Kevin: Hello and welcome back to Subspace Radio.
I can hear the cinematic music swelling around us, Rob, as we.
Rob: It, it's as if Jerry Goldsmith is right here with us.
Kevin: I know, it's uncanny.
It's like it's, it sounds like his music, but it's not quite exactly his music, if
Rob: It's, yes.
Yeah.
I actually surprisingly do.
It's like the guy who came in and took the score in the second Harry Potter film, but
it wasn't actually John Williams' score.
Kevin: You need to do just enough to justify your paycheck.
And so we don't have to pay the, for the
Rob: And you use that wonderful get out jail free card, homage.
Kevin: We are here, of course, to talk about Star Trek Picard season three,
episode one, and the themes we saw in it that take us back into Star Trek history.
Rob: Yes, that's right after our divergence into The Animated Series
where you unexpectedly threw in a let's do a whole season review.
Rob notes, notes that don't actually exist.
I'm just mind noting.
Kevin: If Rob sounded unprepared in that last episode, that was entirely my fault
because I threw him a huge curve ball.
Rob: But that look if you can't go into a podcast unprepared, what's
the point of doing a podcast anyway?
Kevin: I hear you're an improviser
Rob: Uh, yes.
Yeah.
And I proved that probably I'm a little bit rusty after last week.
I'm prepared and ready to get back into our old school format, talk about the
episode, break it off into the wider world, and see how I can compare it
and bring it back to Deep Space Nine.
That's the familiar ground.
Welcome back and welcome to 2023.
Kevin: Or, welcome to the 25th century, as it
Rob: Exactly.
Oh, well done.
Kevin: Before we talk about this specific episode, and I am dying to, let's first
talk about Star Trek Picard to this point.
And I know you, you recently Rob you, you mainlined that series.
To get prepared for season three.
What trajectory were you on as you, you entered the atmosphere
for Star Trek Picard, season
Rob: Look I hate being one of those people who align with this vocal
minority that seem to have besmirched all fandom, but I'm hovering around them,
but I'm not completely invested in 'em.
So it's sort of like, I agree with a couple of ideas, but when they go
into their really extreme stuff, I go whoa, that's not what I signed up for.
So I, like many other people, were incredibly excited to have Picard back.
And as season one kind of went along its way, I got more and more upset and sad.
I tried my hardest to stay tuned in and go, no, this'll be good.
And it's a, it's a common thread I have as a fan in any of the IPs that I follow.
I'm the one who's always at the front going, come on guys, it's okay.
This campaign can still survive.
Even though like we've got limbs lost and it's I'm like the Black Knight
going, it's just a flesh wound.
But by the end I just had completely lost interest, so much so that I
did not touch season two at all.
And yeah, little echoes and rumors online, confirm that for me.
But with the invite to do a podcast from Mr.
Kevin Yank, he drags me back into this world of having to, be up to date.
So I devoured all of season two in a matter of days during my summer
holiday break over here in Australia.
And look, there was some really good stuff in there.
There's some nice points and moments.
But overall I got to the end and I went, what is happening here?
Why, why, Why?
But going into season three, I'd heard a lot of the stuff backstage.
As we know, we talk about a lot, that Kurtzman and Goldman have handed over
Picard to this new showrunner who started out working as a dog's body on
Kevin: He was a PA in Star Trek, Voyager, I think.
Rob: Yes.
And then he became Bragga's like personal assistant.
And so this is a guy embraced in Star Trek lore and not caught up in that
whole, gotta make a new one, flash and sweary and, and dark and bold.
Just going, or we can do Star Trek.
So I was, I was excited to come back.
But yeah, season two was rough going.
There was a, it was an improvement in some ways on season one, but yeah.
It was it was a bit of a mess and I could see the early stages of something
different happening because this crew that they had spent an entire season hoping our
emotional states would be invested in it.
They just went this isn't working, so let's just get rid of all
of them, which was hilarious.
And now they're going
One thing that really peeved me off, one thing I liked about season
one, I loved the Romulan couple.
I loved Picard's Romulan couple who he kind of saved from
the destruction of Romulus.
I went, these guys are great.
They're a beautiful couple.
There's a great relationship with them.
And then season two starts and within the first five minutes they've given away the
husband's dead because we want to set up this female Romulan as a love interest.
And I've gone, Ooh, that is so clumsy.
That is so jarring.
And that, and that kind of put me on the back foot even, just as we had started.
But,
Kevin: Yeah.
It's a means to an end brand of storytelling where they know they have
predetermined the thing they want to do in order to cause an emotional reaction,
and then they reverse engineer a justification for it, which comes off as
clum.
Rob: It was very much a case of we want this to happen.
So everything we, yeah, we're switching everything.
Also the story was quite light in some ways and had some, that whole traveling
back in time jovial type approach.
But
Kevin: pacing of both of those seasons is super weird.
There are moments, There are moments where the pacing is right on point and it's
firing on all cylinders, and you're like, that is the best episode of this season.
But it's a transition point between going too slowly to going too quickly,
or going too quickly to going too slowly.
You get a taste on the way through of what a satisfying pace would
be, but they don't let you get comfortable because they're about to
over correct in the other direction.
Both seasons have that problem,
Rob: you're going through a drive through and they're like throwing ice
cream at you and you go, oh, that's, oh.
But yeah, it was, and plus there was a different form of darkness.
Season one there was incredibly dark, brutal, almost defiantly snubbing
noses at Star Trek hardcore fans going, we're just killing off these characters
that we've brought back that you had invested stuff in, but they, they're
just minor characters, who cares?
And bringing in this whole subplot about Picard's mum and her mental health issues,
and her ultimate suicide was incredibly dark and incredibly clumsily handled.
It's a
Kevin: That's
Rob: incre, incredibly important issue and a delicate issue that
Kevin: If you go there, you owe a satisfying story and
a satisfying resolution.
So my problem is not that they went there, my problem is that when they got
there, it wasn't in service of anything revelatory or or deep or satisfying.
Rob: No.
It was really quite insulting and really quite, yeah I, maybe I'm over
overstating it a bit, but a little bit damaging to to treat it in such a way.
Kevin: So low expectations, I guess
is how we can sum up your uh,
Rob: My interest was peaked when I went.
Oh, okay.
So they're coming back.
Oh no, no, They're all coming back.
And much like, it was a gag on some show when they were talking
about the Jackson Five coming back and someone said, What even Tito?
And they're going, what?
Even LeVar?
They got LeVar back?
They got LeVar and he got his daughter in there.
But that's probably the reason why he probably went, eh, nepotism
is strong in the 25th century.
But yes, I was, my interest was peaked and when I heard the the old hands,
the old regime has handed it over to new blood that got me quite excited.
How about you?
Kevin: Quite similar, like, cautiously optimistic, I think is not quite right.
You know the old saying, fool me once, shame on you.
Fool me twice, shame on me.
This was a fool me three times season.
Rob: Yeah.
So you went into season two after season one.
You went into season two, go.
No, they, this could be all right.
Kevin: Season two had an incredibly strong start, which is what has me even today
after what I think we are about to agree is a great start to a season of Star Trek.
I am still nevertheless bruised from the disappointment of the high highs
at the start of season two of Picard, and then where all of that ended up.
Rob: It's, look, It's not a sprint, it's a marathon.
Okay, guys, it,
Kevin: But In storytelling, beginnings are easy.
Endings are so hard.
Making that all amount to something that feels like an earned ending that leaves
them changed, in a way that was worth the audience's time to show up and watch,
that is the hard part of storytelling.
And neither of the first two seasons of Picard nailed that.
I think the jury is out on whether they will do that in season three.
Do they have a stronger start under their feet here?
I think so.
Do they know in advance where they're going?
And is that going to be worthwhile?
I hope so.
The reunion, as it were, is both worrying to me and encouraging to me.
Like hopefully all of these stars saw in their parts in the story,
a worthwhile story to be told.
And this is what we're hearing in the interviews and the press junkets is the
writers met with each of them individually and asked, where would you like to see
your character at the start of the season?
What arc would you like to see them go on that we have not seen before from them?
How are they different all these years down the line from when
they, we last saw them in Nemesis?
Those questions, the actors are telling us, were answered not just
to their satisfaction, but to their delight, and they are feeling like
they're getting to do deeper, more meaningful stories for their characters.
At the same time, I'm sitting here going, you only got 10 episodes.
That's little more than one episode per character, if we're gonna tell a
satisfying story arc, let alone what is the overarching narrative of this season.
I am a little worried of just how many masters they are needing to
serve with this story, and if it, if they pull it off, it will be amazing.
But I am trying not to get my hopes because I've been burned twice before.
Rob: So what you're saying is if The Animated Series had done exactly what
Picard season three had done, maybe those two seasons might have worked out
differently if they, if Roddennberry met with every single cast member and
Kevin: It still wouldn't have been a good Saturday morning cartoon, Rob.
Rob: It's a Saturday morning cartoon!
Kevin: Let's talk about high level impressions of this episode.
I'll go first.
The, the degree to which this is a love letter to cinematic Star Trek in
a television format like that is the overwhelming, that is the headline
here is they are not making a season of TV Star Trek, as we have learned
to know it, and in some cases love it, this is a 10 part Star Trek movie.
Rob: That's what they've been pushing a lot, haven't they?
Kevin: That's what they've been pushing a lot, and it's there on
the screen, like it's not just hype.
Watching this, it had the pace, it had the lingering establishing shots.
It had the.
The blank page opening of in the 25th century of this is,
this is not a continuation.
This is not an episode.
This is a long form story we're gonna tell you, and we're gonna start by telling
you where we are and where everyone is.
And what the state of the world is, and they are taking their time to roll
all of that out on a grand scale that has every conceivable touchstone to
remind you, to echo the high points of the film franchise right down to
the typefaces and the musical motifs.
Rob: As soon as the font showed, I'm going, yep.
This is, they are all in.
This is like all the chips have gone, this is what we're doing.
And this is what every fan had been going, this is what we expected from season one.
That would be this all in.
Kevin: And despite the the press mentions of we're trying to make the
missing final Star Trek TNG movie here, I was not expecting it to have
the feel of a movie as you watch it.
Terry Matalas coming forward from episodic Star Trek television at
its, in its waning years, I did not expect him to be the same kind of Star
Trek fan as you Rob who fell in love with the franchise in the film era.
But that's what we see on the screen here.
Rob: we de yeah, we definitely see that extension of the Next Gen film series
Kevin: But at the same time, the extension of the Original Series film
Rob: Exa.
Oh, exactly.
And the feel of the original movies, the Next Gen movies compared to
their original TV series, it's like they're different beasts.
They're still the same characters, they're still the same ship in inverted commas,
even though it's Enterprise D, E, F, Q, F.
Oh, Q ooh.
But they are different beats and it's a different feel.
And just as soon as it started, just how it felt returning to, Chateau
Picard, the vibe was different.
How these characters talked, and especially because
it's it's not season three.
It's, sure, Raffi is there and Seven of Nine's there, and Laris is there.
Wonderful actor.
And she really was good that how conversational their dialogue was
is a million times better than any dialogue they had last season.
Just when the two of
Kevin: When they're in front of the fire, knee to knee, and it's an
exposition scene where Picard has received the distress call from Crusher.
And she says, as an ex intelligence agent, here's what I'm seeing, and on rewatch,
it's like, oh, that's an exposition scene.
That is her telling Picard a bunch of stuff that Picard already knows.
And yet it works because of the quality of the dialogue.
It sounds true to the characters, and it doesn't burst the bubble.
Rob: Just the simple thing of the tone of her voice.
She's in real danger.
And you're there going this, this is, this is incredible.
It's how you deliver exposition that, everyone has to do
it, but it's how you do it.
It elevates you from being a fun, basic writer to being an incredible writer.
Kevin: So many things that were just like written for me and people like me
of, you know how much I love a space dock and, oh, we spent a lot of time
at that space dock and we got to see it from the outside and from the inside.
We got to see, take us out on thrusters and the space dock doors, which appeared
to all intents and purposes to be a lift of cells of film from Star Trek II
pasted right on the view screen there.
Rob: It was so cinematic.
Those sequences at space dock were just
Kevin: Cinematic and nostalgic as well.
Like for those of us who love seeing Starfleet at its heart.
What does the home base of Starfleet look like?
What is the sense of scale of ships coming and going and this giant mushroom in
space that they can fly into and out of.
That, that revisiting that sense of scale, let alone the production
value that tells you this is every pixel is sweated to the nth detail.
It, It was all.
Rob: and, but no inclusion of that cliche thing of having a scene
with the top brass or having that scene, that reference of all the
admirals around and stuff like that.
It was just from Chateau to to dingy bar, to heading to Titan.
It's just this incredible set.
It felt like it was all there, but you didn't have all the
admirals going you can't go there Picard, you can't do this Riker.
It was just a case of yeah, it was represented by, the place as opposed
to the people and the gimmicks
Kevin: It that scene was replaced with the dining table scene with Captain
Shaw, which is a hell of a scene.
Rob: Incredible scene.
Yeah, just from that point on they, yeah, within five minutes, they had more
understanding of the character of Laris than anyone who wrote for season two.
And just that whole process of, Picard's moving on into, retirement
he's gonna be the handbag for Laris moving back to this, Romulan outpost.
And he's just gonna, see out his life while she's doing all the important
stuff, which is an interesting I could see a lot of the fans getting arced
up going, oh no, he's gotta be out.
He's gotta be out doing stuff.
He can't just be a a, a glorified plus one.
Kevin: The other thing that really heartens me and gives me gets my
hopes up for the season is the size of, or the scale of the stakes.
We have seen so many, we, we have seen too many now seasons of Star
Trek that amounted to a galaxy threatening, puzzle box mystery,
the nature of which is not revealed to us until the very last episode.
And it's like, surprise, it's metal snakes coming out of a hole in space.
That's, that was what was behind this all along.
And you better shoot those metal snakes real quick or the galaxy will end.
Like ultimately that was the story of season one of Star Trek
Picard, and I am heartened that there is no, at least not yet.
Prove me wrong next week, Picard.
Sure.
But at least setting the table here, all of the mysteries and all
of the stakes are personal ones.
They are stories about an individual character that we care about, in
jeopardy, and their friends breaking regulations to fly to their rescue.
Uh, Star Trek III, anyone?
We'll get we'll, we'll get you to rewatch that one yet.
Rob: The word is no.
Therefore I'll watch it anyway.
Damn.
Kevin: That's right,
Rob: The quote fail, fooled me in the end.
Kevin: But other little mysteries like Rikers mentioned that Troi
and Kestra will appreciate the time away from him, awkward pause.
Like that is a mystery, but it is a personal mystery that will affect
a character or characters I care
Rob: Oh.
Sad sack Riker.
Oh my gosh.
Kevin: The closest thing to the overarching puzzle box that I, that
worries me is this Don't trust Starfleet thing, and the guy in the bar who's
like listening in on Picard and Riker's conversation and the officer in the
hallway at the start of the inspection on the Titan, who just gives Riker a
strange look and it's not commented upon.
There are, there is a sense of forces at work here that a conspiracy
of some kind is to be revealed.
And I hope that doesn't become what this season is about, because what I want
this season to be about is those personal stakes for the characters we care.
Rob: Of course.
And that's gonna be the balance, isn't it, to get that balance of character
and plot, but what is most important?
Nimoy was the greatest at that going let's just make a movie with no threat.
There's a threat, but there's nothing evil.
How about we, you do that?
And but how do you raise, oh, you can have the stakes, like the Earth is
in peril, it's gonna be destroyed, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
But we're not learning how to blow it up.
We're not trying to figure out how to kill this thing.
It's, it, let's focus on the characters in this situation and how they respond
to this life threatening situation.
So it's finding that balance.
And if the showrunner is steeped in as much of Star Trek film lore as I am,
then you know, you should be able to lean into that going, it can take a step
back, that threat, and focus more on how that threat affects the characters.
And if you've got 10 to get through, give him a bit of breathing space.
Kevin: Yeah.
The only other thing I just have to mention in case you didn't notice it, Rob,
was Bev Crusher's puffy collared jacket.
Rob: Yes.
Kevin: It has the same puffer jacket thing that the Star Trek II and Star
Trek III away jackets had going on.
And I was like, that is a really puffy collar, and I love it.
I love it on you, Bev.
Rob: I love the quips and the dialogue between Riker and Picard.
That felt more like cinema Riker and Picard than, within the TV series they
had time to, to break down an idea and collaborate, and let's discuss this,
where in the movies they go let's quip, quip, quip, quip, quip, quip.
Um, And I didn't believe Raffi was using at all.
And then they're going no.
Kevin: I'm not sure.
I quite believe that she and Seven have even broken up because she exposited that
fact in the very same breath as everything else that was a part of her cover.
Now they I don't know what kind of long distance relationship they could be having
with Seven clearly like, very much on her own as first officer of the Titan, now.
It does indeed seem that they are broken up.
But there's a little, there's a little crack open in my imagination
for the fact that she was just lying.
Rob: Look Seven could do so much better, come on.
Raffi is okay now.
Raffi is annoying.
Kevin: Yeah, I won't disagree.
Rob: Yeah.
Kevin: She is annoying in a useful storytelling component sort of
Rob: And that's what they've really delegated her to.
They've just gone, you are just going to be the provider of plot.
There you go.
You are going to, that was a nice effect though with the academy being like,
transport, like the earth coming out underneath it and just dropping out and
then it opening up and, oh, that was horrifying and beautifully realized.
Kevin: I don't know how I would feel as Rachel Garrett knowing that I was being
memorialized by a bright red statue.
Like I'm not sure.
Apart from satisfying the criteria of a red lady, which could have been rewritten
into something more aesthetically
Rob: Who has red statues, who has red statues anywhere, even in the future?
Kevin: I don't get it.
When it toppled into the water, I thought good riddance.
Uh, Rachel Garrett deserves so much
Rob: Garrett, you deserve so much better.
Get a gold one, Miles O'Brien has somewhere, but yeah the quips
and the back and forth with Riker and Picard was just exquisite.
That relationship between Seven and Picard, that was pretty much
only earned through last season.
Was good to see carried on.
And that was hard work to go, I remember this was established
last season and is earned.
And I think Shaw is too mustache twirling to be bad.
I think he's just a dick.
I don't think he's a part of the conspiracy.
Kevin: Yeah, he is a bureaucrat.
He's a rule follower.
He runs a tight ship and is proud of it.
He is not quite as dickish as Captain Styles in Star Trek
III's space dock escape sequence.
He doesn't have the riding crop, but he's not far off.
He does wake up in bed and go, what the hell is going on?
Like it is very much a mirror.
And if he had reached over his head to grab a riding crop, I would
not have been completely shocked.
But yeah.
The lovely thing about Shaw's characterization is it walks that
line perfectly where you can say, you know what, given available
information, I am actually on your side.
But why do you have to be such a dick about
Rob: Don't have to be a dick about it.
And that's actually LeVar Burton's daughter.
Kevin: Yes no.
Mm.
Rob: No?
Kevin: Uh, Sidney La Forge, who we meet in this episode is an actress
who is not related to LeVar Burton.
We are yet to see Geordi's other daughter who is played
by his daughter in real life.
Rob: Right.
Okay.
So he, his daughter is playing his daughter, but not that daughter.
Kevin: Not that daughter.
We will see two daughters of Geordi La Forge, this
Rob: Well, after all we've talked about in previous episode about Geordi being such a
awkward, awkward man when it comes to the.
He is
Kevin: bloomer
Rob: He can see clearly now.
So there we go.
That's more stuff to look forward to.
But yeah, we've only had, one classic cha— they, they can't do.
There's gonna have to be some doubling up soon.
There's gonna, we've, yeah.
So yeah, that has, so we're, we enjoyed it, but we've been burnt before and
Picard season three has to realize it's a marathon, not just a sprint.
Kevin: That's right.
Yeah.
Rob: We'll wait and see what happens, but this has inspired us to go back
into the recesses of Star Trek.
Oh, I've missed doing this, Kevin.
Oh, and what, and our main topic for this week is
Kevin: Star-crossed lovers.
Rob: Yes.
Yes.
And in the world of televised genre it's a common thing.
If you start a romance in a sci-fi or genre based show,
it's probably not gonna go well.
There's not many relationships that go the distance in genre based,
Kevin: There's no drama in stable relationships.
Rob: It's, yeah, it's like Lois and Clark.
It was ruined as soon as, Teri Hatcher and Dean Kane got together and then Teri Yeah.
X-Files.
Yeah.
Come on.
Seriously.
So yeah, we're gonna have a look at some of the star-crossed lovers and uh,
Kevin: I see three examples, here.
There is Picard and Laris who at the start of this, they're like, okay, sorry.
We have a story to tell here where you need to pull you apart at the start.
They seem in a better place than we've ever seen them
Rob: They're very good.
They're very settled.
They're very much in love.
Kevin: But if Laris just happened to have been in that building that
collapsed in front of us, it would not be a complete shock, at this point.
We know Riker and Troi are in trouble, which come on, ha, have those two
not been through enough by now?
And uh, and Seven and Raffi, like they got an audio book between seasons
that you can go back and listen to called No Man's Land, where by all
reports they are happily together.
But it didn't last, it didn't last is what being told.
Yeah.
Rob: For the sake of a good story,
Kevin: Is there any love that, yeah.
Is there any love that lasts in Star Trek or what are our most regrettable
breakups or relationship challenges?
You wanna go first, Rob?
Rob: Yeah.
Look I went more oh, the relationship that coulda, that shoulda, why didn't it?
And I'm looking at and it was done in such a cute way and I wanted to see more.
And and she's still out there somewhere.
And we've talked about before, and I wanna see her again.
It's about James, T., Kirk and Dr.
Gillian from yeah, you did that one.
Kevin: I took it off my list cuz I thought, oh, come on.
They weren't meant for each other, but it was definitely my first thought.
Rob: Oh, she would've been so good for him.
She would've kept him on his toes and kept him keep, he could've, doing his
traveling and stuff like that, but keeping his feet firmly planted on the ground.
But she had stuff to do.
She had, she couldn't wait around for a pretty much a
manchild to figure stuff out.
She had science.
300 catch up learnings to do.
Kevin: James T.
Kirk just can't compete with the entire galaxy of the 23rd century, it seems.
Rob: Whales are just the start of where Gillian's journey begins.
Kevin: Like yourself, I think I saw this film at a certain age where just like she
had the the type of charm that appealed to me and I wanted it for James T.
Kirk.
They had a quippy, playful pizza dinner that had me rooting for them, and like
the Alice in Wonderland of her being whisked away into his world just gave
me the sense that surely she will fall head over heels for this man that
has shown her this whole new world.
But you know what?
In hindsight, Gillian Taylor deserves better than James T.
Kirk.
Rob: And she didn't really fall for him.
She kind of like got no, but he got that whole sense of, but why aren't you?
But I'm used to having,
Kevin: This isn't what usually
Rob: Yeah, yeah.
But yeah.
I don't even have your telephone number.
I still love how he delivered that.
It's I'm there going, yeah.
This is a guy who used to be top crap, and now he's clumsy and
stumbling over lines and stuff.
Um, and he's, they go, but.
But I always get everything I want.
She's going, no, you don't get this.
Kevin: It is a particular, like I, I think, That plot twist, if we can
call it that at the end, where she conspicuously does not fall for James T.
Kirk and puts her career first, it is something that ages better and better.
I am, maybe it was written that way all along and I've just aged into the
ability to see it through this lens.
But with every passing year, the idea that she is more than a love interest.
She had a career, she, she chose this big, risky change in her life
and she can deal with it herself.
She can stand on her own two feet in this new world, and she doesn't need James T.
Kirk's help to exist in this universe.
Rob: how good she is.
She's like from the 20th century and she's already picked up
to be on a science vessel.
So even though she is 300 years
Kevin: out of date.
Yeah, it's almost unbelievable.
Rob: almost a little bit too convenient.
But I'm gonna believe it's because she's absolutely brilliant and incredible.
And all these characters are real.
Kevin: Most weeks, I uh, fare you well at the end of this by quoting Gillian
Taylor by saying, See around the galaxy.
And that is because that moment of her giving the kiss on the
cheek and uh, the whisper in the
Rob: And she does the look up.
Oh my
Kevin: It really sticks with you.
Rob: Oh, she's wonderful actress.
Wonderful actress.
And she was in Child's Play.
Kevin: I don't so much regret not getting to see James T.
Kirk and Gillian Taylor get together.
I mostly just regret not getting to see the further adventures of Gillian Taylor.
Rob: Why hasn't anyone done Gillian Taylor story?
Come on.
I wanna spin off of Gillian Taylor stuff.
Lower Decks, if you can hear me, it's up to you.
Kevin: Crap, that would be
Rob: Oh, wouldn't that be amazing?
Lower Decks is the perfect vehicle for it.
So even though Gillian Taylor would've been dead for some
time, I'm sure if they're
Kevin: They will find a way.
Animation finds a way.
Rob: They're, yeah, if they're going back in live action to the
Enterprise with Pike, they will find a way to find Gillian Taylor.
So yes, tell us your star-crossed lovers who were doomed to never be.
Kevin: I started by picking a small one and it's just like Gillian Taylor.
It's a character that we fall in love with in a single episode or a single story.
And their connection, their romantic connection to one of our main cast
members is severed at the end of it, and we never get to see more of them
again, much as we would like to.
This is an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation Season four, episode
25 entitled In theory, and it is the episode in which data explores
a romance with a crew member, Jenna D'Sora on board the Enterprise.
She has recently broken up with her long-term boyfriend; she's on the rebound.
and uh, and falls for Data, who in his particularly mechanical way
stands out to her as thoughtful.
He never forgets a fact about her.
And her recently broken heart interprets that as care and attention and
safety and uh, they start a romance.
And Data is very open about the fact that romance is a new experience for
him and he is, he has created a new program especially to navigate this
experience with her and at first she is delighted by the him going out of
his way to change himself, to grow in order to make room for her in his life.
But day by day the signs start to stack up that the best Data can do is
perform an imitation of a relationship or act as if he cares for her.
And towards the end she, she confronts him about it and says, do you care for me?
And data admits, I am incapable of that emotion.
Certainly you occupy a significant amount of my processing power.
Rob: Oh, he knows how to say all.
Oh, the sugar coated tongue of Data.
Kevin: There's a beautiful moment where Data calculates strategically that
what is needed is a fight so that they can grow closer together as a couple.
And so he very quickly shifts gears and accuses her angrily
of of treating him unfairly.
And she has taken aback and he says, Oh, is that not what
I was supposed to do here?
Is this not time for our first fight?
So it is so sweet and tragic that data is doing more for another human being
than he would ever do, in service of making this relationship work.
And yet it can never be what she needs.
Or at least that's where it ends up.
She sums it up towards the end of, I've went from an emotionally unavailable man
to a man that is incapable of emotion.
Rob: Yeah.
Kevin: And it's so sad.
And just like Gillian Taylor, she has that that charm, that charisma where you want
her for the character we know, if only so that she'll stick around and continue to
light up the screen and make them happy.
But it is not to be.
Rob: and played by Michele uh Scarabelli, from, a Canadian actress who I know
from her work on the Alien Nation TV series playing Susan Francisco.
Kevin: Wow.
Is she equally charming in that?
Rob: Yes.
It like I'm a big fan of Alien Nation, the film with James Kahn and Mandy
Patinkin, and then they went deeper with the TV show and explored this weekly
process of, and r relying a lot on, the refugee problem of how people assimilate
into society and how they are treated.
And the family dynamic is explored really beautifully in that, and she's a
wonderful, you know, bringing that human quality to an alien character once a
week within uh, slightly futuristic LA.
Yeah, she's a wonderful actress and haven't seen this one, but
it, sounds like pure love fodder within the realms of Star Trek.
Kevin: There's a great B plot of the Enterprise being stuck in a field of
invisible space pockets that cause people to fall through decks and die.
And like the, that provides some of the ticking clock and the tension to this.
But the as TNG did well so many times, the A plot is the
character plot here, and it is,
Rob: Wonderful.
That is definitely one I'd love to check out if not just for
catching up with Michele Scarabelli.
Kevin: What's your next
Rob: Well, Look, I've spent a lot of time talking about the biggest, the biggest
relationship that we wanted to see happen, then it did happen and it ended.
I've, but I've spoken about Kira and Odo over and over
and over again, so this is not
Kevin: Oh, I just, my brain said, but they got together in the end.
It was happily ever after, wasn't it?
And then I remembered the ending.
Rob: Oh, when you just see odo in a tux absorbing himself into the collective and
you into the pool, and you just go, oh my.
Kevin: Uh,
Rob: I'm done, I'm done with romance.
Kevin: She needed, she deserves so much better.
Rob: Oh yeah, I know.
But that's why Lower Decks is good.
We see that, she we don't know how her love life's going, but
she's in charge of Terok Nor.
She's at least positive and happy.
So that's something.
Oh God.
It's making,
Anyway, I went to another movie, which I always thought.
I'm disappointed that it's the tropes of film love interests who
come in and, you know, they're only gonna be around for one.
I'm not mentioning I'm not talking about Alfre Woodard who wasn't a really
a romantic interest, but was a great presence for those mainstream audience
members going to see Star Trek going
Kevin: Yeah, she was the audience surrogate the, she
was the Al Alice in Wonderland.
Rob: Exactly.
Another, anytime we have a reference to literature in Star Trek, I'm a happy man.
Hello Alice.
Welcome to Wonderland.
I'm gonna go to Insurrection again.
I go back to there.
Donna Murphy is gorgeous and incredible and amazing as Anij and
I'm there going you fool, Picard.
I don't care who you are, what, how much you want to explore.
And that is perfection right there.
She is incredible.
And um, it was never gonna be, never gonna happen.
She broadened his mind and slowed down time, literally.
And that wasn't enough for Picard.
Kevin: Yeah.
It is amazing what it takes for them to write a woman that seems a match for
Picard or even that ma that intimidates Picard by the, their presence.
The depth of experience, of wisdom that comes with her immortality, effectively.
That the calm sense of this is all, this has all happened before
and it will all happen again.
And we are all here just to play our parts.
Rob: But never robotic.
Never robotic.
There's and great charming moments like, she's lived for however many hundreds
of years, but never learned how to swim.
But she never got, because she never got around to it.
Never, never a Mary Sue type character where she can kick ass
and be all that type of stuff, but never a damsel in distress.
Kevin: That's it.
She is superhuman in her presence, but she is not magical.
She is not unbelievable.
She comes across as a full fledged person that can meet Picard on equal terms.
Rob: Yes.
Yeah.
it's a believable energy and a believable dynamic.
And there's a great charisma.
I She's, one of, yeah.
Incredibly experienced stage and screen performer.
And she does so much with whatever.
She's never really had a chance to shine in a leading type capacity in any
major films or TV shows that I've seen.
She's always been, come in, done her thing and gone like her very small appearance
in Spider-Man 2 is outstanding and she changes a role that basically just, her
tragic death in that is to fuel Alfred Molina's character into evil things.
But she does more than that.
You forget that she's just a plot point.
And in this as well, you forget how much she feels her character space
and it becomes a part of this world, and it's a, and you really feel it
when they say goodbye at the end.
It's a, yeah, it's a wonderful performance and a wonderful match for Patrick
Stewart, and that's hard to find.
It's hard to find a good match for Stewart on screen.
Wendy Hughes did it in the Next Gen series great Aussie actor there.
And Donna Murphy is more than a match for Patty Mc Stewart.
Kevin: Do you get the sense that there, the story is, has a tragic ending?
Like, is the fact that they don't live happily ever after together,
just because she's a one movie guest star and it, they couldn't afford
her for the rest of the franchise?
Or is there is there the
Rob: is a sense of a tragedy to the fact that, this, these people they convey this
sense of we have everything we need here.
We are happy, we are content, we don't need all this stuff.
But there is a sense of, they in many ways trapped by their, the
gift that they've been given.
And it's almost like a curse in how much it affects those people who leave
and want to come back, obviously.
So there is a tragic element of they are tied to where they are, and that
ability to form connections outside of their little pocket is is is a
quite, sad lifestyle, no matter how much, enlightenment and knowledge
and strength and intelligence.
So they don't get to share that or don't get to, share that
with the rest of the universe.
And so those connections and commitments and opportunities fade
by the wayside, which is, which I think is very sad and very tragic.
Kevin: Yeah, it's a feeling of ships passing in the night that they their,
their worlds briefly intersected.
Love is not strong enough for either of them to give up their
respective responsibilities.
Rob: Exactly.
And what about you?
What was your second
Kevin: I, chose one that I.
I never quite felt myself rooting for them as a couple, but that is because they
were they had everything against them and so poorly served from beginning to end.
This is from Star Trek: Enterprise.
Rob: Oh,
Kevin: Tucker and T'Pol.
Rob: Right.
Kevin: I mean from the beginning, the sense here is that their
relationship was not in service of the characters, or not character
driven; it was in service of ratings.
And the number of awkward decon chamber rubbing gel on each other sequences
that led up to this re relationship being kindled and the aborted attempts
to set T'Pol up as a romantic interest for other characters in the show.
Just it, the starting point for this feels somewhat cynical and thin.
Um, T'Pol had a, there, there was a moment, there was an episode or
two where T'Pol and Jonathan Archer, the captain and first officer of
the first warp five Starship in Starfleet, flirted with confessing
romantic feelings for each other.
And they did that very nice thing where T'Pol said if in theory
there were something there, we of course could never act on it.
And they both agreed, oh, of course we could never act on
that if that were ever true.
Which it isn't, it's not.
But that,
Rob: convinced.
I'm convinced.
Kevin: felt to me like the writers walking up to a line and realizing, nah,
that'd be too much, that we can't cross that line, but what could we cross?
How about the chief engineer?
That could work.
And there is.
The romance grows out of Trip Tucker suffering the emotional
trauma of his sister's death in a terrorist attack on Earth.
He's going through some stuff and T'Pol's Vulcan meditation techniques,
and it turns out massage techniques, enable him to work through that to a
certain extent and they, they initial.
Bond in the heat of therapy as
Rob: That's, that sounds so hot.
Kevin: I know.
Rob: Wow.
Tell you why.
I'm gee, could someone put the air on?
It's boiling over here.
That's sex appeal right there.
Kevin: Yeah, and just as the awkwardness is passing, and it seems like we might
be ready for something real like a real emotion to occur on screen here
T'Pol's betrothal to her, her arranged husband, as happens in Vulcan culture
as we have learned, that comes to the fore and trip has to escort her and
effectively be her best man at her wedding and give her away at her wedding.
And he is of course, devastated.
And then there is plot twist after plot twist with these two where they keep
like getting to that place where you would almost care if they got together.
And then it's disrupted by some plot twist.
And then at the end of it Trip Tucker dies in the episode before the finale,
which is and it's ultimately unrequited.
So these two, I think if there had been an effort to write a genuine relationship
here, it could have been something satisfying, but it was continually
disrupted by what felt like party tricks of narrative of, oh, see if you can
deal with this one, you crazy kids.
And yeah, it, so it never quite gets there.
And now that one of them has died, we will never know what might.
Rob: Never know.
Never know.
So well there.
I'm aware of select the certain beats of of Enterprise.
I was aware of the ultimate fate of Trip, but I did not know that the, their fate
of their romance was already sealed long
Kevin: Yeah, just for completeness, to give you a sense, the last plot twist
is that they discover that their DNA has been stolen and some aliens have created
a child that is genetically theirs.
And they rescue the child from that alien culture.
And then the child, like it's a poor clone, and it ultimately dies.
And so they are, without ever having, come together as a couple to create
a child, they are traumatized by the death of their child and that
prevents them from getting together.
Rob: This is it, man.
Sci-fi.
Sci-fi is
Kevin: I know, I know.
So certainly star crossed lovers.
I think it satisfies what we're going for.
Rob: Definitely.
That is that is a a broad range of tragic to to just not being in
the right place at the right time.
Kevin: Uh,
Rob: what I did there.
Kevin: I wanna say though, I have hope, Rob, I still have hope.
There are examples of couples that do work out, and I want to
say Miles O and Keiko O'Brien.
Rob: Yes.
Very much so.
Kevin: and I want to say,
Rob: Garak and Garak and Bashir.
Kevin: Of course.
Rob: We didn't even, we didn't even talk about Dax and and Worf.
That was tragic.
Kevin: Torres and Tom Paris.
Rob: There we go.
But that's kind of a weird one.
Anyway, that's a
Kevin: It's super weird, but they get there.
They get there, they get married, they have a baby.
They live happily ever
Rob: They do.
But it's super weird.
Yeah and Oh, look, I, and I'm gonna put it out there, you know, I reckon, Troi
and um, Troi and Riker are gonna be fine.
They've,
Kevin: Whatever it is, they can get
Rob: they, they've, they've the Oh my God, what they put them
through in season one of Picard,
Kevin: I'm sure one of them has been secretly replaced by an
alien or something like that.
And
Rob: Yeah, Yeah.
It's a whole animated thing.
It's like a, it's a shape shifting, Romulan spy.
Easy.
So yeah, that's us.
That's our return to our regular episode structure.
We have episode two coming up just a couple of days away.
Yes.
Kevin: can't believe.
Again, I can feel my hopes getting too high, but I was about to say,
I can't believe we are getting what feels like a new Star Trek
movie every week for 10 weeks.
Rob: Look, I'm glad you didn't say that because that's peaking yourself
at a point far too high for it to, but look, we'll, we will wait and
Kevin: I didn't say they would be good movies.
I didn't say they would all be good.
Rob: Look.
We'll ha well yeah, it's either gonna be Nemesis or it's gonna be First Contact
or, yeah, we've got a fifth canon now, but it's gonna be 10 hours long.
So look we wait and and see, and we'll take it in, week to week.
You'll be joining us every week.
Kevin will be here.
I'll be here.
We'll connect it to a broader issue.
That's the way we do things here at Subspace Radio.
And um, keep watching.
Until next week, Kevin.
Kevin: See around the galaxy!