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Matt and Sean talk about doubling down on empathy in the season finale of Starfleet Academy Season 1, Episode 10, “Rubincon.”
Matt and Sean talk about doubling down on empathy in the season finale of Starfleet Academy Season 1, Episode 10, “Rubincon.”
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- (01:40) - - Viewer Feedback
- (04:33) - - Today's Episode
- (05:05) - - This Time in History
- (07:18) - - Episode Discussion
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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 of Trek in Time, we're talking about delayed reunions. That's right. We're talking about the final episode for season one of Starfleet Academy. This is Rubicon, which broadcast originally on March 12, 2026. Welcome, everybody, to Trek in Time. This is, of course, the podcast that takes a look at all of Star Trek in chronological stardate order most of the time. Lately, we've been on a bit of a pause from our chronological rewatch. We're at the beginning of season three of the original series. We hope you'll be interested in following us there as we talk about the older Trek. But more recently, we've been following the new Trek. We've been enjoying season one of Starfleet Academy. So today we're talking about the season finale Rubicon. So who are we? I'm Sean Ferrell. I'm a writer. I write some sci fi, 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. And we won't share all of it with you. But Matt, that introduction was harder this time than it's ever been in the past. But how are you today?
Matt Ferrell: I'm good. I might have to include some of these bloopers at the end because that was fun.
Sean Ferrell: Bloopers. And bleep them where necessary. Spoiler. Sean lets it fly. A little worked up as we worked our way through that introduction. Anyway, here we are. We're going to talk about the final episode of season one of Starfleet Academy. But before we get into that, we always like to take a look at what you've had to say about our previous episodes. So, Matt, what did you find in the comments for us this week?
Matt Ferrell: We had a few comments. One from Dan Sims from the Life of Our Stars episode. You and I talked about the root beer scene from Deep Space Nine. And Dan Sims chimed in, said, oh my God, yes, the root beer scene. So good. I just recently saw that for the first time. I've been watching all of DS9 and I'm now on the final season. Wow, Dan, I'm glad you're finally catching up to it. Cause it's a great series. I remember when it first aired, I was not a huge fan. But then in rewatching, it is such a good show. It's so good.
Sean Ferrell: That speech is one of those ones
Matt Ferrell: that hangs with you.
Sean Ferrell: Hangs with me. I mean, there's like Dharmak and Tilar Tanagra, man. Like there's that episode. There are episodes where it's Picard getting the flute in, you know, like that long storyline, the drumhead where he makes his speech, where he closes down what is effectively a witch hunt looking for spies within the Federation. Like some of those things just stand up there, but that speech is right up there with them. And I love the fact that it's Quark and Garak. It's just like the two of them have one of the best moments in Trek. Absolutely.
Matt Ferrell: So it's fantastic. Next up, from the life of our stars, we had Flo Defoe chiming in saying with the Doctor, Tilly, Ake, Reno and Dax, there's now a few thousand years of life experience in this show. Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if very casually, Guinan would turn out to be the chef on the Academy canteen, which I thought was really funny. It'd be really funny to have her make a guest appearance at some point.
Sean Ferrell: It would be.
Matt Ferrell: Then finally we have Mark Loveless chiming in with wrong answers only for the plot of 300th Night. The doctor is caught up using old sayings from his past and in one, while addressing Sam, mentions an old Earth style toaster she doesn't understand and asks him to describe a toaster and is completely fascinated with the idea that in the description the Doctor mentions that after about 300 uses, often it would break or get so clogged with breadcrumbs it would require repairs, especially the 20th century ones. Since she is busy during the day with classes and activities, she works on it at night, thinking to be accurate she has to use it 300 times, but only once a day. Everyone loves Sam, but between the happy joyness and the handing of often burnt toast to her friends, they all start thinking the same thing, that they cannot take 300 nights of this complete garbage food for revenge. They have a cook off and Jay’Den actually wins, surprising everyone with actually tasty gagh, served live, of course.
Sean Ferrell: Thank you, Mark, as always. Those noises you hear, those lights you see, it's not you falling deeply in love with the sound of my voice. It is in fact the read alert. It's time for Matt to read the Wikipedia sentence.
Matt Ferrell: Braka is organizing a cartel of non-member worlds to pillage the Federation and the Athena is on her own, that is.
Sean Ferrell: You don't get much more precise than that. That's right. This is of course Starfleet Academy and episode 10, originally broadcast on March 12, 2026. And Matt, I hate to break it to you because we're going to be going back in time. We're going to be heading back to the 1960s. Season three of the original series. You're not going to be singing this song much more. Take it away. It's the number one song on the day of broadcast. It's DTMF by Bad Bunny. As always, it's hard to distinguish which is better, the original by Bad Bunny or that one by you. And in theaters, people are lining up again for the number one film, Scream 7. And a new show appears on streaming services with One Piece being the most streamed program on this day. One Piece Season 2 just launched on Netflix. I know this is a show that Matt enjoyed. I'm sure he's gonna be checking out the second season as well.
Matt Ferrell: I've already four episodes in. It's a lot of fun
Sean Ferrell: and just a interesting, fun fact. This week, March 12th, this series entered the top 10 of stream series, which it reached, I believe, number four, which is a very good sign for the series. What's interesting to me is that it built up over time. It gained audience as time went on. We're fairly familiar with streaming services watching the numbers and they don't necessarily move that direction. So I think it's interesting that in this case, word of mouth seems to be helping to spread the word about this show. So I was pleased to see that. And in the news, the top story in the New York Times, the US at fault in strike on school in Iran. Preliminary inquiry says outdated targeting data may have resulted in a mistaken missile strike according to the ongoing military investigation, which undercuts President Trump assertion that Iran could be to blame on now to our discussion of this episode. I want to start with a really big picture take before we get into the nuts and bolts of the episode because I'm curious if you saw the same thing I did. There was a report that I saw which was that there was some for the people putting together the show. There was some difficulty with this episode because they ended up doing something, changing something in the script very, very last minute. From what I saw. It may even have been just a couple of months, if not weeks ahead of the broadcast of this episode. So something was changed. I do not know what. I didn't read much deeper into it because the article came out before I'd seen the episode. I I didn't want to spoil anything for myself, but I couldn't help but pick up a very, very strong note of this episode was written about now, the era we are going through right now. I found myself thinking, wow, they really crafted an episode which is practically tripling or quadrupling down on empathy is important.
Understanding the other side of an argument is important. And sometimes people are going to lash out out of anger and immaturity in a way that is self destructive and needs to be understood but ultimately disarmed. And I found myself as I was watching it thinking, I don't know that I expected this show to confront the era we're living in so directly in such a clear way. They're literally going to Betazed for the founding of the new headquarters of the Federation. They refer at one point in a very passing way to Earth having pulled out of the Federation during the burn. I don't recall that information being dropped earlier in. Oh, it was, was that, was that dropped earlier? Okay, so it was in Discovery.
Matt Ferrell: It goes back to the other. It goes back to Discovery.
Sean Ferrell: Okay, so for me it landed in a very interesting place because I was like, oh, the, the show has very clear, carefully laid out that Betazed is going to be the new headquarters. But that puts it into the hands of empaths saying, okay, the focal point of the Federation is gonna be built around empathy effectively is what the, like the imagery, the symbolism of that is. And Earth pulled out of this Federation at some point. So you end up with this bringing people back together, bringing reuniting around something that worked in the past and hopefully will work again, while people are thrashing around saying, I was hurt, nobody helped me, and I'm blaming you. And the message of this one is not I didn't hurt you. The message of this one is how far back do we need to pull back in order to see the full picture so that we can really understand everybody's perspective? And I found it incredibly, I was impressed, I was pleased, I was moved. And I found it almost stunning in a way that I was just like, how did I not anticipate this coming out of Star Trek?
So that's what I was picking up on big picture about this finale. Did you see anything like that or am I reading. Is this a Sean perspective that I'm finding? Or did you see similar notes in this that you were like, yeah, I got that too.
Matt Ferrell: Oh no, no, I got that theme. I wasn't surprised by it though, because Star Trek has done this from the very beginning where they take something of the time and sometimes kind of ham fisted in doing it, but they will discuss the issues of the day, confront it head on. It's why I love science fiction, because you can deal with these controversial issues in unique ways. So that didn't surprise me about this episode. But what did surprise me is the fact that they were willing to kind of go there in a way that for the way things are in this world today is risky and wouldn't be that way. Like in the 60s when Star Trek was doing it. I wouldn't have said it was necessarily risky because the most that would happen was like the kiss with Uhura and the captain. We're not going to air it in some places. That's what happened. It wasn't that the show's going to get cancelled because of it. Where today we have Paramount literally being
Sean Ferrell: networked by the this is on is going to be. Yeah, that's the thing.
Matt Ferrell: Yeah. Right. So it's like the fact that that's happening and they still went there, to me is more interesting than the fact Star Trek went there. Because of course Star Trek went there. They always go there. That's great. But the fact that they still had the kind of like the will to push it in the current climate is interesting to me.
Sean Ferrell: Very much an episode of definitely a part 2 definitely feels like it leaps right out of the credits of the previous episode. It's concluding all the storylines that we knew it needed to. And it's doing it in the balance. Classic Trek balance of, you want some action? We got some action. You want some philosophical wandering around, We've got that too. Which of those two do you want to discuss first?
Matt Ferrell: Let. Let's discuss the. The talkiness of it.
Sean Ferrell: The.
Matt Ferrell: Not the action side, but let's talk about the. The philosophical debate that happens in this one. Let's. Let's go there.
Sean Ferrell: It is reminiscent of again, dipping into the well that Trek has done so many times. Let's put humanity or the Federation on trial. We've seen Q do it. We've seen it happen with Kirk where people are just like, we're going to decide which of you species get to survive based on do you or the Gorn survive this one on one battle on this planet or the Organians with the. Like, we're going to bring Klingons in the Federation to a screaming halt because we are super powerful. But we're not going to let you get away with your little war. So we've seen this before. The judgment of a scapegoat effectively put before us in the story. But I don't recall it being quite this charged. And by what I mean is the Braka. I mean, boy, did they create a great villain for this series. I'm like, he's right up there for me, he's doing Khan, like, work with his distaste for Ake in particular. Giamatti is doing a terrific job. You and I talked in the very first episode of this, like, wow, he's really chewing the scenery. That was clearly pilotitis. It was.
Matt Ferrell: Yeah.
Sean Ferrell: Nobody quite knew what they were doing yet. And he, I think, hadn't been pulled in or pulled himself in in quite the way that he ended up doing here. Here. He is so reserved while still being completely unhinged. He is absolutely in control and he is. He is cruel and he's manipulative and he's incredibly smart. And he is, as an individual, standing in the place of all those species where I'm glad to see Star Trek entering a tone of. Yeah. A species does not define villainy. You gotta get away from that. Oh, the Romulans are showing up. We can't trust them. Yeah. Let's lean into, like, this individual is the problem. This guy, this one particular person is the problem. So we have that. But we also have a dynamic that is challenging the courtroom, which. The silent conversation between Caleb's mother, played by Maslany, and Holly Hunter's, Ake where or Ake, where the two of them have to have this kind of like, we need to be on the same side. But it doesn't feel like that for a good portion of this because the honesty that is pouring out of Caleb's mother is years of anger and deflection.
Matt Ferrell: They have common ground with Caleb. It's like that's the thing that pulls them together. Even though Caleb's mom wants nothing to do with her or for the Federation, she's only willing to go along with it to protect her son, because if it's discovered that he's alive in a ship nearby, he's gonna get killed. So the way they framed this was perfect. And the tension between the two of them was super authentic. And you could tell, like, especially when the whole courtroom scenes where the mother is brought forward to testify and to ask questions of Ake and Giamatti is just, like, laughing it up. He's letting her loose. He knows this is gonna work in his favor. She's playing right into that because it's the truth. It's how she feels. She's going right with where he expects her to go because that's where she wants to go. And it's super. It's super exciting to see how this played out. And for me, it makes sense of why they cast Tatiana, Holly Hunter and Paul Giamatti. You got three powerhouse actors in this incredible scene where it's like you're handing it over to them and they're bringing a level of gravitas to everything that's happening that I think a lesser actor wouldn't bring. So it made this whole philosophical courtroom drama that happened in this episode. It makes it so much more powerful because of what they are bringing to it from their skill as an actor. So it's like I was just riveted this entire scene.
Sean Ferrell: Yeah, I like the fact that this follows what I like to call the fire alarm technique in writing, which is you present something and it happens, and then you present it again and it happens, and it just keeps notching up a little bit more each time. This one starts off with Caleb's mother has the whole impassioned argument about, like, what you did to me. And then it caused this hardship for my son because he disappeared. And did you actually expect me to sit in a cell where, like, I had no way of knowing if he was safe? And Ake deconstructs all of that with the argument around. Like, you helped break into a shuttle. You helped kill an individual. That person had a name. That person had as much right to you as you do to their life. And really, like, peels the layers off the onion until you can see how it's working on Caleb's mother with the. Like, she doesn't want to think about that side of it because then you're opening the door to maybe I was wrong and she doesn't want that. The next notch of, go ahead.
Matt Ferrell: There's the flip side to this as well, though, Sean. It's that I thought was fascinating, which is. It's like the body blows to the argument are coming from both sides. Like, they're both landing very honest blows of, like, against the Federation. The Federation screwed up. And the knock against her of, like, her. Like, I don't want to admit being potentially being wrong, but, like, it was fantastic to see them going kind of back and forth, back and forth. And they both have very valid criticisms of the other side.
Sean Ferrell: Yeah. The empathy is at play. And then the ramping up version of that is when Braka reveals the pain of his childhood revolves around this moment of like, we needed help and nobody was coming. And when we reached out in the only way we felt we could, my father reached out in anger by building a weapon. The retaliation left only a handful of us alive out of the colony. And then she deconstructs that again and deconstructs it in a way where the deconstruction as you pointed out of the first one is fair. Body blows back and forth. But the deconstruction of the second one is to reveal the immaturity and weakness at the core of Braka. Ake does not even try to turn Caleb's mom into the sort of weak, muling, angry figure. She instead leaves it and takes, as you pointed out, takes the blows of like, yeah, I screwed up. And with the second one says, the federation had to make very hard choices and you did have resources, and that's why you were not helped in that moment, because you had what others didn't have because some just needed body bags. But when she reveals, yeah, the nature of the devastation was not caused by us, that was your own anger burning you up. And you've let that anger continue to burn you up personally and turn you into this weak figure who's standing in front of me. The trial is over in that moment and such a great deconstruction of all of that. And while we're talking about the talking, let's include in that very briefly, Caleb tries to make amends to his friends. There's a bit of a challenge there where he's like, I said things, and they're like, save your breath. Like, not right now. But he gets another opportunity to make sure that that apology comes through loud and clear when he joins the trial scene. But for me, the conversation between him and Reno. Reno in this episode, Tig Notaro.
In this episode, I found myself completely, like, here she comes out of nowhere. This was great writing for her character.
Matt Ferrell: My favorite part of this entire episode, like, the whole philosophical courtroom scene and all that stuff. Riveted. Love it. But the Reno stuff for me was the catnip, was the. Oh, my God. I didn't know I needed this in my life. This is so good. This is so good. Seeing Reno, who's this super chill, constantly making sarcastic remarks. Character from Tig Notaro.
Sean Ferrell: Yeah.
Matt Ferrell: Suddenly coming in and being like, we knew she was a genius, but here we get to see her be, oh, my God, she's actually a commander. Like, she is in charge, barking orders, but in her own unique flavor. And she's a teacher and she's a commander and she's so in charge. That entire scene, every. Every scene she's in, she was killing it. And it was like, I didn't know that Reno was such a badass and such a compelling character because they've. She's usually been there for the comic relief.
Sean Ferrell: Yeah.
Matt Ferrell: And it's like, this was not her there as a comic relief moment, this was her there as like a fully fleshed character. And I. I'm here for it. Like, if there's ever a season two of this show, I want them to do more with Reno because she was. She was so good. I loved how she so undercuts herself and undercuts the kids with her sarcastic remarks constantly. But you always trust what she's saying. Cause she, you know, she's speaking from experience and the kids are trying to do what she's telling them to do. It was. It was brilliant.
Sean Ferrell: I just loved it. Yeah. Yeah. When she. She lays things out in that sardonic tone, but it's hard truths. And she's like, this is pass, fail. You pass, you live. If we fail, we die.
Matt Ferrell: Her speech that she gave of being in a situation like this where you're in a ship that is dead in space and you're on your own and there's no hope for rescue. You have to pivot. You have to come up with your own solutions. And as she's giving this, I got a little choked up because I'm like, her history is that she was stranded in Discovery. They found her stranded on a planet with a dead ship, and she was doing all this crazy genius level stuff just to stay alive long enough to. In the hopes that somebody would find her. And so when she's saying that stuff to her, it's just like hitting with a ton of bricks that this kid may not know her history, but here's Reno saying this stuff. It's like, here she is again in another spaceship, stranded in space for the second time. So she's speaking from experience. And even though the kid may not know that history, you can see that she trusts Reno and gets what she's getting at. And like, okay, gotta refocus. Don't. Don't dread. We gotta find a solution. Those are the. Those are the moments that, for, like, the Reno of it all is what impressed me the most about all these sequences with her.
Sean Ferrell: Yeah, we're given. We're given that. We're given the nice scene when she's working with Caleb in the area on the warp core and they're working together on testing, testing whether the warp core has been repaired enough. And she's. She gives him that moment of like, you got to get your head back in the game. Like, you gotta. You gotta be ready to respond to this moment. And she gives him the pep talk he needs in order to really kind of like, shake off. He's. He's mourning everything he's mourning every choice he's made. He's mourning his mother. He's mourning the situation he feels so, so responsible for. He has a nice moment later where he talks to Ake and he apologizes, like, I should have talked to you. Like, there's a transition in his character. This. This felt like a season finale where they didn't know if they were going to get a season two. I appreciated that. I do hope that they get it, because this is worth going on. You get Reno saying of Darem. He's going to be an okay pilot someday. I'm like, oh, is that what they're doing? They're setting him up like he's not going to be the captain like he thought he would be, but he's going to be that guy. He's going to be the next Sulu. He's going to be like, everybody's getting their little spot. And the final big segment of talkiness in this one is the Doctor comes back from having.
Matt Ferrell: Yeah.
Sean Ferrell: In one of the coolest sequences I can recall seeing, when they have to, okay, we've got to run this. We've got to run this sequence. And we've never tested it before. We don't have a choice. So his holo emitter, which he says, be careful with it. I've had it for a thousand years. And you're just like, there it is
Matt Ferrell: right out of Voyager.
Sean Ferrell: And they place it on the deck. They place it on the console which absorbs it in the programmable matter. We've seen it so many times now, they don't even talk about it. And then they holo project the ship being destroyed. I loved that. I thought that was so cool, so creative. Makes so much sense. And then when the Doctor comes back, his word's talking wrong. So he is the glue. The glue on your shoe. And he is walking around talking about the glue on their shoes. And don't cross the Rubicon, Rubicon, without the glues on your shoes. And it takes them a while to figure out that he's making sense without making sense. So he is giving them the way in to actually solve the mine problem, which is you don't need to diffuse the mines if you actually can make the particles that the mines are made out of stable. So then we're given the action swing of all of this, which is them chasing down Braka, them finding Braka, which relies around the massive empathy, the psychic power of our love interest Tarima, who is in this one. They put all of the will they won't they? Aside with it almost goes beyond being a romantic intimacy at that point when they fully reconnect and he says, do you trust me? You got to go in in order to do this. And they reconnect in the fleet, in the field of flowers, and we're given these moments. And I. And I couldn't help but hearken back. I said this the last time we talked about that kind of experience between the two of them. I kept thinking about Riker and Troy, the Mzadi of it all the like, is that what this is? This level of intimacy that if it's a part of a romantic partnering, is glorious and beautiful, but if it's just this, it is so intensely personal. And unlike the Vulcan mind meld. The Vulcan mind meld is always portrayed around understanding, which is the Vulcan logic.
This goes into not the understanding, but the feeling of the other, where it's that intensity of emotional connection. And I know that the Vulcan mind meld also includes that. But I think there's a very important distinction that they're leaning into in this particular episode. It is about getting the trail because of emotional connection, not unlocking data. And I feel like the history of Trek around the Vulcan mind meld leans more heavily toward we need information, we need understanding of data. So therefore, the mind meld is our tool. This feels like it's doing a different thing. We need to define my mom. You need to go in and know how it feels in here in order for you to be able to project and know where she is out there. I thought that entire sequence, I thought that Sam's rebuttal of her friends. I thought that the Doctor wandering around seeming befuddled. I thought that the ship trying to get to the gas giant and hide in the clouds, like all of that felt. I just, like, I didn't have an. Of a moment where I was just like, oh, this isn't working for me.
Like, it was all.
Matt Ferrell: It was all working pitch myself.
Sean Ferrell: It was all great actiony sequences because it was like you felt a ticking clock. You felt like, oh, he's. He's got to turn to her. And he's just like, I'm showing you everything about who I am. The will they won't they is put to the side but isn't fully answered. You can see that they've had this connection. But did you. Do you agree with me that it isn't that they restarted their relationship, it's that they found a different relationship?
Matt Ferrell: It's an emotional trust that they had there that was like, these two are connected? In a way that others are not. It didn't matter that it's not, oh, it's a love story or anything like that. It's just they're, they're, they're so intertwined and so trusting of each other. It was that relationship. It's like the Troy Riker relationship, you know, I mean, it's like, I don't want to say soulmates. That's kind of what it is. It's just like they're kind of like connected in a very deep, profound way. So for me, that was beautiful for how they portrayed that, because it wasn't a will they, won't they kind of, oh, they're back together again. It had nothing to do with that at all.
Sean Ferrell: Yeah.
Matt Ferrell: On the action side of it, at the end of the episode, I started thinking about. A lot of the complaints about Modern Trek have been that it's leaned too heavily into the J.J. abramsification of Star
Sean Ferrell: Trek, Star wars, where it's just Star
Matt Ferrell: Wars and not Star Trek anymore. And I would argue that the Kurtzman Trek, as much as he's hated for these new shows, they've gotten better as they've been going. Discovery didn't start well and it kind of like tried to do some cheat codes and failed. And it was them find their footing and then you've got Strange New Worlds, which is one of my favorites. I love that show. And it's like, oh, they, they're kind of. They found their footing now in this show. It feels pretty good, but it's still time to time. It's still a little too on that actiony side. And then this show feels like, oh, it feels like they kind of found a balance between more modern sensibilities, but yet still being true to the old Trek of you can talk your way out of a situation, you can argue and debate, and that's kind of at the heart of it too. And this show, to me feels like they finally kind of cracked the code for what a modern Trek show can feel like to balance between J.J. Abrams movie sci-fi action and still being true to this whole philosophical debate side that I love about Star Trek. So for me, by the end of the episode, I was just like, to me, that was like a chef's kiss of thank you. You gave me the exciting stuff that we expect out of modern tv, but you still were true to the There are four lights kind of stuff that happens in Star Trek that really makes me love Star Trek or, you know, the Measure of a Man episode where it's just all in a little courtroom scene with Picard and Data. It's like, that's one of the best episodes ever made of Next Generation in my mind. And it's like people just in a room talking. Oh, you can do that, too in Modern Trek. That's great. Thank you for finding a way to do that in Modern Trek. I've missed it. Thank you. Do more of that, please.
Sean Ferrell: I also just wanted to quickly wrap up. I loved. I loved the ending 2. Even though it was a little bit obvious of a bow, it was. It was very like, and now it's neat and it looks pretty. But I liked that he had his moment with Ake where he was just like, I should have trusted you. I should have told you. And she was dismissive of any kind of grudges. I like the humor of, you know, do I really have to go to this thing? Because he's the kid who's super competent but just doesn't want to be a part of the party. He just doesn't want to be in it. And she's like, well, the President wants to meet you, and thank you. And it's just like, dude, you're getting to meet the President. You're like, you're trying to back out of this. And he's like, because they have so many utensils. And I loved her response of like, we do. And we should do the decorum stuff in the first year, shouldn't we? Because that waits until the second year and we shouldn't do that. Like, I loved that. I loved that Stephen Colbert's voiceover announced that somebody's pet had escaped a holder and was now mating with your fire. Yeah.
Matt Ferrell: Your firefly left the Replicator and is now meeting with itself. Does that seem okay with you?
Sean Ferrell: Does that seem okay with you? I was just like. I was like, there's. I mean, the humor of the show is fantastic. And then I liked the sequence with his mother where it's her saying, I get it, I get it. This is your home and that's okay. And standing there saying, it's in here, too. I'm there for you if you need me. And him saying it back. I thought all of that was lovely. And the little head nod between the two of them looking at each other and they don't have to be friends, but they both are acknowledging, like, we are both on the same page. We're both looking out for Caleb. So I thought all of that was just a really nice. If this doesn't come back with the second season, they did us a service of saying, like, we're bringing it all together in a way that feels complete. I hope that it's not because it's not going to come back. I hope it will, but if it doesn't, I'll feel like this is. This is kind of like modern. Modern Sean. Contemporary Sean. When it comes to entertainment, those things that I love, that don't make it become almost better versions than the ones that limp along for too long and don't keep the energy going in quite the right way. I've got a list of those shows where I'm just like, it was not given enough time, but because it wasn't given enough time, it's kind of perfect for what it is. And if this doesn't come back, I think that this show will be one of those.
Matt Ferrell: It's kind of like Firefly. It's like. I think the reason we all hold Firefly in such high esteem is because it was only on for. Was it 13 episodes? Yeah.
Sean Ferrell: They didn't have enough broadcast, so. Yeah, right.
Matt Ferrell: And by the way, they just announced that Nathan Fillion is trying to get an animated show made about Firefly between the end of the show and the movie. So it would be the whole cast, including Walsh and everybody back. I just saw the announcement about that, and if they can pull it off, that'd be great. But again, Firefly's awesome. My concern about this show is I want more, but I feel like the reason they put the bow on it was because Kurtzman was on the outs with Paramount, and I have a feeling they knew my time's up. So we gotta wrap this up so it doesn't feel like leaving the fans in a lurch. So if it gets picked up, I'm really curious. If they do with season two, it wouldn't be with the Kurtzman crew. It would be with a whole new showrunner, probably. And that makes me wary of. Even if they do greenlight it, it would make me nervous because with the new, people have the same sensibility to be able to continue it without it feeling like a completely different show. And it might be better just to leave it alone and just move on to something different. But at the same time, I thought it was such a. It's the best, I think, of the modern Trek shows as far as the quality of the writing, the quality of the acting, the thoughtfulness, and how they put the whole thing together. It was so well crafted. It's like, I would hope they get a chance to do a season two.
Sean Ferrell: Yeah. And if nothing else, what we know about Trek is, and this isn't meant to be dark, what I'm about to say, if an actor hasn't passed, there's always ways of using them in future Trek. And so let's say this doesn't come back, but a new show is crafted. I think a new show would wisely be set in this era of a thousand years past, what we know of as Next Generation and the original series. And at that point, maybe you go with Caleb, the captain aboard a ship and you have him as one of a different crew, but you pick up on some of these story elements because you then have the opportunity to pull characters in as guest stars for future storytelling. So these characters now exist within the lore, they exist within Star Trek. And Star Trek is a great big universe of terrific characters. And I have really enjoyed the introduction to these and my fingers are crossed that they come back. So.
Matt Ferrell: Me too.
Sean Ferrell: We'll see. But if they don't, as I said, It's 10 episodes that, as far as like a rewatch, easy to kind of binge and put on in the background and have it on and revisit these characters, I will definitely be doing that. So, viewers, listeners, how did you feel about this conclusion? Let us know. As I mentioned, we are going to be, believe it or not. That's right. Returning to the original series. And let's quickly, like, let's quickly figure out what the hell we're going to be watching because it's been so long. That's right. We're going to be. Correct me if I'm wrong, Matt. We're going to be tackling. Is there no truth in beauty? Because the last time we talked about the original series, we were talking about Spock's brain. I'm always talking about Spock's brain. I'm always thinking about Spock's brain. I'm always doodling Spock's brain. I'm always talking about Spock's brain. I just got like, Spock's brain on the brain, so. But next time, is there no truth in beauty? Please, as always. And you know who I'm talking to. Wrong answers only. Let us know in the comments. What do you think that episode's going to be about? As always, jump into the comments. Let us know if there's something about this episode that you wish we'd said but we missed. Or just let us know how you felt about the episode overall. So, as always, everybody your comments, likes, subscribes, sharing with your friends, those are all very easy ways for you to support the podcast and we do appreciate those. If you'd like to support us more directly, you can go to trekintime.show. You can click the join button there. It will not only allow you to throw coins at our heads, but it will sign you up as an ensign, which means you'll be signed up for out of Time, our spin off show in which we talk about things that don't fit within the confines of this program.
We hope you'll be interested in checking that out. As always, we appreciate your watching or listening and we'll talk to you next time.
When we get into these conversations, we Let me start that sentence over. That sentence didn't have a destination. Holy cow.
Matt Ferrell: Didn't have a destination.
Sean Ferrell: I was suddenly there were words coming out of my mouth and I'm just like, where the is this sentence going? Okay, so who are we? I'm Sean Ferrell.
Matt Ferrell: I keep thinking about it. There was no destination. It keeps going through my mind. I can't get it out.
Sean Ferrell: So who are we? Oh, God. Okay.