Kevin: Hello and welcome back to Subspace Radio.
It's me, Kev,
Rob: and me, Rob,
Kevin: and we are here to talk about Star Trek Picard, season
three, episode seven, Dominion.
Rob: are getting closer and closer to no more Picard.
Kevin: Yeah.
Rob: has, where's the time gone?
Kevin: It feels perfectly paced to me, Rob.
I feel like we are on track for a nice, smooth glide path to the finish.
Not too rushed.
Not too drawn out.
I think they're doing a good job.
How about
Rob: Yeah well, it's definitely a case of, especially with this most recent
episode, we've come back to where we were a couple of episodes ago where
we were at darkest before the dawn.
Kevin: Oh
Rob: And so we've, got to that point, they've got out of it,
and now they're back into this stage where it's, even darker.
Kevin: So you're saying we're expecting a brilliant episode next next
Rob: Look, you know, I'm not here for a haircut.
I'm I, my expectations are high.
I'm gonna say that even higher than should be realistic or fair.
Kevin: In Dominion, we have Vadic finally close in on the Titan.
But Picard uses his wiley planning skills to uh, face her on his terms.
They lay a trap in the hallways of the Titan for her.
She gets trapped in a force field and forced to reveal her dastardly plan.
Rob: finally find out the the origins and the backstory of Vadic.
Kevin: Indeed and I'm gonna call it now: it's Section 31's worst plan yet.
Rob: I'm not one of Section 31's biggest fans.
Every time they go, Ooh, a Section 31 episode.
I go, eh, and this proves that.
They've just gone, these guys are the worst.
They are not good at all.
Kevin: Picard and crew have the upper hand for quite a while, but eventually,
thanks to the meddling of Data's brother Lore, the tables are turned and Vadic
ultimately commandeers the Titan.
Rob: Yes they like the, they have lost it after racing around for seven episodes.
They have finally succumbeded and the ship is gone.
The ship is Vadic's.
Kevin: She introduces herself at the end as Captain Vadic of the Titan.
And that commandeering of a Starfleet ship, our hero ship by the enemy
is the theme that Rob and I have chosen for our episode today.
We're gonna explore some examples of that in the second half of this episode.
But first, Rob, what stood out to you in Dominion?
Rob: First five minutes we had another cameo and welcome back, Tim Russ.
It is great to see you.
Kevin: Oh, never been better.
I'm gonna say it now.
We've seen so much Tim Russ in Star Trek over the years, but
he has aged like a fine wine.
Rob: I think we've talked about Tim Russ's performance and when it comes to Vulcan
performances and there's Leonard Nimoy and then daylight before anybody else.
Of course, Ethan Peck is doing an incredible job in Strange New Worlds,
and I'm very impressed, you know, blown dear, old Zachary Quinto away,
but Tim Russ has always been on that.
Ah, he's okay; he's all right.
Oh my gosh.
That moment of him transitioning and that smile
Kevin: smile,
ugh.
Rob: coming in.
I went, mwah!
Chef's kiss.
Kevin: I agree with you, it's hard to beat classic Nimoy, but Tim
Russ here is having fun with it.
There, there are plenty of Vulcans where you can see the actor struggling
against the challenge of portraying a Vulcan in a energetic way.
And Tim Russ has mastered the craft so much, he is batting
it around like a ball of yarn.
Rob: He is swimming in the deep end and he is backstroking his
way through this incredible work.
And it's the whole double bluff as well there going, Seven of Nine throwing
a curve ball and getting that right and then throwing another curve ball.
We didn't expect it to be a curve ball and then the shift
Kevin: You know what I caught is that the music lied to
Rob: The music did lie!
It did brought in, oh,
Kevin: all of the music stings we talked about last week set us up for
a deception here this week, where as soon as the Voyager music played,
we were like, great, it's fine.
The music's telling us what's true.
No, the music was
Rob: So are you saying Terry Matalas is a uh, is a Changeling as well?
Kevin: He is at least as plotting as a Changeling.
Rob: It was very manipulative after all, like the heavy, especially
last week, because every shot of a ship, how about that music?
How about this music?
And you go, okay, we'll do it again.
And everyone goes, okay, we're safe and secure.
Now the music's playing.
Boom.
That's what you get.
That is some hardcore manipulation right there, which I'm all for.
Kevin: A highlight for me was the sequence of scenes with Geordi and Data and Lore
and, Geordi pouring his heart out in order to get to Data and Lore playing
with him, but then like grudgingly admitting, Ooh, that's powerful stuff.
Rob: It's what the fans have really been waiting for, isn't it?
We've had, especially with season one of Picard, it's focused a lot on,
obviously, Patrick Stewart's connection with Brent Spiner and also that
relationship between Picard and Data.
But really most of the heavy lifting, especially, and that's, and that
plays out in the movies as well.
But in the, the TV series, it was the double act of, Geordi and Data.
I know I'm coming from a less well versed knowledge of it, but
it was always that double act and Picard was in the background.
So I always felt it a bit disingenuous how they focus so much on Picard's loss.
I'm there going, what about Geordi?
Geordi was the one who, they'd go on adventures together, scrapes,
they'd go into the Holodeck.
So to have this moment where you see LeVar really bringing all
the LeVar, you know, was amazing.
Like him tearing up and going, you made me a better man, a
better person, a better father.
The loss of you even inspired me.
And you go, wow,
Kevin: loss broke me.
Your memory, put me back
Rob: Beautiful, beautiful.
Any out of any other actor that would come across as trite and a bit.
Kevin: Oh, it was borderline.
You have to be a fan to buy into it, I feel like.
If you haven't, if you haven't enjoyed that relationship, at least in the TNG
movies, I don't think you're buying
Rob: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I bought it just, I think because I believe so much in LeVar Burton.
I'm not sure if you are a Community fan.
Have you ever watched the TV show Community?
Kevin: I've seen an episode or two.
I'm not a fan.
Rob: There's a particular episode where Donald Glover's character has
a massive love for LeVar Burton.
And Donald Glover's character Troy just, just wanted a picture of him.
He didn't want to meet him because you can't disappoint a picture as he says in
the script screaming at this one point.
And so very much the Shaw relationship with Geordi I've been reminded going,
oh yeah, it's very much Troy and LeVar Burton is very much Shaw and Geordi.
Kevin: Shaw very much faded into the background, this episode.
He was not given much to do and what he was given to do was pretty ineffective.
I had to
Rob: He got, he got the, he got the crap beaten out of
Kevin: He got stomped.
After he came onto the bridge and collapsed on the floor,
one of the heavies, like vaporize a Starfleet officer.
And for a second I thought it was Shaw bought it, but he was still
writhing around on the floor.
Rob: is so much love for Shaw going online at the moment, and so much,
people demanding a Legacy or a Titan series with Shaw and Seven of Nine.
But yeah It all seems lost.
There was a little bit of interesting stuff with Jack hitting on Sidney
and reading, and so this is a development where we come into a bit
more of what's going on with Jack.
We haven't found out everything, but that was the big
Kevin: biggest thing that's bothering me about Jack is that his eyes keep
glowing red and nobody notices.
I, I assume now that that red glow is metaphorical.
It is there as a signal to us, the audience, but it is not meant to be taken
Rob: Do not take it literally, no.
But now he can get inside people's minds and manipulate their body, which is a
Kevin: We're still hearing the occasional whisper in his head as
well, but I think they've pulled way back on that because any more would
probably be tipping their hand of what the ultimate reveal is going to be.
And it feels like we're right on the precipice of it here at the end of this
Rob: Well, that's the big cliffhanger, isn't it?
You know, Vadic's pretty much saying, let's have a look at, what
this Jack Crusher is all about.
Kevin: But the whispers we're hearing are still saying
Connect us, bring us together.
And that, along with him being able to now read people's minds and even
get inside of Sidney's body to remote control her in a fight, which I
have to say that was like pure genre nonsense, but I was here for it.
It made for a fun fight scene.
And we don't get many fun hand-to-hand fight scenes in Star Trek anymore that
give us something we haven't seen before.
Kudos to the creators for finding that.
I enjoyed
Rob: I tried to tone down on my Kevin Yank, trying to explain it.
We're there going, well, he's picked up the gun and he's firing, so is he
firing as well so that Sidney fires and,
Kevin: Yeah.
And sometimes he's facing the same way as her and sometimes he's
mirroring her and it, it doesn't quite work, but that's okay.
It, It was enjoyable.
Rob: kind of cool.
Kevin: Yeah, I don't know where this season is going and I'm, I have to
say, I am really getting worried that ultimately this reveal of who
is the big bad behind the big bad, like who's Vadic's boss, I am really
worried that's gonna be disappointing.
What's going on with Jack, probably two sides of the same coin.
And I am like, thinking of what we're seeing from Jack, the only
thing that it connects to in my mind is something like the Borg.
And season two, as we know, ended with quite a change for the Borg.
We're told the old Borg are still out there somewhere, but now there's
Alison Pill's Borg that are guarding this portal into who knows where.
And they told us somewhat incredibly that was being dropped
as a storyline after season two.
We may come back to it someday, but that's not what season three is about.
But the more we get of these whispers and that what's wrong with Jack is similar
to what's wrong with Picard and his brain, and maybe that was connected to
his assimilation by the Borg, I can't help but suspect that they're trying to
pull one over on us and where this is all going is connecting back to the Borg.
Rob: Yep.
And I would be there going, oh, I think you're reading too much
into it, but we were manipulated by a piece of music today.
Yeah, Matalas is doing everything in his power to play us like an old fiddle.
Kevin: Not that I dislike the Borg, but I just feel like we have been to that
plenty of times so far in this TV would be nice to find something new as a launching
point for the future of the franchise.
Rob: Look to, to paraphrase the Simpsons gag about the original cast Star Trek
movies, Star Trek 20, So Very Tired.
And it's all and it's, and it's all animated, fat versions of everyone.
It goes Klingons on the starboard bow, captain.
And James T.
Kirk goes, ah, again with the Klingons.
Kevin: So yeah we know Jack belongs somewhere and it would be so much
better to show you than just to tell you where it is, and that Jack is time
for you to find out who you truly are.
I, I hope in the first 30 seconds of next week's episode, we find
out that the veil is lifted and we get to deal with the consequences.
Rob: He's a Borg.
He's a Borg, right there.
Figure it out.
Join, reconnect with the Borg.
Kevin: But besides like Vadic being scared of her mysterious boss,
she had a lot to do this episode.
I feel like this was the showcase for Amanda Plummer's acting.
We got tons of like closeup face acting and long monologues and
her explaining her motivation.
How did you how did you respond to all that?
Rob: Oh yeah.
And there's some classic Amanda Plummer stuff in there.
I don't, I haven't mentioned it before, which I can't believe, Amanda
Plummer is phenomenal in pretty much one of the only two good Mike Myers
movies, So I Married an Axe Murderer.
She, She is in that and she
Kevin: Is she the titular axe
Rob: Well, spoilers up ahead.
So, so, so, I don't know how invested you are in seeing it, but he marries
this woman and they fall in love.
But then Mike Myers starts to find out that she's got all these potential
ex-husbands who've disappeared and possibly gone in mysterious circumstances.
And Amanda Plummer plays the oddball sister.
And then right at the end, you find out it's the sister who's killing all the
Kevin: Unbelievable that Amanda Plummer could be the secret murderer.
Rob: And as she does all the extreme Amanda Plummer stuff,
but set in a Mike Myers comedy.
So all the stuff that she does hardcore in, whether it be Star
Trek or in Pulp Fiction, here it's cranked up to the ridiculous level.
So there was a little bit moments of that, and there's a line she
goes where tick tock goes the clock.
Kevin: Can't you hear that?
Tick-tock, tick-tock goes the ancient clock.
We're out of time.
Rob: And that, that, yeah.
Beautiful.
Incredible.
That has reminiscence of a scene in Hunger Games Catching Fire, the second one, where
she appears there and she figures out that the Hunger Games arena Is a clock.
And she goes, Tick tock, tick tock goes the clock.
And so it very much connected me to that.
And so when I saw her doing that, I saw 150 different variation performances of
Amanda Plummer and it's just incredible.
Kevin: Apart from all of that, which I agree with, I'm just tickled
anytime Star Trek uses the word ancient to refer to our present day.
The idea that a clock would go tick tock is ancient.
Rob: Yeah, and they did it all the time in Voyager.
They did the whole thing of oh, this old Yeah.
Ancient Earth or this antique and and I'm there going, this, it's
only a couple of hundred years ago.
We don't refer to like the Elizabethan era as ancient.
Kevin: Stone age.
It's stone knives and bearskins.
Rob Lloyd.
Rob: The future in Star Trek has sort of like condensed.
Ancient is ancient Egypt.
Ancient Rome, 2000 years ago, not like 500 years ago.
Come on.
It's getting cheaper.
The term ancient is losing its value.
Kevin: We have the good cop, bad cop routine that is picked early by Vadic and
Picard and Crusher do, I think, a pretty poor job of attempting to interrogate her.
Their opening gambit is, we'll tell you everything we know and everything
where we don't know, and ask you nicely to fill in the blanks for us.
Rob: It's yeah it's quite a bad form.
Kevin: It was very much exposition for our benefit, I felt like.
It was for the audience, just in case you aren't on top of what is the question we
need an answer to, picard and Crusher are going to recap their half-baked theory,
I'm tipping, about what the Changelings want with Picard's body and Jack Crusher.
It seems obvious to me that that is at most half what they have figured
Rob: Yeah.
It can't, they can't gone to all this trouble just to use the DNA as a key.
I think that would be a disappointing thing.
Kevin: And Vadic's reaction seems to sell that.
She's like, really?
That's what you think?
Okay.
I'm not telling you any different.
Rob: A lot of focus on the weaponization of a virus.
I think Vadic says, your first instinct was to go to genocide.
Kevin: What a beautiful twist or revisiting of Star Trek history through a
very valid lens, but one that I've never heard raised before, that I think us in
the audience, right along with Picard here tell ourselves the story of how
Starfleet ultimately did the right thing at the end of the war and saved the day.
And they deserve congratulations for being forced to provide the cure for the
virus that they they let loose themselves.
Yeah, it was lovely to hear the war told through Vadic's point of view.
And I think the only part of it that I could like, that I personally disagree
with is that, that she framed it as we were barely out of the gates of war
and your Federation turned to genocide.
And I think, I think the genocide cop is right.
The barely out of the gates of war, like the Dominion was not treading softly.
Rob: And they were well and truly a couple of years into this conflict
before they went, we've had
Kevin: There was not a lot of restraint from the Founders
in their approach to the Alpha
Rob: Look, it's all relative.
Sure, two or three years may seem out of the gate as opposed to like
the Hundred Years War, or conflicts that rage on for decades and decades.
But it's all, yeah, it's all very much perspective.
And especially that gives weight, especially within, the first time
they've found this new variation, Beverly Crusher's going, all
right let's find a disease.
Kevin: Yep.
Rob: Plan's wipe 'em out.
I'm
Kevin: She flags it out nicely though.
Like she says, I'm a little worried that right now our best plan is a little
too close to genocide for my liking.
And Picard goes we don't have any other options, so let's just see
if this is real or not, and then we'll decide whether to use it.
Rob: And that's what I've been mi I've been missing this whole
for, you know, for decades.
And it seems like I dunno about you, but I've been incredibly frustrated since
Deep Space Nine finished, and Voyager, we've just always been going back.
So we had Enterprise go back to the past.
We had the reboot of the classic universe with the movies.
We had Discovery.
We had Strange New Worlds.
And we've been crying out as a fan base to going the world of Star Trek was in
such a brilliant place with the Voyager Next um, uh, Deep Space Nine era.
We don't, we haven't explored the consequences of that to the world.
And even with Picard season one and two, they didn't really do
much in the way of explore that.
But this is a deep cut.
This is a deep exploration of going, history is written by the winners and
what, how is that history perceived now?
And maybe, maybe it only could be explored decades later, now, as
opposed to if they'd done it straight away, might have still been in
that whole we did the right thing.
Kevin: Yes, it is a leap forward or it is moving forward from where
we are, but I think from where we are is the critical part as well.
You look at Discovery's great leap into the future and as tantalizing
as a blank slate that they're so far into the future that there is
the context of the past is no longer relevant and they can create anything.
It's a complete blank slate.
That did open some tantalizing possibilities.
Hits and misses on the board as a result.
But what Picard is doing here is moving into the future,
using the past as a springboard.
And there's no more poignant example of that than right here at the start
of this episode that the place that the Titan is hiding, is in the Chin'toka
Scrapyard, which is the Chin'toka system, was the site of the most
vicious battles of the Dominion War.
This is where Nog lost his leg at The Siege of AR-558.
It is like immersing ourselves in the recent past and then using that as a
springboard to the future rather than just going, okay, sweep the table.
We're starting from scratch.
Rob: No, I totally agree.
It's great to see that analysis, that reflection, that
evaluation of what has happened.
But I don't know if that reflective nature would be as effective if they did it in
the early noughties as opposed to now.
There seems to be a lot more, so much time has passed and they can
look back on it with that realistic eye of, what that actually means.
And reflective going, Yeah, they did jump to genocide.
Was that too soon, too, yeah.
And was it all just rapidly tied up in a bow in that format of procedural
sci-fi television in the late nineties?
Kevin: Project Proteus, I said it was Section 31's worst plan yet.
Just to confirm, my understanding is their plan was we are in a war with
the Changelings, an implacable, nearly undefeatable foe, and our plan is
going to be to capture some of them and make them more dangerous so they
can fight for us for some reason.
Rob: It's a classic hubris of humankind in sci-fi.
So it goes all the way back to Frankenstein and all that type of
stuff of humankind dabbling in powers that they should not, when
it comes to the world of science.
Are they playing gods?
All that type of stuff.
And that's a clear example of going, yeah, they're trying to weaponize
them or, take advantage of them.
And life finds a way.
Kevin: The prop business in the flashbacks of freezing the little puddles of
brown goo and then chiseling them apart or blasting them with a blow torch.
That was all pretty effective for me.
I was like, yeah, that looks like it hurts.
That looks like evil being done.
Rob: And you kind of allude to it back in Deep Space Nine when Odo
describes, we talked about this before with uh, Shaw describing his situation
as in like Quint's scene from Jaws.
In Deep Space Nine, he talks about his time, how he was experimented
on and because they didn't know what he was or if he could respond.
And so he had that traumatic relationship with his, the doctor who who went
through all these procedures with him.
And now we see that other end of it where they know what they are and they're just
experimenting how far they can push it.
So it's interesting to see it from, through that lens of how it
was done 25 years ago, and how it is done now through a modern eye.
Kevin: Speaking of Odo, there was another like glancing reference
to Odo that one of our own had to steal the cure to deliver it to us.
And they, again don't name check him.
And it's, I'm wondering that it's starting to feel conspicuous now
that they won't say the name Odo.
And I'm wondering is there an in universe explanation for that or an
out of universe explanation for that?
Do they have to pay the estate of René Auberjonois residuals
if they mention his name?
I wonder.
Rob: What?
That would be an amazing deal if he figured that out.
Probably that's why we haven't got any new action figures of Odo.
I've been crying out to get my Odo action figure.
I don't, I think they only released one back in the early days when
Deep Space Nine was first released.
Kevin: Keep slipping off the shelf, though.
Rob: Of course, of course, and nobody wanted to pick up the bucket.
I mean, apparently kids just didn't wanna buy a bucket for their toys.
Kevin: It feels to me like they want to keep Odo in the past, and if
they mentioned him by name, it would be pulling him into the present.
And for new fans, they would be like, hang on Odo?
Who's that?
I have to figure that out.
And they don't want us to get distracted by Odo.
At the same time, they want to honor him by acknowledging him as
Rob: Of course.
So just doing the tip of the hat of going an old friend or a member of our
you know, alliance went in and found it.
Kevin: So ultimately the bridge is taken over.
I have to say, I was like, especially on second viewing, it is very weird
that they do not do anything to protect the ship against that takeover.
Like once they are in the turbo lift on the way to the bridge, and the
people on the bridge are saying, are they gonna take the bridge?
No way they're taking the bridge.
That is the time to deploy the security lockout.
Rob: Yes, but it's not, it's not a full crew.
It's only a skeleton crew, cuz most of the crew were transported
off on Ro Laren's ship.
But yeah, it's very much a case of you can see the plot points coming
through going, ah, we need to get to the point where the ship's taken over.
So all those procedural techniques that a federation
ship would go under, forget that.
And, oh, here we are, Amanda Plummer's the captain, now.
Wave.
Wave of the hands.
wave the hands, wave of the hands.
Here's a cliff hanger.
And see you next week.
Bye-bye.
Kevin: In research for today's episode, I watched a few different examples
of ships being taken over, and Riker, I have to say, way back in TNG, was
very quick on the security lockout.
Like unfamiliar alien beams onto the bridge and shoots a phaser.
Riker is diving to the floor and saying computer lockout command functions.
There was none of that here on the Titan.
And uh, I guess, uh, Starfleet is just getting pretty lax
in its security measures.
Rob: Well, it's getting towards Frontier Day, so they're all just, focused
on that, oh, that's how Rome fell.
Kevin: Are you ready to jump into our examples of ship takeovers?
Rob: Very much so.
Kevin: I've got a TNG and I've got a Voyager.
Rob: Excellent.
Well, I've got a movie and of course I want Deep Space now.
Nine.
Kevin: Oh, well hit hit me with a movie.
Rob: Oh, we're go, we're gonna go with First Contact.
We have talked about First Contact before, but for me we will focus on
that element of, literally the ship is assimilated by the Borg and taken over.
And that B plot of the movie, it is divided into two sections, which they
get that balance quite right, of that endearing, cute, funny story of trying
to inspire a man to take his place in destiny and history up against the body
horror and almost alienesque sequences of trying to stay alive on the ship.
But the whole ship is just taken over from the inside, the wiring,
the architecture, the crew all taken over and it's um, horrifying sequence
of going from level to level and locking out and trying to stay alive.
But that was my first choice.
I instinctively went to the Borg taking over the Enterprise.
You'll be able to fill in what letter It is.
Kevin: That was the E.
Rob: The Enterprise E.
Kevin: Whenever I think of the ship takeover of the Borg in that, I go
straight to one scene and that is the one where the Borg are taking over
the ship deck by deck, but the crew is still on the bridge and it's that
feeling of like warfare in the corridors.
And Worf comes on the bridge and he is looking, he's looking shaken.
He's got his phaser rifle, and he comes to Picard and he basically
says, look, we're losing the ship.
It's time to make the call.
And Picard is in denial.
He is not going to surrender to the Borg again.
And he, he sends Worf back into the belly of the beast.
He says, Worf don't let them take the ship.
Go back.
And you can see Worf go, what?
That order doesn't make sense.
But he's not going to admit he's afraid.
So he, in a beautiful acting turn by Michael Dorn, he takes the
order, he prepares himself to go and walk into certain death.
And then Lily says, hang on, let me have a word to Picard in the conference room.
And we have, the line must be drawn.
Here we have, we you broke, we have you broke your little ships.
We have the Captain Ahab speech.
It is beautiful.
But that pivotal moment of we are losing the ship, but it isn't lost yet.
So poignant.
And that is what I think of.
Obviously the high point of that movie is that moment of choosing whether
we're gonna lose the ship or not.
Rob: Yes.
And especially for Picard at this point, he would have in any
other situation, without a doubt, go, yep, let's just get off.
But because of his connection with the Borg and what that means, and he's felt,
he has been violated by this species.
And he just, like he said, he wants to, it has to stop no matter.
And it's, he's thinking irrationally and he needs the wonderful work of Alfre
Woodard, just to snap him out of it.
Kevin: Yeah.
Real good.
I'll tell you about my TNG one.
So this is rewinding the clock because it's prior to that movie in the timeline.
But this is an episode we talked about recently in connection to Ro Laren.
It's season six, episode seven.
Rascals, the one which starts with a bizarre transporter accident that
transforms Picard, Ro, Guinan and Keiko into their childhood selves.
Rob: O'Brien's Keiko?
Kevin: As in O'Brien's Keiko.
Yes.
Rob: What an odd, wonderful collection of characters there.
Kevin: Yeah, they're coming back from some symposium or something, and Picard is
super excited about his piece of pottery that he found in the archeology exhibits.
And yeah, they're all nerding out on the shuttle on the way home, and it flies
through, a distortion of some kind.
It breaks up the shuttle and they get rescued at the last moment
by the transporter, as kids.
And it's never actually really explained where that distortion came from.
It's just one of those things.
Rob: What are you gonna do?
Kevin: Freak accident.
We're kids now.
It's fun to watch the different characters.
Picard is in denial.
He is I'm still Picard.
I'm a 12 year old boy, but I'm still Picard.
So he leaves sick bay as soon as he can make an excuse and goes to the
bridge and starts issuing orders and watching the crew, even Data go, really?
I'm taking orders from a kid now like, enjoyable scene.
Ro, Ro never got a chance to be a kid, and is bound and determined not to have fun.
She's like, this is serious.
We've had our bodies violated.
I am not going to have fun.
And Guinan is trying very hard to make Ro have fun.
Guinan of course, wants to enjoy every minute of it.
And in a beautiful seduction scene, Guinan talks Ro into jumping
on the bed, and it's great fun.
Rob: It's interesting because of the age discrepancy as well, because Guinan is
like a timeless, centuries-old being,
Kevin: Yeah.
Rob: they're all just converted to
Kevin: year olds.
Keiko goes home to Miles and is worried about losing her family.
She's afraid and she snuggles up to Miles, and Miles is freaked out.
He's like, I will not snuggle with a 12 year old girl.
And she's like, Miles, I'm your wife, I need comforting.
And then she goes in to their daughter Molly, who wants a bedtime story.
And Molly doesn't recognize her.
She says, I want my mommy.
And Keiko is devastated.
And watching like Miles come around and comfort her and go, I don't
know how we're gonna figure this out, but we'll figure it out.
It is lovely character moments.
That ultimately is the heart of this episode.
But the plot of this episode is that very inconveniently as we are dealing
with this mystery and the captain of the Enterprise is out of commission,
the Enterprise is ambushed by two Klingon Bird of Preys, who it turns
out are being captained by Ferengi.
Ferengi board the ship and take over control of the Enterprise.
Riker is quick on that security lockout, so the Ferengi can't do anything with the
Enterprise, but but there is a Ferengi captain sitting in Picard's ready room
poking at his fish tank, and the ship is effectively commandeered by Ferengi.
The fun of this episode then comes from the four childrenized crew
members plotting, how as children can we take over this ship?
And so they play tricks on the Ferengis with remote control cars and
steal hypo sprays from the sick bay.
And Captain Picard as a 12 year old boy, throws a tantrum demanding his daddy,
which is Riker and gets Riker to unlock the school room computer so that Picard
can can trap all of the Ferengi with the
Rob: There's a lot of Freudian stuff in there.
Kevin: I think for me the scene that I remember from this episode
about the capture of the ship is ultimately Riker pretends to give
in to the Ferengi's demands, and the Ferengi captain says, great.
Now you will explain to my officer exactly how to unlock and use the computer.
And Riker sits down and gives the Ferengi first officer a tutorial in
how the Enterprise computer works, and half the words are made up.
He says, okay, here are the bilateral kellelacterals, and this
button is the ferromantle drive.
Don't touch that.
It's very dangerous.
And the Ferengi does not want to admit he doesn't understand any of the, of this.
He's like, don't treat me like an idiot.
I'm not stupid.
And Riker goes, oh, of course not.
I wouldn't even think.
So I, I think that is a recurring trope that when enemy crews take
over a Starfleet ship, often they don't know how to run it very well.
Rob: course.
Kevin: is their undoing.
Rob: Yeah.
kind of like with Star Trek First Contact where we had an A and B plot, but
they're literally in different locations.
This is where the A and B plot, you know, clash.
So it's not just an invasion of the ship, it's the invasion of the ship
plus we're dealing with the 12 year olds and how the 12 year old versions
can actually help solve that problem.
So that's a very clever way of doing it.
Kevin: The most economical example of that pattern of the invaders can't run
the ship properly is when the Klingons board the Enterprise in Star Trek III and
they don't understand that the countdown on the bridge is a self-destruct.
Rob: Then we get John Laroquette Klingon Blown up.
Yeah.
Get out of there.
You're making me wanna watch it again.
What are you doing here, Kevin?
Kevin: It does have Christopher
Rob: It does have Christopher Lloyd.
He is so good in that film.
Kevin: Get out!
Rob: outta there!
Kevin: What's your second takeover?
Rob: My second takeover is a gonna span over a couple of episodes because it
is, yes, we have mentioned it a little bit in previous episodes, but it is the
taking over of Deep Space Nine during the Dominion War by the Cardassians.
Kevin: it is.
Rob: The final episode of season five, barnstorming season, episode 26
of season five, Call to Arms where.
It's a race to get everything in line, the Dominion, the minefield all around.
It's locking off the the wormhole and just the oncoming storm of the Dominion.
You know, they've been signing non-aggressive treaties here and
there and everywhere, and the Klingons and the Federation are just trying
everything in their power at that last ditch effort of who stays and who goes.
Kevin: The feeling of inevitability of you can hear the bootsteps
coming over the hill and, uh, nothing you do will matter at this
Rob: The invasion is coming.
And it's those wonderful, powerful moments where a sci-fi show can connect
with reality and the real world.
That's when sci-fi is so much a, a potent form of storytelling.
If we just go, oh, it's pure escapism.
No, we can connect in with some deeper themes there.
And, the sacrifice at the end, Jake stays on board and Sisko cannot go back.
Rom is there,
Kevin: Who else stays?
I have memories of people like crawling through the ventilation shafts and stuff.
Who else was there?
Rob: Kira definitely has to stay.
And Odo definitely stays.
Rom stays and and of course Quark is there.
And Jake stays to be a reporter.
And of course uh Rom becomes an insider.
Kevin: It's a beautiful um, setup where after these five
seasons of Starfleet running the station, suddenly they're gone.
And what's left behind are the people that were there more
or less from the beginning.
And we get to see how even without Starfleet there, they are changed.
They have become the resistance and they are, they're standing up
for what Starfleet created there.
Even when they're gone.
There's something powerful about that of seeing the impact when Starfleet
isn't there to keep it going.
Rob: It is that chilling sense of the diplomacy that has to happen where you
see, at the end of the episode, the representatives of, of the station.
So you have Odo chief of security, you have Kira and you have Quark there,
quite formal, waiting for the doors to be open for their invaders to come and take
over and go, welcome to your station.
And it's a powerful chilling moment of formality and civility.
Kevin: How quiet it is in the end that the, the takeover of the station
isn't in a blaze of phaser fire.
It is a quiet greeting at the airlock door.
Rob: And a defiant promise with a baseball being left behind on the desk.
Kevin: Yeah.
I love it.
Rob: It's a this world that we have been connected to, which is the ship
which has become this character as the Enterprise has, as Voyager did as well.
But it's a different type of feel, you know, as we said, the Enterprise
and all that type of stuff are going to new places, whereas the station is
this melting pot of species from all over coming and going and arriving.
Who's the next guest sci-fi version of the love boat.
Kevin: We live with that renewed occupation for a while, too.
It's not reversed in one
Rob: No, no, that's the end of season five is where we are left
with that for three to six months.
And then we come back and they stay with that for about six episodes.
So we're right in the heart of Dominion fighting and give and take and who's
joining and who's leaving and who's dying.
And the ship is in Dominion hands.
So this is fully, arc based narrative story structures all
over, long form storytelling being introduced into the Star Trek
world long before anyone else has.
That, that nineties revolution of arc storytelling and long form storytelling
is really on display here in those later years of Deep Space Nine.
Kevin: I wonder if they'll have the courage to do something
like that again, where takeover lasts longer than one episode.
Like we've just had Vadic take over the Titan.
What's your read of the odds that she will still have control of the
Titan by the end of the next episode?
Rob: the thing, isn't it?
Gone are the days of 26 episodes in the season.
We are, 10 episodes is seen as, Oh gee, that's a lot.
So that storytelling is now condensed to a point where, she's got the ship and
she'll lose it by the end of next episode.
I'll be very surprised, cause we've got eight, we've got three episodes to go.
So if they keep that going for another three episodes it's all gotta be
tied to Frontier Day, all that stuff.
Yeah.
Yes, it's a sad state that television has shifted to the point where
so you can't have those long arcs of, that was six full episodes.
That's a fair chunk of the opening chunk of your season is all
dedicated to this is the new norm.
And you start after six episodes, you're there going, is this gonna
stay on for the whole season or, yeah.
Yeah.
And so it's that case of, in a lot of these episodes, the invasion happens
in one episode and is gone, like with Rascals, like with the movie.
It happens.
But this is, was our safe space for five seasons and now for the
opening six episodes, it is not ours.
It's a great, powerful moment of of unsettled storytelling of what we know.
And of course it's all returned back to them in A Sacrifice of Angels.
Kevin: I'm going to take us for our last stop into Voyager.
Voyager at its most uneven, pre pre Seven of Nine Voyager.
This is, This is the cliffhanger finale of season two, season two,
episode 26, Basics, and season three episode one, Basics, Part II.
This is, at the height of the Kazon threat during their journey home.
This is also Seska's swan song, so at this point in Voyager history,
Seka has been revealed to be a Cardassian spy among the Maquis.
She has fled Voyager to join the Kazon.
She has stolen and impregnated herself with Chakotay's DNA.
And this episode opens with her sending a distress call of my Kazon lover has
discovered that this child is not his and he's going to do something terrible.
Chakotay, come and rescue me please.
And Chakotay is understandably suspicious, understandably conflicted
over whether this is his problem.
But as they did in nineties television, at the end of the day,
the crew of the Voyager stood up for the innocent child and ran to its
rescue straight into a Kazon trap.
The Kazon descend on Voyager, take control of it, and immediately land
the ship on a primitive planet, disembark the crew and fly away.
Rob: That's right.
That's right.
And the like.
There are big worms or snakes on that
Kevin: There are big worms.
There are volcanoes, there are cave people with spears.
There's all of the above on this planet.
Yeah.
And they are, they strip their communicators straight off their shirts.
They are left with literally nothing.
It is, thus the title back to basics.
Yeah.
That is the cliffhanger is we are marooned here with no hope of rescue and we need
to make camp, find water, find shelter.
Certainly it doesn't get much grimmer than that, but of course very much like
the skeleton crew left behind on Deep Space Nine, there are a few rays of hope.
The Doctor is still on board, a Betazoid crew member Ensign Suder,
who was in a previous story.
He was also from the Maquis crew.
He was a sociopath who took pleasure from harming others, and he
murdered someone on board Voyager.
So he starts this episode in solitary confinement in his
quarters, trying to redeem himself.
He's working with Tuvok to improve himself through mind melds.
It's like an early example of what came later with Seven of Nine
and that relationship with Tuvok.
He's creating a hydroponics bay in his quarters to try and help feed the crew
and redeem himself, and he is left behind.
He is like pure psychopath, and the Betazoid black contact
lenses only made it worse.
But that plays into this story is that like you, you find him untrustworthy,
but ultimately he helps save the day as, as like one of the last two people,
including The Doctor left on the ship, he is crawling through the vents.
He's using his old Maquis tricks to hide his life signs from the sensors.
And they plot to sabotage the ship to spite the the Kazon crew that is once
again trying their darnedest to make sense of the ship that they've captured.
There's that whole thing of, oh, it broke again.
I thought we had fixed that problem.
And Seska's the only one that understands what's happening is sabotage.
Rob: Of course, and the actor is of course Brad Dourif, who's, um,
Kevin: Ah!
Rob: Wonderful Brad Dourif who was in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
He was the original voice of Chucky.
Done incredible, incredible film work.
And yep, if you can't get Crispin Glover, you get Brad Dourif
Kevin: Uh not likable, but it's a career.
Rob: He's, he has made a substantial career being someone
Kevin: Yes.
Rob: kill you and take joy in it.
Kevin: So yeah.
The other person who's working for the return of Voyager is Tom Paris.
He flies away in a shuttle at the height of the ship battle and is presumed
destroyed, but we never quite buy it.
He comes back with the cavalry the Talaxians who he went and
brought back to rescue the ship.
And ultimately the actual time spent with the Kazon running
the ship is pretty minimal.
A lot of the focus of these episodes is on the planet with the marooned crew.
What goes on the ship is a pretty small, like psychological drama.
Suder wrestling with the fact that he had almost healed.
He had almost found peace in himself.
And now to rescue the ship, he has to kill Kazon.
And his final blaze of glory as he like storms main engineering and kills eight
Kazons with phaser blasts and manages to disable the phasers just in time to,
so that the Talaxians are not destroyed, and he's shot in the back by a Kazon and
dies, sacrificing himself for the ship,
Rob: Yeah.
Kevin: what he does best, murdering people.
Rob: If you learn to do something well, do it as best you can.
What?
No.
Yes.
Yeah.
And that's one where it literally happens.
They go, yep, okay.
The ship's gone.
You've lost it.
That is something, again, the always, I always come it's like a brick wall that
always hits me with Voyager it's just the case of they had a chance to really
learn from the Deep Space Nine element of storytelling where you can do these long
arcs that go over, but they just keep on returning back to that reset button of
Kevin: Yeah.
Give them credit for the cliffhanger, but this was post Deep Space
Nine or late Deep Space Nine.
I'm not sure exactly where the overlap was, but I think the lesson was truly
learned about what was working in Deep Space Nine, and where Deep Space
Nine went to a season cliffhanger abandoning the station, they did
not reverse it first episode back, but Voyager definitely reversed it.
First
Rob: Straight away.
Straight away.
Go back.
So there's always that case of there's this real sense of doing
something different with okay, Star Trek, where all those infinite
possibilities are now limited.
Resources, crew members, supplies, all that type of stuff.
But they never fully explored it.
They always did a hand wave
Kevin: The opportunity of all of those characters stranded in that helpless
situation, we could have gotten to know them in new ways that we never did before.
But it was so mechanical, plot driven.
The don't go into the cave, you'll get eaten by a lizard.
We'll have to cut off our hair in order to start a fire.
Like that is the stuff they spend their time with.
And they never actually sit around that fire and discover each other as
people, helpless without technology.
The opportunity that they missed there was incredible.
Instead they created this threat of the primitive culture.
They couldn't speak their language and they have to come together in shared
struggle against the lava flows.
That is the human drama that
Rob: Yeah, it's the external.
It's the external as opposed to the internal.
Always.
That was always the brick wall that I'd hit up against when it came to Voyager.
It was so tied into that past of that procedural process of a
show, when it could have really explored some exciting stuff.
Kevin: The other thing on repeat viewings does not hold up in Basics, is just the
fact that the Kazon land the ship on the planet in order to disembark the crew.
Like you could have just beamed them down, but instead they do
a whole landing sequence and then a whole takeoff sequence.
And it's very dramatic watching Voyager fly off into the sky without our heroes.
But none of it is justified.
And the landing sequence with the Kazon captain 30 seconds after commandeering
this unfamiliar Starfleet ship is sitting in the captain's chair calling the shots
for the landing of like reverse thrusters and stabilize the environmental systems
like he knows the landing sequence for Voyager, which makes it all the more
unbelievable later on when they are duped because they don't realize that the ship
is being sabotaged beneath their feet.
It all just does not hold well together.
Rob: No, it is that case of yeah, they're on the other side of the galaxy, so
that believability of technology, ships, all that type of stuff would be in a
completely different possible process.
But now it's similar but not similar enough.
Yeah, it gets a bit murky and they didn't fully commit to
what they were venturing into.
Kevin: So I'm not necessarily gonna recommend a rewatch
of Basics for our listeners.
I think Rascals would definitely be my pick of my two.
Rob: You've brought it up twice now and I'm there going, yeah.
It's time to get my Rascals on.
And if Jean-Luc Picard does go Oh-tay, I'll be very.
Kevin: It's not far off.
Rob: And of course I highly recommend Call to Arms and then the the one
where they get Deep Space Nine back, which is Sacrifice of Angels, which is
Kevin: Hmm.
Rob: two incredible stories.
Kevin: Yeah, for sure.
Thanks Rob.
It's time to go find out where Jack belongs.
Rob: Yes.
And whether the vines or the roots will connect to him or not.
Kevin: He has a vineyard waiting for him, I think is what we're led to believe.
He was not meant for Crusher and Picard.
He was meant for Chateau Picard.
Rob: Exactly.
And hopefully he can create a sweeter wine.
Kevin: See you around the galaxy, Rob.