Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
https://youtu.be/ElNac_s3yJo
Matt and Sean talk about letting Klingons be Klingons in Star Trek Starfleet Academy Season 1, Episode 4, “Vox in Excelso.”
Matt and Sean talk about letting Klingons be Klingons in Star Trek Starfleet Academy Season 1, Episode 4, “Vox in Excelso.”
- (00:00) - - Intro
- (02:02) - - Viewer Feedback
- (08:37) - - Today's Episode
- (09:50) - - This Time in History
- (12:07) - - Episode Discussion
Follow us on X: @byseanferrell @mattferrell or @undecidedmf
★ Support this podcast ★
Creators and Guests
What is Trek In Time?
Join Sean and Matt as they rewatch all of Star Trek in order and in historical context.
Sean Ferrell
In this episode, we're going to talk about how we like to Klingon and on and on and on. That's right. We're talking about Vox in Excelso, episode four of Starfleet Academy, season one, aired on January 29th, 2026. Welcome everybody to Trek in Time. This is the podcast that follows Star Trek in chronological stardate order. We started watching way back in Enterprise and we've made our way forward since then so we've moved back and forth in real time to talk about fake time, it's kind of hard to to think about, yeah anyway. We paused our rewatch of the original series, which we are currently in season three of, and we did that because the brand new series Starfleet Academy is airing now. So we're visiting these episodes and then once this is over, we'll return to our original series rewatch and move forward from there. We hope everybody who's joining us here for Starfleet Academy might want to join us for the original series as we return to that. So please subscribe. Before we get into the discussion about today's episode. Who are we? Well, I'm Sean Ferrell. I'm a writer. I write some sci-fi. I write some stuff for kids. I write some horror and with me as always is my brother, Matt. He is that Matt behind Undecided with Matt Ferrell, which takes a look at emerging tech and its impact on our lives. Matt, how are you doing today?
I'm doing really well. How about yourself?
I'm doing okay. Although I will admit to not knowing what's going on in my home, which for some reason feels like it is colder inside than it is outside. I am practically sitting on a space heater. So if anybody sees smoke, please let me know. Before we get into our conversation about Vox in Excelso, we want to take a look at the mailbag and see what you had to say about our most recent episodes. Matt, what did you find for us this week?
Matt Ferrell
Well, Sean, feedback on Starfleet Academy is pretty mixed. There seems to be a lot of negativity about the show. There's a handful of comments that are all of a theme, and this is not all of them, but like Dan Sims wrote, rough second episode, but I'll stick with it. Even Bad Trek is still fun to watch. Jason Dunn wrote, I'm going to keep watching, but still wish they could do better. Billy Bob wrote, Modern Star Trek is dead. film threat even held a funeral for Star Trek because of the Kurtzman Trek, which is really harsh. And good old Mark Loveless, Mark wrote other episodes are available at this exact moment I'm having trouble finding a reason to even watch them after watching the first two I may be tapping out and just reading the Wikipedia plots and listening to you guys suffering on about. Well basically why huh really so there was a lot of you know, I understand it, I understand this is not the trek we're used to yeah. Nut then we have HappyFlappyFarm who wrote I enjoyed the episode sure, compared to Strange New Worlds its rough, but compared to the Original Series, the first two seasons of Star Trek Next Generation and Enterprise, I think it has chemistry and great acting I agree with Matt. I would love to see them lean into the comedy like Lower Decks does. I think that actually kind of hits the nail on the head a little bit for me. I think it does. Yeah. It's like, I think we all as Star Trek fans might have a blind spot for just how bad some of the previous shows have been. Yeah. Because they got so good. Yeah. We forgot how bad they were. Yeah. We need to cut some slack to new shows like this to let them find their footing and figure things out. I agree.
Sean Ferrell
I would weigh on on that to say, I think that there's some kind of psychological impact when something that you enjoy, you enjoy so much that it flavors everything else of that thing, regardless of whether it's true or not. And I think that it's very easy for us. I know I do it. Reflavoring memories around things that I legitimately did not enjoy simply because it is a part of a thing I do enjoy. So we carry that with us and then a new thing comes along and we're told this new thing is going to tap into that same energy. But because it's new, we take it at face value for the first go around and it will take time for it to become a part of the larger hole in our memories. It takes time for it to become part of the nostalgia and the nostalgia clobbers it when it comes right out of the gate and it makes it impossible to judge it. And I think that there's in our previous conversations about some of the most recent episodes of Starfleet Academy, I think that one of the things Matt and I are trying to do is to judge both it as Star Trek, but also it objectively as a thing that was made a TV show objectively. Was it well-written, well-acted, well-directed? And that for me is where like episode two kept falling short for me because I kept saying like, this feels like it was a first draft of a script. It doesn't feel like it, it doesn't feel like it makes sense from a storytelling perspective. So I think that HappyFlappyFarm really lands. I agree with you. She hits the nail on the head. It's better than we give it credit for. It's because of the newness that we judge it poorly. But when you compare this, I mean, there's a lot of people out there who defend Enterprise. And I remember at the time watching Enterprise and feeling like the naysayers who are talking about Starfleet Academy at the time of original broadcast, I was like, what is this? They don't know what they're doing. So yeah, I completely, completely, uh, appreciate that comment.
Matt Ferrell
There's also a little nuance to the show, I think is trying something different. Yeah. To attract a new audience. Yeah. Star Trek, if they kept just doing Star Trek, the way Star Trek is done, the audience is going to get smaller and smaller and smaller and they have to open up the doors. I was listening to the film cast, which is a movie podcast. I absolutely love. And Devendra on that, on the most recent episode was talking about this. He said his wife is a Trekkie. So they're watching this. And he said, I am not a Trekkie. I've seen a handful of episodes of the original series and stuff like that, but I am not a fan. He said, I'm really enjoying this episode. It's scratching an itch for me. It's a lot of fun. And it's like, there you go. It's getting a guy who would not call himself a Trekkie to watch Star Trek. So it's like, there's a reason why they're doing what they're doing is to try to open it up to new audiences. But the last comment I want to bring up is from Babarudra, who wrote, well, that's annoying. After watching the pilot and watching you guys talk about it, I realized that I hadn't seen Discovery to know about The Burn. So instead of moving forward with Starfleet Academy, we started watching Discovery to get a better grasp of the backstory. I sure hope Star Trek Starfleet gets better. But if Star Trek has taught us, or at least me, anything, it's that inconsistency is part of the brand. Yes, Babarudra. But then said, on a side note, I'm kind of surprised that you're doing Starfleet Academy now, if you're watching the shows in Stardate order, wouldn't this be after everything else? And the answer is yes. This literally takes place a thousand years after everything else. So this would be the very last thing we'd be watching. But the problem with that is this episode, these episodes are dropping now. It's current. People are watching and talking about it. And if we didn't do it now, we'd be talking about this in 10 years. So it's kind of like, we're both going to be watching the show now. So let's just talk about it now.
Sean Ferrell
Yeah, that's the, I mean, the, the hubris of the podcast is that we could possibly talk about all of this in specific chronological stardate order and remain consistent to do that would be to ask nobody to make anything new. So we don't want to do that. And so we land in this sort of awkward spot of we're doing it in chronological start date order as much as possible. But yeah, thank you, Babarudra for hanging on for as long as you can. Yeah. And now that flashing light, that klaxon in your ear that's not you needing to dive the submarine deep below the ocean waters, it's in fact the read alert. It's time for Matt to read, well guess what Matt? It's actually a wikipedia description, it's the first sentence of the multi-paragraph summary and I thought well when you boil it down this first sentence really does do the job it does everything.
Matt Ferrell
Okay. Klingon cadet Jay-Den Kraag learns that his family may have been killed in a starship crash on their way to a refugee camp. Holy cow yeah that's a good summary yeah.
Sean Ferrell
There you go, I was like thank you for that. That does a pretty good job. So today we are talking about episode four of Starfleet Academy, this is the newest series on Paramount. It is obviously based on Star Trek by Gene Roddenberry, created by Gaia Violo. Showrunners are Alex Kurtzman and Noga Landau. And it stars Holly Hunter, Sandro Rosta, Karim Diane, Kerrice Brooks, George Hawkins, Bella Shepard, and more. Vox in Excelso is the episode that dropped on January 29th, 2026. And what was the world like at the time of original broadcast? Well, Matt, we're apparently in, I pronounce it DeJoe, but I'm not sure that I'm saying that right. Apparently this is Djo’s era because people keep going back to DJo for their streaming of the top songs. So take it away, Matt. Yes, go ahead.
Matt Ferrell
I actually have listened to this because it keeps coming up. I was like, I got to check this out. So listen to it. It's not bad.
Sean Ferrell
It's kind of fun. All right. So take it away, Matt. You're right. That was a lot of fun. And at the movies, January 29th, 2026, the movie Mercy was the number one film. Also at the top of the box office was Avatar, Fire and Ash and Zootopia 2. Mercy is the Chris Pratt, AI minority report thriller that I'll admit doesn't look very good to me. Nope. But it keeps itself bouncing along at the top of the box office. So apparently they got something right. And among streaming TV shows, his and hers starring John Bernthal and Tessa Thompson ranked as the top show on Netflix. Also in recent release is Bridgerton season four, part one premiering around now. And it is the return of the wildly popular sexy period piece about royal families and who's sleeping with whom. And it feels like every time I walk into the living room, somehow it's on the television. And in the news, top story of this day, January 29th, 2026, nervous allies and Fox news, how Trump realized he had a big problem in Minneapolis. President Trump often blusters his way through a crisis, refusing to back down. Minneapolis tested the limits of that strategy. It is a deeper dive along with several other articles around the ongoing turmoil in Minneapolis, which included the shooting of two US citizens by ICE and President Trump's response to those crises. And now to our discussion about this episode. Vox in Excelso. Matt, we, I say this almost every week, we try to do a back and forth. Who takes a turn this week? Who takes a turn that week in responding? I believe I responded first last week, so I'm going to leave it to you. What did you think about this episode?
Matt Ferrell
Well, don't know if you're going to agree with me on this, but I like this one. I enjoyed it. My wife really enjoyed it. I think this is the best episode so far of the season. That's not me giving it a stamp of approval, saying, this is the best Star Trek episode I've ever seen. It's for the show. This show, this is the best one so far, in my opinion. It had a good balance of humor, drama. It did something I was hoping they would do and not repeat the sins of Discovery where they don't tell us anything about the secondary characters. This show is clearly an ensemble piece and they focus on the Klingon of the group and I was so happy to see that. it had vibes for me, Sean. It scratched an itch of the Worf of it all. Like, I always enjoyed the Worf stories of Next Generation and how much they kind of like fleshed out the whole Klingon species and their culture. And this felt like it was doing the same thing. It was fleshing out the Klingon culture after the Burn and they're in a situation where they have no homeworld, so they're refugees. And so it's, it was interesting how, seeing how that culture of the warrior has to evolve when your home is gone. Yeah. And you're prideful and all that kind of stuff. I thought that was a real fun exploration of the Klingons in this state. It felt new and interesting, even though it's a species we know everything about because of Worf. And then on top of that, it was just a fun, it was fun to see how the characters of the show have bonded and how the different characters of the show were trying to help him, but nobody understood how to help him because Klingons are so unique in how they react to things. So I really enjoyed all the strings it was pulling. I mean, at a high level, I give it high marks. I think it was pretty good.
Sean Ferrell
I completely agree with everything you just said. I ended the episode feeling like this was the best of the series so far, if it continues to follow in this vein I'm fully on board with the storytelling they're doing. I thought it did, we talked about uh or you talked about briefly the idea that a new audience could come to this and I felt like what a great episode, to have enough for the trek nerd in me to be able to just like gnaw on a bone and feel like, yeah, I get the, I get all these references and what they're talking about, but also you don't need to know any of that. You come in and there's the species and there are the Klingons and this guy is a Klingon and his people have no home world anymore because of a thing called the Burn, which they haven't gone into deep for us either. So tragedy, homeless, effectively refugees and Starfleet's trying to debate like, how do we help these people who keep refusing our help? But if you know the series, if you know the deeper lore and you're like, this goes back to Kronos was destroyed by overmining back in Star Trek Six and throughout the next gen era, all of that was their second home world, an adopted planet that here comes another calamity that unseats them again. Like you think about them as a people, it becomes the metaphor of what the Klingons represent has changed so dramatically from the original series where they were just basically stand in for like Eastern influence. They were cold war, Eastern influence threats, literally painted to look like Genghis Khan. And now they've turned into the next gen, took them through a whole Japan infused like feudal system incarnation. And now we see all of that turned into this kind of refugee diaspora, which as a series for Star Trek to demonstrate its flexibility to deal with the realities of the eras in which it is in, you had Cold War, Eastern influence. It's dangerous. It's other. It's just threatening and it doesn't need to have any greater details. Here come the Klingons. Star Trek Next Generation. Okay, it's, the Cold War is not the main focus at this point. We're more interested in, do you remember when Star Trek Next Gen came around? It was during the Japan is going to buy up the US scare. So the feudalization, the Japanization of the Klingon storytelling fit with what was going on in the culture at the time. It was a, what is the danger here? We don't understand the motives of these people. They act different than us. We can't anticipate what they're going to do because their driving force is different. So that fit the mode of that moment. For them to do that again and turn them into the refugee diaspora, which right now you can look anywhere on the planet and you're going to find refugee diaspora everywhere. Everywhere. And it is a nightmare scenario for everybody. The suffering of the refugees experiencing that moment, the burden of the people trying to help, the burden of the people who want to say, no, we won't help. The shutting of doors, the opening of doors, the refusal of help, all of that is going on right now. We're seeing it play out in this story because it is happening everywhere around us. And I thought, how do they thread the needle in telling that story around these fictional people and still maintain Klingon-ness, which at this point is so baked in as a result of what happened with the Klingons through multiple movies and the Next Generation and decades of stories around that now that you can't just wipe that away. And I found myself watching these new Klingons effectively who without a home planet, the house system is now very, it felt very compared to the Klingon infighting that we're accustomed to from next gen seeing house system effectively used as this is, this is the best we got. This is our, like, this is our model for how we hold ourselves together is in a house system that isn't built around caste. It's around just like bureaucratic management. And I love their introduction of their leader. Yes. I loved his backstory with the chancellor. The fact that the two of them were clearly an item at one point that she made some offer a hundred years earlier that he was like, it's been a hundred years and you still can't handle being told no. I loved their scene where he was this diplomatic, polite, there was no drinking of blood wine in a dark room where like all the
Matt Ferrell
other Klingons are still Klingon bashing their swords, there was none of that, but he was Klingon,
Sean Ferrell
he was sitting there and he was just like you and I used to have a thing and you are still super attractive to me. You haven't changed a bit. I look a hundred years older, but you are gorgeous. And clearly in the moment, if she had just said like, screw all this talk, let's just go to bed. He would have been like, here we go. And I loved it. It was fantastic because he was Klingon. And for him to be treating, like talking in the way he was and saying diplomatically, you can't handle being told, no, I got to go. I thought that was fantastic. And then you see the parents on the planet who are coming across as more of the Klingons we're accustomed to the sort of like hard living, but it's living off the land. It's a kind of subsistence living that we're not accustomed to seeing. And it's not conquest, but it is, it's personal conquest. It's the personal challenge of survival. I love the storyline around having having the headmistress of the school have to help interpret klingonese to Jay-Den, it's such a wonderful story of perspective I loved it.
Matt Ferrell
Wonderful story of perspective yeah. I'm just shifting that perspective of it looks like he was being abandoned because he had hurt his family but just like his brother his father actually was helping him.
Sean Ferrell
Yeah.
Matt Ferrell
It was like,
Sean Ferrell
he knew who he was. He was like, I want to keep you here. I want you to be around it. In order to be around, you need to be a warrior. You need to do this thing. You can't do it. You don't want to do it. It's not who you are. I get that. You just demonstrated in this moment, you've drawn a line and said, you're on the other side of it. I get it. And in order to allow you to do that, I need to do this.
Matt Ferrell
The symbolic, it's symbolic gesture of still being a warrior. It's symbolic gesture of still being a warrior and having your honor at the end of it, is what it was all about. And I just like how it neatly that tied into the whole a plot storyline with trying to get them a world that they were refusing to take as a charity but if you make it so that they quote fight for it and they win, it it's like there you go so it's again it's like it's like a charade but it's yeah but it's everybody knows what's going on.
Sean Ferrell
Everybody knows what's happening, everybody knows and the fact that yeah they didn't talk about it they didn't they didn't, I love the fact that it wasn't a conversation behind the scenes. Like the whole thing with the next gen storyline is we got to be in the room where it happened. We get to see the chancellor sit down with Picard and say, I can't trust my own generals. I don't know who here is, I've been, I've been being poisoned. I don't know who's behind it, but I know I'm dying and I need you as an outsider, you can come in and you can fix this. Here we see the inverse of that, where the Klingon is like, I'm not going to give you the in. You have to understand me without me saying it, because if I say it, it won't be genuine. And if it's not genuine, this all falls apart. I'm the only thing holding them together as a leader. And if they don't have me, what happens to these people? So he can't give her the in. I loved that it was once she understood, oh, this is how we have to play this out, that the battle was instantaneously on both sides show. It was performative. Flying around, lots of phasers being fired, and the call out of shields at 95%. There's no damage. The Klingons aren't trying to blow anybody up. They're not trying to blow any Klingons up. Okay, we surrender. So you can have this planet. All for show. It's the fleet that pulled into the Japanese harbor from the United States and shot a cannon into Tokyo to say, we're landing. Your borders are now, you're now going to meet with us because up to that point, Japan had been refusing to have any conversations. So you have this moment of this is, this is a battle and one of us is going to win and one of us is going to lose because this is the only way the conversation actually starts. And yeah, for that to be the gist of this episode, I thought, wow, they really did thread that needle. I didn't know how they were going to do it. How did they stay Klingon? And when it got there, I found myself thinking this was the best written episode so far because it really did manage to surprise me. I didn't know where the conclusion was going to come from.
Matt Ferrell
I also found the, the plot of the kids super emotional and touching. like how Caleb really wanted to help Jay-Den, but he didn't understand the difference of why Jay-Den was being the way he was. And there was that, there was a scene with the kids when they were told they were going to have to do this debate. And the doctor said, we're not going to talk about the Klingon diaspora for obvious reasons. And Jay-Den's like, no, we are going to talk about it. Everybody's talking about it. There was what the doctor said, I thought was, was just like, this is one of the reasons I love the doctor character, because he says stuff like this. It's when he said, you better be perfect. This is a tragedy. Don't compound it with ignorance. He said it to the entire room. It was like, he is, it's like, I just, I don't know. I love the doctor being on this show because he's such a compelling character and him having the wherewithal and the knowledge to understand this is a touchy thing and point blank saying to the kids, don't screw this up. Like this is something we can't compound with ignorance. I thought that was a wonderful sentence that just kind of like hit me. Like I got a ton of bricks.
Sean Ferrell
And it's, and it's a metaphor. The entire class is a metaphor for how political discussions are taking place in this country right now and globally right now. Everybody is reading the other side as wrong because of stubbornness, or wrong because of an inability to grasp basic facts instead of looking at where is that other side right now? Where are they? How do we meet them where they are to be able to have the conversation? That's the point of this episode is meeting people where they are not coming at it from a, well, once I give them the 10 things I've got in my head, then clearly their logic will follow me. Like that's not how it works. That doesn't, that's not how you win an argument. It's not how you win a victory with the other side. It's not how you, that's not how mediation works. Mediation is not once you hear my facts, you'll understand I'm right. That's, and this episode does a beautiful job of demonstrating all of that. And, and the relationship between the two friends, the fact that he's like, I, Jay-Den says, I don't have a brother. And then by the end of the episode, he's like, I mean, I know you're as close to a brother as I have right now. And I thought that that was a remarkable and lovely scene. I felt like the episode did a really nice job, too, of giving Caleb a bit of focusing on his character. There's been a bit of, you know, he's kind of a superhero. He can do everything really well. But I really like the fact that they leaned into, he's an instinctive and brilliant debater for a very good reason, living the way he did force that out of him. You want to talk about that for a moment?
Matt Ferrell
Yeah. Like he talked about like how they, they pointed out how he basically is good at the memorization and getting the facts and the figures to be able to debate, to kind of be able to stand out and to be able to kind of keep ahead. But he doesn't understand the kind of emotional undercurrent and subtext to everything that he's memorizing. And so I thought that was a really nice kind of play of, he's still brilliant at debating, but he's kind of like a bull in a china shop a bit, the way he goes about it. And so he completely misses the mark. And so here's this superhero character that is flawed. And I thought that was a really nice kind of like way to kind of turn how he's appearing so far on his head a little bit and giving Jay-Den a chance to kind of like look like the more put together one versus Caleb. There is something else I want to point out. It's like, I'm so happy that there's focusing on different characters now of this ensemble. I cannot wait for an episode that focuses on Sam. I so want them to focus on Sam because this episode, I love how childlike she is. And every scene she was in, she looked like somebody who's experiencing life for the first time and is just giddy about everything. She's always like clapping and like, oh, this is amazing. This is amazing. Every scene, she just looks so excited that that thing is happening, whatever it is.
Sean Ferrell
When she got up to debate and she was like, hi, Caleb.
Matt Ferrell
Yeah, she's like, hi, Caleb.
Sean Ferrell
We're going to do this now. Yeah. I find her very charming. Yeah. Yes.
Matt Ferrell
That's what I'm saying. To me, she's Data. She's the doctor from Voyager. So it's like, I just want them to do something with her. Like, she's charming. But please, let's get her character kind of like fleshed out. Let us see some growth for her as well. And you know, it's going to come. I just hope it happens this season and they don't plan on a season two to give her time. I hope they give her time soon.
Sean Ferrell
I agree. And like the writer part of me can't help but start to spin out what I would like to see, what I think would be fun to see. And part of it for me is I would like to see that one of the great things about the doctor was that he showed up fully formed with the argument being he had a function. And once that function was complete, he was supposed to be turned off. There was no intention to let him run nonstop and that he was a curmudgeon simply because no personality had been designed for him. He was effectively a curmudgeon because any kind of bedside manner or niceties of social interaction were not a part of the original design. So you didn't need him to be charming or funny or like any of those things. So what you see now is after literally hundreds of years of a program running and designing itself effectively. I would like to see the opposite of that revealed about Sam. I would like to see that Sam chose this personality, that Sam was designed that the way that these holographic beings come into being is with the moment of what personality will you be? I think that that would be fascinating because there's no reason why a young holographic being would be childlike. And I would love to see a story that somehow unearths that she chose to be this way and why. And I, cause I think it could be deeply emotional to have it revealed that for certain reasons, logically this computer system that is the holographic entity landed on the best way for me to interact with humanity is to be childlike and what that looks like, and maybe even what that looks like when that's removed, do we see a version of Sam in an episode where that doesn't work, it breaks for some reason. That's the writerly side of me that's just like that would be the story I'd want to tell and I can't help but be very curious about where they'll go with that because I think it'll be a lot of fun.
Matt Ferrell
What did you think? I'll tell you what I think first, but like, I'm curious what you think about the, is it Darem or Darem? It's the George Hawkins character. He's the guy that can change his composition. There was just, I thought a very touching scene between him and Jay-Den where he taught him battle breathing. Yeah. It was a nice evolution of that character as well. The way he was, he's been this cocky, rash kid who's now finally kind of opened up to the group. And so he's feeling more comfortable with them and he talks about this battle breathing. So it's like whatever his race is and the species that he's from, we're learning a little bit of a glimpse into them that they're clearly kind of a warrior kind of group too. But that whole sequence I thought was incredibly touching because of how much it meant to Jay-Den of it helped him, helped him focus. It helped him kind center himself. Um, and then, and then of course, Darem in the audience during the debate, just doing that, like you got this kind of a thing. I thought that was very nice.
Sean Ferrell
Yeah. They've had a nice evolution. Exactly. As you point out, I think that they've done that kind of drip, drip, drip storytelling across episodes that allows for that moment of, he in this episode couldn't do this. If it hadn't been for the previous episode where he had his failing as captain. Exactly. So the, the genie is out of the bottle for him. He can go and be a vulnerable person and say like, here's this thing that helps us be prepared in that moment. And I agree with you. I found it very touching. It was this calm version of warrior preparedness that was not Klingon. The Klingon version of that was all the flashback sequences around the fire where everybody's brashly singing and they're clanging their mugs together and they're having their Klingonish moment. And Jay-Den is the one who's sitting there and just like feeling awkward in it and not quite feeling a part of it and wondering why he's different. And all of that pulls him out to literally the one flashback where it's him recalling the moment of loss of his brother, where it's within the flashback, it effectively is a hallucination where he's standing there looking at his brother near the fire. And then the brother is gone because everybody has left him. So within that flashback, it's literally a representation of, I was never within the circle. I was never there. And I felt like that moment of the breathing, the thing that stood out to me, those two actors were standing nose to nose. Like the directing in that moment, I felt spoke volumes while being so silent. I was like, they are so close to each other. It's such an intimate moment that it's almost, it had an element to it where it was like are they gonna hug, are they gonna embrace, because it was so closely shot and I'm like it's indoors, it's inside the ship, everything is closed in, they're super close together and the flashbacks are all open sky at a distance apart from each other. The only honesty that comes out of Jay-Den in the flashbacks is when he's alone with his brother. Because everything else is him silent but he's not breathing and then here with this friend he's in that moment of, I can breathe here so all of these layers of the like the symbolism and how it's all constructed, I felt like it was all so consciously done and really beautifully done. I'm, I keep going back to like this is episode four yeah you don't get to episode four without the previous three and I feel like they earned it, except for episode two. Episode two, I like a lot of the fandom I feel like out there is just like holding on to the bad hangover from episode two, we talked about it last week. I went into episode three feeling like I was struggling with actually watching the third episode because the second episode had such a bad taste. And I feel like there's a part of me that's like, oh I wish they could have done something else to like make number two like you. And I talked about it could it just have been a 90 minute pilot and make it part of the first episode, then this would be episode three we were saying wow they're really knocking out of the park, one was good, two is a little bit better, three really great. So like I'm glad we got here, I'm glad four is as strong as it is it makes me hopeful that I don't think they're all going to be necessarily this great, I'm reminding myself like this is the first season. But so far I'm finding myself like, I'm a fan of.
Yeah they made an episode two Sean, they could make another episode two.
They could absolutely make another episode two and I'm reminding myself of that and, but I'm finding myself in a place where I'm really glad I like this show as much as I do because it's yeah, me too. It's working for me. So viewers, listeners jump into the comments. Let us know what you thought about this episode. Do you agree with us that it's a good sign or did you find it lacking in some way? We look forward to hearing your thoughts. As you can tell, we always try to incorporate viewer and listener feedback in the program and keep it in mind when we have our conversations. So please jump into the comments, like, subscribe, share with your friends. Those are all very easy ways for you to support the podcast. If you want to support us more directly, you can go to trekintime.show and you can join there to send us your support directly. Doing so will not only help make this podcast happen, but also will ensure that you will be signed up for out of time, our spinoff show in which we talk about other things that don't fit within the confines of this program. Thank you everybody for taking the time to watch or listen. We'll talk to you next time.