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Matt and Sean talk about petulant space babies in Star Trek: The Original Series. Is this just a Q episode before there were Q?
YouTube version of the podcast: https://www.youtube.com/trekintime
Matt and Sean talk about petulant space babies in Star Trek: The Original Series. Is this just a Q episode before there were Q?
YouTube version of the podcast: https://www.youtube.com/trekintime
Follow us on X: @byseanferrell @mattferrell or @undecidedmf
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Creators & Guests
What is Trek In Time?
Join Sean and Matt as they rewatch all of Star Trek in order and in historical context.
Hello, and welcome to Trek in Time. This week, we're going to be talking about the alphabet. That's right, everybody. We're talking about Star Trek Season 1, The Squire of Gothos. This is episode number 18 in shooting order, but 17 in broadcast order. 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 world at the time of original broadcast. So we're currently talking about the mid 60s. And we're also talking about the original series. So we're looking forward to this episode. I know I am. And who are we? Well, I'm Sean Ferrell. I'm a writer. I write some sci fi. I write some stuff for kids.
Like my recently released The Sinister Secrets of the Fabulous Nothings, book two of my Sinister Secrets series. I hope you'll be interested in looking that up 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 Matt, how are you today?
I'm doing well. Just got back from Canada and I'm about to, after we finish recording this, Sean, get back in the car and I'm going to head down to Connecticut for another event. So it's been kind of busy. Well, there you go.
That's, I know how that feels. I have a couple of weeks coming up where I had a reading event I had to do yesterday and then At the end of this month, I have back to back weekends where one, I will be going up to Chappaqua, New York, if anybody's in the Chappaqua area for a book festival there, and then the following week I will be in Glen Rock, New Jersey for a book festival there.
Book festivals are a lot of fun. They're a great opportunity to meet readers. It's a great time to see kids excited about books and running around and wanting to buy everything. And it's also pretty exhausting. So three weeks from now, I am planning on lying straight, yeah, flat on the floor, staring into the hardwood and not doing anything for 24 hours straight.
Before we get into this week's episode, we always like to take a look at the comments from the previous episode. So, what have you found for us this week, Matt? Well,
this week,
uh, we talked about
Shore Leave last week, and you and I were kind of, kind of harsh on that episode. And this is one of the reasons I love doing shows like this, because we get Varying viewpoints.
And there were several people that kind of came out semi in defense of Shore Leave and the first one was from Dan Q Cat who wrote, Shore Leave is my fave episode, so funny, so entertaining. Glad to see sillier face of Trek. Hm. Which was followed up by Happy Flappy Farm who wrote, I think the writers were imagining that random thoughts come into reality, not necessarily fantasies.
That explains the birds, Finnegan, the tiger, and the samurai. If you can relax and not look for real meaning, this is a fun episode. Not one to watch again, but it was okay. See you in the next one. So it's like, we have a couple of people kind of, not all, like, Happy Flappy Farm was not a full throated defense of it, but it was like, it's fun.
Just kind of like, let it wash over you. Yeah. And then we have one from Linda Shulman, who wrote, 1960s was a very different time than it is now. Nobody thought about sex crimes or anything like that. And I disagree with you. I think that if I was walking through that meadow, because Sean, you said, who's going to say it looks like Alice in Wonderland.
Uh, Linda wrote, I might say it, that it reminds me of Alice in Wonderland or it reminds me of a Monet painting. And so it's like, again, different viewpoint, uh, on this where it didn't feel like out of place for Linda. And then finally, for the episode we're talking about today, the, uh, Squire of Gothos and Wrong Answers Only, Mark, buddy.
This is becoming a
regular installment of the program.
It's not just Wrong Answers Only, it's Mark, Mark's Wrong Answers Only.
Yeah.
Yeah. We should come up with a little theme music for this. He wrote Plot of Squire of Gothos. Or Gathos. A very attractive girl named Amethyst comes on board the Enterprise.
Dressed in black and constantly bored and unimpressed with everything and everyone around her, she opens a hot topic on one of the lower decks. Younger males compete for her affections to become her squire, and all falls All fail spectacularly. Amethyst is actually in love with Scotty, but he is not into goths, not interested.
And when she finds this out, she closes her Hot Topic and leaves at the next stop. The bridge crew all laugh when Chekhov comes onto the bridge after she leaves because he forgot to remove his black eyeliner.
All right, Mark, you're definitely getting your own theme music and I should think it should be one of those classic 1960s sound effects. That's what it needs to be at the end of every one of those readings. Thank you, Mark. And thank you, commenters. It is important for Matt and me. I mean, we're the two having the conversation that you're all jumping in to listen to.
Matt and I are aware that our takes on these things are not the only takes on them, and that our favorite episode might be somebody else's least, and our least might be somebody else's favorite. So we appreciate you jumping in. And for listening. In such gentle fashion, saying like, Hey, I like this one. It is a good reminder of that.
So thank you everybody for taking the time to do that. That noise in the background, it can only be one thing. It's the read alert. It's time for Matt to tackle the Wikipedia description. It's a very short one, which I think is first appropriate and pretty good. So take it away, Matt. Okay.
The Enterprise discovers a rogue planet drifting through space inhabited by an eccentric being named Trelane.
Who uses his apparently unlimited power over matter and form to manipulate the crew. This is, this is the most direct and succinct description. Why can't they all be like this?
Remember the days where it was, this is an episode of Enterprise, a United States produced Television program and following the voyages of the NCX 001, like the preambles on those were always so frustrating for you to get through.
And now we've finally gotten to a stage where things have boiled down to what looks like a TV guide summary. Well done this episode directed by Don McDougall McDougall, and written by Paul Schneider. Paul Schneider. We have seen him before. He is the writer who is responsible for Balance of Terror, which introduced the Romulans, and of course we have enjoyed his work there, and I think this is another
great episode from, from Mr. Schneider. We also see in the main cast, we see a lot of everybody. I think this episode does a really good job of giving us a little bit of everybody in the main crew, giving them an opportunity to shine. So we see everybody from William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelly, James Doohan, Nichelle Nichols, George Takei, and guest actors include William Campbell as Trelane and Richard Carlyle as Karl Jaeger,
Michael Barrier as Lieutenant DeSalle, and Venita Wolf as Yeoman Teresa Ross. I noted that Michael Barrier as Lieutenant DeSalle, we will see DeSalle a couple more times in the series. He will make a few more appearances, and in fact, in one of those, he will have changed his role, and will have become an assistant to Scotty.
So he actually becomes an engineering crew member, having moved from his position, which I think is interesting because it mirrors the move of Geordi LaForge moving from being on the bridge to going below decks. And I wanted to point out William Campbell as Trelane. He has an interesting background in that he was always a, he was a that guy of the fifties and sixties.
He was in a lot of television shows. He was in a lot of movies. He did a lot of B movies and. This anecdote, I found really tremendous when I, when I found this one in 1963, Campbell began to be in some Roger Corman films, and he starred in Corman's The Young Racers, and when they finished production, the film's sound man, and Matt, I don't know if you looked in the notes, do you want to take a guess as to who the sound man was?
No. Think of I'll give you two clues. Think of a director who made a name for himself in the 70s. Okay. And think of a director who made a name for himself in the 70s who was responsible for one of the greatest movies ever made.
It could be so many, Sean. There's George Lucas, there's John Carpenter, there's, uh, like, could you narrow it down?
Francis Ford Coppola.
Oh, I was thinking Godfather in the back of my head. Okay.
All right. Coppola talked to Corman, asking to be allowed to stay on location where they had just finished filming this movie so that he could direct a low budget horror film to be produced by Corman. And Coppola, this is the nugget that I love the most, promised that it would be the cheapest film that Corman ever produced.
So they shot a film for $40, 000. Uh huh. Which is the movie Dementia 13, which came out in 1963. It's an atmospheric and violent horror film made in imitation of Psycho. And Campbell starred as a member of that film. Which having read this, I'm suddenly like, I got to find this movie. I got to see this $40, 000 film, which was made as an homage to Psycho by Francis Ford Coppola.
I've never seen it. I've never heard of it, but I really do want to find it. So the date of broadcast of this episode, January 12th, 1967, just the beginning of a new year, although. So, the episodes that we've been reviewing, there really wasn't a holiday break. It was, it's interesting to me because now we end up with a fall season that usually ends before Thanksgiving, and then we don't see new episodes of a show until sometime well after
the New Year. But 1967, there were new episodes broadcasting between Christmas and New Year's, and then immediately after New Year's. So here we are, January 12th, 1967, a lot of very familiar things, which we've talked about before on the program. The number one song was the Monkees I'm a Believer once again.
This held the number one spot for about a month and a half at the beginning of the year. As a reminder to our listeners about the song, Matt, sing a few bars Terrific as always. It's always so moving. And at the movies, people were still going to watch Follow Me Boys. Yes, that's right. The Disney movie, Matt and I had no recollection of whatsoever about a Boy Scout troop that combats the US Army.
Who could remember that charming tale? And on television, we've been looking at the programs according to the Nielsen ratings that would have been competing with Star Trek. Star Trek earning about a 12 on average for its first season, which would be the high point for the measurement there. Every show that we've been talking about in comparison has bested it by a good amount.
The number one show of the year was Bonanza with a 29. So that gives you a sense of the scale that we're talking about. We've worked through a lot of different programs and this week at a 21. 8, we're talking about the Friday night movies on CBS, which interestingly started as a Thursday night movie. So it eventually transitioned.
It started as a Thursday night movie. And then at some point in the sixties, it moved to Friday nights. And a little anecdote that I found interesting here about this series is that they were always looking for films that they would have to fit within an evening program. So a longer movie might be difficult.
And sometimes that caused some consternation. Like in the running of the Jack Lemon and Kim Novak comedy, The Notorious Landlady, someone in broadcasting the film got reels mixed up and they then had to swap out back to the original reel that should have been played because the continuity was blown. So a network announcer issued an apology during a commercial break and then they went back to the original reel.
So what should have been a Two hour and 15 minute airing ended up being a three hour broadcast of the movie. I can't imagine tuning in to see a movie, having it jump forward so dramatically that it was a problem, having it go back, and then having to watch for three hours to see how that movie must have ended.
A month later, The Burt Lancaster film Elmer Gantry was televised with approximately 30 minutes total in various deletions from the original hour and 46 minute length. Viewers complained that because of all the omissions, the movie made little sense. And then there was a later incident in which a film starring Anthony Quinn, film the Requiem for a Heavyweight.
The film was too short. It was only 85 minutes long. So the network asked the company, Columbia Pictures. To somehow pad the film and they went back into outtakes and they found 40 minutes of outtakes to re insert into the film, which is possibly one of the only times that a film was actually made longer for broadcast.
What I find interesting about all of this is that a lot of these films, when they were shown, were shown in this way without commercial interruption. Well, that's kind of shocking. Which, yeah, which I find very surprising. This is, of course, in the days prior to something like HBO existing. The big lure of HBO is, we'll show you these movies uninterrupted.
But back in the 60s, they apparently made that a regular practice, which I found really, really fascinating. And in the news, a lot of different news stories on January 12th, 1967. Ongoing talk about Well, Communist China, Vietnam, all those typical things. But in the middle of the page, a headline that jumped out at me, Con Ed in New York City accused of overcharges of 35 million due to bad bookkeeping practice.
Well, thank goodness they solved that problem back in 1967. Oh, wait a minute. This is why it caught my eye. Headline, August 20th, 2024. Guess what? Yes, Con Edison was accused of overcharging New York City customers.
Oh my
God. Yes. The more things change, the more they stay the same. On now to our conversation about the Squire of Gothos.
We always jump in with an overall sense of how did this episode strike us? So Matt, let's just start there. What were your feelings about this?
Oh, Sean. Um, Oh no. I, I've, I've realized, realizing something. I'm having some difficulty separating 2024 mindset from watching 1960s television, some of these episodes.
This wasn't, in my opinion, a bad episode, but there was a lot that kind of just like, oof. Oh boy. Oh, oh, we're doing that? Oh, we're doing that? Wait, why are you playing these sound effects that sound like they're from a Saturday morning cartoon? Like, is this meant to be a comedy? Like, what, what's happening here?
And by the end of the episode, I was kind of like, wait, why did we see any of that? Like, I didn't feel like there was character development of any really kind. And it was kind of like, what was the point of all of it? Like, did I just waste 45 minutes of my life just watching this? I didn't feel like it was bad, but it was just kind of like, I don't know.
It might be my. You know, I'm 50 now. It's 2024. It just might be This kind of makes me feel, Sean, like when we get to Next Generation. A little tangent here. First two seasons of Next Generation are awful. They're just really bad. There's way more bad than good. But there are good episodes. But there's way more bad than good.
And I feel like this episode felt like that to me. It felt like something from the first one or two seasons of Next Generation. It was kind of like, eh. And I know I'm going to be in the minority there because I know this episode. I'm pretty sure you enjoyed it, I'm guessing. And I'm guessing most people that are listening to us talk about this probably enjoyed it.
So I know I'm going to be the outlier here for the What did we just watch? That was my reaction.
Yeah, I found this, uh, really hit the sweet spot for me. This really felt like it was like perfect original Trek to me. It felt like everybody on the crew was shown being really good at their jobs. Everybody in the crew was given an opportunity to be the expert in their field.
It felt like the pacing was good. I didn't feel like there was anything about how the story was unfolding that felt like, Oh, this is taking forever. Like one of my big complaints about Shore Leave last week was it felt like. It would have been better served to have the revelation of what the planet was supposed to be, which was a fantasy playground, have that revealed in the first 10 or 15 minutes, and then have something go wrong and have the rest of the episode being, how do we solve this dilemma of being in danger.
I didn't have that here. I felt like for a 1960s program, it felt like it had a good clip. I, in watching Shore Leave, found myself checking my watch a lot and thinking like, Oh, I'm only 20 minutes into this. This time I found myself like, Oh, it's almost over. I couldn't believe it. Um, and I thought the performances of everybody in this one were really, really strong.
And I really like the performance of Campbell as Trelane. I like this character. And don't have, I do think that your 1960s ish comment is also very present in my watching, but I found myself very happily slipping back into that.
So let me, let me clarify. I don't disagree with anything you just said there.
I wasn't bored. I wasn't checking my watch. I thought the pacing was pretty good. I thought the acting was great. I thought Trelane was a lot of fun. He just, he felt like a Q to me. I thought, okay, this is kind of a fun thing. But At the end of it, it was kind of like, I felt like I just sat down to eat a meal, and then at the end of the meal, it was like, I was completely hungry.
Like, I felt like I didn't eat anything. It just felt like there was nothing there to me. Like you just ate a bunch of cotton candy. Right. It felt like a Saturday morning cartoon. Like, it was just eye candy entertainment for 45 minutes and then when it was over there was nothing for me to take away. Like there was, like, I, I did not perceive any character development of the main characters of the show in this episode.
And the only character development was Trelane. to a certain extent who turned out to be that kid that basically got in trouble with his parents where it's like, really, that's what we're left, left, left with here. Okay. There's these godlike creatures that exist in the universe, which you could argue could be Q the way they behave, but it's like, there was nothing to come away from that.
And then you go to the next generation, which has Q and those Q episodes, there's character development in the humans. There's things that happen in those episodes that are struggling with a concept or an idea that are kind of like, Q is the thing that makes things happen. But what's happening, it pervades through the humans that are doing the stuff and there's some kind of character development that comes out of it.
I didn't, I didn't pick up on anything like that from this episode, which is part of the reason why it felt like cotton candy. So I don't disagree with anything you said. I think it's just like you and I are on the same page. It just, for me, it skewed towards the end and that felt like empty entertainment to me by the end.
Yeah, I don't know if it's a knock on something for me, if it's not character development, but character revelation. I feel like this leaned on character revelation, because you are given, I think Spock stands out in this one for his measured combativeness. And you begin to see how Kirk uses him as a foil against others, which is pointed out specifically in other episodes that we will get to in the future, where it is pointed out to say like, ah, you let him do the attack and you look for weakness.
You stand back and you, and you let him be the one to test the perimeter. And I think that's on display here. I think you get a nice moment between Spock and Scotty where the two of them are talking about, like, what's the reality here of the situation and how do we use what we can do to try and gain an advantage.
And it is ultimately a, it's not even an argument, but they are taking countering sides to a point with Scotty revealing like there's no guarantee of anything, but Spock with his, but the logic of the situation means there will be a reveal that we could use. So whether we are successful or not, this is what we have to test.
Otherwise we're doing nothing. I liked that moment because it shows the, the two of them are not, nobody is ordering somebody to do something. It is, they are treating each other with respect. And I think it hearkens back to, for me, this episode does so much to show the, the knitting between the characters and the trust between the characters.
And we have the character who I mentioned will appear in a few more episodes, LaSalle. Um, who will not be the main navigator moving forward. We know next season Chekhov is going to show up. And of course, Chekhov is added to reach out to that Monkey's appeal. It was, he's supposed, he's literally put in a, in a Beatles wig and he's supposed to be the young heartthrob for the show to draw in the younger teen viewers.
And he becomes the mainstay on the, Bridge. But in this, we are actually given quite a bit of characterization about a guy that you might say, like, are they testing the waters with a character who was supposed to be there next to Sulu. And Sulu is kind of like, Hey, like keeping him reined in, setting it up as like, Oh, is he supposed to be maybe the more brash version of a Kirk where he's like, he's like, I'm going to go in and clean your clock.
And everybody around him is just like, hold on, stand back, like, let's do other things. It's little things like that that, for me, were enough. But I also do understand what you're saying about, um, there's no character arc here. Kirk does not change as a result of meeting Trelane. He reveals all the things you expect about Kirk.
He is self sacrificing. He is, Thinking logistically in a three dimensional chess sort of way. We keep going back to like the metaphors of him playing Spock and being able to beat Spock at that game. He does that here when he realizes, ah, I think I know how to pull a lever that's going to throw him off and get us out of here.
It works, and then it doesn't, and then it works again, and then it doesn't, and then the parents show up. And all of what you've said about character Arc is true, but for me, there was enough of like, I just like seeing these people who are coworkers, but actually also family. And for me, that's enough.
One thing that did, I picked up on this, like we're in the original series and like Kirk is always going on away missions.
Yeah. The captain would not go on away missions, so that wouldn't actually happen. And when we get to next generation Even the
point where Spock says to Scotty, we can't go, because the ship can't. Yes. The ship can't have both of us go. It
shocked me when that happened in this episode of like, him saying We can't go.
We're too essential up here. We can't go. It has to be these guys. And I was like, wait, what's happening here? This is like something from Next Generation where Picard is like sending Number One. He's not going, or if he's going, Number One has to stay. It's like Next Generation does a really good job of that.
And the original series never did. And I forgot that that happened. And when I saw that, I was like, why didn't they do this more often? It's because it was like, it was refreshing to see them do that. And it was, it came across clear to me that they were testing the waters. It was like, oh, here's two guys
that are not wearing red shirts, they're most likely not going to die in this episode. So they're clearly testing some new characters that maybe could be recurring. But of course, me, you know, history, we know they aren't. It's like at the time it felt like, oh, we're getting somebody new that we can learn about this week.
And so I did enjoy that part of it too. I thought that was kind of refreshing and disappointing that it didn't happen. Yeah. I also, I got a kick out of everybody drinking coffee. Okay, I gotta, I gotta, I made, one of my notes was, the first note, I used the notes app on my iPhone as we're watching, my first note is, eating on the bridge, question mark, exclamation point?
Like, what the hell? They're all sitting there, and like, that character, that lieutenant's like, hunched over like, the thing next to Sulu, he looks like he's half drunk and not awake, and he's got the cup of coffee on the thing.
He
looks like he's watching a football game. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, where's the cup holder?
If this is what they do, wouldn't there be like cup holders? It was really weird. I thought that was weird.
I thought it was hysterical. I thought it was hysterical too, that it was paper cups. Yeah. Like space paper cups. Like, like the replicator is just like, doodly, doodly, doodly. It's recyclable. Like what?
No, you just like, like if you're getting a cup in a place that, You have, like, ostensibly replicators and a kitchen, and they've talked about a cook in the past. Like, you wouldn't get a paper cup. It would be something for you. It would be a ceramic cup or something. And as you said, like Sulu would have a little thing that he'd pull out to the side to be a little cup holder.
Like, I can't have this dangling over my control panel. And then I thought about Next Generation, and I never saw them eating on the bridge. No. But ostensibly on Next Gen's bridge. That would have been the easier place to eat because all of those were touchscreens and you could just be like, Oh, I spilled something like squeaky, squeaky, squeaky
clean.
I highly doubt there's a lot of eating going on on like a Navy ship or something like that. So I thought it was a really weird choice they made there. But food came up a second time in this episode, which I thought was hysterical to me. Like, they're in Trelane's thing, and there's that huge food spread, nobody's eating, and then there's a cut back, and Bones is standing up, still chewing on something, and I'm like, Bones is the only person that thought,
hey, food's here, might as well.
Yeah. I like it though, because from a scientist perspective, he's merely going through the scientific process. There's no taste. I like, I really like the fact that while Trelane is talking with Spock and Kirk, McCoy very quietly lifts up his device and takes a measurement and then, like, Studies the result and just stares at Trelane.
And when he shows up later and he's just like, he's not showing up as anything. He's not, he doesn't exist according to our machines. And then when he then reveals later, like nothing has a taste. The wine has no flavor. I'm like, he's not eating because he's hungry. He's eating because. He's experimenting.
He's like, he's like, this stuff all supposed to be real, but we already know the fire doesn't give off any heat. So let's figure out what's going on here. I think Sulu started to eat just because he was watching the doctor eat. He was probably like, all right, went in Rome. Uh, the whole, the, the setup of Trelane's space.
I, I found really engaging. I liked a lot of this. The play acting and everything being based on visual cues only. I liked his, Oh, I've made a mistake by forgetting about time. And he's actually depicting something 900 years old and refuses to let go of what he thinks of as humanity's key elements, despite the fact that the people standing in front of them.
Keep saying, we're not like that anymore. He doesn't want to let go of the romantic vision of what he's held on to. I find myself, as I'm saying these words, thinking this is exactly what I'm doing to Star Trek. I am looking at something from the 1960s and I'm refusing to let go of the romantic vision of the program because it fits my needs.
It fits my fantasy of what I want to have. The end of this episode is very Twilight Zone. It's very, like, we get to a point where we build up the danger and then explicitly Deus Machina, the hand of God coming in and being like,
boink,
like, let me solve this for you. In this, I don't mind it as much. I, how did you feel about the ending?
I know you've talked about your feelings about the episode feeling like, what did I just eat? I'm still hungry. Like, this didn't satisfy me. Was there anything about that Twilight Zone ish ending that did or didn't work for you?
I think the word I would use to describe the entire episode, Sean, would be, it's inoffensive.
And I think that is how I would describe the ending. It was inoffensive. It was not, I didn't have a reaction of, Oh, come on. Like, that's a cheat. That's lame. I didn't have that feeling. And I didn't feel like, Oh wow, that's clever. Cause like, you could see that coming a
mile away, with how he was acting like a petulant child the entire episode. And it's like, he's clearly an omnipotent child. And so it's like having the parents come in. It wasn't some kind of M. Night Shyamalan sixth sense reveal where I was like blown away. I'm like, Oh, didn't see that coming. So it was just kind of inoffensive. And again, 2024 Matt watching this, I'm just like, these are Q.
These are Q. You know what I mean? That's all they are. It's like, obviously, Q didn't exist when they made the show, but it's like, these are just Q. That's it. So, the entire episode as I'm watching this, all I kept thinking of was the Q continuum, these are just another person from that group that's just messing with humans because it's fun.
So it's like, at the end when that happened, it was just kind of like, alright. It was almost like a, that's all you got? Alright. That's part of the reason, the cotton, it goes back to my cotton candy feel of the episode.
I am curious. And we're not going to watch them in this way, but if you put this into a rewatch of the Q episodes, I find myself wondering if it is all that different from Encounter at Farpoint.
There are much better episodes of Q than Encounter at Farpoint. And there's the one where he has his powers stripped from him, which I think is, yes, magnificent sci fi, regardless of whether you like Trek or not. I think that episode is magnificent sci fi. Uh, the episode where he gives the powers to Riker, I think is another like really great classic, almost Alfred Bester, 1960s sci fi of like, Like man who became a god and, and like the challenge of that and how do you stay true to who you are, uh, is a very 1960s trope.
So again, and these are earlier, like, I'd also put the, I don't know if this is all that different
from, no, you're hitting exactly what I'm getting at is Encounter at Farpoint, like Roddenberry had his fingers in Next Generation for the first two seasons. And it felt like a direct continuation of the original series.
And so a lot of the episodes are that very kind of like cotton candy, not a whole lot. It's really glum on to at times. Sometimes it's kind of like discordant, like, ooh, kind of feel to them. Um, and then when you get to seasons three beyond, when Roddenberry took a backseat, And, you know, who is it? Michael Piller and the others took over.
That's when we get the Q episodes that like you just mentioned or the one where Picard almost dies and Q basically helps him through making a choice about his afterlife of you want to go back and make choices. Tapestry,
which
is one of the best episodes. It's one of the best ones. And it's like, that's how you handle a Q.
If you have this omnipotent thing, He's not going to really have character development. He's there as an instigator. It's the people that he's instigating against that are going to have the character development. And all of the ones that you just cited are exactly it. Encounter at Farpoint is just like this one.
It's like there's a whole bunch of nothing there. You could argue that Encounter at Farpoint is not a good pilot for Next Generation, but it feels like this.
Yeah, and there's a lot of interesting duplication of this in Encounter at Farpoint all the way to like the kangaroo court, um, the depiction of history as a measurement of modern people, you know, saying like, Oh, you're ready for a duel because your damsel is in distress.
And. Encounter at Farpoint, Q is explicitly saying like, I don't care how you act right now. This is who you are. This court that is completely unjust is what you are. And it's so it's the same kind of thing. And I find that an interesting kind of like thing to chew on. Um, the last point I wanted to raise and ask you about,
is there have been various forms of theories. I, and I do not call myself a Star Trek novel scholar. I fall into the camp of Star Trek novels are not canon. I think they're on a fun aside and I've read a lot of Star Trek novels, but I do not consider they're, they're not considered canon in the way that like Star Wars does do that.
They're like, Oh yeah, the comics, the books, like these happen within the mythology of the universe. I think there is a next gen novel, which is possibly also an original series novel, where Trelane is revealed to be a part of the continuum. Ha, yeah. I say that as I have a fuzzy memory of John Delancey's face on a cover with Campbell's face on a cover, and then Kirk and or Picard in the middle, like, I believe I'm remembering that accurately.
Having said that, I want to put that to the side, and you've already said it a couple of times, this is effectively just a Q. Do you think within the mythology of Star Trek it makes sense that this is in fact a Q? And do you think that it changes our understanding of Q when we get to The Q, because this version, there's technology here.
There's stuff working in the the background machinery?
It could just be part of the Q. Like that kid, the kid Q, created that machinery. You know what I mean? Like he can, he can manifest anything. So yeah, you could absolutely, right. You could excuse all that stuff as it's just, kid made the machinery and it was part of his game, the whole thing.
So it's like you could totally write that, write that way. Um, and it does not change my perception of Q in the future because Q in the future, like when Q first appears in the, Pilot. And then when we learn about the continuum later and all of the other Q, then we find out the first Q we met gets kicked out of the Q.
It's like, there's, there's clearly dynamics inside the Q where some Q just kind of want to leave everybody alone, like humans alone. It's like, let's not mess with people like that. And then others are just like bored and want to mess with people like that. So there's a, there's a variation of Q. So I don't think it changes the perception.
I think it actually, actually helps. It's like, Oh, this is one of those other Q. This is not the Q we know from Picard. This is just like another family of Q that are just like, you know, let our kid play, but just don't mess with people. It's like, oh, you mess with people. Don't mess with people. So it's, it doesn't, it doesn't mess with anything we
learned.
Not to be cruel to your pets. Right. Yeah. So viewers, listeners, what did you think about this? Do you side with Matt? And you're like, this is a bowl full of nothing and I'm still hungry. Or do you side with me? And you say like, this is what I tuned into original Star Trek for. I, I like this episode quite a bit.
So, uh, And it's not just nostalgia. I found myself as a 50 something year old man sitting there going like, I'm having a great time. So let us know, jump into the comments, let us know what you thought. And don't forget to leave wrong answers only predictions about what the next episode is about. It's not all Mark Loveless all the time.
Everybody has like, please feel free to jump in. And next week we're going to be talking about Arena, which Without even having to look, I know what this episode is about, but I want to find out what wrong answers think it's about. Before we sign off, Matt, do you have anything you want to point out to our listeners and viewers about what you have coming up on your main channel?
Took a little bit of a break, so we weren't publishing anything, but we're back in action now. By the time this is out, we have an episode about the world's largest wind farm, some of the challenges with it that have come to light. Um, and then we have more episodes coming. I have an episode that I just recorded about.
My net zero home. I've lived here for a year. So I'm doing kind of a recap of what that year's been like. So stay tuned for those. Not asking for a spoiler, but
are You're thinking of leaving the home behind? Yeah, we're not working out. We're throwing it away. Yeah, that's what I figured. Just gonna abandon it.
Yeah. As for me, if you wanna find out more about my books, you can go to sean ferrell.com. You can also just go to wherever it is you buy your books. My books are available everywhere. That's from Amazon down to your local bookstore or bookshop.org, which is a great way to support local bookstores.
Even if you aren't close to them, you can go through them. You can buy books directly from bookshop. Or you can find a local bookstore anywhere in the country that's part of their network and order books from those shops. So it's a great way to support stores anywhere. If you'd like to support the show, easy ways to do that include subscribing, leaving a comment, liking the episode, sharing with your friends.
We appreciate all of that. It's a great way for you to support us without having to do any heavy lifting. If you want to do a little heavy lifting, you can support us directly by clicking the The join button at trekintime. show, that lets you throw coins at our heads. We appreciate the welts, and when you become a supporter, you are automatically made an Ensign, which means you'll be subscribed to our spinoff show, Out of Time, which, in which we talk about anything that doesn't fit within the confines of this program.
And as I say these words, Matt, I realize we need to record an episode of Out of Time next week. Yes. Yes. Subscribers, you will be getting something from us shortly. Thank you so much, everybody, for taking the time to watch or listen. We look forward to talking to you next time.