Kevin: Hello and welcome back to Subspace Radio.
It's me, Kevin Yank.
Rob: And me DJ Rob Lloyd.
Kevin: We are here to talk about Strange New Worlds, season two, episode three,
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow.
Rob this is another Shakespeare quote, if I'm not mistaken.
Rob: It is they go hand in hand like ice cream and whiskey,
Star Trek and Shakespeare.
The perfect combination.
Following on a long tradition of Star Trek episodes named after Shakespearean
quotes, I think even from From this particular passage from Macbeth, there's
a classic, original series episode and All Our Yesterdays and of course the multiple
quoting of Shakespeare in Star Trek VI.
What more do you need?
Kevin: The thing that popped out in this episode that we're going
to discuss at greater length as it echoes into Star Trek history is the
idea of shifting the goalposts or correcting a perceived inconsistency
in Star Trek history after the fact.
Rob: This is a big, contentious issue.
It's, it's exploding online at the moment.
Like we're, we are in our own lovely little bubble and we, listen to each
other and we have commonalities and disagreements here or there, but
there's quite a lot of people who do not like the status quo as it were,
being shifted or adjusted accordingly.
They like things the way they are, the way they should be, and that's
how it is and always should be.
And other people a lot more flexible and able to keep up with the changing
structure of this constant evolving narrative canon that is Star Trek.
Kevin: It's a relatively small element, just dropped in at the end of this
episode of just oh, by the way, this explains the shift in the timeline
for the Eugenics Wars that were originally set to occur in the 1990s
according to the original series.
And now it happens sometime in the 2050s.
And that we are led to believe is because of all of the kind of temporal
cold war jockeying that has happened.
All the little incursions that secret Romulans have made into Earth history.
It still happens.
It just happens a little later now.
And that buys us some time to make some more Star Trek that
has a chance of coming true.
Rob: And Kevin, that is a very well-grounded, calm,
logical explanation of it.
And there are other people who, I mean, I get this all the time
within Doctor Who canon as well.
But yeah, Star Trek in many ways was started by one man's vision and then it
shifted and evolved through especially its resurgence in the nineties and
how they divert off that original Roddenberry vision of the future.
And of course, obviously Nicholas Meyer took it off track and made it
more, space navy in Star Trek II.
But whereas Doctor Who always evolved because it never had a, a Bible as it
were at the start, like Roddenberry did.
Its continuity is messed up because it has no continual continuity.
It shifts and changes.
And Star Trek is, the longer it goes on is realizing as this
can be flexible and changes.
And there are fans who go along with it and there are fans who just go, no,
this is linear, this is structured.
It is one line.
And that's all it is.
And it's amazing.
How that, as you said, just a little shift here to give us a bit more
time has caused ripples within, a loud but small vocal group.
Kevin: So we'll talk about some other episodes where that sort of
thing has happened in the past.
But first, let's talk about Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow.
What did you think, Rob?
Rob: I really liked it.
I really loved it.
I loved the the concept of it.
Our captain was sidelined yet again.
So I think this is all tied in with the real life Anson Mount needing time off to
be with his family and his newborn child.
But that brought James, T.
Kirk back, our new version James T.
Kirk back into the fray and going on a time travel mission.
He was, of course, from a parallel universe with La'an.
Kevin: Again, another parallel universe Kirk.
We did get to meet the prime universe Kirk on a Zoom call at the end of this episode.
But other than that it's been they've been teasing us with Jim Kirk.
We're, wh when are we gonna see the, the real Jim Kirk?
Rob: Will the real Jim Kirk, please stand up.
Please stand up.
And it, yeah, it was sort of like, where is this episode gonna go?
Is it gonna be action adventure?
Is it gonna be time travel conundrum?
Is it gonna be
Kevin: Where it's going to go, Rob is to Canada.
I was really happy to see Canada, future Canada.
I'm a, I am a proud Canadian myself, and when they landed in Toronto and
identified it as Toronto, on the one hand you're like well, yes, that makes sense.
That's where you're filming the show.
It's cheap to step outside your front door and say, look, we're
in Toronto, and add a couple of CG enhancements to make it look futuristic.
But otherwise, it's pretty much Toronto of today.
But you know, so often we go to other parts of the world in Star Trek
and it's great to get a canonical glimpse of future metropolitan Canada.
I was tickled by that.
Rob: Well, Toronto has become sort of like Hollywood of the North, as it said.
So many TV shows do shoot up there, like the Arrowverse series, like
the Flash and Arrow and all those type of shows shot up in Toronto.
I think that line of James, T.
Kirk saying, oh, it's New York, was a little bit of a meta
reference to the fact of Toronto has played New York so many times.
Because it does have its own sentient presence, of course it
must have been relieved to, for Toronto to finally play itself.
Kevin: There, there was an interesting line by our fake Romulan later when she's
helping them out at the traffic stop and like doing some fast talking from the side
of the street to get them outta trouble.
And she says, you're discriminating against him as an American.
And I was like, wow.
What are we meant to believe is going on in the 2050s here with Canada and America?
Like the are Americans truly discriminated against north of the border?
Or is that just something a Romulan spy made up and hoped it would make sense?
Rob: A tantalizing taste of, of what's to come.
But there was great odd couple type of the team up between La'an
and Kirk and like they're having to begrudgingly work together.
The more relaxed Kirk with the more focused and determined La'an.
Hot dogs were involved with no sauce or mustard or anything.
Kevin: Yeah, it was weird.
I said out loud, aren't you gonna have some mustard at least?
Uh, It was weird.
Rob: It was very weird.
And then we get a little, a little taste of romance which I thought was handled
really well to get that all in 45 minutes.
It's a lot to cram in, but it was
Kevin: It was really good.
So much of this rests on the performance by Christina Chong
as La'an, and she nailed it here.
Rob: She's incredible.
She's absolutely incredible.
Kevin: just want more La'an now.
I want this the Star Trek La'an show, but at the same time like, this is
how you do it's, you look at Discovery and you go, we, we, we wanna tell some
stories about someone who's not the captain of a ship, at least not yet.
And so we will make it Star Trek: Michael Burnham.
And it's all about Michael Burnham.
And Michael Burnham is effectively a superhero in the Star Trek universe by
the end, and rises to Captain a ship.
And here it trades much more on the strength of the performances
and the strength of the characters.
I don't need to feel like La'an is on the fast track to a captaincy
in order for me to buy into a story about her as a character.
And so I love this so much that Strange New Worlds is getting a lot of mileage
out of its ensemble about individual members of its ensemble because each
one of them is a strong enough actor and a strong enough character that they
can carry a story all by themselves.
And I don't miss the rest of the cast.
I trust they'll be back next week.
And getting up close and personal with La'an here, seeing her against her own
better judgment fall for the rascally Jim Kirk here stranded in 2050s Canada.
I, I bought it hook, line, and sinker.
I loved it.
And it was heartbreaking at the end when she lost everything
and was alone in her grief and couldn't talk to anyone about it.
That last moment where she like puts down the PADD switches off the call
with Kirk and just collapses into tears.
I was I was like, wow, she is good.
Wow.
She is good.
Rob: Not bad for a um, British actor who got her start in a
Matt Smith, Doctor Who era story.
A Good Man Goes to War.
She was amazing in that.
And it's good to see
Kevin: I have to go back and watch that.
I don't remember her in that at all.
Rob: Yeah.
Yeah.
She has a, a, a crucial part within A Good Man Goes to War.
Now last time we had the appearance of James T.
Kirk.
You had some thoughts on the performance.
How did you find this return performance of Kirk?
Kevin: Look, it's much the same for me here.
I do not see in his performance the character that we got to know so
well as William Shatner's, James T.
Kirk.
And, love them or hate them, those JJ movies, I felt like Chris
Pine did a version of James T.
Kirk that I recognized.
It felt like the same person to me.
He made choices from the same emotional truth.
And I am not getting that from James T.
Kirk.
Here what I'm getting is a character named James T.
Kirk who I like and I, I enjoy on screen.
I am there for this James T.
Kirk, and the stories we will get to tell with him.
But I kind of have to do like a mental rounding up of, okay, we're gonna
pretend this is the same person.
It doesn't feel like the same person, but we will accept for the logic of
the story that they're the same person.
I don't know if we are gonna get there.
The actor has done some interviews where he says he's deliberately
steered away from doing an impression or an impersonation about
what has been done with James T.
Kirk in the past, and in part this is a younger James T.
Kirk, who is still growing to be the James T.
Kirk that we knew in the original series.
But it's still a bit of a gap for me.
I think it's not going to be resolved, but it doesn't necessarily need to
be resolved for me to enjoy this characterization for its own sake.
Rob: Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I felt that while watching this one, I just went, yeah, he's an entity unto
himself and I can see the choices he's making is not to emulate Shatner at all.
And I love the fact that they're leaning into, even though they haven't actually
shared any screen time, I love how they're leaning into his connection with Sam.
I'm just, they're going great.
That's great.
That's really good.
Now give them some screen time together for heaven's sake.
Like just
Kevin: That moment of Sam's alive.
Rob: oh my
Kevin: now I can accept that your timeline is the best timeline.
Cuz all we got to see of Sam originally in the original series was,
Rob: A dead
Kevin: William Shatner lying dead on the floor with a mustache.
Rob: And then at the end he comes back and he goes, I'm just here to talk about Sam.
He goes, oh no.
What's Sam done?
What's he done?
Kevin: Yep.
It's it's really good.
That stuff's very satisfying for sure.
Rob: Beautiful little foreboding drop and appearance of Carol Kane, Pelia
in, in, back in they had to do a, they had to do some big travel to get from
Kevin: they did.
Like apparently Jim Kirk won a lot of money in the park playing chess in order
to be able to bribe not once, but twice, the border guards to cross the border
into the United States, which uh, you know I, kind of went, you went where and how
Rob: And a re and a really good hotel room as well.
That's a penthouse
Kevin: Yeah, that was a nice hotel.
I wanna know where that hotel is.
I wanna stay there.
Rob: But yeah, it was,
Kevin: Pelia was delightful and that whole scene was entertaining
enough that I just went with it.
I was like, yeah, I don't believe that you made it across the
border with the resources at your disposal, but I want to believe.
Rob: And as soon as, yeah, Carol Kane shows up, all is right with the world.
Are you warming to Pelia more now?
After, after.
Kevin: Yeah she's, she's no less weird.
But I'm starting to have fun with the weirdness.
Her accent is absurd, but so consistent.
Like there are so many things going on there that it could just be a
mess that changes from week to week.
But she is zeroed in on something that is both like at 11 in terms of absurdity,
but also rock solid, consistent, that the character does not change.
The character is the character.
And so I am on board with Pelia now.
Rob: And, and Kevin, you have just hit on the secret ingredient that
has made Carol Kane the success She has been for nearly 40 years, or over
Kevin: Weird accents.
Rob: We well, yeah, she got her big break on Taxi.
She was brought in as Andy Kaufman's love interest, I'm doing
in inverted commas, from the same made up country that Andy Kaufman's
mechanic was, and she matched him.
So that was a character he, his foreign guy was a character just created by Andy
Kaufman and Carol Kane was brought in.
He go, you have to copy something that is so unique and specific to Kauffman.
And she did, and it was near the tail end of Taxi, so it was
fading, but she was incredible.
And she's done weird accents in all pretty much everything she does, like
her work in Princess Bride, her work in Fairytale Theater, her work in Scrooged.
You just accept, you get a hundred percent commitment and you get weird,
bold, incredible choices that work because of her commitment to that.
Kevin: The writing around her character is great too.
I just love the choice of, I'm not an engineer.
This isn't an engineer's workshop.
What are you talking about?
And of course, when you live that long you go through multiple careers.
Uh, So very good.
I when La'an came back and Pelia was on the bridge there, I was
like, do you recognize her?
Do you remember her?
Uh, No.
She's she was pretty drunk in that scene.
I, she probably doesn't remember her at all.
Probably forgot her 10 minutes after they
Rob: I am looking forward to going back and rewatching and over-analyzing
that final scene to go, is she looking?
Is that a knowing look?
Is that not, or is that just a drunken look?
Yeah, and of course it wasn't that much of a shock, but it was a shock moment of that
Kirk being killed off from that timeline.
Kevin: That whole, yeah, that, that got me.
The Romulan spy, Sera was delightful as well.
She played it, she played a character that for some reason I could buy
that she was a Romulan agent, but at the same time was not doing any of
the arch high status villain stuff that you normally see from Romulans.
I don't know it was just the pale skin and dark hair that made me think
Romulan, but whatever it was, there was something Romulan about her that when it
was revealed, I was like, I'm an idiot.
Of course, that's Romulan spy.
But but at the same time, such an interesting we didn't get to spend a
lot of time with her, but there was more there than was on the script page.
And that's a testament to the work the actor was doing.
Rob: And that leads to the final climactic moment, of course, where La'an gets
to meet her descendant, and we get to see the child version of one of the,
biggest and most infamous villains within Star Trek a child version of Khan.
Kevin: Yeah.
And as soon as the name plaque was on the door and it said Khan, and my encyclopedic
brain for Star Trek facts is spinning and going what Khan is behind that door?
Is it like a university professor?
Surely Khan is already off in sleep on the Botany Bay by now, as far as we know.
So who is this Khan, what's behind that door?
And then when they open it and it's a young child, I'm like okay.
It's Baby Khan.
How can that make sense?
I want it to make sense, but I can't figure out how it makes sense.
And then they're like, yeah, this happens 50 years later than it used to.
Rob: Yeah, the Romulan had to wait around.
They went back to the nineties and had to wait around.
Kevin: It's very interesting.
It's unexpected enough, it's a big enough swing that like, I felt like if they made
a small change, the narcissism of minor differences would have me more upset
about a small change that feels arbitrary.
A big change feels like, okay, that's purposeful.
That takes us somewhere interesting.
A big change will have big repercussions, and I wanna, I'm
curious what those are going to be now.
So I was willing to go along with it, at least in the moment.
Rob: Yeah, and it was very much a case of sci-fi doing what it's best
at is answering those big questions.
So everyone asked that if you had the ability to go back in time,
would kill Hitler as a baby?
Kevin: Especially if Hitler was your ancestor.
Rob: Yes, exactly.
And Hitler was a, augmented psychopath.
But it's also that case of, the ultimate evil, what good comes out of that?
And so clearly we have seen a reality in this alternate reality of where
the decision to kill Kahan when a baby resulted in actually a worse
timeline for Earth and that universe.
So actually having the horrors of what Khan did actually
results in a better future.
It's, yeah, all that
Kevin: it's a bigger, it's a bigger version of City on the Edge of Forever
where Kirk has to let his girlfriend die in a traffic accident in order
to restore the future timeline.
It's another ver bigger version of that, and I really appreciated that
as an, as an echo of Star Trek's past.
Rob: Yeah, that whole combination of a bigger ramifications.
But this is your family.
This is your
Kevin: The necessary evil, the horrific, enormous, necessary evil.
Rob: So three episodes down and two killer episodes.
Um, uh,
Kevin: I think this is my favorite so far.
They're going from strength to strength.
And if the season keeps building like this, I don't know where
we're gonna be by the end.
I wanna know if we're gonna get more Kirk.
I think we've been given a hint that there is more Kirk in the offing, but
this feels to me like the original story that Paul Wesley was cast to be Kirk for.
My understanding is that his appearance in the season finale of season one
was a thing they did after that, that that was tacked on as a second idea.
And that originally he was cast to appear as Kirk in season two.
Rob: Right.
Kevin: So I wonder how much more of him we have in season two
Rob: Yeah.
Yeah.
I think he's working well within the show and working with the cast
and they're definitely enjoying the development of where they, what
they can do with uh, this character.
Kevin: So let's talk about course corrections or timeline changes in Star
Trek history, things that were changed to hopefully make things make more sense
that may have rankled fans in the process.
Rob: The dreaded R word, retcon.
Kevin: Retcon!
The retrospective continuity story.
Yeah.
Rob: Look doing this podcast has finally rubbed off on me and I'm
stepping outside of my comfort zone more often, more regularly now,
because I think it, it's a disservice.
It's not a disservice to Deep Space Nine because I love it so much, but
it is a disservice to this podcast and our dear listeners and your good self
that I don't spread my wings a bit.
So I have returned, I have gone back.
To the place that I went to last week.
I have gone back to Enterprise.
Kevin: Hey, I think we picked the same stuff, Rob.
So we're gonna, we're gonna have a great conversation.
Rob: gonna be looking at, and I hope you're looking at as well
Kevin: Yeah.
Rob: The two part story from season four, Affliction
Kevin: Affliction and Divergence yeah.
Rob: where they decided to answer the question that nobody really
wanted to answer and nobody really wanted the answer to.
And everyone was very happy with how it was answered as a throwaway line in
Deep Space Nine Trial & Tribble-ations.
But they went and did it anyway.
Why the hell did the Klingons look different in the original series
than they do in the movies and the subsequent nineties TV shows and on
Kevin: Yes.
So for those of you who may be catching up here, in the 1960s when Star Trek,
the original series was made, Klingons were largely played by white actors
with lots of bronzer on their face in a choice that would not stand up to
scrutiny in today's modern sensibilities.
And they had maybe some extra big eyebrows and extra fumanchu mustaches on but they
were mainly like human looking people with dark complexions and bigger hair.
And then when the movies came along and the budgets got bigger,
the Klingons were reimagined with forehead ridges and armor and and
everything else they've got going on.
And and teeth, yes, scraggly teeth.
No ears for a long time until we finally saw Worf's ears here in the last season
of Star Trek: Picard, satisfying the long running question of do Klingons have ears.
That change, Gene Roddenberry famously said, I don't think we need to explain it.
People are intelligent.
They knew, they know, we got some more money.
We decided to use it to do something interesting.
That is meant to be how Klingons were all along.
Rob: Yeah.
Kevin: In our imaginations.
And it just, the historical document that we were making with Star Trek did
not have enough money to fully represent Klingons to their full fidelity.
And we are asked to squint and blur our vision and understand
that, that's what they were trying to represent all this time.
Rob: Suspension of disbelief.
Kevin: Yeah, but there were just enough fans who always asked the
question, why were they different?
Is there a story there?
Could there be a story there?
Maybe it would be interesting for there to be a story there.
And they teased us with it in Deep Space Nine, Trials
& Tribble-ations, you mentioned.
Rob, do as
Rob: Very well, very beautifully handled.
To celebrate 30 years of Star Trek during Deep Space Nine's fifth season the crew
of the Defiant are sent back to the original series time where the Tribbles
episode is happening and they need to stop a bomb within a Tribble going off
and changing the course of history.
And while they're there, they get all clothed up like they're
in the original series era.
Worf has to put on cossack clothing to hide his bumps and stuff.
And they're sitting down at a cafeteria on the base and O'Brien, Odo and Bashir look
over and they go, oh they're Klingons.
And they go, what?
And then they look back at Worf and he just rather uncomfortably going, we
do not talk about it with outsiders.
And that's it.
And they just move on.
Kevin: Genius.
Rob: I've been watching a lot of online docos and fan stuff
about about that type of stuff.
And cuz during this time Ronald D.
Moore, who went on to do Battlestar Galactica was working
on Deep Space Nine at the time.
He goes, it doesn't need an explanation.
That's it.
That's enough.
Just
Kevin: that's better than any explanation we could tell.
It was the kind of the idea.
And there was no escaping it either.
Like the conceit of the episode is they used the old footage from
the original series and placed our modern characters into it.
And as long as you were gonna have a Worf on screen alongside those sixties
Klingons, the question had to be asked.
Otherwise, all of our characters would look irrational.
So the fun thing was they're like, yeah, let's turn it into a joke,
because that is more satisfying than attempting to explain this thing.
And it was great for quite a few years until, um, you know,
Enterprise was looking for story ideas in its fourth season.
Rob: I found it very interesting.
I did, I knew very little about Enterprise obviously, cuz I haven't seen much of it.
But watching these docos online have been really fascinating to find out
about season four especially cuz they Pillar and Bragga had moved on.
They had a new showrunner, the budget from UPN the Paramount LED network that
Enterprise was the flagship on cut the budget to from 1.7 million dollars an
episode to like, 800,000 or whatever.
So one of the budgetary restraints, and what they did is they decided
to make pretty much every episode a two or three, a two-parter.
So therefore, to cut down on.
Hiring of actors using the same sets, same makeup, all that type of stuff.
So we get a two-parter, which should have been a one parter exploring
how the Klingons looked human.
Kevin: I have been bemoaning the state of Enterprise in some
recent episodes of this podcast.
But to research this, I watched a significant amount of season four
Enterprise, and I have to say, despite the budget cuts, despite the sense
that this show was on its last legs before cancellation, I have to say I
enjoy season four of Enterprise more than any other part of Enterprise.
in a sense, they were kind of in a, we have nothing to lose state here.
There was the fresh fresh hand at the wheel with Manny Coto as showrunner,
and he was a Star Trek fan and he knew what Star Trek fans love is finding
cracks in the canon to tell stories from.
And that is what season four is from beginning to end after they resolve the
weirdness of being trapped in World War II at the start of the season, they bring
us back and then the rest of it is, let's go to Vulcan and learn some stuff about
Vulcans that we've never learned before.
There's a three parter about Arik Soong, a descendant of Khan Noonien Soong and
a precursor to the Soong that creates data, and it is connected to this episode.
We get a three-part story about Augments and and a Augment
crisis that happens here.
Rob: And we get our mirror universe story as well in season four.
Kevin: And those things are all, each of them by themselves and together are
examples of stronger, more confident storytelling, taking bigger swings
than I think Enterprise had done in any of its three first seasons.
Rob: Yeah, I've heard I've heard season three is actually a good
course correction and so like a series arc, which is quite good.
And season four was sort of like ramping up that quality as well.
There was just running on fumes and so the show already had plans for what
they were gonna do with season five.
They were gonna, alter the Enterprise to look a bit more like the,
the original series Enterprise.
They were gonna bring on Jeffrey Combs's character as a regular.
They had that going, that everyone wanted it to happen, except the
entire viewing audience and UPN cuz Star Trek it had been going for,
what, 15 years in this new format.
And at the start of, the noughties new TV shows and new formats were
filling up that genre quota.
Kevin: Yeah I think it is somewhat of a shame that two-parter about Klingons'
mutation is probably the weakest story here in season four of Enterprise.
Having watched it, I had trouble sitting through it.
I had trouble maintaining my attention for two full episodes.
By the end, I wasn't entirely sure what had happened with Phlox and the
Klingon scientists and the virus.
And my understanding is what happens here ultimately is that the Klingons
have gotten hold of the Augment virus.
It's very interesting to me that this story has us understand that the same
genetic modifications that enabled Augments to become the threat that they
became on Earth was used in an attempt for, Klingons were feeling we need to keep
up with these humans if they're gonna make Augments, we need to make super Klingon
Rob: If, If two augments could take down an entire
Kevin: Yeah.
As they do in the three parter about augments with Brent Spiner.
Yeah.
And in the end, Phlox manages to defang this virus and go, it will
now complete its first phase, which is it takes your forehead, ridges
away and makes you look human.
But it will not do its second phase, which is give you superpowers.
And so now there is this, rampant defanged virus that is gonna sweep
through Klingon society and make a bunch of flat skinned Klingons.
Rob: Uh, you're watching it go.
Okay.
So this is where they explain it, but they actually don't.
It is so complicated.
So it's not just that story, it's the story of Trip going on to the Columbus.
It's got the story of Malcolm Reed and
Kevin: It's the Columbia, I believe,
Rob: Yeah.
And Malcolm Reed's allegiance to, yeah, section 31.
But they went, okay, so let's explain this.
It was the augments thing, but then it got infected by the flu, which made it change.
And then it has three stages, and the first stage isn't contagious,
but the next stage is, and then the final stage is death.
And then there's this, and then there's that.
And then we have to do this, but then we have to put it into a human,
and then we have to take it out of a human and put it here, and then we
Kevin: And then flocks double crosses him and says he is gonna do one
thing and he does the other thing.
Yeah.
It's just so many layers and it feels like all of these confusing back flips
are in service of cramming a story into the cracks of canon and making
it link to as many things as possible.
And it is not worth it in the end.
Which I think brings back to, brings us back to that original sentiment
by Gene Roddenberry of is more interesting not to worry about it.
Rob: And going, and we'll try and explain it, but we will still
leave some things up in the air.
So I'm there going, what have I just put up with for 90 minutes?
Like they're there going, right?
So this is gonna be passed on to our children for generations.
Oh.
But then I can go into cosmetic surgery.
Oh, there'll be a lot of need for that.
I'm going, what does this mean?
What does any of this mean?
It's just
Kevin: and and what is, what is the impact on the characters we care about?
Next to nothing.
Rob: Yeah, the, there's stuff in there I like.
Scott Bakula was a lot better in this than he was in Judgment.
And that whole essence of why they did it in that time period was that they
were closer to our version of humanity.
So they're a little bit more rough around the edges.
So Archer is a lot more aggressive and emotional when
it comes to you betrayed me.
You wouldn't have that type of loss of control really with a Picard or a Janeway.
They have that anger, but still keep it, that elevated level of the future.
And Billingsley was incredible as Phlox.
He's amazing.
That energy that he has a countermand to what Neelix was who was meant to be a
buffoon, but that was just an to cover the fact that he is actually quite devious.
But they lost that, and they just made Neelix a buffoon.
In this the outer shell of Phlox's chipper nature belies underneath,
he's a dedicated surgeon and a serious man and a very intelligent man.
And Billingsley plays that beautifully.
There's a great line when they talk about their family and their
backgrounds, and he goes, so every male of your species has three wives
and every wife has three husbands?
That must make mating complex.
And he goes, Wondrously so.
And I'm going, Yeah!
Kevin: Yeah,
Rob: There's some great stuff in there.
I actually like Trip.
Trip has actually, actually grew on me.
I'm there going, I like this character and I know what happens
to him is a cheap payoff and there going him and T'Pol, I don't get
Kevin: This place where he and T'Pol find themselves of the post will
they, won't they, where T'Pol has had to go through with an arranged
marriage and Trip is look, I'm gonna need some space and some time.
Rob: But it just get, it gets so caught up in going, we wanna explain stuff, but
we're gonna over connect everything like you said, to the Augments and to Soong.
And, but then we don't want to go too specific cuz we still wanna leave a
bit of vaguary cuz there's still a hundred years worth of evolution before
we get to the original series and I'm there going, it's just utter nonsense.
Kevin: The preceding episodes, the three parter, Borderland, Cold Station 12, and
The Augments is much more interesting.
There is a bit of Star Trek II cosplay going on, like the group of Augments
that Arik suing has raised from babies and like he, there are scenes where
he's like leading a classroom and it's a bit, it's a bit Jedi Academy sort
of thing but low budget and a, as they grow up, they all get holes in their
clothes so that like they, they look like those scruffy eighties ruffians
that you get to see in Star Trek II.
But they are all wearing the exact same clothes with the exact same holes in
the exact same places, to the point where it's almost a fashion choice, but
it looks like an impractical one where they must be cold a lot of the time.
Especially the love interest of the Augments, she has some, very prominent
gaps in her upper chest clothing, let's say uh, that, that are there
to keep the male viewers interested.
But apart from those bits of like awkwardness, this story is interesting.
I think Arik Soong is interesting, seeing Brent Spiner play a completely
unlikable, unsympathetic ancestor of his.
It's way more interesting than it is when they do it in season
two of Star Trek: Picard.
They do it more effectively here, they do more with him.
It's, it is enjoyable to watch Brent Spiner want to believe in these
Augments and say, look, they've, they're just prejudiced against it.
They can be better than us.
They can be the future.
And then one by one as the dominoes fall and they betray him as their father and
he is forced to reckon with the fact that they are an unstoppable force of evil that
he is going to have to turn his back on.
That is an interesting turn for Brent Spiner as a guest star
and it's most there on screen.
The fact that this was a strong enough series of episodes, I think is in part
why they wanted to pick up that thread and go, oh, and some of that Augment
virus gets out and we're get to tell a story about the Klingons because of it.
Unfortunately, that is a weaker story.
If you were going to be inspired by this week's episode of Strange New Worlds and
the story about the Augments shifting in the timeline, I would suggest the
thing to watch would be this three parter of Borderland, Cold Station 12,
and The Augments with Brent Spiner.
Rob: Yeah.
Other notable things about Affliction and Divergence is some of the cast.
We have James Avery, who a lot of people would know from
the Fresh Prince of Bel Air.
He plays one of the king on Klingon generals.
He's really good at it.
They bring back dear old John Schuck, who we know as the
ambassador from Star Trek IV.
There shall be no peace as long as Kirk lives.
Kevin: Very recognizable voice that like the first thing he says with
any emotion in it, you go, hang on.
I know that emotion.
Rob: And of course a huge Star Trek fan and creator of Family Guy, and also
lead and creator of uh, The Orville.
One of the second best tributes to Star Trek after Galaxy Quest,
of course, seth McFarlane is there
Kevin: Yeah.
It's weird now that we, he's gone on to be the captain of the ship in The Orville,
it's really weird seeing him here.
It is hard not to read him as the captain of The Orville who
is in his spare time watching a holodeck program about Enterprise.
Rob: Yeah.
That you, yeah.
When anything comes to Enterprise and you see someone familiar going, oh,
it's just Riker again in the final episode, this is another cop out thing.
I like the smaller confine nature of this.
I love how like the engine room, it feels like the engine room of a
submarine or or like the engine room of Firefly where it's just you have you so
crammed in and all that type of stuff.
I love that type of field that they got a gist of, and they could have gone
further, but I think they were tied down by the era they were in, which
is always a problem with Star Trek.
Kevin: So I guess looking back in my mind on this less successful example of
the show saying there is a question in canon and we can turn that into a story.
I think what we saw in Strange New Worlds this week, and it is fresh
evidence in my mind of just how good a job the writers behind Strange
New Worlds are doing is they did the same trick, but they did it better.
They said, we are going to acknowledge and address a question
in canon, but we're not going to go so far as to explain it to death.
To create a big two-parter around explaining away these intricacies
of canon questions that most of our audience is not aware of and doesn't
care about and ultimately does not impact the characters we care about.
Instead, they said, okay, there is that question there.
We are going to answer it, but the story we're gonna tell is
going to be impactful to La'an.
And that comes first.
We are not gonna give you all the details.
We're gonna say, it shifted.
This Romulan had to wait around.
That's all you need to know.
And way stronger way of approaching it.
So yeah, that's really all I had Rob this, five episodes here in
the fourth season of Enterprise.
That to me is the one big example I had of the showrunners trying
to course correct in canon.
Did you have anything else you wanted to talk about?
Rob: I do.
I went back to, I did a bit of research into it.
I was fascinated by it cause I had never actually seen the original episode.
We've talked about it a little bit, but I wanted to look at the retconning,
slash evolution of the Trill.
So I've been watching a bit of stuff about behind the scenes of Deep Space Nine.
I went back and actually watched The Host from season four of Enterprise and
to see that shift and change, where it started from a practical point of view
and whether it's been explained or not, cuz the Trill in their first appearance
in season four of The Next Generation have the same elements but do evolve
and change and retcon quite a lot when they first appear as Jadzia Dax in
the first episode of Deep Space Nine.
Kevin: Yeah, it's fascinating that it's remarked upon less.
I don't hear fans like decrying, when are you gonna explain the Trill?
But when you go back and watch that episode, like the actor has a
very prominent forehead appliance on, and I believe it's established
they can't use the transporter because of the symbiont relationship
Rob: Yep.
So basically in this episode there's Odan, who's the Trill.
They're very mysterious species.
We don't know much about them.
He's an ambassador brought in and his father helped broker this peace deal
years ago between these two colonies on on a sister planet of this race.
Odan is very much against transporters despite the fact that would be safer
to get him onto the surface of the planet because taking transports,
they're susceptible to intercepting ships and all that type of stuff.
It's during the course of that they're attacked going down
the runabout with a Riker.
Riker's in this a lot.
Riker is putting himself on the line a lot.
And Odan reveals that they can't do any surgery on him because there's
some sort of parasitic thing within him and going, no, that is Odan.
Kevin: By this point in the story, he and Beverly Crusher have got a thing going on
Rob: Yes, they've been seeing each other for a little bit, it appears.
And so there's a weird awkward it's awkward.
It's like seeing your parents flirting
Kevin: For some reason it is often awkward when Beverly Crusher
falls in love with someone.
We, I don't think we have yet seen the non awkward version of
Rob: I was just grateful it wasn't a ghost.
Kevin: Yeah, that's right.
Rob: But the scene in the turbolift where Odan and Beverly are there talking and
Data, oh Data not being able to read the room going let's do all this work now.
And they're trying to go let's get the kid away so we can have some fun.
Anyway Beverly does not know about the Trill having the symbian inside and falls
in love with Odan, but Odan isn't really
Kevin: No one knows it.
You get the sense it's a bit of a secret, like speaking of, we
don't discuss it with outsiders.
That is the sense you get about the trill is that it is secret
information that they are carrying a symbiont around inside themselves.
Rob: And this is where, yeah.
So the first big thing is the Trill has the usual Star Trek heightened forehead
things on their front as opposed to the beautiful dots that appear on, uh,
Kevin: no dots.
There's
Rob: No dots.
And and then we find out that unlike how it evolves in Deep Space Nine,
where the personality of the host is primary and they keep the memories
within the symbiont as well, in this, the hosts are just shells.
And as soon as Riker offers to be the human that Riker is gone.
Yes.
And there was a moment where Odan in Riker's body is talking to Picard,
and he says a line, Riker says a line of reassurance, and Picard
goes, you reminded me of Will Riker then and Odan almost is insulted.
Kevin: Yeah,
Rob: that it's and though, right?
And it's very binary.
It's very old school right at the end where it's agonizingly
hetero in its description.
Right at the end, Beverly goes, oh, it's the new host here.
And Worf goes, yes.
She goes, bring him in.
And Worf goes, uh, and turns around and the new host's a woman.
Kevin: Yeah.
Look, I don't know if, if I am wrong about this, if I still need to evolve on
this, but I can still see a truthful human story In that twist that I think is not
unkind to Beverly Crusher as a character.
I can believe that someone, the way they experience love is somewhat affected by
the physicality the physical gender of the person you are falling in love with.
And I, I could see it feels interesting to me, it is at least a shade of gray
for Beverly Crusher to go, I want to go there, but I can't, I am not, I
am not flexible enough to go there.
Rob: She said, I'm not ready.
I'm not evolved yet.
That's, it's beautifully written.
But it's, she's more than happy to, succumb to her love if it's gorgeous
Jonathan Flakes and his beard.
But yes the thing that cuz I, my first in introduction with the
Twill was in Deep Space Nine.
So I am used to that, and it's quite well explained in last week's episode
we talked about Dax, where they explain the Symbiont and update it really.
And I like the idea of the new host, their personality is crucial.
And I'd watching the Host with NextGen, I felt uncomfortable at even the
actress who came in at the end to be the host was pretty much just playing
it blank, like they had no personality.
Kevin: Empty husk reporting for duty.
And it was meant to be that way.
As a one-off alien of the week, it was meant to be challenging
in that way that this, to our human sensibilities seems immoral.
And yet a truly alien species would probably be immoral in
some, in, in numerous ways.
And so we are challenged by that.
And that challenge is interesting.
But if you're then going to create a character that we are meant to embrace
emotionally week to week and invest in, you want to strike a different
balance there, which is why I think it did need to evolve for Jadzia Dax.
The question is, is the change too much for you as a fan?
Does it bother you that these two iterations of the Trill are so different?
But we are asked to accept that they are the same.
Rob: No.
Cuz I can see how things evolve.
It's and anytime creators of shows have too much control to go back
and explain it, doesn't always work, as we've talked about.
And it's happened in other franchises as well.
Kevin: If we could do it all again, my advice in hindsight would be come up with
a different name for Jadzia's species.
Make the, make it another symbiont species that is different.
It's the Troll, not the Trill, whatever it is.
That I think the the connection to NextGen canon did not give us
enough that it was worth doing that.
And I suspect in hindsight, that's what would've been the choice.
But it's so easy to say in hindsight.
Rob: And especially evolved as well the nature of the Trill and even the nature
of Jadzia, like even what we saw in episode eight, Terry Farrell's doing a
great job, but she's still playing it.
How they originally thought: play her as this noble, honorable, a young
woman beyond her years type stuff.
And then as they evolved, they went, let's bring a bit of Terry Farrell into this.
Let's make Jadzia wise-cracking and fun loving and, likes to drink and gamble, and
has a personality as opposed to playing the noble sage in a young person's body.
Let's have all that noble sage experience, but in, a young person living and
that's where Jadzia really takes off.
The word Symbiont for me is a collaboration.
And whereas in Host it's very much a case of the host is a husk and it
is very alien and I accept that for what it is from what you said as well.
But I love that cohabitation and that working together and how the host and the
Symbiont work as one and the Dax stays.
So the Dax is the symbiont, but then the name of each of them.
I love that culture.
I love how that evolved and it became alien.
But it, and it became this unifying type of presence, which I really dug
in later episodes, which they carried on with one of the few episodes of
Discovery I liked with the Trill character
Kevin: Forget Me Not, with the introduction of Adira.
Kudos to Discovery for not falling like into that trap of, oh, we want to have
a Trill character, but there's this open question about the Trill, so we're gonna
spend two episodes explaining it to death.
I'm glad they didn't do that.
Like the, the approach they're taking with the Trill still feels like in,
in that it's just a TV show territory.
Rob: It was beautiful in that Discovery one, how she stands there
with all her previous hosts around her, and they kind of unified and
shared this experience together.
They never really did that within Deep Space Nine.
You had, obviously the personalities in that episode come through each of the
crew of Deep Space Nine inhabited it.
So, yeah, Nana Vista plays an old format of it, and she's like an old nana.
And the serial killer appears in, I think it was Avery Brooks's in Sisko's body.
Anyway, that type of stuff I like those extensions of the Trill species cuz
they're, like I talked about last week, there's a lot of connections to Doctor
who within the justification of it and but more of a Star Trek kind of way.
And I've always got a soft spot for the Trill.
Kevin: At the end of the day, there are surprisingly few of these
surviving inconsistencies in Star Trek.
These things occasionally rise to the surface.
I think like warp 10 and like warp 10 is this barrier that we can't go across.
And if you go at warp 10, you're at every point in the universe at once and Voyager
to its peril, attempted to tell a story inspired by that seeming inconsistency.
But mostly Star Trek's done a pretty good job of not contradicting itself
over the years, and even when it does not getting too distracted by it.
Rob: Yes.
Yeah.
Yeah, this has been a good exploration of of those type of recons and where
they work and where they don't.
Kevin: All right.
I'll see you next week until then, see you around the galaxy, Rob.
Rob: Until then.