Rob: Hello and welcome back to Subspace Radio.
There is Star Trek out in the world, new Star Trek, and as always,
Kevin and I are here to talk about it and then go into the deeper
details connected with said episode.
Kevin Yank is here.
Kevin: Hello.
Rob: When we say here he is actually on the other side of the planet, but
with modern technology, we can talk to each other and talk about Star Trek.
Kevin: I am visiting family in my native Canada, and it means I'm that much closer
to the epicenter of modern Star Trek, Rob.
Rob: You can go and stop an explosion on a bridge.
Kevin: That's right.
I'm within driving distance of Toronto as we speak.
Rob: You can go see Khan in his playroom slash experimental lab.
Kevin: Indeed.
But we're not here to talk about time travel to Canada.
Rob: No, we are here to talk about memory loss.
In particular, the focus on episode four, season two of Strange New
Worlds Amongst the Lotus Eaters.
And let's just get straight into it.
Throw ourselves right in there.
What did you think of this episode, Kev?
Kevin: I enjoyed it a great deal in part from nostalgia.
I knew going in from the previews that this would be a revisitation of The Cage.
The once again, the very original pilot for the original series with
Christopher Pike, that opening section of that first episode, he is recovering
from the mission to the planet that they return to here this week.
He's beating himself up for the loss of his uh, yeoman who we discovered
this week is actually alive.
but yeah, that, that part of the nostalgia was built in.
But what was a pleasant surprise for me this week was just how great an
episode and I, I put that in bold type there, an episode of Star Trek this is.
This felt to me like a tight package right out of the sixties where our
favorite people go on an adventure together, beginning, middle, end.
They are slightly changed by the experience, but it is self-contained
and satisfying, and, twists and turns and we get to see people in new lights,
but that compact nature of the story that we got here felt so satisfying in
a wistful, nostalgia-tinged way to me.
How about you?
Rob: Yeah spot on.
I absolutely adored it.
That's, it's where Strange New Worlds really knocked it outta the park last
season and really established itself.
It had that air of classic Star Trek with those elements that you would
find in the original series, but laced in with this modern storytelling way.
And yeah, like you said, it had that classic feel that, not only was it the
Easter egg tie in with the original pilot.
The legacy of Starfleet.
What happens, you know, that prime directive stuff.
What happens when, we leave ourselves a bit of our technology
or a bit of ourselves even behind.
And some, the really human connection or the emotional connection of
these sci-fi ideas of memory loss because of radiation and how does
that affect the people as opposed to just the scientific theory of it.
So ranging from trying to define your humanity, the good in you and being
driven by that, and what feels right and what feels wrong, right up to
the, tragic stuff like a man having a sense of loss, but not wanting to
confront what he has lost in his memory.
Some really powerful things in there, and beautifully played by everyone involved.
Guest stars knocked it out of the park and it was great to have Anson Mount front
and center for the first time this season.
Kevin: Indeed.
Yeah, this was a captain takes the lead even when he can't
remember he's the captain episode, which yeah, it was great to see.
And of course we got maybe our first occasion of Ortegas in the spotlight.
And we were, we've, we were promised that with this clip that was played at some
Star Trek Day, about six months ago, that opening scene where Ortegas has got the
hat and she's like, I've got the hat.
I'm ready.
I'm going on the away mission.
This hat is awesome.
And then unfortunately she has to stay behind.
And like we, we were given that kind of as a taste of yes, at the end of
season one, we realize we've told a story focusing on almost every one
of our bridge crew except Ortegas.
Here's a taste of what we're gonna get of Ortegas in season two.
And we definitely got to put her in the spotlight, admittedly, in the B plot here.
But nevertheless, it was up to her to save the day and she did it.
Rob: Definitely, yeah.
She wasn't the A plot focus, but there was that B plot attention.
And what I really liked about it is that it wasn't played for comedic effect.
It was a case of this memory loss is a violation, is a terrifying experience.
It wasn't, this is the quirky, fun episode.
It was a very dark, serious tone for the whole thing and trying to reestablish
who you are, and the dangers of that.
Especially when you've got your memory being lost, when you
are controlling a Starship.
Kevin: Yeah, the sense that they were ill-equipped for it.
Like Spock very rationally walking around, handing out PADDs,
going, here's your biography.
You're gonna forget who you are, but this'll help.
Chapel saying, this is just a bandaid, it's not gonna work.
And sure enough, Spock loses his memory and apparently loses his ability to
read English or Federation Standard or whatever that was on that PADD.
So he can't even read the thing that he made for himself.
That sense of they tried to prepare and nevertheless it went terribly wrong.
That kind of deepened that unease, that feeling of just like they're sliding
down the slope here outta control.
The conversation Ortegas had with the computer was.
There was a bit of comic relief there at times, but it never broke the mood
that, that when she came outta the turbo lift and there's like people
wandering like zombies in the corridors and, oh, such a nice mix of tones.
Like she asks for her.
She eventually manages to ask where she belongs and it leads her to her quarters
with the lights down the hallway.
That's something we haven't seen explicitly since early Next Generation,
when Riker is asking how to find his way to the bridge and that you get
the strip lighting down the hall just for one person, as zombie Starfleet
members bump up against the bulkheads.
It was so like light and playful, yet disturbing and scary all in the one scene.
It was really satisfying.
Rob: Definitely.
Yeah.
I saw it wasn't really, play for comic effect, but there was that joy
in her trying to remember who she was and with the conversation with
only limited parameters for how the computer can talk back to find that way.
Getting to that mantra.
I fly the ship.
That
Kevin: Fly the ship.
Yeah.
Rob: That beautiful mantra that is Ortegas's destiny.
And beautiful stuff at the end when, Pike has to confront Zach, who he
left behind, who he had no idea he left behind, but the damage is caused
and saying, we are taking you back.
Kevin: That's one of those flavors that really took me
back the, I'm a random ensign.
I got left behind.
They made me their king.
Don't think about it too deeply.
Look they made me their king.
I'm very happy here in my cold castle with nothing but phaser rifles to keep me warm.
That return to planet and a human was made king by the natives, quote
unquote, a very sixties trope, I'll say.
It felt right out of the original series.
Yeah.
Rob: And of course I, I was really relieved at the end
when the traveling companion actually did get his memory back.
Kevin: Yeah.
Despite not wanting it.
Rob: Really wonderful example of what this show can do and just why
it is becoming the flagship and gold standard for Star Trek at the moment.
Kevin: In some ways there is no more disposable kind of story within Star
Trek, and yet watching it played to the nines here with the full production
values of modern Star Trek brought to bear, they spared no expense in
telling this nevertheless small story.
And that is very satisfying to me.
Rob: Very much so.
Kevin: What did you think of the framing device of Captain Batel and Captain
Pike breaking up getting back together, all of that stuff, the medallion.
How did that go over for you?
Rob: Yeah, it was a very that was one of the modern elements.
If we go back to the classic series, Kirk was very much, oh, has a, has a woman at
every port and every, every attractive woman who shows up has a past with Kirk.
But to see this very balanced relationship about, two professional people working
hard, moving up in their industry and in their line of work and attracted to
each other and wanting to spend time together, but both realizing both their
careers and their lives are important and the foibles that we each fall into
of how we protect ourselves by running away instead of facing those challenges.
Kevin: I found it a little distracting that she appears to be both a career
starship captain, and also we learned earlier this season, apparently a
JAG lawyer of some kind who's like
Rob: Lots of levels.
Kevin: I am unclear exactly what her job is, or her career is.
She could be a starship captain who moonlights as a
Starfleet lawyer or something.
But yeah, that, that was just a little confusing to me.
One too many jobs for this person.
Rob: Yeah, maybe I'll get the impression She was trying to
move up and so her training was, this was her way of trying to.
Move up within the Federation and because she stood by the right side, she's
been curtailed by the jerky Vulcan.
But yeah, it wasn't really clarified.
She can be whatever she needs to be, whichever plot convenience.
Kevin: That's something that happens with Star Trek now and then.
Like these people are such experts, you get the sense
they're almost interchangeable.
Like you get the sense that Spock could step over to any one of those bridge
stations, sit down and be an expert.
And you get the sense about almost all of these characters that, that
they know how everything works because they are so ultra proficient
and ultra professional and capable.
And it it sometimes blurs things or makes the world feel a little less
large and a little less believable.
I prefer the world when it feels like, there are things
that even Spock doesn't know.
There are things that even Scotty couldn't fix because you need a McCoy
because this is a medicine thing.
But every once in a while, especially like those science officers and
occasionally starship captains, they become jacks of all trade who
are actually masters of everything.
Rob: Yeah.
I did particularly, there was a little bit of humor in the, a bit of dark humor as
well with the guide always saying well, you know, um, uh, La'an's gonna be dead.
Gonna be, is gonna be dying soon.
Just Will you please stop saying I'm dying?
But for me it was really good to, not only was it the first episode with Pike
front and center, he had a lot to do.
I loved the gift that he was given, really beautiful gift by Batel, and that
was something that kept him in focus.
That's a, it's a, that's an old narrative trick that you do, but it played out well.
And because it is so sincere about its ties to classic 1960s style Star Trek
and 1960s fifties sci-fi storytelling.
To have him front and center and be his, have his own emotional journey,
but also, be a heroic hero and captain, but still have his moral code of not,
taking lives or anything like that.
Was a great episode to really show Anson Mount's skill as a performer
and as the lead of this series.
Kevin: Indeed.
So the thing we picked out of this episode was memory loss and our main
characters struggling with amnesia.
Natural, artificial, whatever might be the cause.
And I've picked out a Next Gen episode.
What have you got?
Rob: I've got I've gone to my first run-in with this experience, and
that's from the original series movies.
Kevin: Ooh, let's start uh, let's start with yours then.
Rob: Let's look at which was dealt with over at least well over a
three film trilogy arc, but also especially in Star Trek IV, the
memory loss of Spock in the movies.
Kevin: Of course.
Of course.
It didn't even occur to me.
Yeah, so ambiguous.
What does he remember?
When?
Rob: Exactly.
It's this big case of, like for me, cuz I hadn't seen Star Trek II or
III before I'd seen Star Trek IV, so I had to go back and watch that.
But I could still feel that sense of longing from Kirk and McCoy and the crew,
they just want their old Spock back and
Kevin: And the audience wants their old Spock back.
Every slight taste of old Spock you get is so delicious.
it's almost the actor going I'm going to give you so little and
you're gonna be so grateful for every little bit that I give you.
It is such a nice way to play a character after so long is I'm gonna
strip him back to such a minimal form and and have the audience leaning
in to every word I say as a result.
Rob: It's the absolute skill and talent and just charisma of Leonard Nimoy.
That's his cold, calculating version of Spock.
And it's still so engaging, so layered as a performance.
It's not just clearly a case of I'm a Vulcan, so I'm a robot.
But you can feel that cool detachment still, but it's not from anything
other than just finding out who he is.
That opening scene of him and his mother with the original actress coming
back, I believe, to play his mum again was just fantastic to see, just the
simple question, How do you feel?
And the question is irrelevant.
Kevin: How do you feel?
How do you feel?
I love that
Rob: Um, it's a, great scene.
Kevin: It's a compact way to establish for people like yourself who hadn't seen
the previous movies, what's going on with Spock while telling us some story.
Yeah.
I love the world building of those, laws of the thermodynamics and things like
that, that they're quizzing with him with.
And he knows all the facts, but he's stymied by a question, How do you feel?
And that's a it's it's something that I'm wondering.
I.
I wondered at the time, and I wonder even today, whether it was deliberate by the
storytellers here or by Leonard Nimoy, is this idea that Spock came back from the
dead, but he came back Vulcan first, like his rational fact-based library computer
version of himself came back first and the personality came back second.
Rob: It's a Vulcan tradition.
He passed on his self his katra to McCoy and they had to go through the process
on Vulcan, all that type of stuff.
So of course, the first part of him brought forward we would be that part
of him connected to all those traditions and rituals and this, genetic process.
And it's done in a sort of like, offhand kind of way because of the tone
of Star Trek IV, but there's a real deep meaning behind the frustration
of Kirk wanting his friend back and there going, you used to call me Jim.
Don't call, Jim, remember Jim?
All right, let's just move on with it.
So for me, watching it for the first time and giving enough backstory
and information it hit really hard there going, yeah, I want this
character back the way he was.
I wanna see, I, I've got an idea how he was, but now I wanna see it for real.
And you do get that at the end of the whole movie with his run in with his dad.
And when he finally pays off that, that question that was
asked at the start of the movie.
It's a masterful performance.
It's a masterful structure of storytelling and it's, yeah, it's beautifully done.
And for me, it really engrossed me and engaged me in how we deal with
someone we know losing who they are.
Kevin: It's an interesting echo of an original series episode that
wasn't on my list, but it should have been that you've reminded me of.
And it's The Changeling, and that's the episode where Uhura has her
mind, wiped by the probe named Nomad.
So this is an Earth probe.
It's very much, this is the same story as Star Trek, The Motion Picture,
but it was told in the TV series.
And it's this little probe that they beam on board and it turns out to have been
an Earth probe that got damaged and then repaired by an artificial intelligence.
And it is now coming back to Earth thinking its job is to sterilize
all of the carbon units to use The Motion Picture language.
But in in the Changeling, which is season two, episode eight of the original series,
this probe comes on board and it hovers around the ship and they give it a tour.
And when it meets Uhura, it probes her mind and wipes it,
and she loses all her memories.
And at the end of the episode, she's laid up in sick bay, just
reading on the library computer.
And they say like she's at a, she's at a grade 10 reading level.
We'll have her up to college level in a couple of weeks.
And there's this sense that Uhura needs to rediscover herself from scratch.
There is no katra to re-embed.
Has completely lost her memories and in true sixties TV style, she's back to
her normal self by the following week.
And it is never commented again that Uhura completely lost her
memories and personality and had to rebuild it by reading, studying
the library computer that is the, probably the biggest reset button
we've ever seen in Star Trek history.
Rob: So it wasn't the probe giving it back at the end.
It was just a case of all
Kevin: No, no, she, she lost, she lost her memory.
Sorry.
No backups.
We just gotta, she's gonna have to read.
She remembers like Swahili, like they, she has some super childhood skills left,
so she speaks in Swahili and they, they have to use that as their only starting
point to teach her herself again.
Rob: That's analog rebooting.
That's really analog rebooting.
None of this 20, 25th century technology coming in or anything like that.
Holy smokes.
Kevin: Forget about Pike and his date with destiny in the chair.
Uhura is sitting on that bridge and has no idea that in just a few years
time, she's gonna completely lose her memory and never get it back.
Rob: But she'll learn everything as if she's brand spanking
new in a couple of weeks?
Yeah.
So what's your actual episode that you wanted to focus on about the
Kevin: Uh, yeah.
So I picked a favorite episode of The Next Generation called Conundrum, and
this is TNG season five, episode 14.
Season five of Next Gen, come on.
Star Trek in the nineties did not get better than this.
This is like a high point.
Some people like season six better than season five, but I think it's a toss up.
Rob: They're the two top ones.
Kevin: This is when the characters were so well formed that they would play
an episode like this one in order to play with the idea of what would they
do if they didn't know who they were.
And that was a delightful treat for an audience who had gotten
to know these characters so well.
At the start of Conundrum, the Enterprise is just, on a typical
exploration mission, they get intercepted by a ship they don't recognize.
The ship scans them, and it's like that green beam that passes over everyone on
the bridge and they all just go blank.
I would say you could watch this episode just for the cold open and watch the
acting in that scene when they have all lost their memories and they're all
looking around trying to reckon with this fact that they can't remember who they
are, what they're doing there, who the people around them are, what this place
is, they are, and it is, the director must have done a masterful job here because
they all play it the same way of the like social face of something's wrong
with me, but I don't know if it's safe to admit that something's wrong with me.
So I'm just gonna like, look around and pretend everything's fine until
they all realize they're looking around and pretending that everything's fine.
Riker's the first one who admits like, I don't know who any of you people are.
And of course, Picard, Patrick Stewart does the best with this.
And he, his voice completely changes tone.
He's suddenly very very vulnerable.
And he I can't reproduce it here for you.
You'll have to watch the
Rob: Damn it.
You are leading up to it.
Listeners, you, if you saw Kevin Yank's face, he's there, he's building up.
I saw him literally building up going, I'm gonna give it a try.
I'm gonna try and do Patrick Stewart in Conundrum.
And then you
Kevin: Yeah, no, it is beautiful.
It is a quiet, understated performance from everyone on that bridge.
And then just as you see everyone the camera turns, and then there
is a character also in, in a commander's uniform standing on
the bridge that in hindsight, we should recognize him as a stranger.
And this is my biggest memory of this episode at the time is back in the
nineties when we were watching Next Generation pre-Internet, pre streaming.
The first time you watched this episode, you were being exposed to new doses of
Next Generation every week or a few, and there were long hiatuses over the
summer for reruns, and so the look around the bridge at everyone and the
fact there is one person there standing right next to Picard who we'd never
seen before, back then you wrote it off.
Now in hindsight, you watch it and you go, he's evil.
He doesn't belong there.
That's not someone I recognize.
And as the story goes on, he's introduced to us as commander McDuff who is the
Executive Officer, a position we've never heard before on this show.
And Riker is subtly demoted to second officer.
And I'm like, my teenage mind at the time, I'm like, hang on second officer?
Wasn't Riker first officer?
Well, he's second in command.
Maybe that's what second officer is.
So I watching through this, I was second guessing my own memory
of, does this person belong?
Is it important that I don't recognize him or is he just
another bridge crew of the week?
Maybe he's been there a few times and I, I don't remember him.
But sure enough, the characters who don't remember who they are, they consult the
library computer and they find their mission is to maintain radio silence
and go and attack the command center of the Lisians, which is this race
that they are supposedly at war with.
And as they attempt to follow those mission orders, they find the Lisians are
not equipped to put up any kind of fight.
The first ship that they encounter, they, they destroy with a single phaser shot.
Picard is getting more and more like suspicious.
How could this be the great threat that we have been sent on to, to destroy when
they, they are defenseless against us?
And of course the entire plot is that McDuff is an alien in disguise.
They have used this mind wiper in order to use the weapon of mass destruction that
is the Enterprise D in order to settle their war for themselves by planting
this fake mission in the computer.
But yeah watching our characters puzzle that out and ultimately, still
not knowing who they are, still not sure they're doing the right thing,
decide not to attack those defenseless people in the Command Center.
It is uh, lovely, similarly to Pike this week, it's lovely
watching our characters become themselves despite a lack of memory.
Rob: Yeah, it's something that I really love about the movie Eternal
Sunshine of The Spotless Mind.
It's one of my favorite films, and it's incredible how much conversation
that film still generates after nearly 20 years of its being released.
It's a great film about losing your memory and finding out who you are
again, but how that movie ends with, how it what, how people decide it.
Some people see it as an incredibly negative, sad, depressing ending.
I see it as a very positive ending and it connects to that whole thing of Star Trek
of you find who you really are despite whatever technological or alien force
takes your memory away, you will find you.
I find that a really hopeful, positive thing that it was definitely brought in
the last, this Strange New Worlds episode and I, I can tell that in Conundrum.
Kevin: That last scene where Pike, comes to the brink of killing his
ensign with the phaser rifle, and then pulls back as his memory's
restored, it is deliciously ambiguous.
Like, would he have killed him?
What does that say about Pike?
Pike goes on to say, no, we are ourselves regardless.
So what is he revealing about him himself there?
It's beautiful, like not quite to the artistic achievement of Eternal Sunshine,
but it's in the same realm of who are we really when our memories are removed from
Rob: Was Pike gonna turn into that Pike, who was gonna have Orion slave girls?
Kevin: Yes,
Rob: So yeah, Conundrum would be a great episode for me to go and watch.
It's from a great era.
Now I've gotta get into that.
I've been focusing in on Enterprise so much recently,
I've gotta get into Next Gen.
Kevin: The other one, like the runner up that was on my list was Clues,
which is another Next Gen episode.
That one we may talk about at some other time.
But it's it's a much more of a puzzley sort of episode.
This is season four, episode 14.
Everyone wakes up.
And can't remember what happened for the past couple of days starts to go about
their day and they start to discover things about the time that they lost.
And Data is revealed to be working against their efforts
to piece together what happened.
And it turns out they deliberately wiped their own memories in order to
resolve a situation, shall we say.
Rob: We talked about this in the early days of the podcast, all
the way back in the heady days of 2022, remember that, Kevin?
About how I think Strange New Worlds has just set up a checklist of all
those sci-fi gimmick episodes that said we need to do a body swap.
We need to do we need to do, yeah, we need to do memory loss, and they,
we need to do a time travel one.
We need to do, and they've literally gone through that checklist and they've
got that combination of classic and modern and why it's working so well.
Kevin: In our next episode, we seem to have another Spock
Hijinks episode to talk about.
So they're not afraid to go back to the well as well when
they've got something that works.
Rob: When they've got the talent that they have in this show.
It's, this is what I love about regular sci-fi as well, when you realize you've
got really talented actors, the show runners go, let's put these really
talented people through their paces.
They did it with Next Gen, they did it with Deep Space Nine.
They did it with the cast of Voyager as well.
Really talented actors with stage experience with
multiple years of experience.
Just put 'em through the ringer and bring out that, experience and quality.
So I'm looking forward to having a chat with you about our
episode Charades for next week.
Kevin: Yeah, see you then, Rob.
Rob: See you then.