connotation that I just found interesting.
Rob: Yeah, as we've talked about before, ever since Star Trek II, where Nicholas
Meyer pretty much made Hornblower in space, which was so against Roddenberry's
idea of the original Federation, there has been this pull to what is the original
Roddenberry concept and what is this militaristic advancement of Star Trek
through other creative interpretive eyes.
And especially if you're looking at it from a canonical point of view,
but also creative point of view, this is a post Dominion war where
the Starfleet is, and the Federation is in its biggest conflict in over a
century, if not its entire existence.
So that type of militaristic jargon and lingo has stayed within after all that
might be hard to break outta the system.
And we see with Picard later on, it's definitely seems still more
quite militaristic as opposed to that we're a group of explorers
getting together and let's find out what's awesome about the universe.
Kevin: Some great teases about what we can expect in the future
of Prodigy here at the end.
The idea that they have created, they have green lit, a Protostar class of ship,
but that's not the one we're going on.
Janeway says I have a bigger plan for us, her and her trainee crew, which
for the, this is another one of those implausible situations to me that I'm
happy to go with because of the strength of the story and the characters.
But the idea that a rear admiral would be in, given a ship to train five trainees
sounds like an implausible use of resources for Starfleet, let's just say.
Rob: So what?
Look, cause I
Kevin: You're not allowed into the classroom, but we'll put you on a ship.
Rob: That's the thing.
Are they gonna be on the ship with the rest of the crew or is it just
gonna be like a copy of season one where it's just now real Janeway
with a gray streak in her hair with,
Kevin: looking forward to seeing what it is.
I'm not sure they've figured it out themselves either.
I think they need to work
Rob: cuz we've gotta bring back Jason Alexander's sassy for no reason, but
then calms down, but then it becomes like a bitchy, almost racist character.
And we need to bring the number one who I really liked.
I like the number one, the Andorian.
He was really good.
He had that like distinguished Sherlock Holmesy nose and
Kevin: He was the straight man.
It was, it is the the thankless task o of being the professional
on the bridge who's working to follow the orders and get the job
Rob: Doesn't get all the flashes and doesn't get all the bells and whistles.
He just, just comes in, does his work, punches the clock, and and walks
away with my MVP oh he's not my MVP.
I dunno why I was even saying that.
Kevin: I think what we're gonna see is a Voyager A, there is a tease of that.
One of the, one of the shuttles that is coming to rescue them over the bay
has the registry number, NCC-74656-A, on it, which means Voyager A.
That's where I think we're going in
Rob: Yeah, I was gonna get to that.
I was thinking, yeah, they've gotta be getting on a Voyager.
There's gotta be, if they're not doing the Protostar, then it's gotta be a Voyager.
So we say goodbye to Gwyn.
And they have given her the name.
We've had the Diviner, we've had the Vindicator, we had the
we had the incubator, we had the no, we have the Unifier.
What a wonderful one.
That was a beautiful little moment.
I, yeah.
I thought that
Kevin: forward to, I hope they keep her in it cuz I think they could
easily write her out at this point and say, look, she goes off on that
mission and hopefully all goes well.
We'll maybe hear a line later that says she, they made first
contact and it's going better.
They could go that way with it or they could keep her in as like a
standing B plot for this series.
And I hope they do.
I hope we get to follow Gwyndala.
Rob: Look.
Yeah I think that's where the, they'd be stupid not to do that if they've,
if it's split in two parts of, the, A plot is finding Chakotay, or in many
ways the B plot will be Chakotay, and the A plot will be how Solums do the
Kevin: but the whole crew is going with Janeway to find Chakotay.
feel like that's gotta be the A plot.
I don't know what they're gonna do.
It's very weird to me that Gwyn is going off to try and make first contact go
better, to change the future that Chakotay is stuck in, that Janeway is going to
try and find Chakotay in the bad future.
It's mind bending.
If Gwyn succeeds, does the future that Chakotay's stuck in change?
I don't
Rob: look, I like people taking risks, but they are taking a big swing.
The, the Prodigy writers and directors and the production team,
they're going okay that like they have done well with season one.
They're going, let's go all out.
We've got parallel dimensions, we've got time travel, which is always a
bitch of a thing to write, if you ask the, the dean from Community.
Kevin: When they said that the Prodigy's explosion had created a temporal rift
and that they got a signal from Chakotay out of there, I kind of leaned back and
crossed my arms and went, okay, that's the pill I'm being asked to swallow here.
That's the thing that makes the least sense of this entire episode.
The episode would've been better if not for that, but they wanted
that to set up their season two, so
Rob: They have, but they've been constantly pushing Chakotay's story back
and back and god bless Rob, Robert Beltram coming back to do the, that's another
thankless role of coming in, doing his voice and then getting his voice echoed
and repeated and you say, oh, cool.
I'm gonna be this cool funky A plot and this animated Star
Trek, ah, no, you're B plot.
Now you C.
There you're D.
Or you might be a in season two.
Oh, they're cha, they're changing
Kevin: I'll be hap.
I'll be happy to see him back.
I hope.
I hope we get a grumpier, grittier Chakotay when we finally
Rob: Oh, he's gotta have he's gotta have a, full on, Gandalf beard and
surviving out there in the wilds.
He's gonna have, because he is, as I've spoken before, he is the dawg of Voyager.
So he's gonna have his own tribe set up.
I think there's gonna be a tent and then pulls apart.
He's got a haram of nineties women, like the Ferengi from a couple of episodes
ago when they're in the Delta quadrant.
Or maybe that's just my mind playing tricks on me.
I
Kevin: What did you think of the kiss or the kisses?
Rob: we got two
Kevin: there was a, there was an ill-advised kiss in part one,
and then the more consensual version in part two I don't know.
My, my partner who was watching the, on the sofa next to me, she groaned
especially she groaned at the first kiss and then groaned again at the
second kiss, and she's come on, can we ever not have a romantic subplot here?
They're kids.
They're supposed to be kids.
Rob: And if you do not remember who you wanted to kiss and who you
wanted to go steady with, and who you wanted to, all that type of stuff
played a massive part of being a kid.
And I think it was handled it was, I found it quite adorable how as soon as
it happened, everyone was, what the hell?
What I'm trying to tell you.
This what?
Oh, I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
What?
What who what?
Hey, who?
Haha.
It was like, It's like a 80 sitcom magnified.
But I thought it was a very cute, dignified final goodbye with a touch.
And it's hard to do an animation.
It's hard to do any type of, I feel as if I'm watching an AI program
trying to become self-aware.
But then the Simpsons episode, where they are in the future and then one and the
librarian turns to someone who goes first, they love each other, then they hate each
other, and now they love each other again.
I don't get it.
And the person goes, that's because you're a robot.
And then it cries and then head blows up and it melts.
So that's what I feel about it's gonna happen whenever there's
animated characters kissing.
I don't know.
That's just me.
So, With all that backstory, we get to the point of I thought it was okay.
It was all right.
It wasn't too cringey.
Kevin: Yeah, I think it maybe only works because it was a farewell.
They are going their separate ways.
If season two became the story of the couple that is Gwyn and Dal, I'm
not sure we'd be watching the same TV
Rob: Yeah, let's put a pin in, let's put a pin in that and let's, let's
focus on exploration, discovery, saving the dawg and and saving Gwyn's
planet because it, it was a truly tragic, end of a first contact story.
And I think we're gonna see more of that race.
I think that's why I was pushing that to be the, A plot more is because
they've spent so much time creating this whole new race and the backstory
of its destruction would be, yeah.
I would be quite surprised if they push that further back and go, no, this is
what makes us unique to everywhere else.
We don't have this species anywhere else in the Star
Trek, so let's develop it more.
Kevin: Zero gets a new body look, looks like it's designed by
Rob: It's very Apple.
It was very, it was, look, it's the iZero.
Kevin: That's right, the iZero.
I'm sure it'll be the hot new toy when season two comes out.
Rok Tahk chooses a field of science with Xenobiology, which is pretty
Rob: Yeah.
We, yeah.
That's the thing, like Rok Tahk is doing so well with all the sciences
it seems a little bit why should she
Kevin: Why choose?
Why not everything?
Rob: Yeah.
If you can do everything, you do it.
And you've been doing really well, like managing five or six different sciences.
And for me, I was a bit, oh, okay, so you're just going to, animals is great.
Animals are great species from different, every, that's awesome.
But they're going, oh, okay.
That's,
Kevin: Jankom seems to be like settling into engineering classes
and learning not to use the hammer, but to use the drill now and
Rob: And it fits in well, because that's where, that's where you get your
O'Briens and your Scotty's and even Torres, B'Elanna in some ways, that,
the salt of the earth type of, ah, let's sort this out while everyone else
is being highbrow and stuff like that.
Jankom's perfectly fit, suited for the for the orange jumpsuit.
Kevin: Yeah, for sure.
I'm not sure I caught an end for Murf in this.
Rob: Murf, Murf's just in Starfleet.
Kevin: Just in
Rob: Murf just showed up.
Kevin: Look very early in Supernova part II, there is a shot.
People walk onto the bridge and Murf.
No one comments on it, but Murf is sitting in the captain's chair and
I was like, I don't know about that.
That seems like a bad
Rob: Yeah, we
Kevin: There are a lot of high stakes buttons on that Captain's
Rob: We did have Murf jump up and give the raspberry, then also slap
their behind in front of Drednok.
So not only just a showing the backside, like that was a full
on multiple slap a slap that
Kevin: I did not feel bad for Murf when he got frozen to the wall.
I said, serves you right.
Rob: You know what Murf, yeah.
Grow up a bit.
Come on.
Kevin: All right well, anything else you wanna call out in in Supernova?
Rob: No, like I said, I like how they spent that time, the second half of the
episode focusing on them settling in and getting that preparation for season two.
It made it very much feel like we didn't have to rush our way through.
We took our time and I appreciated that to, to get them that feel and
get used to them within Starfleet.
But like I said, I'm gonna be very interested to see whether it
moves forward or whether it just becomes just another Star Trek show.
Because there was something unique about, this race of all aliens, which
has never been done on Star Trek before.
Not a part of the Federation, but following those ideals.
Obviously they couldn't keep that up forever and ever.
But how they can advance, what makes Prodigy unique without just blending
it into another Star Trek show.
Kevin: So the thing we called out in Supernova that we wanted to explore in
Star Trek history was the sacrifice of the Protostar, the decision to scuttle
a ship in order to save the crew or save the day as the case may be.
Definitely a big moment every time it happens, and it hasn't happened
that often in Star Trek history.
Rob: It ha it has happened quite a lot in the the Christopher Pine versions.
It's either the Enterprise blowing up or being destroyed or being ripped
apart, or being have to self-destruct.
I think it's happened in all three.
I, yeah it was destroyed at the end of the first one and it was destroyed
again at the end of the second one.
And it was almost destroyed on the third one and it was
ravaged to almost 80% destroyed.
But they still ambled it back to Starfleet.
So I don't think we're including any of those.
Cuz
Kevin: It's alternate history.
Doesn't
Rob: doesn't matter.
It's, it was the Kelvin line.
The Kelvin
Kevin: Yeah, that's right.
Yeah, that's right.
Rob: So yeah, none of those make any emotional impact cuz if you keep on
doing it, you lose the emotional impact.
Kevin: Okay, so let's, yeah, let's apply that filter.
Emotionally impactful sacrifices of
Rob: Definitely.
Definitely.
Kevin: Do you wanna pick a first one?
Rob: I'll pick.
Okay.
I'm coming back to it.
I come back to it all the time and I dunno why.
It's one that I don't watch, and this is one of the another reasons why I don't
watch it anymore because it ripped out my heart when it killed Da when they killed
David and then it ripped out my heart.
Cuz this is the first time ever, this iconic vision as a young man when they
destroyed the Enterprise for me, the first time in Star Trek III The Search for
Spock, when they destroyed the Enterprise, when Kirk goes, what have I done?
I went, yeah, what the hell have you done?
That I didn't even hear McCoy going, what you had to do, blah.
Bugger that.
Okay.
That was really like the heartache of it, of having to blow up the
Enterprise with the Klingons on board.
And it's also, it's, yeah it's a very much a Kirk move.
Sure, I'm gonna blow up the ship, but I'm gonna take a lot of Klingons with them.
Kevin: That's right.
Yeah.
The ugh, the shot where the entire surface of the saucer section bursts,
Rob: Just lifts
Kevin: and it just lifts off and flies off in pieces.
So iconic.
I am amazed and also not surprised that they couldn't resist putting
it in the trailer to the movie.
Like you went to Star Trek III knowing you were going to see that moment
because it was in all the trailers.
But when you make something that, that looks that amazing, you
kind of have to put it in the
Rob: And it's a tense moment as well because they're the, they're teleporting
on and the boys are teleporting off.
You've got, Christopher Lloyd doing incredible stuff of getting out, get
out, get outta there, and he's wonderful
Kevin: Oh, amazing.
Rob: performance.
John Larroquette is one of the them, I think, and he gets blown
up on the ship and also that.
That shot of perspective.
So we've got it from front up and you see the front dish section just
implode up and it's incredible.
But then you have the shot of them from the planet of Genesis looking
up and you see that trail of fire.
It's such a small, yeah.
Beautiful.
Kevin: it makes it feel so tangible.
Like how many ship explosions have we seen that it's just like a superimposed
fireball as the ship like fades out.
This was not that.
This was, it was a storyboarded.
There are pieces to this destruction.
It feels yeah, very physical.
Rob: It, yeah, it does.
It feels real.
And we talked about it before.
It's another one of those sacrifices that Kirk put on the table so
that he could get his friend back.
So that resurrection of Spock is earned, but by the amount of loss.
And so for me, the first time ever I saw the Enterprise,
I'm going, this is their ship.
And so much so it's gone that we don't get it again for, pretty much an entire movie.
So it's an incredible, powerful moment.
As for young Rob watching it, when I was like about 10, 11, it was heartbreaking
to go, I'm there going well okay, so not
Kevin: What does it mean?
Is Star Trek
Rob: Does that mean we're done?
Does that mean we've got Spock back now?
But do they just take a bus to each planet now?
Is this what we do now?
Is it
Star, is it, Star bus?
Anyway, busk?
Anyway, so.
Kevin: It was a payoff to something that was established in the Original
Series in the episode Let That Be Your Last Battlefield, which is memorably the
allegorical episode where the two halves of the race, one has white on the right
side and black on the left side, and the other one is reversed and they're
at each other's throats for that reason.
In that episode the Enterprise is commandeered and Kirk threatens to blow
it up, and there is a protracted sequence where they give all of their authorization
codes and start the countdown timer and then abort it at the last second.
But in Star Trek III, they use the exact same command codes as they did in that
Rob: Nice.
Kevin: and we get to see the destruction through to completion.
So it, it was a nice , payoff for the fans as well, that moment.
Rob: And how was that for you?
Like I talked about Young Robert, a 10 11 seeing that for the first time.
How was
Kevin: Yeah.
I must have been about the same age and it hit me just as much.
Like it was like this, the Enterprise is the constant of Star Trek.
And you have blown it up in such a devastatingly comprehensive way here.
Like, there is no, there's no sense that, oh, it could come back from that,
it could rebuild that it'll buff out.
There is no, it breaks up in the atmosphere.
And yeah, I had that same hollow sense of this is the irre even more than Kirk.
This is the irreplaceable character of Star Trek that
has just died before our eyes.
Rob: It did take it out of.
Kevin: How does Star Trek go on af after
Rob: Exactly.
And it's really, in many ways, it's where it really, like everyone talks
about Star Trek II being when Star Trek finally made it as a movie.
Whereas Star Trek, The Motion Picture has the great Robert Wise
big sweeping widescreen shots.
But Star Trek III is the really one where it's not that episodical
type thing of like ship gets into a scrape and everyone's back
together again and they're fine.
Sure we had Spock die in Star Trek II, but this is the one where they go, no, these,
this is a story that just doesn't reset.
So you don't go to Star Trek IV and everything restarts again.
You have lost your ship.
You have lost, your son.
You've lost all this stuff.
And this is the point where I went, this is not just, a Star Trek episode
on television, on a big screen.
This is where they're actually putting in movie stakes.
If you were.
Kevin: And this is why it echoes what we just saw in Prodigy so much
for me is like Prodigy as well.
We have that sense that the show is going to be completely different in season two.
When they opened the hangar and the new Protostar class ship was sitting there, I
was like, oh no, they're rolling it back.
And then they said, but we're not going on that.
We're doing something different and good on them to honor the ship by saying the
line will go on, but our story is going somewhere else because the destruction of
the Protostar marks a point of no return, where everything will be different.
Rob: And it's interesting because like you said, we were introduced into
Star Trek with the opening credits was the Enterprise, going from one
side of the screen to the next, and that has been copied with every other
subsequent Star Trek show, whether you've got The Next Generation new form
of the Enterprise sweeping through, or you've got wonderful shots of
admiring the pylons on Deep Space Nine.
And even with Prodigy, the opening sequence was the Protostar.
So you're there going no.
Even though we've copied the exact same style of our opening credits as we've been
doing for the last 50 years, what makes Prodigy isn't the ship, it's the cast.
So I always be interesting to see whether they carry on with that.
So it's, even though its opening credits were the Protostar front and center.
It doesn't matter what ship they're on, it's the cast that are more important.
And that's never really been done before.
It's so the ship has become such an invaluable part of the body of it.
Like people say about, a Woody Allen movie or Ghostbusters, oh, New
York's another character in the film.
It is really is a case of the ship has become a character.
So it'll be interesting to see whether they discard that for the first time.
Am I saying that another animated show is doing some continuity defying or
canon defying shifts with the protocol?
Lower Decks did with this whole class of AI ships.
We'll wait and see.
Kevin: We'll wait and see.
I hope not.
Rob: So yeah, any other, there weren't that many.
I had a bit of a look around too.
And
Kevin: Look, there is nothing that, as is as strong a match as the
destruction of the Enterprise in Star Trek III and well done to them.
Like how many times has Star Trek tried to go back to the well in one way or
another of what, what worked in those three films, especially Wrath of Khan.
So often they're like, let's make Khan again.
let's
Rob: again, but now with Benedict Cumberbatch and instead of Spock
dying, we'll have Kirk dying.
Kevin: Yes.
Rob: It's innovative and new.
Anyway.
Kevin: So taking an emotional beat from that film and not exactly replaying it.
But finding that kind of emotional place again, is something that is
rarely done as successfully as we just saw in with the Protostar.
I did have a few to call out, but they are relatively small.
So the first one I could think of was in the original series episode,
The Doomsday Machine the big, like it's worth watching again.
If you have not watched the original series since it was remastered, this
to me is the most visual effects heavy episode of the original series.
It's got that big sort of what would you call it?
Like a cornucopia sort of uh, planet killer device that's
got a fiery mo at the front.
Rob: What season?
What season is that one?
Kevin: It is season two, episode six of Star Trek, the
Rob: So we are right in the middle of prime, prime
Kevin: Prime Star Trek.
Yeah.
And this probably, I'm guessing, more money than they ever spent
on visual effects in any other episode of the original series.
And so the remaster, they likewise spent a, an inordinate number
of of hours remaking all of that in CG, and it looks glorious.
In that episode, this planet killing machine, they try to stop
it, the phasers bounce off of it.
It's crippled starships, they don't know what to do.
It's heading for populated centers and the solution ultimately is to ram a full
ship, the USS Constellation if memory serves, a captain pilots it down, pilots
the ship down the, because the autopilot or whatever is damaged, captain has to
go down with the ship Captain pilots it into the maw of the Doomsday device.
It explodes and is neutralized.
So an early example of a ship that, it was already badly damaged.
The captain was a little unhinged by that point as well because oh, it's tragic.
He had beamed his crew down to a planet so that they would be safe,
and then the planet killer ate the planet with the crew on it.
So he was a broken man after that.
Um, so like this was his redemption to be able to save the day by
steering his ship into the device.
It's a good one.
The other ones that come to mind, this is not so much a match.
The Next Generation season three, episode five, Yesterday's Enterprise
where the Enterprise C appears into the future, where it doesn't belong.
And the entire timeline changes because they escaped a fateful battle
defending a Klingon outpost, and then history does not remember them
coming to aid of that Klingon outpost.
And as a result Starfleet and the Federation has been at war
with the Klingons for 22 years by the time of this episode.
So we get to see the Enterprise D transmuted into a war ship, and
Guinan is the only one who knows something is wrong and convinces
Picard that what has to happen to avert this 20 year war that everyone
else figures like it's facts of life.
She says, this war could have been completely averted if the Enterprise C
had just been destroyed at Narendra III.
And so the rest of the episode is Picard wrestling with the decision and then
the, everyone planning to send the Enterprise C back into the time rift
where they know it's a suicide mission.
They're gonna get destroyed by the Romulans when they get there.
But they decide to sacrifice the ship with what's left of the crew,
a aboard and even a volunteer Tasha Yar manning the tactical station.
And fans know what, what ends up happening to Tasha Yar as a result
of her presence in the past there as
Rob: Yes, we do.
Yes, we do.
I've got another one I found was from Voyager.
Star Trek Voyager.
You probably found this as well, Deadlock.
Kevin: Ooh I did not remember Deadlock.
Give it to
Rob: Ah, so it, it's the it's season two, episode 21.
It's a famous episode for many reasons where we have the birth,
the newborn Naomi Wildman.
This is of course, before Seven of Nine has built their relationship with
them, but they're being chased down by the the Vidiians, that's right.
So this is the early days of Voyager where the main arcing villain, they tried
the Kazons and that didn't really work.
So they, then they tried the Vidiians who were the organ harvesting creatures.
And so they are on their way to taking over the ship.
And for whatever reason, some way, shape or form, there are two Voyagers created.
There's a, the overly damaged Voyager and their other regular Voyager.
Janeway and Janeway discuss the only way that they could solve this
problem is that damaged Voyager has to self-destruct so they can save the day.
So it's that, that, the greater good is sacrificed.
The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the many on a parallel version of it.
So there's two Voyagers and one has to be destroyed to to stop the
Vidiians and this calamity happening.
And a newborn, Naomi Wildman's there with the points on her head and
we all think, how did that hope?
Oh gee, I hope it was a hope that baby was teleported out.
Kevin: Was it have you watched it
Rob: No, I haven't, I do want to go back and watch it cuz the Ians
were a rather creepy creation
Kevin: The Vidiians were great.
I was sad to see them left behind.
But that's how Voyager went.
Rob: Forward.
Ever Forward.
Kevin: Yeah, there, there were at least a couple of times.
Deadlock is one of them.
And there's another one where there's like a copy of Voyager that
ends up like evaporating in space.
Like it's made up of this shapeshifting matter that is conscious and convinces
itself that it is the ship and crew of Voyager, but they all start melting
and it's it's like a tragic end as they fall apart and then are discovered
by the real Voyager who go, oh, like what's this weird cloud in space?
I don't know.
Let's keep
Rob: That's right.
Yeah, yeah, Yeah.
And it is that sort of like moment at there and go, oh, what's this weird thing?
Oh, doesn't matter.
Kevin: not so much a sacrifice as a glimpse of an ill fate of Voyager.
Like what if Voyager didn't make at home?
Let's play out one of those scenarios and do some sci-fi
cheating so that it doesn't count.
The other one, the only other one on my list was another one of those.
It is Star Trek Voyager season four, episodes eight and nine Year of Hell,
which is another alternate timeline episode where for a year, It is
like, it is a very epic two-parter because again and again throughout
this, these episodes, we jump forward in time and there's a title card
that says like, day 46, day 129.
And this is really a story of what if Voyager didn't make at home?
What if one of the species whose territory they entered along the way was menacing
enough, warlike enough and effective enough at whittling down Voyager so that
they ultimately didn't make it home.
And there is the big cliffhanger between the two parts is the moment
that Janeway finally decides staying, asking the crew to stay on this ailing,
increasingly damaged Voyager is a death sentence, and she sends them all out
in the escape pods and says, we will, we'll meet again on the other side.
I look forward to hearing your interesting stories when we do,
but you can see it in her face.
You can hear it in her voice that she doesn't believe it as she's saying it.
And then part two is the skeleton crew of just the bridge crew left on
the ship trying to keep it running.
They hide in a, in a nebula, and because most of the hull is missing,
the nebula seeps into the ship, and they have to deal with the toxic
gases and ultimately Janeway and Voyager sacrifices itself at the end.
Janeway, last person standing on the ship, she the rest of the bridge crew is
transported to some ally ships and Janeway is left alone on board on the bridge.
And she chooses to ram the time ship that is responsible for this alternate timeline
that occupies this entire episode.
And, but it's not so much of a sacrifice as the other ones we've
seen because Janeway knows what she's doing and she's doing it.
She says, everyone drop your time shields.
When I hit this thing, if I'm lucky it will reset the timeline and none
of this will have ever happened.
But nevertheless, we get to see Voyager nose first into another ship
and crumple and burst into flames.
And we know Janeway is sitting in the pilot seat when that happens.
So it does have, it definitely does have an echo of what we saw in
Prodigy this week with with Janeway captaining the ship on its fateful final
Rob: Definitely.
Definitely.
Kevin: There you go.
Certainly many more instances of self-destructs being started and
then aborted at the last minute, or attempted and not working because
they the ship is too badly damaged.
Many threats of ship's self-destruction, but going through with it is
a surprisingly rare event.
Rob: Exactly.
And if Galaxy Quests taught us anything, it only gets to one and
then it doesn't actually blow up.
Cuz that's how every all self-destruct episodes go.
So yes.
It was good to explore again, go back into Star Trek III.
Why does it Star Trek III and Star Trek V keep on drawing us back in.
Kevin: I'll keep finding excuses until you watch
Rob: Yeah, that's right.
That's right.
It is all you are the, this is the season finale of Subspace Radio.
It was your plan all along.