Rob: Welcome, welcome, welcome.
We are back because another episode of Star Trek has just dropped
and there's so much to discuss.
We need to talk about it.
I am here with Kevin Yank, as always and I am Rob Lloyd.
And so the most recent episode to drop is episode four of season three
of Picard, No Win Scenario, written by Terry Matalas and Sean Tretta and
directed by the great Jonathan Frakes.
Kevin: What a team!
Well done team.
Rob: What a team.
What a combo.
What an episode.
What are your first thoughts, Kevin?
Of No Win Scenario?
Kevin: If, this was as good as Picard ever got, I would be satisfied.
Rob: Look.
Kevin: This deserves to be the high point of the entire series.
Rob: It was an incredible episode.
And it's amazing what can be done when you bring characters back.
And so they're not in their prime.
They're not in a weekly, regular program that's going over and over again.
So that whole threat level is diminished when you're in you're
halfway through the season and you know you've got more seasons to come.
But with this being touted as the final one, anything's up for grabs.
Anything could happen.
So that threat level can be manipulated with, I'm not saying used, but
definitely can manipulate the audience.
Kevin: So you're talking about that sense of we are all doomed, like
to a certain extent you buy it.
Like this could be the end of the road, at least for one of our characters.
Rob: The whole scenario of a ship of our heroes trapped in a situation where
it looks like there is no way out.
The know, resources have diminished, oxygen is diminishing.
They're at the point of if they're found, they're pretty much dead in the water.
And that has been played out in Star Trek multiple times.
But because of the, the finality of this season, the age of the characters, the
age of the actors, the shortness of this season compared to, say, a a 22, 24 arc
season back in the eighties and nineties.
That, is rarely used.
They, They have tried at times to be Game of Thrones in modern Star Trek, but it's
very much still Star Trek as we know it.
So they can manipulate that emotional investment a lot more.
So we find ourselves Vadic's ship, the Shrike, is cat-n-mousing
the Titan within this nebula.
Has been blown to smithereens because of a tactical decision that Picard got wrong.
And Riker is is dealing with the realities of their situation.
They are losing all power.
They have no way.
They're floating dead in the water in this nebula.
Kevin: Riker did a pretty sharp turn following the throwing Picard off the
bridge at the end of the previous episode.
He was pretty quick to assess the situation and go apologize to his friend.
So, uh, I think it it further made me question the point of that heated
moment, at the end of the last episode.
I feel like someone just had it as their personal mission to create a moment
of their relationship fracturing under stress, and they were gonna do that,
whatever it took to get them there and then they would move past it very quickly.
Rob: They move past it incredibly quickly.
Some might say, that is more in character than the line that was
dropped at the end of the previous one.
Kevin: That scene was the first of several big speeches this episode, getting to
hear from Riker what was going on in his head, in his relationship with Deanna.
That it almost made it worth it.
If the question was why is Riker not behaving like Riker last episode, they
did provide an answer for that here.
Like, He's the guy's going through some stuff and,
Rob: He is.
He is.
Kevin: Yeah, it affected me and ultimately, this continued, the pattern
that we saw last episode of it seems like this season, besides telling a
satisfying story, seems to be deliberately crafted to create breaks in the storm
where there is relative quiet, where our characters have nothing to do, but
to confide in each other how they're feeling about the situation, and we're
getting great character moments out of it.
Rob: And that is a tricky balance to get.
It's the, there's been criticisms in other franchise shows, other IP,
where finding that balance of how you hit the emotional while still
going through the, the threat level.
And some shows don't get that balance right where they literally, put a brake
on any type of action or progress with a narrative and just go straight into
let's have it deep and meaningful.
Other shows can blend that into the threat level as that, when you're
at this heightened state, you have to get straight to the point.
And so this was a good exploration of the fact that, it's being sucked into this
nebulous type of a gravity pull system.
There's the mystery of trying to solve what it is and Dr.
Crusher is sorting out the patterns of it.
But they're at that lowest point.
They've lost more than any other ship I've seen that hadn't been destroyed
in the background of a ma major fight.
And taking solace just to take those final moments and some dealing with it
by going into the holodeck, which is a whole other, there's been a lot of online
criticism from fans and I'm interested to get your take on going, hang on.
They're down to Baris minimum life support,
Kevin: Look it, it, it is dumb, but it's one of those dumb Star
Trek things that was established previously and so it's fair game.
It happened a fair bit in Voyager and there they, they explained it pretty
clearly, that idea that Starfleet ships have a dedicated, non repurposable
power system just for the holodeck, for the crew to use in emergencies.
Yeah, it was dumb in, in Voyager when they made it.
I think they could have chosen not to bring it back.
There was, the thing that bothered me is there was nothing about that scene
that wouldn't have worked in a mess hall or some other quiet corner of the ship.
It seems like they must have spent a whole lot of money on that 10
Forward set and they are using every excuse to get characters in there.
Rob: A part of me was thinking, yeah, it's that whole case that they don't
trust, it's that modern trait I'm seeing in star Trek of they're not
trusting that you can hit that emotional truth that is universal, whatever
timeline you are without having it set in a environment that you as a
modern audience are comfortable with.
It's that case of, having a, just sitting around and having a chat
about that could be done at any of, any space within Star Trek.
And we've seen it done in regular Star Trek in any series, even if,
like in Star Trek II, you have Kirk going through his mortality crisis
when he gets older and he's talking to Bones about it, having the drink
of Romulan Ale in his quarters, which look realistic, but are so futuristic.
They don't trust that anymore, I don't think.
They just go, oh, we're gonna have this deep and meaningful
casu— relationship chat.
We gotta do it in a setting that we know as being a confessional
area in, in, in that setting.
I'm going, we've been doing this over 50, you know, nearly 60 years,
Kevin: I've heard some comments about the fact that from the showrunners
that this season, despite it looking like a movie so often, they have been
making it on surprisingly little money.
And behind that, like I hear a certain amount of pride of, oh, we
reused that set from season two.
It was very expensive, but we didn't have to pay for it.
And it was almost like Terry Matalas, every time he reused something his
bosses were very happy with him.
So he was gonna reuse stuff as much as possible to make the exorbitant expensive
season two feel less expensive somehow.
Rob: Terry has gotta deal with, it's the final season syndrome.
We've wasted all the money on the previous seasons.
All the main show runners have buggered off, you've only got these sets.
You, most of our money has gone into the cast,
Kevin: Yeah.
Ultimately the question has to be did it make the show better or worse?
And for me, it took me out of the scene.
And to their credit, they explained it on screen,
Rob: It was very much a hand wavy type of, oh yeah, Bubba.
Kevin: but they had to take the time to explain it so it also distracted
from the story they were telling.
It was Jack's accent all over again.
Like I was saying last week, I would've preferred Jack not have that accent so
that they didn't have to explain it.
But given that he had the accent, I'm glad they explained it.
It's the exact same thing with the holodeck here.
I would prefer they hadn't used it, but I'm glad that if they did,
they at least did us the respect of explaining, "explaining" why.
Rob: And this led into a retelling of of a young Picard,
Kevin: Yeah.
And I wanted to point out a detail that I noticed that delighted me, and I don't
know if this is just in my head, but throughout these conversations that Jack
and Picard were having Jack was fiddling with some red straws that were on the
bar and he was tying them up in knots.
And I'm like, Ooh, these are, this is like a visual reference to the red vines that
are in his head and invading his world.
It's great.
I saw them, they were like prominently positioned out of focus in the
background when they first went in.
And I was like, that is a bright splash of red.
And when he got there and he started playing with them,
I was like, that is not an
Rob: That is done on purpose.
That is all metaphor and symbol.
Kevin: Very cool.
I.
I don't know what to make of his flashes of violence yet.
They seem to be dealing with it head on, which is good.
But it is that puzzle box of the season.
The voices in his head seem to have gotten a bit clearer this episode, and
to me they sound like Vadic's voice.
They sound like Amanda Plummer.
Rob: Yes, we shall, we shall see how it plays out.
That's very interesting.
The symbolism that they're doing.
I guess it's because it's very much pushed in our conscience now, but it looks
very Stranger Things in The Upside Down with those red vines and that red type
of environment and those flashes of red doors opening and that type of hellscape
environment that keeps to be seeping in.
And that's been employed so much by Stranger Things.
So I'm looking forward to see how it, differentiates itself and
steps itself away from that kind of, symbolism and iconography.
Kevin: Yeah.
While we're speaking of Vadic, she did have a little scene where she cut
off her hand and it became a face.
And I've seen a joke online that was her "handler".
Uh, what did you make of that?
Do you think she's a Changeling herself?
Is she reporting to Changelings?
Has she got a Changeling attached to her somehow?
What's
Rob: I think.
I think she is an actual Changeling.
And that type of, that's something we haven't seen within the Changeling
culture, and I like that type of advancement of how they communicate,
how they stay connected, even though they're disconnected from the Great
Link, how they link themselves within this new faction, which
Kevin: Perhaps she is two Changelings.
She's like the fluky and the handler, like in one.
And, And that moment was them separating to have a conversation
with each other for our benefit.
I'm not really sure what was going on there.
It was visually, spectacularly creepy.
Rob: Yeah, I think it is their way of how she connects with
Changelings within the conspiracy, so
Kevin: That all smacks of uh, Star Trek VI and the Bird of
Prey that can fire while cloaked.
They're prominently changing some rules to unlock some new storytelling
Rob: To make it even harder to make the challenge something
we have not seen before.
But there was a great moment and I, we did talk about it in previous
episodes and we finally got it.
There was the moment where Vadic, in a moment of pure joy and release,
got in her chair and spun around Amanda Plummer very much a tip
of the hat to her father spinning around in his chair in Star Trek VI.
Kevin: It was a less triumphant moment.
It was detach the weapon we're going to, to our deaths on a suicide mission.
But she was delighted nonetheless.
Rob: Oh yes.
Cuz you know that unhinged character slash actor, so the where the lines blur.
We had an incredible moment in the bar with
Kevin: Speeches two and three, we had Picard telling the story of Jack
Crusher in the when they borrowed a shuttle and spent all that time limping
home when they got hit by a meteoroid.
And Picard uh, dropping the F bomb there.
Rob: Which uh, I dunno if you read the article that I sent you,
Kevin: I've read a few articles about that this
Rob: Hey, are they contrary opinions about what, how it
happened or how it came about?
Kevin: Oh look, the people writing the articles come from it, come
at it from one side or the other.
But the showrunners and the cast and crew all seemed to be on the
same page of, it was improvised.
It was not in the script.
But it came from Patrick Stewart.
And the showrunners went, Ooh, this did not work for us
when we did it in season one.
Uh, we probably don't wanna make everyone angry again.
But the moment felt so real, so human when that is what the scene needed.
So they decided to keep it.
But it sounded like they, they were not claiming it was the right decision.
They are claiming they expected it to be polarizing.
They accept, some people won't like it, but it felt like the right thing
to do to keep it in the moment.
Rob: And that's something we'll talk about a bit later on when
we get to our deeper dive.
Kevin: Long story that the old swearing in Star Trek.
Rob: Yes.
And then we get to Shaw's speech, which is incredible.
Just absolutely an incredible moment.
Kevin: We were praising him for his performance in his very
first appearance in the Captain's Mess, eating that blue steak.
A and yet that feels to me perhaps like the strongest emotional
beat of this entire season.
Who knows what they still have in store for us, but like I was saying at the
beginning, if that's as good as it gets, I'm go, I'm walking away satisfied.
And that's a guest star playing a character we've never seen
before, have no expectation of seeing again past this point.
But yeah, made us feel more than any of our regulars.
Rob: And yeah.
Uh, An actor at the top of their game given a gift of a speech think I
spoke to you about it last week about this was the equivalent of Quaid's
speech about the Indianapolis in
Kevin: In Jaws, and I've seen that reference to a couple
of other places as well.
That was a touchstone for them in writing that scene.
Rob: Yes.
And it shows just that beautiful, just that slow, methodical, retelling
of how things happened and then the emotions slowly seeping in.
Kevin: It is an interesting contrast to me from the scenes with Ben Sisko in The
Emissary, the series premiere of Deep Space Nine, where in a very similar way,
Ben Sisko, who lost his wife at Wolf 359 comes face-to-face with Picard, or
Locutus as the survivors of that battle would see him, and the story is retold.
In Deep Space Nine, it is retold in flashback.
So we get to live it with Ben Sisko and then flashback forward
and see the effect it had.
In this the job is done by the actor rather than flashbacks and special
effects, much as it is amazing.
It still holds up today to go back and watch The Emissary and see those
scenes inside of Wolf 359 of Ben Sisko in the escape pod launching away from
his ship and it getting destroyed.
Yeah.
Rob: And also, but that's a whole tele movie length to show Sisko's journey.
And so you have him going into the wormhole and meeting
the beings within there.
And they appear as not only his wife but as Patrick Stewart as well playing.
So this whole ordeal plays out for him, and it's his kind of coming to terms
with that so that he can start the rest of the season on, a fresh mind.
Kevin: The economy of it is what fascinates me, is like how much money
and how many sets and rolls of film did they have to spend to let us into
Ben Sisko's experience in The Emissary.
And here one actor did it in one speech sitting at a bar in closeup.
And it was more affecting this way because the experience happened in
our mind where it is most terrible.
I wonder what The Emissary could have been if Sisko was treated that same way.
Rob: Emissary is very much a product of its time, obviously it's nineties
television, and it was very much that case of we need to show everything.
And now how television evolved, how streaming services has come
along, how that balance of film, theater, and television have blurred.
And so stripping it right back, it could be a, it could be a sense of, yeah,
there's nothing more horrifying that you can see that your mind can create.
Kevin: I love what they're choosing to spend their money on.
Like they have effectively unlimited streaming dollars this season.
Although, like I said before, they are claiming they are doing
it surprisingly economically.
But given all the money that is visible on screen in an episode like this
one that they choose not to take us there and live it through a flashback.
They choose to stay right up close on an actor's face and
tell it to us in a speech.
It feels like remarkable restraint, great artistic choices.
Rob: Oh.
But yeah, it is that case of that the functionality of that process and
the coldness of going, we only can have so many people get on the ship.
If that was played out, if you saw that acted out, it would be over overdramatic.
It would be, you'd have multiple actors, sound effects, editing, all this type
of stuff it would take away than just hearing it from that cool, troubled
recount is just, yeah, like I said, it, the horror in your mind is far worse than
anything that anyone can create on screen.
And you, when you've got an actor at the top of their game being given such
beautiful words and imagery, trust the art of what we all do this for.
Kevin: I feel like we haven't talked enough about Seven this season so far.
And she had a lot to do with the Changeling hunt this episode.
What did you think of that sort of sequence of events?
Rob: Yeah.
Um, it's, It's a, a fascinating exploration of who they keep and
who they have let go from Picard.
And pardon me, because as we know, Seven had no interactions with Picard at all.
And so they've tried to, in many ways, build up this really intense
relationship between them over two and a half, three seasons.
But it's great to have Jeri Ryan back.
It's great to have her inhabit this character and how Seven of Nine has
evolved and grown and the challenges they have to go through, but the intelligence
of them, how they solve solve problems and how they interact with people.
It's fascinating to see how that character has changed.
And it's great to have her out of, it always was in, in Voyager as well, not
having her attached to any romantic stuff.
They hamstrung her by throwing this odd thing of them holding
her and Raffi holding hands at the last episode of season one.
I went, what?
Kevin: It felt forced.
It felt like they, they needed, they had a sense that they needed to create an
emotional arc for that character that season, where she, along with every
other character in the season would come out of the story changed forever.
And this season, I am appreciating that Seven is more or less being
allowed to be the competent Starfleet officer that we know her to be.
And in a sense it is, the step forward that she has by donning the uniform,
rising to first officer and acting in that capacity, that in itself
is a change from when we left her.
And it feels like at least so far that is enough for her or that is
enough for the storytellers here to let us see her inhabiting that
that status that accomplishment and be the foil to Shaw a bit.
But this is not a story about Seven.
I don't get the sense that Seven will be making a monumental life
decision at the end of this season.
I get the sense that at the end of the season, the Titan, should it survive,
will fly off into the sunset with Seven as its first officer and and
we'll be perfectly satisfied with that.
And maybe leaving room for more Jeri Ryan stories in the future.
Rob: Look, we could we can never have enough Jeri Ryan.
And it did explain a lot why you know of Shaw's like we went Okay, Shaw doesn't
trust Seven because of the Borg thing.
Yeah.
But now we find out a specific direct reason for it and the great
line of, how she justified, when she explains to Shaw that she knew that
LaForge was a Changeling because she didn't call her by Seven, and Shaw
goes, oh, what's that all about?
She goes, cuz that's a sign of respect.
And you just go and that sinks into Shaw and it's, yeah it's a great great moment.
Kevin: Even without this amazing speech from Shaw, this would've
been a great Shaw episode.
Like the the chime because he's in his quarters and Seven's knocking on the door.
The chime.
Don't come.
Chime.
Don't come.
Chime.
Okay, come.
Can I talk to you?
Officially, no.
Unofficially?
No.
You know, just.
It's a beautiful melding of the writing and the performance.
It is obvious these two, like the writer and the performer know each other so well.
And they're, the work is incredible cuz of it.
Rob: And it was a great setup of like you find out more about Shaw and
there's this great dramatic moment where Picard goes, I, there's nothing
I can say, I just have to walk out.
But then Picard goes, actually, there's information within that
traumatic story that I can use.
And so therefore they go back to shore and he's the only one that can,
Kevin: Yes, Agh!
It serves a purpose!
It serves a story purpose!
Rob: And so he's the only one that could get down there and do the hot wiring.
And a great beautiful Star Trek ending where they are literally it's
always the darkest before the dawn.
So they are literally at their lowest point.
They
Kevin: They assemble around the conference room table.
They work the problem.
Riker isn't convinced, but then he is convinced.
I did note a moment of maybe I'm oversensitive to this stuff because this
is my day job, is this kind of thing, these workplace dynamics, but Crusher
says, Deanna would say it's about trust.
Let's come together and trust each other to do what we know we're good at.
And Riker is unconvinced and turns away.
Then Picard says effectively the exact same thing and he turns around
and goes, actually, now that you say it, Jean-Luc, I'm, like this
sexism seems to have persisted into the 25th century, is all I'm saying.
Rob: Uh, Yep.
Um, it, It, it was a fun moment to see the three, like the three family
members come up with the idea.
So there was jack, Beverly, and Picard going, oh, how about this?
How about this?
And they're just riffing off each other and the three of them go, ah, there's
a dynamic that I would like to see more
Kevin: Jack was a nice presence in this episode, but more and more, and I, you
know, the Red Vines tell us that there is a story here that centers around him.
So we need to get to know him so we can feel what will happen to that character.
But every long unburdening of the soul that Picard and Jack have
together make me regret the fact that we're not getting that, more
of that between Crusher and Picard.
Rob: Yeah.
Kevin: They had the one scene in sickbay and it's been very
transactional since then.
Rob: Yes, very much so.
Beverly was serving a purpose of figuring out what these pulses of
energy mean and what this could.
And so that was, they have a crucial role and that was wonderful
to see how proactive they were.
But that takes away
Kevin: I love how competent she is.
I love how she's making a difference in every episode.
She's got stuff to do in every episode.
They are serving her character well, but they aren't quite serving
the Picard Crusher relationship as well as I might hope for, but
I guess you can't have everything.
Rob: We've only got an hour each week.
We wasted so much in episode two.
They wasted so much in episode
Kevin: Yes.
Shutting down life support in order to eke the last little bit of power out
of the ship to do that, that wave surf.
It was I really nerded out on that.
So often we see Starfleet ships like where main power is down and the lights
on the set turn off, but all the computers keep working, all the air keeps flowing.
You can still make a cup of tea if you need to.
I'm not really sure what power they've lost other than lights.
But here, there was a sense of, oh no, really, we're throwing it all into the
last ditch attempt to save ourselves.
They did everything but have people float off the ground because the
gravity plating was switched off.
But it was nice to hear a very specific life support is turning off now alarm,
that it feels like one of those really low tech things, that it's the last
thing to fail on a ship, that alarm.
It's someone standing in the corner turning a crank on a box.
That's what makes that sound.
So yeah, lovely to see the workings of a ship.
Rob: Definitely.
And then to have that, everything built up.
So they've finally got all they need to open the two vents.
The Changeling comes in.
Seven of Nine needs to sort that out.
Then they open the vents, so they, then the next thing they need to is they need
to ride with the wave as it goes along.
Then at that point, Vadic shows up.
Then they had to find a way to solve it, and then of
Kevin: Very quickly.
I reckon.
Riker now has the Riker Maneuver named after him.
The chuck an asteroid at him.
Rob: But didn't they throw something else earlier,
Kevin: Early in the season, Vadic threw the ship at the Titan, and
so throwing the asteroid at Vadic was giving as good as we got.
Rob: I was thinking that and I'm there going that maybe there could
have been a reference to that going
Kevin: See how you like it!
Rob: Yeah, exactly.
Sort of like she threw a ship at me, I throw a rock at her.
Yeah.
Very petty Riker.
And then finally getting through and not only is it the beauty of Oh my God,
we've survived, but then look around and look space babies everywhere.
And you just go, that's frigging Star Trek.
Star Trek right
Kevin: Were they too cute for you?
My partner said they didn't need to have eyes.
They didn't need to have cute anime eyes.
Rob: I thought they were absolutely fine and what all, how
the depths of the episode went.
I was totally fine with just that beautiful sight and just
Kevin: It had to be beautiful enough to restore Riker's faith in the universe.
Rob: Yeah.
And just to remember, this is what Star Trek is.
It's that positivity, the joy of in coming across new life and new civilizations as
opposed to, space battles or, swearing.
Kevin: A real sense of end of chapter or end of story here
at the end of episode four.
What I'm expecting at this point is another series of four episodes that
are one story and then like a grand finale at the end of the season.
And this sense of closing a book that we are gonna open again in the next episode.
But it is very much the end of something.
There's a long series of scenes at the end here that are both resolving
character issues and setting up mysteries for the next chapter.
And Riker's call to Troi where he confesses why he left and, and
accepts responsibility for what's been going on in their relationship.
This one worked for me.
This was the best Riker speech we've had so far this season for me.
And that was the fourth amazing speech, the second from Riker in a single
episode that really hit home for me.
Rob: And it's just, that's one of the few moments I actually
liked about Picard season one.
I loved Picard hanging out with Troi and Riker, and hanging out with the
daughter and sure the grief of their loss of their son was there, but it
just, it felt right, and then it gets caught up in other ridiculous stuff
in season one, but it felt right.
Kevin: really hope we get to see Troi in the flesh, like it's starting
to feel like she's just gonna be a voice on the phone this season.
Rob: Oh, really?
No I'm there going, they've gotta have at least a moment where everyone's together,
Kevin: I want more than a moment though.
I want an, I want a whole episode of them all together.
Rob: Coming from my experience as a Doctor Who fan, the biggest event
for us was, one of the biggest events for us was the 20th anniversary
where they had the five doctors.
And the original actor who played The Doctor had been
dead for a number of years.
The fourth doctor, Tom Baker, the most popular one, didn't want to come back
because it was too soon after he had left.
So we only technically had three Doctors, and most of those Doctors were sent
off to their own little adventure.
And then in the final moments, they see each other again.
Kevin: They got them to stand in one room for 10 minutes.
Rob: 10 minutes is all we could get.
Yeah.
I'm hoping we have more than that, but I am expecting that, like end of Star
Trek VI, where they're all together and, oh, not even, not even Sulu was there.
He's on the on, on board Excelsior.
Kevin: I just wanted to say the culmination of the scenes of Picard's
lunch being interrupted by eager cadets with Jack asking, did you ever find
time for a family outside of Starfleet?
I thought it was just, they went a little too far, making Jack wear a
stalker hat in the bar in that scene.
I think we, we could tell that he was secretly following Picard around without
giving him a creepy baseball hat.
Rob: Yeah.
And were baseball caps still around there.
Kevin: Did you wear them indoors, is what I
Rob: Ah, Ah, look, when you're, when you're in a,
Kevin: I wouldn't have said young man.
I have never needed a family outside of Starfleet.
I would've said, young man, take off your hat.
We're indoors.
Rob: They're in a pub.
Alright.
You can wear a hat and it wasn't like a high class.
Yeah, they're using the same pub, but they're going,
that fish and chips is cold.
That like the amount of time he goes I'm gonna have my dinner.
I've got another question.
I'm gonna have my dinner.
I'm there going, seriously, that's the point where you turn and go,
I'm eating and just everyone leave.
Or you just pick up the fish and go, maybe that's just me.
Maybe that's why I'll never make it as a Starfleet captain
Kevin: It is, it is fun to think of the timeline of that bar that Picard went
back in time in season two and found that Guinan had been on Earth running a bar
at 10 Forward Avenue, and he came back into his present and went, I wonder if
that bar is still there 400 years later?
And sure enough, it is.
So he starts having lunch there and the cadets get word that every
Tuesday at lunchtime, old man Picard can be ambushed for stories.
And uh, apparently Picard doesn't mind because he keeps going.
Rob: Oh, again?
Oh.
Kevin: Oh, well.
Rob: Think, and maybe it's just the same haddock every week, they
just bring it out going, we'll just put this out in front of you.
And he goes, oh, I have go.
This hasn't been touched for months.
Okay.
It's been sprayed in some sort of thing to keep it all
Kevin: Yeah.
Yeah.
And then he goes, he loves the bar so much that when he goes off
on a mission, he recreates it on the holodeck at his lowest point.
Rob: Hand waving justification.
We've
Kevin: He really likes that bar.
I don't know about you.
There is no place in the world that I like as much as Picard likes that 10 Forward.
Rob: Exactly.
But there's also a case of he's n.
Never in the history, and I'm not as okay with Next Gen as you are, obviously,
but when has he ever been in a bar?
When has he ever gone to, oh, you know what I need?
I need a,
you
Kevin: Well, Young Picard was a bar surfer for sure.
Yeah.
So he
Rob: stabbed.
Kevin: His youth
Rob: Sure.
Yeah.
Let's go that.
Yeah, that's a nice wave of the hand explanation.
But they did give the impression with the look that he, that
Picard figured out that was Jack.
Kevin: Yeah.
In hindsight, it occurred to him.
I don't think we can quite believe it, so they didn't explicitly say
it, but they gave us enough of a hint that we can, like our heart can
believe it, even if our brain can't.
Rob: Very true.
So our hearts were full from that episode.
No Win Scenario was definitely a win-win situation for at least Kevin and I.
And overall, the feedback online from the fans has been quite positive.
Apart with the odd niggle here about the swear word or, yeah.
Kevin: The swear word, Rob.
Rob: Let's get to it.
We've been tiptoeing around it for so long, and you lay it out bare bones.
Let's discuss swearing in Star Trek.
Kevin: Yes.
I feel like we should give, an opening statement each of just what is our
personal irrational um, reaction or rational reaction, if you feel
it is, to swearing in Star Trek.
Just what is your personal preference and why, what do you attribute it to?
Then I've done a bit of research on the history of swears in Star Trek,
so we'll go through it and maybe discuss some of those instances to
see if they evolve our thinking.
Rob: First and foremost I can't believe I've I've found myself in a position
where I'm of the traditional view of it's created a, it's been created this world
where swearing has not been a, involved.
So much so in my, the big first movie I saw Star Trek IV: The Voyage
Home, that swearing is an antique.
They don't know how to do
Kevin: They, they barely recognize what's
Rob: Yeah.
And there's big discussions of it and it's hilarious and brilliant and wonderful.
They go all the colorful metaphors.
Oh, you mean the profanity?
Oh, you can find it in all the great works of Jacqueline Susann, ah, the giants.
Great.
Kevin: Kirk says, That's simply the way they talk here.
Nobody pays any attention to you unless you swear every
Rob: every other word.
And that how bad they are at it.
That's
Kevin: That's it.
It is a lost art.
Rob: Yes.
Double dumb ass on you.
The hell they did.
They're not the hell your whales.
Spock, I think you should cut down on this word
Kevin: Some of that is okay, Spock is not human.
He grew up on Vulcan.
You could understand that maybe it is a human cultural artifact that Spock doesn't
recognize, but, and Kirk is proud of how much he knows about swearing, but he's
Rob: He's terrible at it.
He's terrible.
And it's great because you have it with, eighties contemporaries,
so you have Gillian, and Gillian, she says son of a bitch.
She slaps the guy when they take george and Gracie and calls him a son of a bitch.
And, you know, so for me, I'm going, that makes sense.
That's of that time.
And these characters are so bad at it.
I was one of those people when as soon as we get to Picard and the admiral
up against Picard is just dropping bombs all the time and I'm there
going, this doesn't feel right at all.
And I think I figured out what it is because I was okay with the F bomb
dropped by Picard, cuz he's he's not in uni uniform, he's outta uniform.
He's in this relaxed setting.
They're just hanging out and chatting and swearing could
be a thing in a casual sense.
I didn't like it when they're swearing in uniform, I'm there go, I dunno
what it is cuz you're there going.
Kevin: One of the most senior members of Starfleet in her own office
says "the sheer fucking hubris."
It felt like Starfleet was broken to me, and may, maybe that was what
we were supposed to feel, but, ugh.
Rob: And that seems a little bit, yeah, of the showrunners going.
Yeah, that's it.
It's Starfleet's broken.
Kevin: But that is, yeah.
So somewhere between the 23rd and 24th centuries, we get that swearing came
back into fashion and was rediscovered.
Rob: Yeah.
I miss that days of Star Trek IV, where they have evolved so
much, they don't need money.
There's no poverty, no disease, and no swearing.
And so I
Kevin: I like that that's where you are head is at, because me too.
Every time it happens, my mind immediately goes to Star Trek IV and goes, no.
It has been historically established that this is something that has fallen
away from our culture, our knowledge.
It's not about it's not about, morals or humanity being better than that.
It is the history of the world and just like changing any other rule or
breaking any other rule in Star Trek makes the world feel less real, this
makes the world feel less real to me.
Rob: It's it's something that people have been saying about the latest Scream movie
that has come out, Scream VI, which is Scream from a couple of years ago, which
is Scream V and Scream VI is like they're trying to create this new reboot of it.
And some of the legacy characters have come back, some of them haven't, but
they've created this new generation.
And what a lot of people are saying is going, when Scream was originally
created by Wes Craven, he was excited.
He had experimented with, took this type of meta reference to horror
and slasher films with Freddy's New Nightmare, which is a great experiment.
It's not a very good film, but there's some incredible stuff in it where
the actress who played Nancy in the original is haunted by Freddie Kruger.
So she plays herself in this, altered reality where she is
haunted by the ghost of the character from the movie she was in.
Very meta.
He refined that and created Scream, which is a celebration not only of
the slasher genre, but horror genre and all those references really
elevated and he was excited by it.
Whereas now people look at it and they're using all those elements that made Scream
good, but there's no, they're doing it not because they love the franchise,
they're doing it just to, get a paycheck.
Kevin: Right.
It's, It's, cynical or it's uh,
Rob: a little bit cynical to go surface level going, this is what, oh, okay.
So the Scream movies are about, twists, plot twists, big reveals, and gimmicky
in joke stuff about horror genre.
And th they've just kept that.
Whereas when Craven did it, he added all those elements, but he loved the genre.
He knew so much about it.
That's what I get with this modern version of Star Trek, is that it's basic stuff.
If you knew Star Trek, you know Star Trek IV.
That's there and you can use that.
They've created an entire world where, you know, swearing from the Elizabethan era
is not the same as swearing as it is now.
Kevin: Although the F word is surprisingly persistent in English culture.
Rob: You can't beat the classics, Kevin.
Like when they made Deadwood a lot of, they said they had to
make the artistic choice of going.
We could use all the type of swear words back in.
People would laugh so they said, let's put in all those swear words that
people know now to have that impact.
And so that's what I get from now.
They go, it's, they can do it.
A hand wave gesture, reference back to it.
Go maybe swearing has come back.
But no, it's been proven in Star Trek.
It is cannon.
You're just doing it to be cynical and you just want to go, let's be, let's
do something radical with Star Trek.
Let's add in swearing.
And so of course it loses all legs because of going, we've established
that it's died out because just like poverty, just like disease, just
Kevin: What, what of those other things are no longer
true in the Star Trek universe?
If the if the absence of swearing has been tossed.
Rob: Yeah.
As well.
Like a lot of people are angry about, okay, swearing's back.
And also someone with a severe mental condition cannot be treated
in a future utopia where they've, where they've established that in
Star Trek, all those type of things, can be healed, can be sorted out.
And that's a utopian
Kevin: Uh, I mean Rob, Crusher got pregnant uh, uh,
had an unplanned pregnancy.
I don't buy that in the 24th century either.
Rob: One last night of passion, Picard.
He doesn't miss, he engages.
Kevin: Beyond the historical fact of swearing in Star Trek.
And that is for me, my only rational objection to it, and it's a strong
one, but I feel like creatively, the ship has sailed and I almost need to
get on board with it because there are more examples for swearing than
against swearing at this point.
But the other way it affects me is a it's something that's relatively
personal to me, and therefore I don't think it's, it's at all important or
anything that the creatives behind the show should be thinking of.
But as someone who grew up with Star Trek, as for me, it was the primary pop
cultural influence on my personality.
Star Trek was my show from from the age where I was old enough to
watch the original series in reruns right up to today, it is the show
that I have always watched as soon as I could get my hands on it.
And when you engage with a piece of art that closely, it colors you in return.
Rob: Yeah.
Kevin: I am known by people who know me well as someone who rarely
swears and to the point when I do swear, people are shocked by it.
In the same way that people are shocked when Star Trek swears.
Rob: I have known you on and off for years, and I didn't even know
that you knew what a swear word was.
So
Kevin: And I, it's only relatively recently that I think I realize I at, I
should be attributing that to Star Trek.
Star Trek showed me people that I look up to and showed me that they don't swear.
In fact, they live in a culture where that has been left behind.
And as a young, impressionable youth, I took that on as part of my definition
of what it is to be a good person, to the point where today when people
swear, I like, I have a irrational, like I'm somewhat triggered by it.
I don't judge them for it.
I try not to respond or react to it unduly.
But it is something that Star Trek has left me with and to now
have Trek "triggering" me, if you will— I use the largest of
scare quotes around that word, in
Rob: They are very big listeners.
They are very big.
Kevin: But for Star Trek now to be the thing that is shocking me with swearing
rather the thing than the thing that created that aspect of my personality.
It is a thing to, to reckon with.
Rob: Look for me, I also see it as very lazy and clumsy writing and going for
a cheap reference because there are multiple examples within the sci-fi
realm where you've got around that by creating, especially a lot of television
stuff, by not being able to use swearing.
So they create their own.
So Star Wars doesn't have any swearing at all, and it would completely take you out.
But they have created their own swear words.
The biggest one is poo-doo, which is their version of, what, that
you know of crap, of poo, of shit.
Red Dwarf, one of the greatest sci-fi comedy shows of all time,
they create their own swear words where they have, you know, smeg.
Smeg substitutes everything else.
They've dropped in asshole every once in a while or stuff like that.
Kevin: Battlestar Galactica did
Rob: Frack, yeah, Battlestar Galactico is my next one.
They created their own swear words as well.
It can be done.
It is a precedent.
It is, it is cheap, it is lazy.
And it, and yeah, you said I've just gotta get on board cuz everyone else
is, and going, we have justified it in my way of going, well I kind of
like Picard saying fuck when he's just casually having a drink with his son.
But again, it's a case of, but it's not clever.
And it's no matter how times they try and justify it,
Kevin: I don't doubt that Patrick Stewart was able to get somewhere in
his performance with that word that he wasn't able to get without it.
I don't doubt that the take was stronger and that it made the moment,
the scene work better, but what cost?
Rob: Yeah.
It does take you out a little bit, and Patrick Stewart has been
doing a lot better this season, performance-wise than previous seasons.
So that's a credit to the directors they've got to the writing, to the
environment that he feels safe within.
Kevin: So very briefly I'll share with you my research here.
So the first prominent example of swearing in Star Trek that I could find was in
the original series, back when they were dealing with the censors of television in
the sixties, City on the Edge of Forever, the episode in which they go through
the Guardian of Forever back in time.
Kirk falls in love with Edith Keeler and she, she must die in a traffic accident
in order to put history back on track.
They come back into the present and Kirk is broken up by the loss of his love.
And he sits heavily in his captain's chair on the bridge and he says,
Let's get the hell outta here.
And it is that word at that time was transgressive.
Rob: Yep.
Yep.
Kevin: And according to the, some of the research that's been done there's a great
book called, These Are the Voyages that's on my bookshelf here that has deep history
from the memos between Gene Roddenberry and the studio around that time.
This was something that the studio said, no, Roddenberry fought for it.
He said, it's an important moment to the story and there's
no other way to achieve it.
And ultimately the studio relented.
So it was a fight to get that word on our screens back in the sixties, but it,
an argument could be made, many people argue that is the best episode of the
original series, and I might argue that line is the best line in that episode.
And I struggle to reconcile that with how Picard's F-Bomb in this
latest episode affected me because this is the equivalent at that time.
Rob: At that time, Yeah.
Kevin: And but it works.
He, he gives that order in a way.
He never has given an order before and never will again.
And so you buy that something irreversible and unprecedented has happened to
this character in a single line.
Rob: Definitely.
But it's still
Kevin: It's still lazy?
Rob: No, not at all.
I don't see it as lazy, and I still like it was a hell of a statement at that time
Kevin: Literally.
Rob: and that's more to do with the conservative nature of American society,
which is still very much prominent now.
And it's such a it's not like he said, let's get the fuck outta of.
Kevin: That's right.
Yeah.
Rob: Or Yeah, let's get the shit outta here.
Sure.
Cuz that's a phrase that people say, Kevin, I know you don't know swearing
that me, I swear all the time.
And how many times have I said let's get the shit outta here.
Kevin: I need to ask my parents cuz I wasn't alive in the sixties.
I need to ask my parents.
Was Captain Kirk saying hell on the bridge of the Enterprise, is that
equivalent to Picard saying, fuck today?
Like, is it, is it
Rob: don't think it, I don't think it is.
I think it, it's very much that conservative American culture of
you do not say that because that is our Lord and Savior, connection.
But yeah, I don't think it's a it, it was a, a shocking moment
that had to be fought for.
But people go, oh, as opposed to going, that's a swear word that is
like hell is causes a lot of heart palpitations within the conservative
group, but it is not drop in the F bomb.
Kevin: McCoy gave us a lot of Damnit Jims in the movies.
I think we can move past that.
At that time,
Rob: If anyone was gonna swear, I'd accept Bones swearing.
And he does say, are you outta your Vulcan mind, so.
Kevin: Uh, We talked about Star Trek IV already.
Moving into The Next Generation.
Picard twice is established as swearing in French.
He uses the word "merde" in uh, which is shit in, in French twice.
Both in The Last Outpost, episode five of season one and Elementary,
Dear Data, episode three of season two, it is notable to me that both
of these are very early in the run.
It almost looks to me, in hindsight, like they were flirting with
this being a quirk of Picard.
Like every once in a while when things get really bad, he says merde.
And the audience would go, oh, there's the old Picard catchphrase.
In both cases it came off a little strange and it had fans asking why the
universal translator didn't translate it, and it was just, not worth the
speed bump of the moment in my mind.
And so I'm glad they dropped it.
But it is there if you go looking for it,
Rob: If you look for the shit, you'll find it.
Kevin: And then fast forward to the Next Gen movies, we have a Data
freshly equipped with his emotion chip as the saucer section of the
Enterprise is crash landing on Viridian III, he goes, "Oh shit!"
Rob: That's right.
He does.
Kevin: And it has to be the dumbest moment in what is not the
strongest film of the franchise.
That's the one where I'm like, no, too far.
I was even on day one watching it.
I was like, Nope, nope, don't like it.
It is.
It is an attempt at comedy.
We are supposed to laugh at that.
It is meant to be funny.
Data, or Brent Spiner loves playing comedy when he can.
But in a moment where the Enterprise is split into and crash landing, those
of us who take Star Trek seriously, those of us who are affected by peril
to our characters and the biggest character of all, the Enterprise, not
in a mood to laugh in that moment.
Rob: And that's the thing, that's more of a sign of they didn't get the humor
balanced out in that particular film, especially cuz they work on the emotion
chip in Data and all of it falls flat.
Even remember the first time when they were showing a clip back in
the day when they're going Star Trek Generations comes out, this is
the first time, blah, blah, blah.
Here's the clip.
And they showed the clip of him going Open sesame.
Humor, I love it!
Which I've quoted multiple times.
And even then I was watching it going, oh.
Kevin: Still better than swearing, swearing on the bridge during a crash.
Rob: Yeah.
And but that is, is leveled out.
Oh.
That comedy isn't hitting properly.
Oh.
The saying, Oh shit makes me laugh now.
And that would probably work better in the Orville as opposed to, or Galaxy Quest.
But yeah, at this moment it takes away from the tension.
Kevin: And then from there we end up in Discovery where Tilly and Stamets
drop some language at different times.
And the the fans are somewhat outraged and the creators are like, ah, get over it.
They're young and impressionable.
People, people should be excited on Star Trek and they should let their feelings
out in unpolished ways when they do.
And like I think that brings us back to what we've already covered, is that
those versions of it are especially historically out of place in a way that
I would wish they I wish they would take more seriously and do as much
damage to the moment as support it.
Like the, if the argument is it makes the characters more believable, in return,
it makes the world less believable and on balance, I don't think it's worth it.
Rob: Look, and there's a lot of issues within, like I have my
own issues with Discovery anyway.
But just how they have tried so much to overhaul it for the sake of overhauling
and they go to hell with the consequences time, timeline wise or anything like that.
We'll sort that out with a wave of our hand later on.
We wanna have all this modern stuff in for the sake of it, as opposed
to just letting it occur naturally.
And, doing it, it's clever, it's far cleverer to do it within the
confines of the genre you have, as opposed to go dragging it out
of what makes the show what it is.
It's just, yeah, anyone can just throw in swear words or stuff like that.
Kevin: Give us a performance that feels like a swear word without using it.
That's
Rob: Mm-hmm.
Yes.
Yeah.
William Shatner said Khan, and I know he was saying, yeah, he was saying
every other swear word imaginable, Khan isn't even a swear word.
So I swear I felt that DeForest Kelly dropped many swear words in his entire
performance, but he never did, because yeah, it's the intention he put behind it.
Kevin: It seems like we're on the same page, Rob I think we should wrap
this one up and see if we can find something to disagree about next week.
Rob: Yeah, great episode.
Brilliant direction, wonderful writing.
Take swearing out of Star Trek.
Find a cleverer way.
Make up your own swear word.
We've got frack, we've got smeg, we've got poo-doo.
What can you come up with?
Bring double dumb ass on you back.
Kevin: I would love that.