Rob: Hello, and welcome to another episode of Subspace Radio.
It is me, Rob, and Kevin is joining me as well.
Kevin: Hello!
Rob: It is another, time for Star Trek to be talked about, and we are here
to talk about the latest episode of Lower Decks, Empathological Fallacies.
That's right.
Kevin: Well done.
I'm glad you had to say that one and not me.
Rob: So yes, we are back and we have a particularly focused episode with a
species we haven't seen for some time and also a bit of a focus on the species
we've known since the very beginning.
What were your thoughts on this episode, Kevin?
Kevin: Um, wow, there was a lot of swearing in this Star trek, wasn't there?
Rob: Lots of swearing.
Lots and lots and lots of swearing.
This was a big bleeping episode.
Kevin: Yeah, I mean, I hate to start there, but it definitely took me out of
it, and especially before the reveal that our characters were under the influence,
like, they ramped it up, and the swearing was the first sign that something was off.
And I was like, wow, that was a lot of beeps for one episode of
Star Trek, and that was one scene.
And I was wondering, what is going on here?
So I'm kind of glad that there was something unusual going on.
But it seemed like, yeah, making, making every officer on the ship
super sweary was the shorthand for their emotions are out of control.
Rob: Yes, very, very much so.
Kevin: Setting that aside, I thought it was an enjoyable episode.
The idea of a Betazoid secret service or, or, or, uh, what
Rob: Heh heh heh.
Kevin: spy network?
Rob: Yeah.
Kevin: Um, I, I enjoy that idea.
I loved, uh, getting a T'Lyn focused episode, and we have been saying
how naturally she slots into other characters' stories up until this
point, and now to see her, like, take a step to the fore, even though she
was kind of hiding in the background.
Like it was, it's, sort of the reveal of the episode that
it was about T'Lyn all along.
Um, but really good.
We got to see her give someone a neck pinch.
Uh, we got to see her, uh, kind of wrestle with her barely controlled emotions.
Um, really enjoyable.
Lots of references as usual.
And, um, yeah, uh, I liked it.
Rob: Yeah.
It was, uh, pretty good.
It was good to, uh, focus on the, as always, there seems to be that passive
aggressive nature of Vulcan culture to just completely shut people out as opposed
to talking about it openly and honestly.
It's just that whole gradually fading out and so that leaves,
uh, T'Lyn in a position of trying to come to terms with this state.
And of course Mariner was there to support her through this trying time.
But it wouldn't be a Star Trek episode if we didn't have that connected and inflamed
in some way to a, um, ridiculous level.
The crew entirely goes off the rails.
Um, I particularly loved having the Betazoids back and what a
stellar cast of Betazoids we had.
We had Janelle James from, uh, Abbott Elementary.
The brilliant, um, uh, Rachel Dratch, uh, and we had of course Wendie Malick as
well and they were all in fine, fine form.
Kevin: Yeah.
All three characters were interesting in their own ways and, and having
all three of them was such a gift.
Rob: Lots of flirting but, you know, if, if Ransom flirts
back, she's not interested.
And lots of, uh, flirting with each other.
"I can be detached and unavailable."
Kevin: A highlight of this episode for me was the very first shot, and
it was masterful visual storytelling.
It is a close up on T'Lyn walking down the corridor with a crewman sort of
over her shoulder down the corridor, out of focus, making like moony...
love eyes at her.
And the composition of the shot leads you to believe that the object of his
affection is T'Lyn, but just in the foreground, in front of T'Lyn kind of
bobbing in the corner of the frame, is the bottom of one of those giant glasses of
alcohol that the Betazoids are carrying.
And just that one shot of like, what is going on here?
There is a log entry going on in the, foreground.
So, as an audience, you're just invited to consider that frame of T'Lyn, someone
apparently following her, uh, with love eyes, and, uh, a, a mysterious
vessel, uh, floating in the foreground.
And everything that happened in this episode was like
promised in that one frame.
Rob: Exactly.
Yeah, it was it was great to see as always Lower Decks is pulling it out
again of uh, species that we have not seen for some time being brought
back and being the, uh, celebrated.
So we haven't even heard, really, of the Bezoids since, uh, they were invaded
and taken over during the Dominion War.
So, finding out that they actually do have a secret service and they're
not just all about nude weddings and, getting emotional feelings off people.
They, uh, can kick butt as well with lipstick slash, um, fighting weapons.
Kevin: The lipstick batons was a bit much for me, but it was a
good visual shorthand, I thought.
Rob: It does remind me a bit from a Doctor Who spin off.
It wouldn't be a Subspace Radio episode if I didn't pull in other franchises.
One of the most famous companions of the Doctor was Sarah Jane
Smith, and she got her own spin off series back in the mid naughties
called the Sarah Jane Adventures.
And she had, instead of a sonic screwdriver, which is the Doctor's magic
wand of choice, she had a sonic lipstick.
So it was very much in, yeah.
Get it?
Did you get it, Kev?
Hehehehehehehehehehe
Kevin: There was a B plot, uh, hidden in this episode with, uh, well,
Rutherford putting Boimler forward for the Security program with, uh, beat
poetry and other forms of therapy to, to kind of calm the mind and, and make
you a more effective security officer.
What'd you think of that stuff?
Rob: And Boimler getting pretty annoyed by the fact that he wanted to do, like,
security stuff, and he's, like, he
Kevin: Not just security stuff, but also, like, Star Trek trivia stuff.
Like, Boimler being annoyed by a guessing game where the answer is
Constable Odo from Deep Space Nine.
I mean, yes, he was the first person to the answer, that's the Boimler we
know and love, but the fact that he was annoyed did not really track with me.
It's interesting what colors Lieutenant J.G.
is bringing out of, uh, Boims here.
Rob: Yes, and I did, um, I did appreciate the fact of security's role on the
ship is security in more than just the, you know, the physical labor of, you
know, grabbing your phasers and being there, um, to be a physical threat
or physical security, you are there
Kevin: Security's opposite is insecurity, it seems.
Rob: Exactly, exactly, so having that emotional, psychological security with
on the ship is a part of that as well, which hasn't really been explored,
which I thought was a very cute idea.
So yeah, it was a fun episode to go through, but there was a lot of
tropes in there that connected us to our wider topic to explore this week.
Kevin: Yes, the, the crew of a starship seemingly going off the
rails, and behaving erratically.
Rob: We had quite a lot of it.
Kevin: And looking at all the other times in Star Trek where crews have
gone off the rails or behaved out of character, something that, for me stood
out for this episode before we leave it is how far behind the audience was.
I feel like so often when this happens, the audience is let
into the cause of this early.
Uh, it's an alien that we get to see before any of the crew are aware of them,
or it's a parasite that we learn of in the cold open, but our characters don't
discover until the climax of the episode.
In this one, we were given a very persuasive red herring with
the presence of not one, but three Betazoids aboard the ship.
And so we, as the audience, were 100 percent convinced.
I don't know about you, Rob, but speaking for myself, and I think the intent
of the episode, we were 100 percent convinced that those Betazoids were the
cause of this until, uh, you know, the ultimate reveal right near the end that
it's just T'Lyn's powerful self doubt that is projecting all over the ship.
Rob: Yeah, I mean, it was, it was well done in the way that the clues were left
behind that it was T'Lyn to begin with.
It wasn't just a case of it was the red herring thrown.
There was those little breadcrumbs left behind.
But it was a, it was a well laid out, uh, mystery to be revealed.
Um, but again it was that case of this is far too prominent, far too, uh, early.
Um, but it was good for us to be led in, uh, with our eyes closed as
opposed to getting that little hint
Kevin: I appreciate a good bait and switch now and then.
It worked on me.
Rob: Exactly, yeah, me too.
Kevin: But, uh, yeah, so we, we picked a couple of episodes from the past
where crews were not themselves.
Um, shall we go chronologically as usual, Rob?
Rob: As always, as always, let's go back to the original series.
You got one for
Kevin: I do have one for us from the original series.
Oh, twofer here.
Rob: It is.
Well, I couldn't really find any in my go to stories.
It was actually quite a tricky one to find a definition of.
So, I knew there was two that stood out for me, that one I'd already
seen, and it kind of always, uh, shat me to tears, so I didn't want
to go back and watch that again.
But there's always one that I've always seen moments of, but I've
never watched the full episode.
So, it's a classic
Kevin: Might it involve Sulu, sweaty and shirtless?
Rob: Of course it is.
This is my time to catch up on classic episodes, iconic episodes, and so
I did, I watched The Naked Time.
Kevin: Yeah, good.
This is not my pick, so I'll let you lead us off!
Rob: Excellent.
Well, this is the fourth episode of the first season of the original series of
Those Old Scientists, and we have Spock and another crewman transporting down
to a colony that needs to be evacuated because the planet that they are on is
frozen over and is about to explode.
So they need to take off the surviving colonists and then watch
the explosion to make, you know, build all the scientific data around it.
However, all the crew there are dead, killed in quite, you know,
graphic and horrifying ways.
Kevin: Some great set dressing work with the frozen interiors
and the frozen body in the shower.
Rob: Yes, frozen body in the shower and the colonists on the,
on the ground covered in snow and, and collapsed on the table.
And despite the fact that the token redshirt and, uh, Spock are there in
full spacesuit outfits, they can easily just slip their hands underneath,
Kevin: Well, everything seems to be in order here.
I'm gonna scratch my nose and take off helmet, you know.
Rob: Just slip it underneath.
Just slip it underneath the helmet.
Uh, take their gloves off.
Um, it's quite a beautiful eerie shot of the crewman's hand being placed
down and the blood from the, from that was smeared moving its way, giving
this intention of being drawn to, uh, to, to the life that is there.
And this begins a chain reaction of the blood infecting, uh, the crew passed
on by sweat and touch and contact, and everyone is drawn by their...
darker, more impulsive impulses.
McCoy describes it later on as if they've been infected by alcohol.
Kevin: Yeah, they're all drunk.
Rob: We see Chapel and Spock have a really interesting run in where Chapel's
affected and she affects Spock and there's this unspoken but spoken tension there,
and it's very interesting watching it through, uh, Strange New World eyes now.
And of course we have the iconic, uh, Sulu earlier talking about how
fencing is the great way to go.
Fencing, oh, the only way to keep up your health and keep
your mind fresh and keep focused.
And uh, George Takei is very good here.
He is, it's, it's not a cringeworthy performance
Kevin: No, he's playing full commitment and, uh, yeah, it works.
Rob: Yeah, yeah, it's not camp at all.
There's a great intensity to it, which I really, really enjoy.
But yeah, Nimoy does, an emotionally battled Spock.
Kevin: And so early in the series, like this is episode four and think, three
hours of television earlier, Spock was in the pilot, The Cage, grinning like a fool
Rob: heh, heh.
Kevin: just so quickly, the character has developed to this point where
the idea that his stony personality might be cracking, is the moment
of pure horror in this episode, it is the scariest moment when you
see Spock starting to lose control.
That is the, the, the strongest character beat this episode and that
they found that so early is amazing.
Rob: Oh, and there are moments when you can see he's, like, clearly annoyed.
Like, the crew are falling apart, falling asleep, you know, being distracted,
and you see, literally see Spock there, frustrated and annoyed and sending people
off the deck in a, almost a fit of pique.
Um, it's fascinating to see.
And the great, great moment where, you know, 1960s, uh, emotional
logic of going, well, how can I, uh, snap Spock out of this?
Kirk goes, I'll slap him.
Well, that didn't work.
I'll slap him again, then again and again, and again and again and again and again.
I'm like, okay, stop, stop, he's already dead, Kirk.
And then it slips into this other, uh, alternative plot of, uh, alternative
ending where they slip back in time.
They get in a time warp.
They go back seven
Kevin: the weird one where they're like, oh, lucky us, it never happened.
Let's fly in a different direction.
Yeah, clock runs backwards and it's very early on, just randomly, let's introduce
the idea of time warp, by accident.
Rob: And of course it has the memorable line of Scotty doing a bit of a Bones
and turning to Kirk and going, I cannot change the laws of physics!
Kevin: it's so good.
Rob: I need half an hour!
Kevin: They had catchphrases, they had their character hooks sorted
out so early in this series.
It's so good.
So many other Star Trek series don't find their groove until Season 2,
or even deep into Season 2, and Star Trek was on it so quickly.
Rob: Very much so.
And especially after watching the Naked Now, and that's been sort of
like a fuel for me to, you know, talk about sex in Star Trek, and just
how awkward, uh, the Naked Now is.
That moment between Gates McFadden and Patrick Stewart is still stuck
in my head, that laugh that Patrick
Kevin: Heeh-heeh-heh…
Rob: Ha, yeah, what the hell is that?
Um, but to watch this, I'm there going, nah, there's, the build, the ratcheting
up of tension is, is quite lovely in this.
And, um, the emotional turmoil that our characters that we
love are very good in here.
Kevin: The duality those two episodes I think is interesting
as well, like The Naked Time, the TOS episode, I think it's strong.
It is an early highlight of the series and it serves that function that we've talked
about before that by making the characters be under the influence and therefore
revealing things about themselves that they would not normally, it is a shortcut
to help us get to know these characters and let us into their internal lives.
And so it is such a useful episode in the function it plays in the series early on.
Rob: Yeah, little beautiful, um, moments of, you know, uh, Spock talking about his
family, about Kirk talking about where he'd rather be, all this type of stuff.
You get little hints about the, the characters so early on.
Kevin: the fact that they brought up the exact same trick to the extent that
they referenced the episode explicitly.
In the Naked Now, which is episode 3 of Star Trek: The Next Generation,
they literally sit down at the library computer and go, Oh, this happened
to the original Enterprise and Dr.
McCoy found cure.
This is it.
Let's try it again and see if it works.
They are that explicitly referencing this previous episode.
But something about the TNG version of it works so much less well.
And in part, I feel like the writers and the actors didn't have
their characters as locked in.
And so there wasn't strong sense of, is this out of character for me?
Or is who I am all the time?
And I don't know if they were taking bigger swings, but the Spock/Chapel
scene, and the Picard/Crusher scene are like, you put them next to each other
you're like, one of them really works and is maybe the best scene episode.
The other one, you're going, what is going on there?
They're going for something and they're not getting it.
And I wish I could put my finger on it.
Some good things do come out of The Naked Now, like the Data,
Tasha Yar relationship, which echoes all the way into Picard.
Rob: Where they were intimate.
Kevin: They were intimate.
So there is stuff that is carried forward, but this episode of TNG does
not form the foundation for characters through the series in the same way that
it did for Spock, for example, in the
Rob: Yeah.
That scene in particular was a highlight for me between Chapel and Spock, I
think I've already mentioned that.
Just, like, so much is being said, but so much is not being said, and it's all
about yearning, and repression, and all that type of stuff, and Spock trying
to come to terms and handle everything.
And what he doesn't say is so powerful, while Chapel is just repeating it like a
mantra, I love you, I love you, and you're there going, it's, it's hypnotizing, it's
hypnotizing how well it's done, where it's a little embarrassing in The Naked Now.
Kevin: Yeah, it reminds me a little of, for example, um, Star Trek Into
Darkness, the movie that, okay, we're in a parallel universe now.
What are we going to do with what we know of Star Trek history?
The Next Generation must have been asking itself the same question in the
early days: how are we going to use the history of Star Trek in this new show?
Are we going to avoid it and be our own thing?
Are we going to embrace it and literally bring back plots the
way they do in The Naked Now?
Or are we just going to have sprinkles and cameos of McCoy in the pilot
and much later on Montgomery Scott coming out of a transporter beam?
And The Naked Now, as well as Star Trek Into Darkness, which retreads much of the
plot of The Wrath of Khan, just in a, in a flipped alternate universe version, feels
like the version where they're like, well, let's literally take a plot from before
and replay it in an interesting way.
I think what we learn through these episodes and that film that is generally
considered the weakest of the new Star Trek films, I think what we learn is
that wholesale reusing a plot will only remind you how good the original was and
make the new one seem weak by comparison.
Rob: Exactly.
Exactly.
And I mean, as has been shown with Lower Decks in their Tuvix, uh, sequel.
Just how to take that idea and then push it beyond to the ridiculous,
not just trace the same ground.
Yeah, so what was, uh, what was your, uh, episode of The Crew Gone Crazy?
Kevin: going take us to season three of the original series, with Day of
the Dove, Season 3, Episode 11 of TOS.
And this is one of those, uh, relatively short list of good
Season 3 episodes, if you
Rob: hey,
Kevin: Day of the Dove is Star Trek's message of anti-war at
the height of the Vietnam War.
This was aired in 1968.
Rob: you saying that Star Trek was being political back in the
Kevin: was.
I've, I've read in the excellent, if you've got time for a big read,
These Are The Voyages, season three by Mark Cushman, where he pulls all of
the memos and correspondence between writers and studio execs about every
single episode of the original series.
And they went into this one, the writer and the producer were saying, we should
try to air this episode as close to the election as possible because the
statement we are making about the war, we want to affect the polls we.
That is how deliberate a anti war message is baked into this episode.
Rob: That's amazing, and also for listeners, um, Kevin was just showing
up the book, which is obnoxiously thick.
Kevin: it's two inches thick and it covers just one season of the original series.
Rob: That's incredible.
That's incredible.
Great.
So yeah, tell us, uh, tell us more about this, uh, political statement
in an era which apparently had no political statements about it.
Any, do these people even know science fiction?
fiction is laced in political comments and all that type of stuff.
That's what makes sci fi so great.
You do it in a way that people just think it's entertainment.
Kevin: right.
Rob: Anyway I shall get off my soapbox.
Kevin: In Day of the Dove, a swirling blob of light is the
antagonist and it never a line.
It is just a floating alien presence.
But what we learn in the episode is, it subsists on violent thoughts.
And so it sets out to pit against each other in a state of permanent
war, the crew of the Enterprise and the crew of a Klingon vessel.
The episode opens with the Enterprise thinking it is flying to the rescue of
a Federation colony under attack, and it finds nothing on this desolate planet.
And then a Klingon ship flies in and explodes, and the Klingons beam
down to the planet the last minute and immediately blame Kirk and crew
for the destruction of their ship.
And this, these are two delusions that are placed the minds of these crews by
this blob of an alien that arranges for them to all beam up to the Enterprise
and then it walls off parts of the ship so that there are exactly equal
number of combatants on each side.
And plants in their minds this racial hatred for each other that locks
themselves into a cycle of violence.
The alien is able to convert the walls of the Enterprise so they
are impenetrable by phasers so that they can't get through the barriers.
It converts all of the, uh, energy weapons the ship into swords and other
primitive weapons so that they cannot vaporize each other, only slice and dice
each other, and the alien is able to rapidly heal any injured crew member to
get them back into the fight right away.
But, the reason I picked this episode against our theme of crews
acting out of character, is the...
beautiful character work that we get to see as, one by one, the characters
we know so well three seasons in, now, start to act out of character
in how driven by hate they are.
Chekov is the first one to show the signs when they're still down on planet and
he calls them cossacks to their faces he gets knocked down and from then on,
Chekov is on a mission of retribution.
When they get back on the ship, he starts, he starts shouting about the
fact that they killed his brother, Piotr, in an unprovoked attack on
a Federation, uh, science station.
And I'm like, ooh, a relative!
That's something we use New Worlds.
Are we gonna get to see Chekov's brother, Piotr, in Strange New Worlds?
What I didn't remember is this is completely delusion
that the alien is in head.
Uh, Chekov is an only child and has no brother, but he is convinced
that he has to lost brother.
And McCoy, uh, McCoy is the next one to show the signs.
He starts saying things like, You know what a Klingon is.
We don't need to ask them why they behave this way.
You know what they are.
Um, and, uh, yeah, one by one, Kirk sees his bridge crew kind of turn to
hatred and violence, and he is puzzled by it each time, and each one adds to
the mountain of evidence that there is something weird going on on this ship.
Ultimately, he has to convince, Mara, which is the Klingon captain Kang's wife.
They managed to take Mara hostage and he, he and Spock managed convince her
that this is all an alien's doing and that they are pawns in its sick game.
And then Kirk and Mara go and convince Kang.
Kang is played by an amazing guest star.
For me, this is the best Klingon in the original series.
He is the most like modern Klingons that we now see in Star Trek, the
noble warrior driven by honor, uh, and willing to listen to reason if there
is sense that the, the battle they are doing is not an honorable one.
Like that ingredient is here for the very first time in the Klingon
culture, and as a result, Kirk is able to make Kang see reason.
And the two captains in the final scene of this episode, they turn to the
floating ball of light, and they tell it to ship out, and they they laugh at it
and, uh, Kang slaps Kirk on the back and Kirk nearly falls over from the impact.
They, they point and laugh at it in order to, like, give it the opposite of
what it thrives on, and the, the ball, uh, makes its escape by floating through
the wall, out the hull and into space.
And that's how the episode ends.
Rob: Kang is of course played by the brilliant Michael Ansara, who, came back
for, uh, Deep Space Nine to play the same character, uh, with, uh, Jadzia.
And that's one of the that's pretty much the episode that
really nails Jadzia's character.
Kevin: Amazing character and amazing character actor.
He was in all sorts of like, my reading suggests he was quite a
get as a guest star, but he was mostly star in shows at this time.
So he's one of those character actors that you bring on to bring gravitas
to very special episode of a show.
Rob: American Syrian actor, and I remember him growing up as, uh, the voice of Mr.
Freeze in the animated series of Batman, uh, in pretty much the, the episode
that defined the new series of, the animated series of Batman, uh, Heart of
Ice, which rewrote the character of Mr.
Freeze to be a tragic character seeking revenge for his dead wife.
And it's an incredibly powerful episode and Michael Ansaro's voice is outstanding.
And yeah, when you mentioned Kang I'm there going, that sounds
familiar, and I went, Of course, it's Michael Ansara, one of the
greatest Klingon actors ever to live.
Kevin: Yeah, I believe it.
Great character voice as well as just great presence on screen, too.
Um, there are certain things about this episode that do not age well.
The number of fair skinned actors wearing brown face makeup in this
episode is very conspicuous, particularly Mara, the, the wife, uh, of Kang, is,
they, they laid it on pretty thick.
She, uh, she looks like a block of chocolate walking around in this episode.
Rob: Yeah, they do that much better in the, uh, modern series, where they
blend different actors in the make up.
Martok, of course, being a white actor.
Kevin: And there's very uncomfortable scene in which Chekov, in his haze of
alien induced hatred, comes across Mara in the corridor, and he holds a sword
to her neck and threatens her life, and then you see his expression change
he goes, But you are very beautiful.
And then, uh, forces a kiss on her, before Kirk come and Spock come
around the corner and knock him out.
And Kirk does, just as you described before, the hit him and hit him again!
Whap, across until Spock restrains him and says, Captain, he's not
responsible for his actions.
And uh, Pavel kind of slumps against the wall.
Uh, at the end of the scene, Kirk literally lifts Pavel up and holds
him in his arms, unconscious, and he says, Chekov, Chekov, is
this what's in for all of us?
An endless cycle of violence?
as he walks off the screen with, with his, uh, his crewman cradled in his arms.
It's good stuff, but that scene is very hard to watch and I don't
feel like it would have been put on screen in that form, nowadays.
Rob: Yeah, even with the justification I do in inverted commas of him being
under the influence of this alien force.
Kevin: Yeah.
But, um, yeah, really good.
If you haven't seen it, worth a watch, especially for like the early cultural
creation of the Klingons, here.
I think it is one of the few original series episodes where the Klingons
are not two dimensional villains.
They have three
Rob: Great,
Kevin: Yeah.
Rob: and just to watch Michael Ansara in his peak as Kang.
Kevin: Yeah.
The anti war message in the writing is at times explicit.
There's a, there's a log entry.
Once Kirk figures out what's going on, he does a captain's
log between scenes where he says, Captain's log, stardate: Armageddon.
We must find a way to defeat the alien force of hate that
has taken over the Enterprise.
Stop the war now!
Or spend eternity in futile bloody violence.
Stop the war now was like written on protest signs that were being
outside Capitol buildings in the lead up to the election.
Rob: that's
Kevin: these, uh, at these times.
So Star Trek was wearing its, uh, politics on its sleeve.
Rob: Whenever people do the whole thing of oh Star Trek, it was never political,
they al always show the photo of, uh, Frank Gorshin in makeup with the silver
half one side and black half the other
But th this one is definitely, you know, as you've just said with the
backstory as well, is it, you know, it was written specifically for a
reason to get a message out there
Kevin: Yeah, and, and the, hatred between the Klingons and Federation is the
headline for sure, but the peak of this episode for me is actually a scene on
the bridge where the bridge crew start to turn against each other, and, uh,
just like you were talking about with Spock, uh, kind of losing his cool with
Chapel in the, The Naked Time, I've got some quotes here in front of me.
Spock tries to restrain Scotty, who's a little upset, and Scotty
says, Keep your Vulcan hands off me!
Just keep away!
Your feelings might be hurt, you green blooded half breed!
And Mr.
Spock says, May I say that I have not thoroughly enjoyed serving with humans.
I find their illogic and foolish emotions a constant irritant.
And Scotty says, Then transfer out, freak!
And they, they, they go at each other, uh, pretty seriously.
And it's, it's Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and Scotty on the bridge, going at each other.
And Kirk steps out of it at a moment and goes, Hang on, what we doing?
We have been trained to think in other terms than this and
yet we're behaving like animals.
What is wrong with us?
And it's this, this breaking point that leads them to realize
what's going on in the ship.
It's a really great scene.
Rob: Awesome.
Well, I mean it, I have to keep on reminding myself because I
watch it with The Naked Time.
There's the moment where, uh, Spock gets his, you know, he's requested,
uh, quarantine and being examined after they've come back from the colony
and everyone's a bit, uh, alright.
going, have we learnt nothing Alien?
we learned nothing from Alien?
Quarantine is anyway.
So when Spock has finished his examination, uh, there's just the casual
racism of McCoy going, do you even call it blood, that stuff inside you?
And you go, oh, oh, oh, oh.
Kevin: Credit to DeForest Kelly, like, the casual racism that's kind
of a elbow in the ribs that you just talked about is played very
distinctly from the something's wrong with McCoy racism of, You know what
they are, Jim, they're Klingons.
We don't need to stop what is motivating them.
You're going, Oh, that is, that is a different color.
Rob: Yeah, that is very much a case of, yeah.
Yeah, they are different to us.
And that type of stuff is brought back in, in, um, uh, Undiscovered
Country, obviously, so beautifully.
Some of those incredible, powerful lines of, um, Kirk's inherent prejudice and,
you know, racism built within there.
Um, that he had to evolve and move on from.
Yeah, still beautiful.
One of my favorite parts at the end of Undiscovered Country is, um, the
daughter and Kirk coming to terms with the loss of their son and, uh, father.
Beautiful moment.
Ah!
Kevin: Seeing characters changed.
It's the heart of drama, Rob.
Rob: That's right, heart of sci fi as well.
Get a message across; do it in a sci fi, fantastical way, but also move
those characters forward emotionally.
What a great three episodes to explore.
Kevin: Yeah, I did not expect to, uh, be reminiscing about the
original series with you today, Rob.
So, um, yeah, thanks for, thanks for pulling that one out.
Rob: Well, you know, you've been carrying the load of next gen and original
series so much, you know, I've dabbled a bit, if I've watched a little bit
of the animated series, I think I've done one or two classic ones, but yes,
I thought I'd spend a bit more time, uh, at the very heart of the early
days of this, uh, wonderful franchise.