Kevin: Welcome to Subspace Radio.
I'm Kevin Yank.
Rob: And I am Rob Lloyd.
Kevin: Each week there's a new episode of Star Trek on at least
we're looking at that new episode.
Rob: And finding what wormholes will lead us into Star Trek lore and
history and mythology to explore.
Kevin: Wormholes.
Perfect.
Rob: Hey, see?
And we're entering a quadrant filled with many… white men in their thirties/forties,
talking about this thing.
And why not we join the party as well?
Kevin: Why not?
Why not?
Get on in, the water's warm.
Rob: Exactly!
Kevin: Um, if you're curious who we are and how we relate to Star Trek,
stick around at the end, we won't talk about ourselves till the end.
We know you're here for the Trek.
So we're gonna start with that.
If you get to the end of this, and you're like, "Actually I enjoyed
that; I wonder who these two dudes are," we'll compare our Star Trek
credentials, and talk about our histories with the franchise, at the end.
Rob: Excellent.
Because here at Subspace Radio, we're all about Trekker, no filler.
Kevin: This week, our focus is on season one, episode nine of Strange
New Worlds, "All Those Who Wander".
Rob: We've only got one more episode to go.
And where do we go after an episode like that, Kevin?
Kevin: Whew!
Whew!
I needed a breather after that one.
Rob: It snuck up on me.
I didn't expect it to go to the places it did and to hit the emotions as
hard as it did by the end as well.
Kevin: I was kicking myself that I didn't see it coming, but uh,
yeah, it was a horror episode.
Arguably, the most horror episode that Star Trek has ever done?
Rob: Especially in this new this new era of Star Trek.
Yeah.
And it's the first time that Strange New Worlds has sort of like leaned
into, I mean, some of Discovery had a little bit of uh, especially in the
Mirror Verse episode arc of season one, was quite violent and a bit gory
in some way, shape or form especially with the Klingons and the sort of
like the body morph stuff in there.
Very Kronenberg.
So there were elements of that, but really in a pure science fiction manner.
But I didn't think it was overdone, I think was a nice, a nice balance of just
enough to terrify you, but not going over the top as some of these new shows…
Kevin: This episode, you mean?
Rob: Do you feel it was a bit over the top, or…?
Kevin: No I think it was a definite step into a genre, as every episode
this season has been, they, they didn't half- uh, measure it.
They went full Aliens on us.
But I agree with you, it didn't stop being Star Trek.
And as someone who doesn't watch Star Trek for the horror, I wasn't turned off by it.
And I will say like Star Trek has gone too far at least once, in my mind.
We're not here to talk about horror this week, but I'll say Star Trek The
Next Generation, "Conspiracy", the one with the little bugs that that
crawl into people's mouths and have a tail sticking out of people's necks.
That one, true gross-out gore fest at the end.
It felt like they went too far in that one.
This one, not so much.
Rob: Yes.
We'll do a bit of a, a rundown of the episode.
So the, uh, the Enterprise is getting a distress signal on the
planet that of course is buffeted by storms, and so there's no way of
getting a clear signal in and out.
An away team is sent, whereas the Enterprise and Number One are
sent off to this vitally important mission to hand over supplies and
equipment and all that type of stuff.
Kevin: At Space Station K7, famous for its Tribbles.
Rob: That's right.
That's right.
But those "Trials and Tribble-ations" are for another time.
*chuckles*
Kevin: They are for another time.
Rob: So the away team arrive and as soon as they get their things go bad.
And we find out that we are maybe in the presence of the previously
mentioned and not seen, Gorn.
Kevin: Yes.
Second episode in a row that was largely played out on redressed sets
of the Enterprise, as we know it.
So they're getting good value for money on those sets!
Rob: Yeah, gone are the plastic vines from Bunnings and hello falling beams
and sparks and flickering lights.
Kevin: It looked great, I thought.
It was very creepy, even a number of scenes in the sick bay, obviously,
while we were diagnosing people who had as it turns out, Gorn eggs in them.
But even in that sick bay where we had spent a lot of time the week before as
well it had a mood that was different.
Rob: Very much so, very much so.
We knew as soon as the threat became present that this was the
genre that they were leaning into and they were leaning into heavily.
Kevin: We get to meet a very small number of survivors and,
and yeah, two and only one of them survives to the end of the episode.
Rob: It's something I wanted to bring up because they've been quite calculated,
following the Steven Spielberg Jaws method of as little of the beast you
show the better, so the imagination can carry away, but they went all in
and we actually get to see this new interpretation of the Gorn, as opposed
to, from the original series episode, lumbering around in the desert and
throwing paper mache rocks at each other.
And a lot of sweaty hugging and embracing — no judgment here!
Kevin: The moment I saw the full sized Gorn land in Engineering and hiss at our
two main characters, my first thought was "Captain Kirk double-fist-punched that?"
Rob: Yes.
Yeah.
Apparently.
Apparently it— apparently he did!
Kevin: He dropped-kicked one of those in the chest?
Rob: Look, yeah.
And he lived to tell the tale.
But yeah, I was there going, how is it gonna be realized?
Is it gonna be through the new art of CGI or will there be any element of
practicality, and especially the unnamed creature who was one of the survivors
was fully practical, animatronic.
Kevin: I loved that character.
Rob: Incredible.
Kevin: The moment I saw him, I was like Oh, Star Trek can do this now!
Ah, I loved it.
The fact that it was… it was, completely alien, but felt completely real.
Rob: And beautiful motion, beautiful animatronics, beautiful puppetry work.
But the, Gorn were relegated to being pure CGI.
Kevin: The babies and at least the teenager Gorn were puppets and the CGI
was used to eliminate the puppeteers.
Rob: Okay.
Kevin: So yeah, the little white ones scurrying around?
Rubber puppets with a stick in the back and everything.
And yeah, the CGI was to remove the performers.
Rob: Okay.
I got, yeah, I got a sense, like some of the close up quick shots of the Gorn like
roaring and stuff like that seemed a bit…
Kevin: The big one felt CGI to me, for sure.
Rob: Yeah.
Kevin: Anyway, that big blue guy, very next scene.
As soon as he started heavy breathing, I was like, okay, we're
not gonna see much more of this guy.
Rob: It's— Look, we hardly knew you.
And that's a good segue.
We had the red shirt dilemma for the first time, Kevin, really in this season.
We had, we had real loss, from characters that we haven't
really, well at all, seen before.
So in the good old days of the original Star Trek series, whenever
there was an away team, whichever schmuck joined the lead actors on the
mission, you could clearly tell they're not gonna be sticking around cuz we
need to show the element of threat.
They are gonna be sacrificed.
And it's been interesting to see, that's a whole other broader topic, about how
Star Trek played that out, but there was a nice, I'd say a an, a noble attempt
to fill in as much of a backstory or at least connection with this cannon fodder
in a short amount of time as possible.
Kevin: We had cadet Chia finish her placement on the Enterprise and Ensign
Duke promoted to Lieutenant in one of the first scenes of the episode
and following our conversation last week, I was sitting there going, "Hah!
Take that, Harry Kim."
Rob: If only Duke took a clarinet with him, I think he would've been fine.
Cold weather and some really jazz.
Kevin: Uh, later in the episode I thought, "Harry Kim gets the last laugh."
Rob: Yes he does.
He always gets the last laugh.
Damn you, Kim!
Kevin: So, um, two, like disposable red shirts.
And I think both of them there to distract us from the third loss this episode.
Rob: The big one!
Spoiler alert for anyone who hasn't, but if you're tuning in here and you
haven't seen the episode, welcome.
Yeah.
After our big conversation on him in episode zero, Hemmer's gone like that.
Kevin: Yes, he's gone.
And in hindsight, should have seen it coming.
Rob: With the spray, or…?
Kevin: Even at the spray, he got hit by the spray and, I was like, oh,
that's some eggs, that's some eggs.
We're gonna have to deal with that.
But it wasn't, like— All credit to them, it wasn't until he was standing
in the cargo bay and all the problems in the episode had been resolved and
he turned to camera and it was just a little too lingery that I thought
"Uh-oh, uh, this guy's going."
And immediately, like my life flashing before my eyes, but it was his life
flashing before my eyes, all the clues leading up to this point that
he was headed for this fate, replayed.
And I realized, I had ignored them and I blamed myself for ignoring them.
Rob: You'd got comfortable, hadn't you?
You'd got completely comfortable with the Star Trek format, and they
pulled the rug under us, and did what modern shows have been doing.
And it's it, modern writers have had to get a bit clever because we kind
of got used to the format with shows like Game of Thrones or stuff like
that who broke the mold of "these are the regular characters you think are
gonna stay" and they kill them off.
But you can see the pattern in the episode, that they get a longer
monologue than they normally would, and then later, "Na-ha!"
That's where they go.
But they covered…
Kevin: "If anything ever happens to me, I wanna be remembered for this…"
Rob: Exactly.
"Let me tell you a little bit about my past that I've never brought up
before, but I'll bring it up now…"
Kevin: And we had that speech several episodes before, um, with Uhura, and
he said, "We believe that you only die once your purpose in life is completed.
And my purpose is to fix things."
And I remember at the time when he said that, I said, in my mind to
him, "You've got more things to fix.
Don't you go nowhere!"
Rob: I think it was the the body swap episode where we didn't have
any of Hemmer at all, or there was an episode or two where he wasn't in,
and yeah, and he was sorely missed.
I was actually there going, I'm actually missing his presence here.
Kevin: Even the very first episode.
We are introduced to the entire cast, they go on this whole adventure,
and then in the very last clip of the episode, Hemmer beams on board
and has no lines, he just appears.
Rob: It gives more import to his appearance last episode where,
clearly, the actor was just having an absolute ball with the role and…
Kevin: Flipping open the communicator and saying "Abracadabra!"
There is no, like in one moment that character will be remembered
through all of Star Trek history.
That is the moment they made sure we fell in love with him
before they break our hearts.
Rob: Yeah, a very experienced stage actor who works with the visually
impaired theater in Toronto, I believe?
So yeah, again inclusiveness, isn't a dirty word, people.
We would never have found an actor of that quality if we didn't
open up to all types of people to be involved in, the beautiful,
utopian world that is Star Trek.
Kevin: So, in the moment when we lost him I felt, oh gosh, this was inevitable.
It was planned.
And I willingly blinded myself to that fact even though all the clues were there.
So I felt a mix of betrayal, but also self blame.
How did you feel?
Rob: I was about to discuss with you what level of the stages of grief did
you go through quicker than others?
Because you put the blame on yourself, did that mean you got to acceptance quicker?
Kevin: Yeah.
No, I was ready to come to you this week and go forget this podcast.
I am out.
If we all stop watching, they'll be forced to bring him back.
Rob: Exactly.
Yeah.
Okay.
So if we spoke earlier, you would've been in the denial stage it's Star Trek, he can
come back, if Spock comes back, it's fine.
Even Tasha Yar came back in some way, shape or form.
Yeah.
They brought back Denise Crosby, for God's sake.
They can bring back Hemmer!
Kevin: How are you?
Rob: I, I didn't, I wasn't as self-conscious as you of being able
to pick it earlier, and I should have seen the moments because earlier in
that episode, they returned Uhura and Hemmer to the point in, purpose in life.
But yeah, because it was a slow, it wasn't a sudden type of thing, he
helped us with the acceptance as well and taking it through with everybody.
And it was a very well shot, dignified… You know, He was very
much Scott of the Antarctic.
"I'm just going out for a walk; I may be some time," which I found a very perfectly
beau— and especially, and there was hints!
Like he was talking about this, everyone was hating the planet cuz
it was cold and icy and he loved it.
Cause it…
Kevin: …like Andoria.
Rob: Just like Andoria.
And ugh.
Normally the shot of someone falling off a great height can't really be made
to look that dramatic or beautiful, or could be done too over the top.
Yeah.
Having that distance and how it was all done was very good.
So I was, I was taken through the grief process with Hemmer so I
was, not ready to let him go, but I was going, this has happened now.
So my acceptance was not completely resolved, but I was
seeing what they were going.
Kevin: Yeah.
When we compared notes this death of a major character is the thing that
we seized on and wanted to discuss.
Why don't you go first?
Where did this take you in Star Trek cannon?
Rob: It took me, cuz I was trying to think about how it all fits in,
and how Star Trek deals with death.
Especially cuz I look at other franchises that I am into, whether it be Dr Who or
Star Wars and how they deal with the loss of important characters in the series.
And I've always found a bit of an emotional disconnect, but through
the course of looking at all these prominent deaths, I've come up across
two that really stood out for me.
And so, I'll start with one and first one is I'll go back in chronological time.
I didn't really get affected by the loss of Spock in Star Trek II.
Kevin: You cold-hearted bastard!
Rob: But I, didn't see Star Trek II until after.
My first Star Trek movie was The Voyage Home.
So…
Kevin: Okay, so you knew he was coming…
Rob: I knew he was coming back, and he was going through the whole process of
remembering his Human and Vulcan side.
So all that I saw.
So when I went back to see it, it was moving, but I went, he's got this.
But the one thing that really got is in Star Trek, The Search
for Spock, is the death of David.
That really upset me as a young fan.
And it angered me, so much so that I don't watch Star Trek III, because it's such,
it's such, a brutal, sad, horrible death.
It's a struggle.
It's a battle.
It's with a knife.
It's brutal and it's awkward, and it's, there's nothing heroic about it.
He's doing a heroic thing, and he's just left there.
Kevin: It's played for shock.
The point of it is the effect it has on Kirk.
It robs David of a story.
Rob: Oh, it takes away so much, especially with Star Trek II, that beautiful
development of their relationship and dealing with Kirk's mortality.
Kevin: For those who might be not be that versed in this part of Star Trek cannon.
This is David Marcus, Kirk's son that we're talking about
Rob: didn't really know about
Kevin: Yeah, his estranged son that he had with Dr.
Carol Marcus, who was the head of the Genesis project.
And in Star Trek II, David and Carol, mother and son are working on the
Genesis planet to terraform a planet with a single torpedo that rebuilds
the planet's atmosphere and biome.
Rob: And at the end of the episode where Spock sacrifices himself, his
body is sent to that Genesis planet to hopefully, to have a rebirth in some way.
And in Star Trek III, David is left to supervise how the planet is going and
he gets caught up in finding Spock's body, who is growing again from a,
baby up to the fully grown Spock.
Kevin: They give a Spock back, and they take David away.
Rob: They give us Spock.
We get Leonard Nimoy, but we lose David who we are only just getting to know.
The Klingons are there, and they take him out in a most brutal fashion.
And they carry on with this, it's done beautifully in Star Trek VI and
how they incorporate the prejudice of Kirk about the loss of his son.
And…
Kevin: Yeah.
But it reveals David ultimately to be a plot device…
Rob: Yes.
Yes.
As opposed to what I wanted to see, was this beautiful young man, a
wonderful character who was discovering his father, finding out he hates his
father, but then loves his father and finding his own bravery, cuz he's
just a scientist, but he's put into this appalling, violent situation.
It's, yeah.
I felt this beautiful character was taken away from us.
And we were robbed of his story, like you said, and that really angers me.
Kevin: There's a lot of that in Hemmer's death this week where he is revealed to
be a plot device for Uhura's development.
Rob: Yes.
So that she can decide that she wants to stay on the ship that
she, we, know she's gonna be on.
Kevin: She could have figured that out herself.
An Andorian, or an Aenar didn't need to die for her to figure…
Rob: They could have carried on that, figuring out together,
having a drink every week.
Kevin: Exactly.
Rob: So that's mine.
So the death of David is one that still affects me and that I don't
watch Star Trek III, no matter how much Christopher Lloyd and John
Larroquette as Klingons may be appealing.
Kevin: Yeah.
Rob: So what's uh, what's, one of your most powerful and influential…?
Kevin: Gosh, I— Just because you took us back to the movies, uh, and I am now
in that mindset, you reminded me of just one film before, Captain Decker, who is
introduced at the start of Star Trek, The Motion Picture as the new the Enterprise.
And the first 50 minutes of that movie are Captain Kirk deciding he's gonna take the
ship back going on a, a leisurely shuttle craft tour around every angle of it,
and, coming on board and then breaking—
Rob: That tour takes up about half an hour of that…
Kevin: Yeah, that's right.
Rob: And even longer in the…
Kevin: …the best part of that film.
He comes on board and he gives the bad news to Decker.
"She gave her back to me, Will.
I'm the captain now."
Admiral Kirk takes over control of the Enterprise and Decker is, is relegated
to uh, executive officer, and by the end of the movie is killed off.
Rob: And goes off with his former lover…?
Kevin: Yes.
Well at least an assimilated, amalgam of Ilia and V'ger.
She's another character that's gone before her time in this movie,
actually, but yes she and decker go off into the sparkly sunset at the end.
Rob: But mind you, his hair looks great in that final profile shot.
It's all the big, and…
Kevin: …all twinkles, yeah.
Let's compare and contrast, cuz I feel like I don't mourn the loss of Will
Decker as much as I do David Marcus.
Rob: No, well—
Kevin: And is it just that he's a less, fleshed out or charismatic character?
Rob: He's not, yeah, it's not that familial connection.
Like, he is friend, but a little bit, competition for Kirk.
And we don't know that much.
And even when they introduce Ilia and they had something, but we don't
know, and they're not giving us that.
So we have to fill in the blanks and then at the end, they're
gone anyway, and you go, "Eh."
They do so much with David and Kirk and Carol and that dynamic, and
just at the end, when David says, "I'm proud to be your son," you go.
Yeah, that is, the, moment where… Kirk's been dealing with, you know,
he feels so old all the way through.
That helps him feel young again.
Whereas, yeah, Decker, we, even within the first 15 minutes,
he saying, I'm in charge now.
Oh, now I'm not.
And that makes you just go, you're not gonna be sticking around.
Kevin: He's more than a red shirt, though.
He's not just there to, die.
He's not the cannon fodder.
I, I think the difference for me is that his death is the end of his story.
Rob: Yes.
Kevin: It's maybe not the story he thought he was gonna have at
the start of the movie as the new captain of the Enterprise, but it
is ah… it is the end of an arc.
As much as that particular film can manage a satisfying character
arc, it's there a little bit.
Rob: The word 'satisfying' doesn't really associate with The Motion
Picture, but there is that case of yeah.
You go, yeah.
There's not many places for Decker to go.
And this seems like a poetic place as any, to have him with the person
that he was connected with, who's actually just been taken over by
V'ger, just, he accepts his fate.
Kevin: Did you say you had a second one you wanted to reflect on?
Rob: Yeah.
This is another one that got me very angry.
You'll probably hear a bit more about this in the "special features".
So as I said, I got into the motion pictures the original
motion pictures first.
And, this was around about the time where Next Gen was happening, and I was excited.
I got caught up in the Next Gen excitement.
It was being shown on Channel Nine when I was a kid here, and I got caught up in it.
And a character that immediately drew me in, straight away, who was
unlike anything previously seen in Star Trek before was Tasha Yar.
I really loved Tasha Yar.
I'd seen Denise Crosby in a couple of other TV projects, and I saw her
in, later on, in Pet Cemetery, but how it was shown in Australia, it
was all wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey.
Sorry, different franchise.
But I liked that she was a street kid.
She had this really dark, gritty background.
She was, in gangs, and and all this type of stuff.
And really going with some more adult concepts of verging on prostitution and
Kevin: Yeah.
Rob: sex trafficking and all that type of stuff.
Kevin: So much of that revealed in a single vignette in "Where No Man Has Gone
Before", or, I forget what the title is.
Is it "Where No Man" or "Where No One", that episode?
I'll have to look it up.
But that one where they're hallucinating because they're in a weird…
Rob: That's right, yes.
Yes.
And she flashes back to where she was.
And she's a great actress, Denise Crosby.
And I love Tasha's story.
I loved that she was head of security and me in my very old school background,
raised with men do these roles and women do these roles, it was revolutionary.
A woman in charge of security?
Wuuuuh?!
Opened my little mind, and I'm glad that it's a lot wider and
bigger than it was back then.
Kevin: It's "Where No One Has Gone Before".
"Where No Man Has Gone Before", of course, is a different episode.
That was the second or actual pilot of the Original Series.
Rob: There you go.
But yes, the sudden, tragic and almost inconsequential death of
Yar near the end of season one really shook me and angered me.
And to be perfectly honest, it really pissed me off, to the point
where I just, I stopped watching.
I stopped watching because of that.
This is such a great character and such a great presence.
And no matter how many people, the writers or the production team talk
about fitting Tasha in, and because Worf was taking that role that she didn't
really fit, or Denise Crosby talking about she was getting cold feet, or
was feeling like she wanted to leave…
I thought it was a bit of a misstep, and I really missed
having her a part of the show.
And I didn't really want to envision a show without her.
And I've missed out on a lot of great Star Trek because of that.
I found my feet again with Deep Space Nine, but there was that
massive gap that Tasha Yar left.
And especially how inconsequential in many ways.
It just happened outta nowhere, and it still leaves uh, an empty place
in my heart of, again, lost potential of where Yar could have gone.
Kevin: Yeah, you've reminded me of the anger I felt in that moment as well.
I think her speech in hologram form at her own funeral at the end of the episode,
it saved it just a little for me, but rewind the tape 15 minutes and like
they're pronouncing her dead in sick bay.
I too was like, "What!?
This is not what I signed up for.
This is not the Star Trek, I want."
So yeah, I could totally imagine that.
These days I find it so hard to see that death without knowing the behind
the scenes story that effectively she asked out of her contract,
that she opted out of the show.
And if an actor is not having a good time, it's very hard for me to begrudge
the death of that character in hindsight.
But you're right, at the time it was outrageous.
Yeah.
Rob: Yeah.
Especially in that first season, everyone was a bit unsure, and
like, dear old Patrick Stewart, wasn't sure what he was doing and
he was struggling to find his place.
Kevin: Oh, everyone was bumping up against the scenery in that first…
Rob: Yeah, exactly.
That's why I have a lot more affection for Kira Nerys in Deep
Space Nine, cuz she's very much like the spiritual partner of Tasha Yar.
Yeah.
Kevin: Oh, I could see that for sure.
Of course, the other thing you missed out on by opting out was the
triumphant return of Denise Crosby.
As, Tasha Yar "Yesterday's Enterprise", one of the most memorable
episodes of that entire series.
And then, that character going off into a wormhole and having a half
Romulan baby, Sela, who comes back and is effectively evil Tasha Yar.
Rob: Evil Tasha Yar with a Evil Tasha Yar bowl haircut.
Yep.
Kevin: Yeah.
Rob: Nothing more evil than a diagonal diamond-shaped haircut.
Kevin: So that model of a regrettable death resulting in a triumphant return
that almost justifies the death is a model I wanna hold up against Dr.
Culber in Star Trek Discovery.
Hugh Culber, whose neck is snapped by uh, Ash Tyler, who's wrestling
with his Klingon personality.
Rob: He's had the ultimate plastic surgery to look like a human.
Kevin: In a moment of split personality conflict he snaps the
neck of his own doctor, Hugh Calber, who collapses to the floor in full
sight of his lover who is unable to help because he's in a, in a coma.
Rob: That's right.
Kevin: And it is kind of tragic, but really unsatisfying.
Rob: Very much so, very much so.
I was at that point where I'm yeah, Discovery was a hard slog for me in those
early seasons, and still in some ways.
And instead of being this moment of, oh my gosh, this is really happening, I'm going.
Oh really?
Is this what we're…?
Okay.
Kevin: And it happened and like, it was the, shocking end of the episode.
And you're like, okay, I hope that pays off in some interesting way next week.
gonna be back to, see what the heck you think you're doing, cuz it better be good!
Rob: But in reality you gotta wait a couple more weeks, a lot more weeks.
Kevin: The fan outcry was immediate, not just because the character was beloved.
The couple was beloved by fans.
This played into the "bury your gays" trope that you would imagine this team
behind this show would be conscious of.
And yet by all appearances, it was literally what can we do to make
this evil character seem more evil?
We're gonna sacrifice a character that we had no particular plans for.
Rob: Yeah.
Yeah.
And it doesn't seem like the messy way to get him back, that's
clearly convoluted up the wazoo…
Kevin: I had to look it up on Memory Alpha to figure out the rationale,
or to remember the rationale.
I watched it wanting— I watched it wanting the character to come back
in a satisfying way, leaning for it.
And I still cannot tell you what exactly happened.
According to Memory Alpha, Stamets, Paul Stamets cradling him in sick bay
at a moment of being connected to the Micelial Network, inadvertently pulls
Culber's "essence", quote unquote, into the Micelial Network, where he becomes
a foreign entity who is hunted by the natives of that environment until sometime
the following season, the Discovery completely miraculously happens upon him
in a unrelated foray into that realm…
Rob: And then we have to go through the weeks of PTSD and not connecting
with Stamets and then reconnecting with him… and then later in season two, they
become a couple again, and in season three, they have that solid, almost
parental relationship with the Trill.
Kevin: Yeah.
Rob: So…
Kevin: Like, sum it up for me.
You,
Rob: Oh god, really?
Kevin: You, you started by calling this the red shirt problem that Star Trek has.
Describe that problem to me, and how does it intersect with these characters?
Rob: It's because its basis is that episodic nature.
No real shows apart from Deep Space Nine have really embraced… Cuz
at that time, overarching story narratives was quite rare within the…
Kevin: Yeah.
Rob: …television circuit.
Kevin: Deep Space Nine famous for blazing the…
Rob: Blazing the trail.
And you see they're the real pioneers of that.
Especially they're of that era where Twin Peaks was experimenting with that,
and Deep Space Nine was experimenting.
The early stages of stuff we take for granted now with overarching
stories, and all that type of stuff.
So Star Trek was still very much a slave to that episodic nature
that they had in the sixties.
Your lead characters are narratively invulnerable.
But to show a level of threat, you need to have a loss.
And so they're bringing in these characters one at a
time with no introduction.
And when you move into trying to break the mold of the format, like they tried
to do with Deep Space Nine, there was that ability to introduce characters that
you would see over a couple of episodes.
And especially cuz like we talked about in episode zero, you'd have more episodes,
as opposed to just nine episodes.
A season you'd have 24, 26.
Whereas with this they wanted to show the threat straight away,
but they're going all we've really introduced is our main characters
and we don't really want to kill off all of them except Hemmer at the end.
So we've gotta quickly spend a bit of time building up that love and heart for our
two, red shirts who have been promoted, but they're gonna be um, killed off.
It was like with Voyager.
Voyager set up this process of you are, Nearly a hundred years away from home.
You, all you have are the supplies you have and the crew you, have.
So that set up this bold idea of you could, if you want to set up
the importance of when you lose your first victim, when you lose your
first crew member, the power of that.
And sadly Voyager never really followed that process.
They, when they lost their first crew mate.
It was an episode where B'elanna was captured and she was being experimented
on and this other character was as well.
And his parts of his body were being used by the guys who were diseased.
It was just treated, it was just treated as another, you know, just as if it was a
episodic series, as opposed to, this is a character we've met, this is a character
we've known, or the power of this is one of our crew is gone and we've got
Kevin: Yeah.
Rob: a finite supply of them.
Kevin: I think what, in this conversation, what I've discovered
is the importance of it feeling like the end of a character's story.
Rob: Yes.
Kevin: There are the true red shirts in Star Trek.
There are the one episode people that are just there to be sacrificed to
the plot of that episode, and you only get to know them well enough
as is necessary to acknowledge that there is a loss that the characters
you actually care about will feel.
Then there's the characters who go on a bigger journey that ends in their
death, and you mentioned Spock early on.
By the time Spock died, it did feel like this was his final frontier.
This was the last unexplored thing to do with that character, and
so it felt satisfying and earned.
But the middle bit that Star Trek can fall prey to is killing off a character
for shock value that the show doesn't value as much as the audience values.
Rob: Yeah, and it doesn't take that time to deal with the emotional reality
of what that loss means, it's— I know we're talking about a science
fiction show set hundreds of years in the future, but it's also following
the format of, okay, this is episodic, we've got a whole new adventure next
week and we need to almost reset.
So we can't really have that lingering nature.
It's come in a lot more now with thanks to Deep Space Nine, and they have
elements of that returning into the show.
So it returns back to past events and how that has affected the
character as they go along.
But it's taken some time to, to get there.
Kevin: Yeah.
Rob: But it's more of, a exception as opposed to the rule.
Kevin: Bringing it back to Hemmer, I think the intent was there to do a good
Star Trek death, a Star Trek death where we met a character and their story,
its natural, earned conclusion was they that Hemmer sacrifices himself for the
away team, having made the difference in the world that he was there to make.
Rob: Definitely.
Kevin: And I think that was the intent.
And I think the failure, if there is one, is that they did
their work a little too well.
They made us fall in love with him and want more for that character
than for him just to exist, to progress another character's story.
The problem is they could think of too much to do with them and they had
already committed to killing them.
Rob: Yeah.
And we are also living within the world of Strange New Worlds.
We're in this interesting ground of, we know where we're going, and
we know what the end point is, but we've come in a little bit later, so
we don't know, are we three or four years away from Kirk taking over?
So a part of us is they're going, are they moving ahead too quickly,
so we're not really enjoying the time with the cast that we have
and now with La'an off as well?
Kevin: She'll be back.
Rob: Yes.
Yeah.
Not all the characters are going to, stick around.
We know who sticks around who doesn't, but we at least want to have more than
just eight episodes with them before they go, I need to leave now because got
something important to do over there…
Kevin: Yeah.
Yeah.
Deaths in Star Trek.
What, uh, what a tangled web.
Yeah, let's let's talk about, for those who are interested, here ends, here
ends your discussion of actual Star Trek canon as relates to Those Who Wander".
Rob: Yes.
So yeah, come back next week.
We'll talk about the grand finale.
It'll be awesome.
It'll be wonderful.
And if you wanna stick around, we'll get a little bit more personal.
Kevin: Yeah.
You want me to go first?
Rob: Please start us off, Kevin.
Kevin: Cool, cool.
So Star Trek for me was I suppose it would be the first "grown up"
TV show I watched in my life.
I think my parents recognized me as the budding computer nerd and
technologist that I was destined to be.
Just about the same year they bought our first family PC and, uh, a manual
for how to write programs for it, they also sat me down in front of
this show called Star Trek that was well and truly in reruns at the time,
this would've been 1986 ish, like just barely before Next Generation came on…
Rob: Now, had you heard anything of Star Trek before then?
Cuz the movies were out at this time.
Had you heard anything about it?
Kevin: No, nothing.
They, I was introduced to Star Trek through the reruns on…
Rob: Right, so that was your pure introduction.
It wasn't even, it wasn't even a part of the periphery of
your pop culture knowledge.
Kevin: No, but it came fast, because in those days, Star Trek was airing five
nights a week at 7:00 PM every weeknight.
It was in full reruns phase at that point.
And so, yeah, over the course of a year, I probably watched most of Star
Trek as it existed at that time in three seasons of the original series.
And so the big milestones I remember are, I think at some point
I watched Star Trek IV on VHS.
I watched the home video release of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, and
went, whoa, Star Trek can be this good?
And funny?
And then Star Trek V came in theaters, and that was my first
opportunity to go along and see a Star Trek movie first run in cinemas.
Rob: I'm sorry for your loss.
Kevin: I bought the pin in the lobby, and I convinced myself
that, was a great movie, dammit.
It took longer than it does in this internet age for the pronouncement
of the world to land on me about that movie, and for me to realize
in hindsight, it wasn't very good, but I was all about the marsh-melons
and the jet boots for a while.
But then Star Trek: The Next Generation premiered in 1987 and I got to
watch new episodes of Star Trek.
I still remember the teaser TV commercials that came out in the months and weeks
before its premiere, and feeling that sense of are they gonna break Star Trek?
Are they gonna do it wrong?
Hang on, the red and the yellow uniforms have swapped; they
have no idea what they're doing.
Rob: And the captain's a bald guy and he's got a British accent?
What is this upside-down mirror universe?
Kevin: But just like Star Trek V, I think season one of Next Generation, I was there
for the ride and novelty of it was enough to carry me through until it got good.
And since that premier episode of, since the Encounter At Farpoint
appeared on my screen, I have watched every new episode of Star Trek as
early as I can after it comes out.
There was a while there where I was, I was living in Australia at a
time where Star Trek wasn't on TV.
And my friends in Canada were having to send me tapes that
they had recorded for me.
But apart from that dark time, I've been a day one viewer of
Star Trek, my entire adult life.
Rob: And what is it about Star Trek that,
Kevin: I'm glad you asked.
Rob: What is it specifically?
Cuz each franchise, each bit of, whether it be a novel or a TV show or a movie
has something that draws you there, but what is it specifically about Star
Trek that makes you want to come back?
Kevin: I think what originally attracted me to it was its flying spaceships.
And that's what I was building out of LEGOs in my family basement growing up.
But what has kept me there as an increasingly devoted fan over
all these decades, has been the hopeful vision of the future.
The idea that it's all going to work out for the best, that whatever mess
is going on in the world right now is all in service of a better future
that we need to learn the hard lessons in order to build that together.
And Star Trek doesn't always wear that on its sleeve, but when it does,
it is the Star Trek I most live for.
Rob: Amen.
Amen.
Kevin: Yeah.
How about you?
Rob: Yeah, like I was saying earlier in the episode I was
introduced to, Star Trek by my mum.
And yeah, mum used to, talk about Star Trek and how she'd watched
it and all that type of stuff.
And so the first one I remember watching in full and we taped it off the TV,
illegally, which you weren't meant to do, but everyone did it, was Star Trek IV.
And it was just for me, cuz I'd grown up with Star Wars.
And so watching this, it was my interpretation of science fiction
could be many different things.
And so Star Trek is in no way like star wars.
So it's a different approach.
And I was really drawn in by the concepts of they go back in time and
they talk about the fact that, oh, what, you don't have money in the future?
We don't.
And I'm there going, that blew my mind, and finding, how does that work?
And, so unlike the almost Western, Seven Samurai feel of the wild west of Star
Wars, Star Trek had structure and order, and hope, and people of all different
backgrounds or species of different alien kind working together and unifying.
And the characters really got me in.
I fell in love with old, weary Kirk.
So I didn't see any of the original with like young, vibrant sixties Shatner.
Kevin: So you got in through the movies.
Rob: I got in through the movies.
So I had to go back and watch the original series whenever it was like
repeated when I was in high school.
And I haven't seen all the original series, but I've seen
as many episodes as I can.
I've seen the key episodes that everyone talks about.
But yeah, it was the movie.
So, Star Trek IV, I just watched over and over again because it was funny and it
was about environmental issues and all that important stuff, that really got me.
Star Trek VI is another one that really stood out for me,
cuz it's such a good story.
And it got me into Shakespeare as well.
Cuz Nimoy loved dropping his Shakespeare references and so
getting him and Christopher Plummer quoting Shakespeare back and forth.
That type of stuff really got me.
And I didn't find my feet again with Star Trek until Deep Space Nine, where
again, I fell in love with the characters.
I was drawn into it because I re— this is obscure.
I really loved Rene Auberjonois.
He was one of my,
Kevin: Oh, right.
Rob: of my favorite actors as a kid.
Kevin: He brought you back.
Rob: I loved him in Benson.
He was in a couple of tele movies called fairytale theater where
he was in a guest star role.
And he was just hilarious and I loved him.
And so whenever I saw him in movies, TV shows, I loved him as an actor.
And um, I saw that he was like a lead character in a Star Trek
series, and I went this is amazing.
Kevin: They've earned another shot.
Rob: Yeah.
And And what that, he's a shapeshifter and me as a young, thespian,
there going, oh, it's the dream to transform into somebody else.
And how Star Trek Deep Space Nine created, like we talked about, those
arcs and those storylines that would last seasons upon seasons.
I fell in love with it.
I loved the Next Gen movies, so I didn't get into the Next Gen TV
show, but I loved First Contact.
I remember going to see First Contact in the cinema.
That same excitement I felt for, cuz the first Star Trek film for me in
the cinema was Undiscovered Country.
And First Contact was that same excitement about it.
I love Insurrection.
I really love Insurrection.
There's a lot of hate or dismissiveness for Star Trek: Insurrection.
I love insurrection.
It's a—
Kevin: I'm sure we will have an episode all about shows and movies that
objectively are bad that we love anyway.
Rob: And that, and what we determine as bad is gonna be interesting.
So yeah, Voyager was an important part of my ex's life.
And so she took me through that.
So watching all of Voyager was the important part for me that
I never thought I'd get into it.
But there's certain things about it.
I love Robert Picardo as a great character actor, and his work with Jeri Ryan and
Kate Mulgrew as well, inspired me a lot.
So I've sort of like in a more combative place with Star Trek now because of
the oversaturation and the quality is quite varied, but I liked finding
those new characters and that new emotional connection I can make with it.
Kevin: All right.
Well, I'm sure there's there is so much more detail to our respective
connections to Star Trek that we will explore and reveal in the weeks to come.
Rob: As Karen Carpenter says, "We have only just begun."
Kevin: Hmm.
"The human adventure continues."