153: Star Trek TOS Season 1, "The Conscience of the King"

https://youtu.be/svz5nD0rz74

Matt and Sean talk about eugenics, military dictatorships, and aging in Star Trek: The Original Series. Has this episode held up over time or not aged well at all?

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Creators & Guests

Host

Matt Ferrell

Host of Undecided with Matt Ferrell, Still TBD, and Trek in Time podcasts

Host

Sean Ferrell 🐨

Co-host of Still TBD and Trek in Time Podcasts

What is Trek In Time?

Join Sean and Matt as they rewatch all of Star Trek in order and in historical context.

In this episode of Trek in Time, we're talking about being a good dad. That's right everybody, we're talking about Season 1, The Conscience of the King, Star Trek, the original series. Episode number 13 in shooting order, and this is not likely to happen again. Number 13 in broadcast order. Who saw that coming?

Welcome everybody to Trek in Time, where we're watching every episode of Star Trek in chronological stardate order. We're also taking a look at the way the world was at the time of original broadcast. So we're currently looking at the original series, which means we're also looking at 1966. And who are we?

Well, I'm Sean Ferrell. I'm a writer. I write some stuff for kids and I write some sci fi and I write some sci fi for kids. Like the recently released The Sinister Secrets of the Fabulous Nothings, book two of my middle grade adventure series. I hope you will be interested in checking it out. 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. And Matt, how are you today?

I'm doing pretty good. It's been a good week. Good weekend, although hot, but how are you doing?

It is hot. I am dealing with it as best I can, which is not super duper well, but today hopefully is going to be a low key day, maybe with some ice cream and not a lot of walking.

And hopefully that'll help me manage. Before we get into our comments and conversation about the Conscience of the King, we always like to take a look at the mailbag and see what you all had to say about our previous episode. So Matt, what have you found for us this week?

First comment from our last episode, Miri, from PaleGhost69, Bonk, bonk, take Kirk to naughty Horny Jail.

I think the meme made this episode better. Yes. Followed up by AJ Chan with, Why is there a mirror earth? Because you and I talked about like, it made no sense why there was a mirror earth. AJ Chan wrote, Why There was an alien species who captured humans between the 19th and 21st century in order to clone the whole planet.

We see parallel Earths like Miri because of this. We see the effect of these aliens in the Enterprise episode, North Star, Next Generation, The Royale, and Voyager episodes, The 37s, and One Small Step. The latter includes Phil Morris as the commander of the, of Ares IV. Uh, I thought that was pretty good.

That's a good explanation. Of course, they weren't thinking about that when they wrote this episode. It was kind of retconned into being that. Yeah. But it is kind of fun to think about it from the point of view of viewers who saw this for the first time versus all of us who are steeped in Star Trek and we can kind of explain this stuff away.

I love that explanation. It's pretty fun.

Yeah, I think it's, I, and I completely see where that comment's coming from, where you're talking about. I, I think that from a nuts and bolts, why was it done? I have a feeling somebody was like, we have to get people to care. So from a writing perspective, I think they thought they needed to lead the viewers into, Oh, if it could happen to this alternate earth, what if it happened here?

And then needing to awkwardly leverage your audience into caring about something is, it really kind of like shown a really, in a really bad way. So yeah, there's the nuts and bolts of it. And then there's, I like the retconning.

Then there's a kind of, not to bring the episode down here, Sean, but about Miri.

Cause we've talked about Grace Lee Whitney and the awful stuff that happened to her on the show, sexual assault kind of stuff. Yes. Uh, Sam Higdon wrote, I just want to let you guys know that the stuff with Grace Lee Whitney happened during the Friday wrap party for the filming of Mirri of that episode, which is horrible.

Um, considering weren't her children in that episode?. That's a context

that's really awful. Yeah. That's awful. Awful in any regard. And then finally, yeah.

And then finally for the, what is this next episode about? Wrong answers only, Conscience of the King. Uh, Cattleman wrote, The Enterprise encounters an alternate reality where Tolkien's final book deals with Aragorn having second thoughts about destroying the Ring.

Spock, disguised as an elf, must convince Aragorn otherwise. I'd watch that crossover.

That almost sounds like a next generation holodeck episode. So that noise you hear in the background, as usual, is the read alert, which means it's time for Matt to tackle the Wikipedia description. Matt, take it away.

While visiting an old friend, Kirk suspects a Shakespearean actor may actually be the murderous former governor of Tarsus IV, known as Kodos the Executioner, where Kirk grew up. Kirk invites the acting troop aboard the Enterprise to investigate. Spock discovers that there had been only nine people who could have identified Kodos, but seven of them were murdered when the troupe was nearby.

He is certain that Captain Kirk and Lieutenant Riley, the only remaining witnesses, are the next targets. That description is actually not exactly right, because it wasn't Kirk that actually suspected, it wasn't his friend that suspected, but Let that go.

This episode directed by Gerd Oswald, written by Barry Trivers, originally aired on December 8th, 1966, and we have a lot of the original players.

We have William Shatner, of course, we have Leonard Nemoy in this one, DeForest Kelly. And in guest roles, we have Arnold Moss as Anton Karidian, also Kodos. We have Barbara Anderson as Lenore Karidian, Bruce Hyde as Lieutenant Kevin Thomas Riley, back once again, and gone once again. This is the last time we'll see Lieutenant Riley.

We also have Bill Sargent, Natalie Norwick, Karl Bruck, Marc Adams, and Eddie Paskey. And what was the world like at this time in history? December 8th, 1966. Well, I don't have to tell Matt that Winchester Cathedral by the New Vaudeville Band was the number one song in the country. Matt, take it away.

I'm going to have to cut you off there, Matt, because if I let you keep singing, I'm going to make you sing the entire song. And number one in the box office, we've talked about this movie before, The Professionals, which was the Burt Lancaster, Lee Marvin, Robert Ryan, Jack Palance, and Ralph Bellamy film about a group of aging Cowboys going on one last job.

It is an excellent film. I highly recommend it for anybody who likes a good Western. And when we compare Star Trek to other television series on the air at the time, we of course are talking about a show that earned roughly a 12 on average in the Nielsen ratings. It was up against shows like My Three Sons, Bewitched, and The Dating Game.

The number one programs on the air at the time trounced the 12 that Star Trek was earning. Shows like Bonanza were getting nearly a 30 in comparison. And we've worked our way through a number of programs as we've reached now the 13th episode of Star Trek, which means we are talking about another show that earned a 22.

There were a bunch all clustered together that earned a 22 rating, and this week we're talking about the Lawrence Welk Show and the Lawrence Welk Show for those who do not recall, was an American televised musical variety show hosted by a big band leader Lawrence Welk. The series aired locally in Los Angeles for four years, from 1951 to 1955, then nationally for another 16 years

on ABC from 1955 to 1971, followed by 11 years in first run syndication from 71 to 82, the repeat episodes are often broadcast in the United States by PBS. There are 1, 065 episodes total. And I am excited to announce that Matt and I are starting a podcast in which we are going to watch every episode of the Lawrence Welk show, talk about it in context and share news from the time of original broadcast.

The reason we're doing this is because I feel, and I'm sure I'm speaking for Matt as well when I say this, I feel like I have seen every episode of the Lawrence Welk show because whenever we visited our grandparents, it would be on TV. Yes, it would. Stop the bubble machine, Sean. Stop the bubble machine.

It's, it is this program. I'd like, and I mean this in all seriousness, was a huge cornerstone to American culture In comparison to and in contrast to the counterculture movement, what was considered questionable pop culture and pop culture that was pushing the limits of propriety more and more, the Lawrence Welk show filled the living rooms of people like our grandparents who just wanted what was dubbed because of this program, champagne music.

This is the quintessential background music in an airport, in a restaurant, in an elevator. And in the news on this day in December 1966, the New York Times reports on a 25th anniversary commemoration of the attack on Pearl Harbor, which included the presence of the Japanese pilot who led the invasion.

I've never heard this story before. I found this incredible to read about. The gentleman who led the invasion was after World War II, he converted to Christianity and he applied to become a US citizen. He visited Pearl Harbor, did not want any kind of notoriety around his presence until after everything was done.

And his name was Mitsuo Fuchida. And during the invasion, he had given a signal from a flare gun as they were flying over their target. The signal was misinterpreted by the pilots who he was leading, and the invasion went from being a more targeted one, to being one of effectively full scale, As quickly as possible attack with the belief that they had been spotted.

So the original attack was apparently supposed to be a more targeted and surgical strike to cripple ships. But the misinterpretation of the signal from the other pilots who thought they had been spotted turned it into the all out, just ravaged destruction of the port and the sinking of the ships.

I found that a incredibly, um, moving, moving aspect of the story. On now to our discussion about this episode. And I just really quickly want to share some like big picture thoughts about it and then get your response to, to those. And we can take the conversation wherever it leads us. But, I found myself, this is an episode that when I was a kid, I always bemoaned it being on because to me, it didn't feel like Star Trek.

And now as an adult watching this, I thought, no, this really does feel like Star Trek to me in a way that it didn't when I was a kid, but it doesn't feel like television to me. It feels more like a stage play. The performances, it is a morality play. It is performed within the context of Star Trek as if it is a play.

And then there are the plays within the plays. And of course it is also a named after a line from Hamlet, which includes the play is the thing to catch the conscience of the king. The play within the play within the play, which this is a very theatrically, writerly teleplay. It is a theatrically performed

performance from Shatner and the guest stars, especially Kodos, especially the woman playing Lenore. And I find myself watching it thinking a lot of this is dated and yet I found it captivating. I found it well rendered and I, there is very clearly a, yeah, there's a bad guy in the episode. But the bad guy gets an opportunity to make some arguments in defense of himself that doesn't explain away his bad choices, but humanizes him in an interesting way.

And we're left with a morality play about the evil that people do being passed on to their heirs because Kodos has not been driven mad, but his daughter has and I found the whole thing very, it's not Twilight Zone, it's not Outer Limits, it's more of just like a, a one act play put together to play with the ideas of guilt and responsibility and the madness that we bring to the world by not facing the consequences of our actions.

And, I found it really, really engaging on this watch through. How did you feel on watching this? And how did you feel, let me also open the door to you, how did you feel when you were a kid watching this? When this one would come on the air, like me, did you go, Oh God, roll my eyes. This does, this one doesn't have any Klingons or phasers in it.

I would skip this one.

Um, it's part of the reason why I was, the first third of this, I was like, This is an episode? I don't remember this episode. It was like, I was completely like, I didn't remember a thing about it. And then when Kodos came on screen and we start seeing the play on the ship, it was like, Oh, Oh, Oh, I remember this.

I remember that. I didn't know. I did not like this as a kid. I'm with you to a certain extent, Sean, that this is a morality play. This is a one act thing. I never felt like it wasn't Star Trek. I just thought it was boring as a kid. As an adult. I like what they were trying to do in this. They've, there are four lights.

Um, they've done a bunch of episodes like this on Next Generation and all the shows that are very, almost like a play. Um, especially that four lights one, which with Picard. Yes. Um, which is one of my favorites. Next Generation. Yeah. This I don't think it's a good episode. Uh, not only is it dated, I think a lot of it is poorly written and there are other scenes that are extremely well written and the acting, even though it's stage acting, is still good acting.

Uh, it's a, but a very dated style of acting. Yeah. So I appreciated it from a certain point of view, but this episode to me was just so stupid. It was just so, it was stupid. It was, why, why, why does he have to kill? We find out it's the daughter. It's not him. But like, why are they assuming that like at one point, Spock, Mr. Logic Man says that if Riley dies, that means the captain is next. And I was like. Uh, no, Riley could be alive or dead, the captain is next. It's like, if they're killing all the people that can identify him, has nothing to do with Riley being alive, why would Spock even say that? It was just dumb. And then it's like, ugh, Sean, uh,

I'm kind of enjoying watching you lose your mind here. I just, the entire setup, the whole, the whole, Construction that creates the tension is dumb. I thought it was the dumbest construction. What happens because of that construction, I thought was good. Does that make sense? Like, yes. So what we're seeing, like the acting and the scene between Kodos and Kirk, I was riveted

I was like, this is, this is, I love morality plays. I love this. They're taking different points of view and like, like logical arguments against each other. And he's making his case for why he's a villain and why it made sense. And it's like, I was just eating that up. But the whole construction of the cage that's supposed to hold this all together was just dumb, dumb, holy crap, it was dumb.

They could have done such a better job pulling it together. So for me, I do not like this episode. And if I was, if it came on TV again, I would just skip it. And it has nothing to do with that. I found it boring. I just find it dumb. Just like, I, there was just so many of those. I hate to do this. Like I've pushed my glasses up.

Well, that doesn't make logical sense. If I was a character in that situation, I wouldn't do that. It was like, there's a whole bunch of that, this episode where it's like, it's all so contrived just to get to those really great scenes. And it's like, you had great scenes, but the, the, the glue that holds it all together is just cracking and falling apart.

So for me, that's why I did not like it.

Yeah, I don't disagree with anything you said. And when I say I found myself captivated by it, I was captivated by the bullet point of the scenes that worked well with good acting. And then there are passage, like you mentioned the Kodos scene between Kodos and Captain Kirk.

I thought that that was terrific. Um, I like the scenes with Kirk's friend who ends up being the one to say like, I think I've spotted Kodos and the dinner party. And I thought that like, that was kind of like some set pieces more than having good moments were just kind of interesting tone showing the captain wandering through in a way that we've become accustomed to seeing like,

ten forward, Riker walks in, he goes and orders a drink, he wanders over to a table where Worf is sitting. And it's kind of casual, and you're not quite sure where the scene is going yet. You don't get a lot of that in the original Star Trek. The original Star Trek is a lot more by the numbers, it's like bang, bang, bang.

Like, moment to moment, you'll cut from one scene to another, the camera's already on somebody who's talking. And it's like the pace is kept and this has a little bit more of a slowness to it that is unusual for the original series at this point. I appreciated those atmospheric moments, the dinner party, the discovery of the friend's body outside,

when he's on the walk with Lenore, I found most of the scenes with Lenore hard to get through. Um, I felt like they were both doing good acting, but I don't think they were given anything that was worthwhile. I found Kodos a far more compelling actor or a character to, to watch. Um, I found the Riley of it all very distracting.

It felt very convenient to have a character who's only been in one other episode come back, but it does have in it one of my favorite all time Images of the attempted murder, the murder weapon being used. I absolutely love that it is a glass of milk and you see a hand wearing a rubber glove with a spray bottle come in and just go pump

pump and then pull out. I'm like, they thought this was compelling television.

That is amazing. So I had written in my notes of like, Oh my God, why did they just use a random spray bottle that you can clearly tell this is from any store market shelf. Just spray in there. It's like, this is a science fiction show.

Why not just have a little glass vial that he comes in and just boop. And pours it in and then goes away. But they actually explain it because later it was, he was poisoned with a, uh, some kind of, what'd he say was, it was, um, it was a chemical that's used in the for, for cleaning and stuff. Like, it was like, it was like, oh, you just explained why it was in a crappy little spray bottle, but still that

whatever.

It's in a little bottle, it doesn't explain it though. It's, it, it doesn't explain it. It's a bad choice, but, yeah.

But Riley, my favorite thing about the Riley stuff.

Let me guess, let me enact it right now. This is dumb.

Dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb. Go for it. No. No. No.

For those of our viewers or listeners who are just listening, I pantomimed almost taking a drink and then not taking a drink.

And then not.

Well, they were trying, they were trying desperately to do the thriller, where we as viewers know something that the person doesn't, and it's supposed to be thrilling. Kind of hacky. It was not. My thing was, Sean, Bones, sitting there, You know, I gotta keep, basically, I gotta keep Riley here because if he finds out that that guy killed his whole family, this could be a train wreck.

I forgot about that. It's like, there's an open door to where the beds are and you're talking really loud there, dude. Worst, it's like, that makes Bones look like the worst doctor and Starfleet officer ever. Ever. And then, and then of course, Riley just being in the open going, overhearing everything and the way he like slinks back behind the door when Bones turns around.

It was, it was laughable. It was laughable how bad that was done.

It was so stupid. To me, that was a, uh, Certain elements of that, the spray bottle being used to put the poison in the milk, uh, the Bones saying something into his notes, which Riley overhears, and then 23 Skidoos back into the room. Uh, all of those, I think, were the writer and director being a little too cute

in their, it's a play within a play because those moments are what Shakespeare would have happen all the time. It would be a character standing in a tree, overhears two characters below, reveal that their plan is to go back to the city and he's like, ha ha, now I know where they're going. I will stop them by trickery.

And you would have the poison. The person walking out with the poison right in front of the audience, very conspicuously saying, And now I will put the poison in the milk. And it's all of these things which are intended, I think, to be very theatrical. I think that they were, and maybe this is 2024, missing an element of, In the 1950s and early 1960s, there were more stagings of play like broadcasts than we actually recall.

There were more shows that were put on the air on television that were literally just broadcasts of plays. Where It would be a staging and it would be broadcast as television. And we don't really do that in the same way now. And I'm wondering if a part of this is the audience would have read it in a way as the play within the play that would have made it more interesting.

Cause this episode strangely is well liked by a lot of people. And it's considered like in some, it's in some people's top 10 lists. And like I said, I enjoy aspects of this, but there are other things that like the Riley of it all, the scene when Riley is complaining about his job and he's been effectively demoted.

I didn't like the fact that he was like, Oh, I'm going to put him in engineering. Why are you changing his position? What is that about? Like he's in communications. No, he needs to be in engineering. Why? What is like, that means that makes no sense. And it then puts him in a position where he is working the graveyard shift.

So he is now possibly going to be attacked. And there's one last layer to this though. And he's, down there complaining about his job in a way a Starfleet officer should not be like, Oh, this is a terrible and boring. I'm going to use the ship resources to talk to people in the lounge and ask for a song, which is then, We've had an episode previously where we talked about, Oh, this was a great use of Nichelle Nichols because her performance skills and she wanted to be a singer and they're giving her something to do.

And in this episode, she has quite a bit to do. She gets another number, but this number feels like it goes on for about 18 minutes and it's all about where her heart is. And oh my gosh, the laborious nature of that song playing while we get the spray bottle coming in and pump pump. But Sean,

it was so tense.

It was tension filled. It was tension. The reason I was laughing about all of that was, I just blanked on why I was laughing about it. Cause it was, it was the, the reason that Kirk put him there, I was confused by because he had just done that research on like, you know, that Riley was part of this too. And so he deliberately demoted him in this moment for a reason, but the reason wasn't crystal clear.

And I was like, is he putting them there as bait or is he putting them there deliberately to try to keep him away so he doesn't know all this is going on? And I'm assuming that's what it was supposed to be, but it wasn't crystal clear to me. And at one point I thought, like, when he, when Riley's getting poisoned, I'm like, did Kirk want this to happen?

Was Kirk hoping that somebody would go after him? It's like, I just didn't understand the reasoning of why Kirk did what he did. It's like, how would him being in communications put him in more contact with Kodos? Because Kodos is a recluse who never wants to leave his room. So it's like, you didn't have to hide him away because he's not going to be seeing Kodos.

So why are you doing this?

Yeah.

It was very confusing. It would have made more, it

would have made more sense for them simply to say like, Oh, Riley is also a witness and just, he's wherever he is. Like, don't make it about reassignment. Cause that, that became a distraction. It became a question of like, why would he do this?

And where is he? Like, what is the goal of reassignment? And I mean, and again, I keep going back to, look, there are parts of this one where I enjoyed the tension of the moments and the scenes, but one of the big things for me that I couldn't wrap my head around, there were nine witnesses. How are there nine witnesses?

And how are two of them children? What? Like, I, I didn't understand the logic of the past that they were setting up. Nope. That this man was responsible for executing 4, 000 people on a colony because of not knowing the rescue ships were closer than he anticipated. So he thought he was doing the best hard decision making in the moment that he could.

And out of that were only nine witnesses, two of whom are children. We have no deeper explanation as to how or why. And it's supposed to have been 20 years. So we're supposed to believe that a, how old would Riley maybe have been? Seven, five, five, seven. Yeah. Like, and Kirk is supposed to have been 13 and I have no problem with like giving them the commonality background, but I did have an issue with how did Kirk not know, like it's, if you have that kind of background with somebody, they likely would have known each other.

Which means that dropping this in, in this way, in this episode, and having Kirk actively not know that Riley was another witness. It just kind of stood out. I was like, that doesn't make any sense. And like you said, there's a lot of Spock making statements that don't really follow a logic. And yet at the same time, I liked a lot of the conversation by Spock around this.

I liked his sleuthing. I liked him connecting the dots. I like him saying boldly to Kirk, Kirk saying, like, my friend thought it might be him and I'm not sure. And Spock's response being like, you better, like, you're going to die if you don't. And I also liked the scenes between Spock and McCoy and McCoy taking a far more neutral like stance so that the two of them can have their cantankerous relationship.

Um, I liked those scenes as well. But. Like, there are big moments of this where it's like, I don't think this is working. And yet I find myself continuing to be engaged. So I found myself in a really weird place. Did you find it creepy that he was hitting on a 19 year old girl? I did. I did a lot of math in my head.

Like he's supposed to be 33. We know he's supposed to be the youngest captain in Starfleet. And we just had in our previous episode, Miri, where we discussed, like, was he hitting on somebody? He was, in that case, it was literally a 19 year old playing a younger, and there was a little bit of a heavy Flirtation and soft shots and you're such a pretty girl, Miri.

Uh, which was weird. And in this one, it wasn't as egregious, but it did have a bit of like

ooginess to it. It was ooginess because in the beginning, he was clearly playing her. He was attracted to her, but he was playing her. And that was actually one aspect of this I did like was he's on the bridge. He's, he's arranged things to force them to need to call for help.

She comes on the bridge and he says to her. What if I told you I arranged it? And she laughed it off as him being completely charming. I thought that was really funny. It's like, he's literally telling her to her face. Yeah. What if I arranged this? Yeah. And I was, I did like that little dynamic of him playing with the truth in a very charming way that kind of disarms the situation.

That aspect, I liked. Cause there was, there was character development happening with Kirk and stuff like that, that was, I thought, well done. But again, I That cage they built for themselves. Just, it was off. I didn't like it.

Yeah. I have two final thoughts I wanted to share. One is about the Captain Kirk of it all.

This episode does something, and again, I'm starting to pick up on something that I think was intentionally But as a younger viewer, and even younger as of a few years ago, wasn't really picking up on until this watch through, we talked about in the Dagger of the Mind episode, how Kirk seemed haunted by the fact that he had seen what extreme loneliness was and how it made him long for death and what it would do to an individual if they were stuck there permanently, and I, Speculated on there's an interesting link through to in Star Trek V where Kirk says, I've always known that I will die alone.

And that, for me, is a key moment of Kirk's persona. I love that moment in Star Trek V. It's one of the only things that you can take from Star Trek V that I think is of any value other than the singing around the campfire. No, I'm joking. Uh, this episode touches on that loneliness aspect in an interesting way.

When Lenore brings it up and talks about the loneliness of a captain. And I find myself thinking, Oh, they were far subtler in planting that as a key aspect of his captaincy than I had ever given them credit for the idea that this driven man who achieved the captain seat at such a young age is in fact operating from a place of he needs the relationships with the people around him to be as close as they are.

And he meant, and we have an episode coming up next week in which he refers to his crewmates as his friends first, not as his crew. And. It just feels like loneliness as a key cornerstone of this captain is something I hadn't picked up on in quite the same way earlier, but I'm picking up on it now. The other thing I wanted to point out is, I really liked the scene when Captain Kirk calls up the captain of the other ship that is supposed to take

the theater troupe to their next stop. And he contacts the captain and says, Captain John Daly, it's Jim Kirk. Can I ask you a favor? And John Daly's response is, well, I owe you a dozen, name it. And they have this brief conversation. You never see the captain and the captain goes uncredited. Well, the uncredited captain was played by John Astin.

That's right. Gomez Adams, father of Sean Astin. From Lord of the Rings, that John Astin. I thought that that was terrific. A little tiny Easter, easter egg in the episode. So, Matt, we don't always ask this question of each other, but I'm going to ask it now. Would you recommend this episode to another viewer who's never seen it before?

If you're trying to be a completionist and see all Star Trek, yeah. If you're just trying to find the best ones, no. I'd say skip it. You're not going to miss anything by skipping this one.

Yeah, I have to say, even though I started off saying how I found myself engaged throughout the episode. Yeah. I don't recommend it.

It's not the best. Uh, but if you're looking for some scene chewing, if you're looking for some interesting play within a play modality and mind games and some scenes between actors squaring off in very dramatic ways with the captain effectively saying like, I kind of want to kill you. He boldly says, like, if I had my wish, you wouldn't leave this room alive.

There are some scenes in here that I think do make it worth watching. So I'm a little, I lean a tiny smidge closer to yeah, go ahead and watch it then Matt, but still it's a hard sell. Next time, we're going to be talking about the Galileo seven. Please jump into the comments and let us know wrong answers only what you think that episode will be about.

And once again, jump into the comments about this episode. Viewers, listeners, do you find something here that does work for you in a way that you say, yes, I would recommend this to other people? Are you in the same vein as Matt and I? Which is, this is kind of all over the place and doesn't really strike a tone that makes it essential Trek viewing.

Let us know in the comments. Before we sign off, Matt, is there anything that you have coming up in your main channel that you wanted to share with our listeners and viewers now?

We're taking a break this week because there's a lot of weightier topics that we're diving into. So nothing to share quite yet, but just stay tuned.

As for me, if you're interested in finding out more about my books, check out my website seanferrell. com. You can also go directly to wherever it is you buy your books. That includes your public library. My books are available everywhere. And don't forget, if you'd like to support the show, you can leave a review.

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We hope you'll be interested in checking that out. Thank you so much, everybody, for taking the time to watch or listen, and we'll talk to you next time.