Rob: Hello, and welcome back to Subspace Radio.
It is.
I Rob Lloyd, and joining me as always is my dear friend Kevin Yank.
How are you?
Kevin: I'm very well, thank you.
Rob: Yes.
Another episode of Star Trek is out there in the universe
and we are here to review it.
Episode two of season two of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.
Kevin: How's your Latin?
Rob: I'm not gonna attempt the Latin, Kevin.
If you want to attempt it, you can.
Kevin: Ad Astra per Aspera,
Rob: Well, that's easy for you to say.
Kevin: To the stars through adversity, I think we were taught in this episode.
Rob: So yes, Captain Pike is back not in, not on center stage.
He's definitely present, but more on the side brooding.
And this is fully focused on our Number One, Una Chin-riley is finally put on
trial which has sparked our broader debate of courtroom dramas within
Star Trek, but more of that later.
Kevin, what's your first thoughts on episode two of Strange New Worlds?
Kevin: This was some m-mm good Star Trek.
That's my thought.
Rob: Wasn't it so
Kevin: Oh, it's so good.
This is the kind of Star Trek that I, for a while there, I had given up on ever
getting this kind of Star Trek again.
That we could sit in this universe that has been created, trust that it is
interesting enough to be in, in this place and time and explore some ideas, have some
people debate concepts across tables at each other for a full one hour and have it
be engrossing and emotional and impactful.
That is my favorite kind of Star Trek.
And I know we need the phasers, we need the wormholes every now and then.
We need to keep things interesting with some lighthearted adventure and action.
But this kind of, dare I say it, cerebral Star Trek is my kind of Star Trek.
This is what I show up for.
Rob: Strange New Worlds does it again.
It is the most modern of modern Star Trek interpretations, but it's the most
classic of classic topics and issues.
Star Trek has always been at the cunning edge of political progressive
exploration and has always been used as a way of exploring contemporary
issues in this futuristic way.
Kevin: This is what Star Trek is for.
What can we learn about ourselves as people?
Rob: So it's all those type of issues about prejudice, about judgment, about,
indoctrination about, incarceration, about separation, all these type of issues,
apartheid, all this stuff brought up in a beautiful manner and written beautifully,
performed excellently and executed at the top, top tier level of its game.
Kevin: Yes, absolutely.
And that last point, I think bears repeating especially in light of last
week's episode that that I thought was let down a bit in the execution.
Besides the kind of episode this was, which I love, this is also just a
pinnacle of achievement in terms of the execution, the polish, everything from
the understated visual effects like an office chair floating in midair through
to the acting, which our guest star this week, Yetide Badaki, nailed it.
She had me in tears, a character I have never met before.
Just everything about this episode, not only was my type, but I dare
say this is the best courtroom drama we've ever seen in Star Trek.
Rob: She was particularly good in the way of her performance is there's a
tendency to have the science fiction style of acting or the genre style
of acting and whether it's a bit stilted, whether it's a bit theatrical,
whether it's more show than actual let the audience fill in the dots.
It's more of a general topic.
If you look at some of the greatest performances in science fiction,
that they're not rooted in any genre.
But she brought this incredible, natural process to her performance.
There was a great poise to her and there was a great energy to her that
was both appropriate for the genre but also brought that fresh, naturalistic
element that people could look at that and go, it is sci-fi but it's,
that's not the main focus of this.
She was an incredible and filled in the brief of what a guest star
should be and everyone gave her a standing ovation at the end.
I think we all joined in.
Kevin: Yeah.
So we will be looking at courtroom dramas in Star Trek this week,
but before we do is there anything that you wanna highlight here that
stood out to you in this episode?
Rob: I think every character had their part to play, even Pike's lover from
episode one who's coming in here, she had her own battle and journeys to go with and
what she had to endure through Federation.
Great, little cute moment with Spock causing such a public stir
Kevin: I, I loved that scene of the Vulcans, quote unquote arguing at
at a table in the cafe and M'Benga and Ortegas kind of analyzing it
from a distance and she saying, are you messing with me right now?
It was hilarious.
In the moments after that scene, I went, I wonder if that scene
is gonna be about anything.
Are we going to end up, is that argument going to have a consequence later?
And it didn't, it was really that scene was there for comic relief to
let the audience breathe out before the next dose of courtroom drama.
But for that, I loved it.
And it, it gave M'Benga and Ortegas something to do other than sing
Una's praises on the witness stand, and yeah, great to see them.
Rob: That was a good moment representation of the comedy of the Vulcan personality
as opposed to last week with the cramming in of the, what's your
catchphrase when you do the ship.
Yeah, beautiful moments, there.
A nice bit of tension between April and Pike and bit more delving
into Robert April being captain of the Enterprise before Pike and
Kevin: Already a hint of that future prequel, to the prequel, to the
prequel that we're going to get.
Robert April's
Rob: which will be called Boldly Go.
So yeah, everything was firing off really nicely.
I love the exploration of the Illyrian culture and the persecution.
Such a horrifying, heartbreaking story about hiding, who you are
and those who can and those who
Kevin: Yeah, it got real.
They moved past the abstract idea of, racism in the Federation, into what
would that actually mean in practice?
In what way would those people suffer in that society?
And we got to see it.
We got to see the scene of baby Una sitting there with a broken
leg, not being able to get it treated and it was hard to watch.
Rob: Yeah, and Rebecca Romijn just is, yeah, is killing it.
She's doing such a good job.
And that's a credit to her cuz you know for so long she was the model turned
and was employed like as Mystique in the X-Men movies for her appearance.
But she has finally been able to go no, no, no.
I've got some skills here.
I've got some talent
Kevin: She keeps surprising me.
Every time we see an episode featuring Una, I come away impressed at how,
how much I like the character.
And I was like, wow.
I knew I liked you, but I didn't know I liked you that much.
And this episode brings that to a new high.
The long soliloquy she gave when her attorney put her on
the witness stand by surprise.
One of my small objections to the logic of this episode.
Would your defense attorney really put you on the witness stand without briefing you?
That's not a real life thing.
But
Rob: It's very Perry Mason or Matlock style of it.
Yeah.
Kevin: But considering where some other courtroom dramas in Star Trek
have gone over the years this was one of the more realistic ones.
But once she got up there on the witness stand and she started telling her story
I had this moment of, Oh, here we go.
When she started with the motto of the Federation, I was like, eh, this might
be a little overwritten, but she got me.
The emotion was there.
It pulled me in and I was crying along with her, by the end.
Rob: Beautiful episode.
Absolutely beautiful.
It was an easy watch
Kevin: Did you notice that the courtroom was the reused Starfleet
headquarters bridge from Discovery?
Rob: I didn't.
Kevin: Oh, you didn't because you haven't seen the latest
season of Star Trek Discovery.
Yeah.
So, Yeah, stay tuned for your rewatch that room is going to be very familiar
that room, that is ring shaped with a big open space in the middle that is
the bridge of Starfleet headquarters.
And that open space is filled by a galactic map in Discovery.
Here, it wasn't really filled by anything.
They just shot around it and across it, and it made it a very strangely
claustrophobic, for me anyway, courtroom.
Although it was a large space, everyone was like pressed up
against the wall at all times.
And uh, the lawyer walking around the side to put the book on the desk,
it was like, felt very intrusive that she's going on a long walk.
You can't just pretend you accidentally ended up here.
This is where you intended to get if you're walking all
the way around that ring.
So it was very, very strange.
I couldn't decide if I liked it or disliked it.
I thought because it is so conspicuously the same room we have seen recently
in discovery, I felt it was a bit of a shame because it took me out of it,
it broke the reality that this room that exists in the 32nd century also
exists here in the uh, 23rd somehow.
But that was a minor thing.
I think what I liked the most is the legal machinations of this episode.
That trick they polled of, yeah, she may have technically broke this law,
but there is also another law that applies equally and it is our asylum law.
And you get to choose which one you apply here.
I'm no legal expert, but as a Joe Schmo viewing public of Star Trek,
it at least was, it felt to me like a convincing reason for a court case
to not go in the expected direction.
It felt like a plot twist that I could buy.
Rob: They called it out, which I really appreciated.
At the end, they just said, Una said it herself, that we,
this was just a technicality.
And the real work carries on, that we now need to build up this recognition for
the Illyrian people, and it's a start.
Kevin: That they found that was really impressive to me.
Because I think I said at the end of last season, my worry is that we know Julian
Bashir is discriminated against in Deep Space Nine a hundred years from now.
So what satisfying end is this arc of Una's is going to lead us to?
I couldn't see the space between, she gets drummed out of Starfleet because
the Federation is still racist at this point, and we break the canon.
And they threaded that needle.
In fact, it was so deft I can only assume they worked out how they
were gonna thread it when they wrote the ending to the previous season.
Hiding the fact of the asylum law applying in plain sight
was a beautiful magic trick.
And really brought the episode home for me.
Rob: Just the cold, hard reality of the fact that the laws were created
for this good to stop the horrors of the Eugenic Wars coming back, which
is fascinating to read up on from what is touched on from, um, Space
Seed, and all that type of stuff.
But to see that lofty heights of going, we have set up these laws to
protect us from a war happening again, but how that filters down to everyday
people, that it becomes, people become labeled and, slurs are, blazoned
across their doors and they have to go into hiding to get medical attention.
Just from the lofty heights of not wanting to start another galactic war down to pure
prejudice and racism showing its head.
It's wonderfully fascinating blend of gray within the bright colors of
this utopian future, which it isn't tarnished by it because it's what is
being fought at to keep that vision of a bright future, which is masterful.
That's what Star Trek is does so well stuff like that, what really
brings out that the beautiful grays of this bright new future.
Kevin: The thing that I most narrowed my eyes at suspiciously in the legalese
they were throwing around was, in the asylum law, they said that people
may seek safety within Starfleet.
And that seemed like a strange thing to have on the law books.
Cuz if you, if you transpose that to today, that's like the US Navy
having a law on the books that says that people in a war zone may seek
safety within the US Navy, which seems like a weird place to seek safety.
Like the the separation between the military organization and the
state is very interesting there.
My way I'm explain that in my head is that maybe this is like an old law that
was on the books before the Federation, when it was just Starfleet out there
roaming the stars, in which case it would make sense to have a policy around
asylum that was specific to Starfleet.
And the idea that Una's lawyer would have found this really old law in the
books is especially tickling to me, if that's uh, if that's what we accept.
Rob: Yeah, it's glowing praise all round for an excellently written,
beautiful executed piece of television.
Whether it be sci-fi or not, it's just wonderful.
And that led us down the the much easier path of previous Star Trek episodes.
I type in Star Trek courtroom episodes.
I got so many lists.
Ti Yeah.
Typing in Captain Away last week, yeah.
Not so much this one.
There was a plethora
Kevin: Well, we, we have to test ourselves now and then, but when they
give us a layup like this, we also need to we need to take the opportunity.
We're not gonna have a better opportunity to talk about Starfleet courtroom
procedures than we have here today.
Rob: We've touched on episodes with a courtroom feel or have been
mentioned in previous episodes, like we have mentioned The Menagerie.
We've mentioned Measure of a Man.
We've mentioned a couple of others in passing, but we have not dedicated
an entire episode to the courtroom.
Kevin: Let's not hold back.
I'm gonna, I'm gonna repeat at least one of the ones that you
mentioned in my uh, choices.
But look, we said last week, new rule: Enterprise goes first, cuz
it's ear earliest in the timeline.
So do either of us have an Enterprise episode?
Rob: I specifically picked an Enterprise because I went, you know what?
I'm doing a Star trek podcast.
We are into our second season of Strange New Worlds, and I've only, I
started watching Enterprise and then gave up, and so I went, you know what?
No, let's go in and do this, Rob.
Let's take this seriously.
And it's appeared in every single one of the lists that I've found online,
and it's quite high up in the list.
So I've gone with Judgment season two, episode 19.
Kevin: Ooh.
Yeah, good one.
This one always comes to mind because around the time this aired, Star Trek was
just getting serious about the Internet.
Like they had a website that they updated every week for the first time, and uh,
they were releasing audio commentaries along with significant episodes.
And there was an audio commentary by, I believe, the writers of this
episode released at the same time as the episode so that you could
watch the episode and then you could re-watch it with the audio commentary.
And that audio commentary was lost when the Star Trek website changed hands and
was torn down and rebuilt from scratch.
But I believe Trek Core has an archival copy of it.
So if anyone is following our advice and watching Judgment this week, you can
also pick up that audio commentary too.
I'll link to it in the show notes.
Rob: Yeah, definitely.
So to recite the IMDB outline of this story, After Enterprise lends aid to
a group of accused rebels, Captain Archer faces a tribunal and charges of
conspiracy against the Klingon Empire.
Kevin: Yes, this is what I like to think of as a flavor of Star Trek VI.
Rob: Oh, yes.
Yeah, it definitely has the easter egg of using the exact same set and some of
the props from uh, Undiscovered Country.
Now, for me, there are some incredible stuff in here.
There's some amazing stuff in here, but for me also, it's a
case of understanding why I never really connected with Enterprise.
All the elements are there, but it just
Kevin: It's got your general Martok Rob, how could you not like.
Rob: Oh, who is outstanding.
Outstanding.
Kevin: JG Hertzler plays.
Kolos
Rob: Yes, who is outstanding.
Even though in many of the shots you can clearly see the
Klingon bumps rising on the side.
The makeup hasn't, the makeup hasn't been stuck down properly and they
went, we don't have enough time.
Go with it.
He is frigging amazing in this episode, incredible stuff, and has the best
monologue that I've seen talking about a race within Star Trek since David
Warner's speech as the Cardassian interrogator Like just amazing.
But it just, it's an interesting way of starting within the trial and
then the flashbacks to what happened.
And it's an old trait, used many times of the different point of view.
So the Klingon gives his point of view of what happened, which is very clearly
Kevin: That's simplified if you will.
for legal expediency.
Rob: It's very much a Archer focused episode, so we see the doctor a little
bit in a really nice tense, there's almost espionagal, that's a real
word, type of scene at the start.
And you've got to Paul and the others up on Enterprise,
sorting it out in the background.
But it's really a two-hander really with Scott Bakula and our
dear old Martok with a different
Kevin: Yep.
Xenopolycythemia The, uh, disease that Phlox mentions when he's
visiting Archer in his cell, I believe is the fatal disease that Dr.
McCoy had in for the world is hollow, and I have touched the sky way back in
the original series, so a deep cut there.
Rob: Nice little reference there.
So there's a lot of great stuff there.
And of course they're sent to Rura Penthe at the end, but it's kind of
Kevin: It's a low budget Rura Penthe isn't it?
Rob: Very low budget.
I felt like I was kicked in the knees slash balls watching it.
And despite how difficult it was for them to get Kirk and Spock off
Kevin: Oh yeah.
Rob: Rura Penthe to just
Kevin: We bribed a, a transport captain.
Rob: Yeah, he just walks in, he goes, all right, let's go, shall we?
Kevin: Well,
This is why they tightened up security at Rura Penthe.
Rob: It's all because of that.
Thank you.
So yeah, it was a bit of a nothing end.
You just go, ah, ju… oh, okay.
But for me, the highlight is not so much the trial, which is the focus,
and we always know that it was gonna be a dodgy trial anyway, but they just,
there wasn't any confrontation of it.
It was more just, this is the process you gotta go through it.
Let's just get you to the prison and get
Kevin: Yeah, I think it needed one more hook for me.
When the thing that this episode rests on, is Archer going to be able to tell
his version of events because the Klingon legal system is stacked against him, and
even his own advocate is not interested in his version of events because they
are so used to the presumption of guilt.
And in the end, the way Archer convinces his advocate to listen to
him is to me, somewhat unsatisfying.
Archer says something like why don't you care about justice?
And his advocate goes, Don't be so quick to judge me.
I used to care about justice.
And Archer says, really?
And that's basically it.
That's the entire convincing that he has to do.
At that point, the advocate basically talks himself into it and goes,
oh yeah, I remember when these courts were willing to listen.
And they weren't just a tool for the military to to advance their agenda.
And it the fact that Archer does very little in order to secure his own
freedom here, it's, this is something that happens now and then in Star Trek
stories, I find, is that the, the story kind of advances on its own and there
is no sense of it having been earned.
Rob: Scott Bakula is an incredible actor.
His best work is in Quantum Leap, where he does everything.
He does dramatic work.
He does comedy work.
He sings.
He dances.
He does fight choreography.
He does car chases.
He impersonates women.
He plays a monkey In one episode.
He plays a vampire in one episode.
He does,
Kevin: He is definitely up for anything.
Rob: But it's amazing in watching this as the lead character in a Star
Trek show, he is such a passenger.
He does nothing to take hold of the story.
So much so that he, everything happens to him.
Even his escape.
He has not, he just like at the end of it, was it is it Dominic Keating, whatever the
Kevin: Malcolm Reed.
Rob: Yeah, comes in, just goes, all right, we're going now.
And so we've done all this for you.
And he's, he just swans through this 45 minute episode.
He's the captain and he's just, he's like lethargic.
Is he on medication?
It's really quite disheartening.
Cause I know Bacula can step up.
Bacula could so have a, a speech to rival Patrick Stewart.
He could do some, really hardcore muscle work like like a Avery Brooks.
He could do like some classy, sassy stuff like Kate Mulgrew, for heaven's sake.
But he is just so passive here.
That the highlight of the performance is Kolos's speech,
and I've got it quoted here.
It's wonderful.
"My father was a teacher, my mother, a biologist at the university.
They encouraged me to take up law.
Now all young people want to do is take up weapons as soon as they can hold them.
They're told there's honor in victory, any victory.
What honor is there in a victory over a weaker opponent?
Had Duras destroyed that ship, he would've been lauded as a hero of the
Empire for murdering helpless refugees.
We were a great society not so long ago, when honor was earned
through integrity and acts of true courage, not senseless bloodshed."
And that's coming from a
Kevin: Yeah, it's pretty Good.
that's probably some of the deepest implied change to Klingon society
that we get in all of Star Trek, like Klingons, they don't really have an arc.
And we've talked about the Cardassians now and then about how we get these
glimpses of how they used to be and how they are today is not how they used to be.
This is not their finest hour.
Whereas Klingons, we are told again and again, this is their finest hour.
The this is their greatest glory.
And this hint that there maybe was a different version of Klingon culture
before this is not something we often get.
I think Star Trek might be a little afraid to break what they have in Klingons.
And yeah, they, we get a hint at something more here, that's very tantalizing.
Rob: It's so tantalizing, especially cause we move ahead to say, looking at Discovery
season one, where they knuckle down on the horror and the monstrous type of nature
of the Klingons, and it just doesn't work.
You're there going, look at this incredible moment, the only
incredible moment in a quite bland episode of Star Trek that
could have achieved so much more.
It goes to show that you could see the show's tired.
This is filmed after, a good 10 years after when Next Gen was at its height
or when Deep Space Nine was close to beginning, but it looked cheaper.
It looked like it was done earlier.
It looked like it was filmed in the mid eighties.
Kevin: Star Trek VI is what hurts this episode the most, in my mind, because here
we have a great example of less is more.
There is much less of that Klingon courtroom in Star Trek VI, but
it is so much more powerful in part because it's darker.
We see less of it.
It is more cinematic, more is left to the imagination.
It is a scarier place in Star Trek VI than it is here where it is de-fanged because
we see behind the scenes we see into every corner, we are given a long time to look
around in that crowd and realize they're not actually that scary, they're just
Klingon rabble who will shout at anything.
And the judge is less scary because he talks more.
He engages with with the idea of justice in a way that the,
Rob: And he's not hidden in the background with almost his white eyes going, Silence.
Yeah.
Kevin: So if Star Trek VI had never been done, I feel like I would enjoy this
episode a lot more because we would be seeing something we'd not seen before and
we wouldn't have that stronger example of the same thing to hold it up against.
Rob: Yeah, so for me, it's it just fell short of what it could have done and it
had its lead very passive, but a standout performance from from Martok as a Kolos,
and an incredible speech of what could, what we could have, Kevin, with the
Klingons, if the, if they just listen to their own history and go, we can have
the Klingons as a deep, rich culture as opposed to just a one note archetype.
Kevin: From Enterprise and I'm glad it wasn't me complaining about
Enterprise for once this week.
Thank you for taking us there, Rob.
Rob: I should play my part in this Star Trek podcast and actually watch all of it.
And that means so that I am aware that does mean I have to admit to, I will
have to watch Discovery Season four.
Kevin: A nice, standalone episode of Enterprise as well.
I think it is a good way to get a taste of what Enterprise was.
This is an early episode of
Rob: Well, That was, but that's season two.
That's season two episode 19.
So they should be, the the other episode I'm gonna talk about is from
a Star Trek series early on, so like within the first seven episodes.
But this is like where it should be quite established.
And I'm there going, no, this, it feels like an early season one type episode.
Kevin: Well, I'm going to take us to the original series and uh, the
episode that this week's episode of Strange New World owes so much to,
and that is Court Martial, season one, episode 14 of the original series.
This is where Captain Kirk is put on trial for the murder of one of his crew members.
The episode opens with the ship docking for repairs after an ion
storm and the ship is damaged.
And the entire proceedings of this court is because during that storm,
the Enterprise lost a crew member.
There was a crew member uh, Ben Finney, who was in the weather pod at the front
of the ship, and when the ship went to Red Alert, when the ion storm got bad
enough, they had to eject that pod.
And Kirk says he gave Ben Finney plenty of time to get outta that pod and ejected
it after he sounded the red alert.
But the computer records say that the ship was not yet at red alert
when when Kirk pressed the button.
And this episode it is not the first original series courtroom drama, that
comes back to The Menagerie that we have talked about before, the two-parter
where the Enterprise crew sits in the courtroom and watches an episode of Star
Trek on tv.
Yeah, there was a bit of that this week as well of uh, the Enterprise crew watching
the court proceedings on their monitors.
But yeah where The Menagerie kind of sets out, you know, it's got the ringing
the bell and it's got the courtroom set.
This is the one where most of the story is in the courtroom, rather
than the courtroom being a framing device for watching an adventure.
What we get from this episode is the dress uniforms with the interesting like jewelry
emblems that are exactly like the ones we see in Strange New Worlds, this week.
We get the chair with the lit the lit circle that you put your
palm on to identify yourself and to uh, read out your record.
The little tapes, which are ubiquitous within the original series, but they
are prominently used in Court Martial to, like everyone who testifies,
puts their tape in the computer and it reads out their their record.
And then when they finish their testimony, they take their tape with them as a record
of everything that they said, and all of that is here in Strange New Worlds.
So it was obvious to me that they went back to Court Martial
and plumbed its depths deeply.
So if nothing else, if you agree with us that this was a great episode of
Star Trek, it's worth going back to Court Martial to see where a lot of
the template is created so long ago.
Rob: I was watching episode two and Batel was there in the prosecution and she had
the big brooch of multicolored things.
I'm going, that's gotta be from the
Kevin: Oh, it is totally from the original series.
They look remarkably similar.
The thing that happens in the original series though is like the costume
department isn't quite as well paid, and so from scene to scene, some of the
characters' parts of their sculptures on their chest disappear and reappear
as the continuity is not quite there.
It, is so charming.
Yeah.
Who knows what they mean.
But it seems like the one thing you can infer is the higher you rank, the more
pottery you have glued to your chest.
Rob: More ceramics that you have attached.
So the main thing put on trial is the chain of command and the how
Kevin: Ultimately the fascination of this episode is, we get to see what law
looks like in the Star Trek universe.
We meet the prosecutor, Areel Shaw, who is an ex lover of Kirk's.
Once he's been accused, but before the court martial is convened, Kirk
walks around the space station and a lot of his, like old classroom
buddies are like giving him the side eye and like presuming his guilt.
So that is something we learn about Kirk is that people are pretty
quick to assume his guilt in a matter of negligence as a captain.
So there's six people there and they're all like mrr, yeah, I think he did it.
But uh, over in the corner of the bar is this beautifully dressed woman, and Kirk
is so happy to see her because it's a friendly fa face in this hostile crowd.
And it's a woman that he had a relationship with previously.
They're still very lovey-dovey.
And she's, he says, actually it's lucky I meet you because I could
really use a lawyer right now.
And she goes, sorry, I'm busy.
And it is revealed at the end of the scene that she has actually
been tapped as the prosecutor.
So she is going to have to prosecute her ex lover, a pattern that is repeated
in a Next Generation episode that we're gonna be talking about in a little bit.
But yes, she is the prosecutor, the defense attorney that Kirk ends up
getting at her suggestion is Samuel T.
Cogley, attorney at law.
And he moves into Kirk's quarters and fills the place with books.
There's like books stacked ten high on his sofa, on all of his desks in every
surface, all these brown legal tomes.
And that is the main, and as far as I can tell, only character trait
we are given for Samuel t Cogley is that he likes the law in print.
Nice to see another print book here this week in uh, Strange,
New Worlds in the ultimate,
Rob: Quite a few little, quite a few appearances of old
Kevin: Yeah.
But yeah, so watching those two guest stars fight it out through the objections
and arguments of a courtroom is the main fascination of this episode.
The actual like legal case is much less strong and interesting than
we get elsewhere in Star Trek.
It is ultimately a case of Kirk's word against the computer records,
and the presumption is the computer is infallible, it can't be wrong.
It's Kirk's word against an infallible record.
So Kirk's obviously guilty.
The big twist I use with big air quotes here is when Spock discovers that he can
beat the Enterprise computer at chess, which we are led to believe, is evidence
that the computer has been tampered with.
So because someone tampered with the records of whether Kirk pressed
the button before the red alert or not, that tampering somehow made
the computer less good at chess.
And that is how Spock discovers the wrongdoing.
Rob: Makes perfect sense to me.
Kevin: When this is revealed, this earth-shattering evidence that Spock
can beat the computer at chess.
Samuel T.
Cogley attorney at law demands that the court adjourn to the Enterprise
so that Kirk can face his accuser.
One of the guarantees of Federation law is that you will be allowed to face your
accuser, and in this case, the accuser is the Enterprise computer itself.
And so it's, uh, it's, pretty drawn out at that point that, oh, okay.
The big twist in this courtroom drama is that we're gonna get to move the
court to the Enterprise, and then they have a session in the briefing
room where Spock beats the computer at chess for the entertainment
of the the convened officials.
And then they moved to the bridge where it is a bit more interesting.
They evacuate the ship so that no one is left aboard.
And then the people in the court, McCoy walks around with a microphone
and puts it to each of their chests and does a little thing that cancels
out the sound of their heartbeat.
And then they have the computer play all audible sounds left on the ship
and there is one heartbeat left.
And that is the revelation that Ben Finney did not die in the ion storm.
He actually faked his own death by modifying the computer records
and Kirk goes and has a fist fight with him in engineering.
Rob: How all good K and dramas should finish.
That's what was missing in episode two of Strange New World Season two.
Shame.
So yeah.
Kevin: It sounds hinky, and it is, but I think it's still worth watching.
Rob: Definitely it.
See, like exploring that type of procedure of the Federation in such
early stages of the show's development.
What within, in its first year, first couple of
Kevin: It is interesting to realize that Star Trek in its first year
had two courtroom drama episodes, and one of them was a two-parter.
So three of the first 24 episodes of Star Trek were courtroom dramas.
They knew the formula worked early.
Rob: But as we explored, like with The Menagerie, there's not much
courtroom drama going on there.
Yeah.
It's out of like a hundred minute two-parter, it's 80% ooh, look at
the clips from the previous thing we
Kevin: Court Martial has a lot of that fun that we get this episode as well, where
we get members of the crew brought up as witnesses and asked questions like, Areel
Shaw asks McCoy for example he says Dr.
McCoy, you're an expert in space psychology, aren't you?
And he goes I know something about it.
And just these very in character answers from our favorite
characters is really fun.
Rob: I've always wanted to study space psychology
Kevin: Uh, you got a second one?
Rob: I do.
I do.
And I've gotta go back to, to, to my home base.
So we're looking at as I've alluded to, we're going to season one of
Deep Space Nine, episode eight.
So early on in the process, we're looking at Dax.
This really is the establishment of, okay, let's, we've created these characters,
let's find out more about them.
And even though the trill had appeared in Next Gen…?
Kevin: Yeah.
There was one episode called The Host, I think, that kind of established
the mechanics of how Trill work.
Rob: Yes.
But this is the one that really explores the essence of what it is.
And I was fascinated by the Trill as a character, because it's very much the
Star Trek terminology and interpretation of what they do in Doctor Who.
So in Doctor Who, when they change the actor, they do a
process called regeneration that the only Time Lords can do.
So I was fascinated by, within this Star Trek thing, they could never do something
as ridiculous as just regeneration, but if they have a symbiont that is
inside the Trill, it's part of this process and culture, and then they
move that creature inside another host.
And the memories are left within that symbiont, but then there's the
new personality that comes through.
It's all that lovely, complicated Star Trek stuff.
But this is the process of let's actually look at the fundamental creation of this
species: what personality means, what identity means within this culture, and
whether someone, if a crime was committed in a previous host, would that person,
who now is the new host, big culpable.
And it was always a fascinating concept of bringing on a Trill who in
their past life was dear friends, a mentor to our lead character, Sisko.
And it was always the great gag of always referring to Jadzia as
Old Man cuz that's what he used to call Curzon, the previous host.
And so there's a lot of stuff done here.
We find out a lot about Jadzia and how she became the host.
We find out a lot about Curzon, who he was as a person, his relationship with Sisko.
A lot of that is established here.
Now, Dax is a an episode that stands out for many reasons, but the main
reason is someone we've mentioned before on this show, especially when
we looked at the animated series of the sixties, this is actually
co-written by the great DC Fontana.
Kevin: Very good.
Rob: Yes, who was brought on, and it said in production notes that she
actually found it quite difficult to focus on an episode that's focused
on character because as she said, this is only the eighth episode.
You haven't really established the individual characters here.
You've got archetypes.
So she was brought on with a co-writer, Peter Allen Fields, who came up with the
idea, and the two of them had written together on The Six Million Dollar Man.
And she of course, had extensive history with the original series
and the animated series, but it's actually a really good episode.
I remember watching this when I was, when it first came
out, and it sticks in my head.
There's some beautiful moments in there, like the on the offside, like
the tension between Quark and Odo is still very much in its early stages,
so it's very tense and antagonistic.
The, there's a beautiful moment when representatives from this culture
who've come to put Jadzia on trial, sneak onto the base and have all
the codes and can easily get out.
But then brought back in with some, nice maneuvering from Sisko, showing how
smart he is to get a tractor beam in.
And in an interrogation interview scene with Sisko and Kira, they
good cop, bad cop each other.
They do this wonderful double play with the representative from that culture to
find out that he actually got the codes and everything from the Cardassians.
Kevin: a staple of TV legal dramas that the investigation continues
while the court case is proceeding.
That's something that I'm pretty sure never happens in real life, that um,
there's a ticking clock because the court case is happening at the same time.
Rob: When I was growing up, there was Perry Mason and his investigator
doing work was William Katt from The Greatest American Hero.
And in this case, it's Odo going to the planet where this happened
and finding out what he can.
So like the trial is there more as a background, cuz as, as they always say,
it's not a trial, it's not a trial, it's just a hearing, and so it's just
a way for us to find out more about it.
And we hear it from a scientific point of view.
We hear it from a moral point of view, an emotional point of view,
a philosophical point of view.
So we in this episode, we find out more about the Trill culture
and the process of it than in any other episode we have before.
There's one episode in Discovery season three, where we have the
Trill crew mate coming on, and that's a really good episode.
That's one of the ones that I particularly loved.
I but yeah, this one, it focuses on that and the characters are still quite raw.
Bashir is at his hound dog, uh, love rat best but steps up and speaks
beautifully from a medical point of
Kevin: This is a really good parallel to this week's episode of Strange New Worlds.
I feel like it lands at about the same place in the series as this one does.
We're at episode 12 because season one had 10 episodes in it.
This is episode eight.
Not that far apart.
It's taking a character that we presume is gonna stick around for
the rest of the series, but we know we have no guarantee of that.
So it is at least plausible that that we are about to see them locked up
for the rest of their lives or drummed outta Starfleet as the case may be.
So there is some believable jeopardy here, and it is the court case is an
opportunity to delve deeply into not just the character that's on trial, but
a bunch of other characters and learn a bunch about them under that pressure.
Rob: It's actually quite a good episode.
It's a good little mystery that they have to solve.
But one of the most heartbreaking things for me is at the time of this
recording, watching the episode, I'm there going I started watching this
when I was a teenager, obviously, and in the episode they talk about this young
woman, Jadzia Dax, who is 28, and I'm there going, yep, am now 45 years old.
Kevin: It's almost two young women old.
Rob: Yeah.
Thank you very much for pointing that out, Kevin.
Thank you.
Time is a bitch, sometimes.
But it's a great episode.
There's a wonderful supporting cast.
You've got Anne Haney as the the judge coming in.
She's done great work in Liar, and Mrs.
Doubtfire, wonderful character actress coming in as the
Bajoran judge to oversee things.
You've got the wonderful Gregory Itzin.
He's done stuff like 24 and he's played Richard Nixon and he's done
like lots of, just a TV staple.
And just wonderful character actors filling out this hour
of wonderful television.
And the big reveal at the end, obviously is that Curzon could not have
possibly been there because he was in the bed of the man who died's wife.
Oh, good lord.
Kevin: Yes.
Uh, to, to use one of your turns of phrase, Rob, this is uh,
innocence proven by being a dawwg.
Rob: I'm so glad that has caught on.
Yes.
Yeah.
It's a still is very much in that early nineties perception
of gender and identity.
So it's so binary.
It is so binary.
There are so many things about, Kon the male and the older,
hardened, drinker and womanizer.
And Jadzia is the young woman and noble, and yeah, there is a line
where Sisko goes, if you weren't a woman, I would… you're there oh,
Kevin: They were trying.
They were trying.
Rob: They were, yeah, they're still working within the confines
of the time that they were at.
They were pushing ahead, but still staying within their little bubble.
But yeah, and that's all revealed at the end in the last scene that, cuz
it was all about committing treason and that Curzon was accused of
sending this message to the rebels.
But actually it was the guy who died who sent it to the rebels.
And when the rebels, the rebels didn't like him and they killed him off.
But this guy clearly has become a legend and a hero and his death
inspired victory and he's seen as a hero where at home he was, it's alluded
to, he was not a nice person at all.
And, but the legend is more important than that has to stay on.
And it's quite sad at the end going back cuz there's a moment she plays
it quite rattled, Terry Farrell, she's a wonderful performer.
And she's like battling with all the personas and the memories
within her and having this talk with this former lover of Curzon's.
And I think it's Enina touches Jadzia on the face and goes,
just do one thing for me, live.
Live a long and happy life.
And I'm going, she doesn't get that.
She dies.
Damn you, Gul Dukat!
But yeah, it's a it's a good episode in the early days of a show finding its
feet and it's it does a creative way of rather complicated alien species giving
it depth and variety to get, an early nineties mainstream audience watching,
going, what the hell's going on here?
We just want the bumps on the head.
Kevin: All right.
I'm gonna take us back to The Next Generation.
And this is a, this is an easy one.
Like this is a, nothing but the net sort of pick because it is often on lists
of best ever episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and it is The Measure
Of A Man, season two, episode nine.
We can't not talk about The Measure Of A Man under the heading of courtroom dramas.
It was before this week's episode of Strange New Worlds, it was
my favorite courtroom drama.
I think it's the strongest story.
I think some people may consider it still stronger than what we got this
week from Strange New Worlds, but I've watched the two in close succession
and I think this one does some great storytelling but Strange New Worlds is
a stronger courtroom drama for sure.
This episode is all about the question of is Data a toaster, to put it in the
words of our guest star Captain Phillipa Louvois, who is the previous kind of
implied love interest of Captain Picard.
And when Picard goes looking for someone to help him with his legal
problems, Phillipa Louvois is waiting for him there on this star base.
The dynamic is slightly different.
Apparently Phillipa Louvois in her previous life prosecuted Picard
for a case involving the Stargazer, and there are some hard feelings,
but also you can tell there is a lot of attraction between them.
She says it's I'm not gonna get this line exactly right, but she says something
along the lines of it is reassuring to my worldview that you, Captain Picard are
still a pompous ass – and a damn sexy man.
Rob: She
Kevin: Yeah.
Yeah.
She says sexy man.
Yeah.
Yes.
Unless I'm misremembering, but it is something along those lines.
But yeah, so this is an episode that's actually tied to some of the lore
that we got in early Star Trek: Picard seasons, season one, particularly, where
Bruce Maddox, who is the mad scientist at Starfleet that wants to, in this
episode, disassemble Data for parts in order to understand how he works
so he can make a thousand more Datas, but he's not a hundred percent sure
he's going to be able to figure it out.
He'll cross that bridge when he comes to it.
But first he needs to take Data under his command and pull him to pieces.
And so Data, at first, he objects.
He says, I don't think you've done the groundwork necessary
for an experiment of this nature.
But the initial ruling is that Data cannot refuse, that he is property.
He is an object, and he is owned by Starfleet.
And he can not decline this experiment any more than the computer of the
Enterprise could decline a refit.
And this is what prompts the court case.
The beautiful twist in this episode that is a stroke of genius from Melinda
Snodgrass, who wrote this episode.
This is her first episode of Star Trek, she's written.
She worked for several years as a lawyer, which is why she was familiar enough
with court proceedings to, to pitch a a courtroom drama for her first episode.
But the thing she does here is that the JAG office on this star
base is just getting established.
And Louvois here, Captain Louvois has no staff.
There are no lawyers available.
And she says under these circumstances, Starfleet procedure is clear.
I get to draft the most senior ranking officers to be, to
act as counsel in this case.
And Picard you're most senior, so you'll be defense and Riker,
you need to be the prosecutor.
And Riker says, I can't argue for Data's ineligibility as a sentient
being because I don't believe it.
But she says then I'll rule summarily against him.
So this is among other things a great Riker episode as Riker needs to swallow
his friendship and his belief in Data and do his best to mount a case for
the fact that Data is nothing more than a a walking talking machine.
There's a beautiful scene where Riker is in the library section researching Data's
schematics, and finds his deactivation switch on his back, and Riker sees it and
you, it's just a closeup on Riker where you see him like light up in delight.
He can't believe his luck.
And then he realizes what this will mean to his friend and he is deflated.
And the moment where he switches off Data on the witness stand and Data
slumps in his chair is it takes my breath away now even though I've seen
this episode five, ten times now.
Like this week's episode of Strange New Worlds, it has the strong emotional
speeches that get me all choked up because people in Star Trek care
about things like principles and the truth, and it's just so heartwarming.
All of that is here.
What is lacking is there is no real kind of legal mechanism that comes into play.
All that kind of happens is that Picard gives a better speech than Riker,
and the judge says, I'm convinced.
There's not much more beyond that.
There is some let's tease apart what it means to be sentient.
It means three things.
Data clearly satisfies two of the three.
So what about the third one?
And there is a bit of exploration of the ideas here, but it's not quite as
satisfying an unwinding of the facts as what we get in Una's case this week.
Rob: And um, and this is early on then as well.
So this is like, uh, season, two.
Kevin: I think what we're learning is a good series of Star Trek needs at least
one courtroom drama in its first season to get its characters off the ground.
Rob: It really does.
It really does.
And this is one that people refer to so often when it comes to, Next Gen
episodes and Star Trek episodes in general, that is just top tier and it's
the quintessential elements of sci-fi.
Like you said, what is humanity against technology?
It's the same thing that they explore quite well in Voyager
with Robert Picordo's Doctor.
What is a, what is just a simple program and what is the personality
and how do you define humanity, which is what you want to see in, in Sci-fi.
Kevin: I'd say arguably this is the episode where we recognize Data
for what he can be in this crew.
He says things in his purely logical mechanical way that are so heartwarming,
like when Picard is appointed to be his counselor, Picard says, look if
there's anyone else who you think would do a better job, and Data says,
Captain, I have full faith in your ability to represent my interests.
And it's just like that bromance starts right there, that, that Data
expressing his undying confidence in Picard to look after him is there.
And at the very last scene of this episode, as everyone is celebrating Data's
victory Riker is nowhere to be found.
And Data tracks him down in the observation lounge.
And Riker is like leaning against the window, gazing off into space, going, I
don't deserve to be in the celebration.
I almost won.
I could have cost you your life, Data.
And data says if you hadn't done it I would've been ruled against.
Isn't that right?
And Riker says, yeah.
And he goes, You injured yourself to save me.
What better sign of friendship is there?
And it's just these earnest declarations of professional love for each
other really gets me every time.
And there was plenty of that
Rob: I think, and that's, it's a big thing about Star Trek because
it is earnest and procedural.
Its way of like rank and file.
And so when these characters are working through, whether it be the original series
or whether it be in Next Gen or any of them, they're just so stuck in their roles
of command and the Federation and stuff.
So when they show a, they crack through that exterior with that same
earnestness, whenever you have Spock turn to Kirk and call him Jim and open
up honestly and earnestly from his heart, you go, Oh, and it's the same
here when, Riker being comforted by Data.
Kevin: Among all the other reasons to go back and watch The Measure Of A
Man, the one that is often forgotten is that this is the first poker game
in Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Data learns to play poker in the opening cold open of this episode.
Rob: Good good.
So yeah, I, it would be remiss in this Star Trek podcast not to, to
us, to mention at the end of it all what a wonderful exploration of
the trials and tribulations of the Federation in the star Trek world.
But big news that's just broken and heartbreaking news, even though
it was commissioned for a second season, Paramount+ has pulled
the plug on Star Trek: Prodigy.
So in a matter of days, season one will be taken off the air.
And even though they've already done season two, there's no guarantee of
where it will be played and when it
Kevin: Yeah.
Season two is in the final stages of post-production, we're told,
and it will still get completed.
My understanding here is Paramount has paid for the production, but
they have declined to retain the rights to actually air the thing.
So that.
Rob: But it is a co-production with Nickelodeon,
Kevin: And it's also not coming to Nickelodeon.
So both places that it was airing are no longer, they have divested
themselves of those rights.
And some of the coverage I've read about this stuff is it comes down to tax.
Tax concessions.
Basically, if you not only cancel the series but take it off your
streaming service, you can claim a tax deduction, not just for the losses
that are present in this series, but also the projected future losses.
All of the income that those episodes were going to make in the future can
now be claimed as a tax break today.
So it's Paramount saying, look, we need money badly enough that we are going to
pick our own pockets from the future.
And Star Trek: Prodigy will pay the price.
Rob: And there's quite, there's a number of other shows that
they've done this to as well.
It's like the the grease prequel series rise of the Pink Ladies and
Yeah, across all streamers, they've been doing that, like Disney Plus
did a massive purge of shows off their streamer about a month ago.
But this would be one of the more high profile,
Kevin: It's not good news.
One hopes it will find a home somewhere else, but that is somewhat dependent on
someone having enough money to pay for a Star Trek series, an already produced
Star Trek series, like Paramount's already paid for it to be made.
Someone just needs to pay to the, the rights to stream it now.
So you would expect that to be within reach of a Netflix or an
Amazon Prime or whatever it might be.
But there's no guarantees.
And the feeling is that all of the money is draining out
of this streaming gold rush.
And all of these companies that were competing with each other by greenlighting
anything that anyone would conceivably watch, all that money is going away.
So I, I am worried that we may never see Prodigy season two.
It seems almost inconceivable that a group of star Trek loving nerds would
have put together a full 10 episode, 20 episode season, we're told, of Star
Trek, and the world may never see it.
One assumes it will get out someday, somehow someone will
pay to press those Blu-rays.
But yeah, it, there's no guarantees now that we're ever gonna see it.
Rob: This is this is good, consistent Star Trek and good television, not
just for kids, but for all ages.
So for something to be taken off that is of such a high standard animation
wise, music wise, script writing wise and bringing back Kate Mulgrew and that,
to have it taken off and it is nowhere,
Kevin: a sad state of affairs.
In any market that gets flooded by like competition fueled investment
like this, ultimately what happens is that there's more product than people
to pay for it at the end of the day.
And good stuff is going to pay the price of that.
I think I felt for a while now that there was way more star Trek being made
than could be justified given that they barely were able to keep it on the air
through, through the Enterprise era, and then it's been off the air all this
time, the idea that suddenly the world is ready for more Star Trek, like I've
been ready for more Star Trek every day.
But but I don't believe there are enough of us out there to pay for four prestige
series in production at the same time.
Yeah.
So something had to give, sadly.
I think Prodigy is just the one that didn't find its audience.
Because the people who are nostalgically attached to Star Trek, it's the
last one they were gonna watch because it was marketed for kids.
Rob: Yes.
And it was that case of we have been getting a sense
of the environment shifting.
Everyone's just gone, okay, writing is on the wall.
Let's go, let's put all of our attention into making our one
Kevin: Yeah,
Rob: Strange New Worlds.
Kevin: And it clarifies one of the reasons why Star Trek: Legacy
is potentially a hard sell.
Because yes, all the Star Trek fans want to watch it, but there aren't enough
Star Trek fans to pay for two series.
And so they've already got Strange New Worlds.
The sets are built, the actors are hired, the costumes are made.
It's in production and it's successful.
We've got a very good, proven safe investment in a Star Trek: Legacy,
but we don't need that right now.
What we need to be doing is shutting down Star Trek series.
So that's my worry.
For Prodigy, I hope the fact that it is made for children is potentially
its salvation, because the one thing streaming services need is a lot
of content for kids because parents love to pay that bill so that their
kids can have something to watch.
So yeah, I hope, a Netflix or something can come along pay that
relatively modest bill and get some fresh young eyeballs learning what
Star Trek is and how amazing it is.
Rob: Yeah, it's a sad day from, for all the people involved.
So wonderful voiceovers, actors, wonderful animators, wonderful
script writers and directors and everyone involved in Prodigy.
It must be devastating for
Kevin: The fact that season one was such a tight beginning, middle and end
makes me feel like it could have ended there and I would've been satisfied.
But that also tells me that this season two, that is all but done,
is probably also a very satisfying, self-contained story, that it would
be a shame if we never get to see.
Rob: Oh, if only we could.
We'll see what happens in the future.
Until next week.
Kevin: See around the galaxy.