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Matt and Sean talk about upping the stakes and darkening the tone in Star Trek Starfleet Academy Season 1, Episode 6, “Come, Let’s Away.”
Matt and Sean talk about upping the stakes and darkening the tone in Star Trek Starfleet Academy Season 1, Episode 6, “Come, Let’s Away.”
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- (08:25) - - Episode Discussion
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Creators and Guests
What is Trek In Time?
Join Sean and Matt as they rewatch all of Star Trek in order and in historical context.
Sean Ferrell: Welcome, everybody, to Trek in Time. This is the podcast that takes a look at Star Trek in chronological stardate order. We've been watching Star Trek from Enterprise, moving forward, program by program, series by series, until we hit stuff that's brand new. And then we take a pause and we go and watch the brand new stuff. And that's what we're doing right now. So when we're done with Starfleet Academy, we're going to return to the original series. We're currently in season three. We hope that some of you new viewers and listeners who've joined us during Starfleet Academy might want to join us on the rewatch. And if you do so, we'd be happy to have you. Who are we? Well, I'm Sean Ferrell. I'm a writer. I write some sci fi, I write some horror. I write some stuff for kids. With me, as always, is my brother Matt. He is that Matt behind Undecided with Matt Ferrell, which takes a look at emerging tech and its impact on our lives. Matt, how are you doing today?
Matt Ferrell: I'm doing great, but Sean, I know, as Grandpa Ferrell would say, I sick. You're a little sick.
Sean Ferrell: The Sean is dealing with a bit of a cold. So I've got a bit of fuzzy brain and how fuzzy is it? You might be wondering, well, as we started to, I mean, literally, Matt was hitting the record button on this episode and I was sitting here thinking, which episode are we going to talk about?
Matt Ferrell: That's not good.
Sean Ferrell: It's not good, not good.
Matt Ferrell: Strap yourself in. But here we go.
Sean Ferrell: Believe me, I remember. We're going to be watching. Come, let's away. Written by Larry Teng or directed by Larry Teng. Written by Kenneth Lin and Kylie Rosseter. This is the sixth episode of the first season of Starfleet Academy and it originally aired on February 12th 2026. So before we get into our analysis of that episode, we always like to take a look at what you've had to say about our previous episodes. So what have you found in the mailbag for us this week, Matt?
Matt Ferrell: Well, some interesting shifts in the comments, Sean. A lot more people are. This is from Vox in Excelso are saying, hey, liking this episode. So people seem to be kind of like, I don't want to say coming around, but this episode seemed to be kind of like working for a lot more people than the previous episodes, which isn't too surprising. Checksums Charlie wrote. Love this episode, which is a relief after the previous one, which I turned off after 10 minutes. The fleshing out of the gentle giant Jay-Den is a delight to see. Gotta correct you though. Qo'Nos wasn't destroyed in Star Trek 6 like you said, Sean. Instead, one of its moons, Praxis, was destroyed by mining, devastating the Klingon atmosphere. Surely a reference to the ozone layer issues of that day.
Sean Ferrell: Yes, you are absolutely correct.
Matt Ferrell: Got destroyed later. Yeah, much later. Then we had Wayouts123, chiming in, saying this was a great episode. The dialogue on how to help the Klingons and the defense of the Klingon way by a Klingon that other Klingons would not accept is a classic Trek thing. Think of how Worf wasn't truly accepted at first. But I don't think the we rather die than lose our honor Klingons would have accepted the farce of that battle. I agree, I agree it was a little kid. Yeah.
Sean Ferrell: If you took a Klingon from the Next Generation era and showed them that moment, they would probably be like, what is this? But I think what we're seeing in the future that we are being shown is that the Klingons are such a, at such a sad turning point, you know, teetering on full extinction, that in that moment they have, I guess their ideology may have expanded so that they could actually accept help when it's offered in the right way. Which I think is the important lesson of that episode.
Matt Ferrell: Then we have RyuKagedeku. And among the comments about the people not liking the new show or shows so they just watch this channel instead. Here I am not having access to the new shows. I appreciate the time. Skipping it helps me stay current. Thank you, Ryu. I appreciate that.
Sean Ferrell: Glad to help in whatever little way we can.
Matt Ferrell: Yeah. And then finally, Mark Loveless coming in with the wrong answers. Only for the Acclamation Mil episode, the gang decides to play an ancient game called poker. And while the entire thing was Caleb's idea, he's angry when his winnings of a series of games results in the others beaming a million flea like bugs into his room at the Academy. His adjustment to the inadvertent climate change of mood in his room from the bugs in their breathable containers is the main plot point. Ake tells him this is a perfect example of adapting to new situation and says at least you weren't playing for farts. Imagine a cool mil farts. Why I experimented with that myself years ago. And bores Caleb to tears with a tale regarding a fart filled atmospheric adventure from her past. Yes, Sean farts. I like the end of that. It's directed directly at you, Sean.
Sean Ferrell: Yeah, thank you, Mark. Good to have you back in the wrong answers only spotlight. And now that noise you hear, those lights you see flashing, that that's not the farts that Mark was just talking about is in fact the Read Alert. It's time for Matt to tackle the Wikipedia. Let's just call it what it is, the Wikipedia couple of first sentences of a long synopsis.
Matt Ferrell: The Academy and War College cadets participate in a routine training exercise aboard the derelict USS Miyazaki, which contains an experimental singularity drive that disabled the ship a century ago, killing its crew. Aliens called Furies board the Miyazaki and take the cadets hostage.
Sean Ferrell: This is, of course, Starfleet Academy episode six of season one, originally broadcast on February 12, 2026. And as always, we'd like to take a look at the world at the time of original broadcast. Matt, I don't have to tell you, you were still singing along to DTMF by Bad Bunny. Take it away, Matt. Now, I know I've said it before that Matt's ability to really nail the songs that we talk about when we talk about what was popular at the time of original broadcast is uncanny. But what's really remarkable here is Matt doesn't even speak Spanish. And yet. Flawless. Flawless. And at the movies, a couple of new films were in the top spots at the box office this week. Wuthering Heights, the new Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi film, is in the top slot. Sitting next to it, Crime 101 from Chris Helmsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Barry Coogan and Halle Berry. I can't help but think about Wuthering Heights with Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi. What if it was, instead of it just being straight up Wuthering Heights, what if it was him as the monster from Frankenstein and her as Barbie? Wouldn't that be a wonderful depiction? And on television, we're looking at streaming programs so that we're looking at Apples to apples. Comparing it to the current streaming of the Paramount shows. In the top spots, the Artful Dodger, which is on Disney and it's been in a top spot for several weeks now. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. This is of course, the spinoff show from Game of Thrones. And in the news, the top news story on the New York Times on that day in February. It was an analysis of the amount of funding that the Democrats have in their coffers compared to the Republicans. The Republicans have quite a war chest available to them as we head toward the 2026 elections. On now to our discussion of this episode. We have a nice return in this one, I think Paul Giamatti is back playing the baddie and we get some nice scene chewing. You and I spoke in the pilot episode about his performance. We both liked it, but we were also both like, wow, he's really like, nobody's pulling him back. He's doing all. He's doing all the things. What did you think about his depiction in this episode as opposed to that one?
Matt Ferrell: Okay. In the pilot, he was full Giamatti. He was just going full Giamatti everywhere. And it was a little too much. Felt a little hammy. This one, I didn't get that feeling at all. This one, Sean. I got the feeling of like, this is why they cast Paul Giamatti, because he was bringing nuance and layers to it. And this is the first time, I thought he wasn't menacing to me in the pilot. This. He was menacing. There were parts in this where he was talking calmly to the captain. And it was. You could tell behind his eyes there was just seething hate. And like, he's got machinations and machinations and he's. You clearly, like five movies ahead of everybody. And it's. It's really kind of terrifying. It's a really good performance. He. He goes between that, you know, very boisterous, like hammy, hamminess. But you can tell in this performance, in this episode, for me, that it was an act. It's not an act, but it's kind of like he's putting on a show for the people that he's in the room. He's putting on a show. And that came through where it didn't come through the first time. And so this, I thought, was a much more nuanced performance, and I loved it. I think he's turning into a fantastic villain for the show.
Sean Ferrell: Yeah, I feel like in. There's the directorial sense, there's the production of a TV show sense. The pilot is his first time dipping into this. It's with a different director than this episode. So then this episode is filmed. They may very well have filmed them close to each other because of his availability. It may have been like, we'll film them kind of back to back and then we'll separate them. But it was a different director. There's all of that as a reality into, like, why is the performance a little bit different here? But I think there's also a kind of in universe, canonical way of looking at it, which is when he is in a circumstance where he yet doesn't. He. He doesn't yet know the players he puts on a. He referred to himself as. He's that Klingon-Tellarite, the Klingorite hybrid. And it feels like when he's first in a circumstance, what comes out is the Klingon, the presence is bigger than the room and he forces everything onto you. But once he knows who the players are and he knows what the pieces on the board are, he pulls right back in and he's the more conniving language wielding Tellarite. Remember from the original series, the depiction of the Tellarites is very brief. There's only the one episode, but it is put forward that their means of communication and how they test the waters to is by being extremely aggressive and putting a stick in your eye to get you to respond so that they understand where. Where you come from. And I feel like this performance moves between the brashness of it doesn't matter what you do. To me, I'm bigger than everybody in this room. I'm bigger than King Kong of a Klingon followed by the quiet poke, poke, poke poke of the calm side of his personality. And I feel like they've managed to create this thing that in universe gives him as an actor a wild range to be able to play with.
And I can't help but wonder how much of that is simply Paul Giamatti brought it in and just was doing these things and they rolled with it and they let him do what he wanted to do and how much of that was actually constructed. It's a fascinating. It's a. It's a fascinating character from all those different angles that it is laid out. But at base, what I'm left with in this episode is how much I really, really liked his performance in this one. How as you mentioned, how threatening he feels that he's. He's doing this for such personal reasons that it enters Khan territory where it's like you did this stuff to me and I'm not going to let that go. And I'm going to make sure that when you do lose something that you care about, I'm not going to let you forget it. The fact that he lays out her personal history which we haven't been privy to up to this point. The idea of the loss of a son that she sacrificed to save the greater good and now the brilliance of the writing in him saying like, oh my God, the poetry of this. Now you're losing your surrogate son and everybody else's suffering and playing with all of that.
I loved all that.
Matt Ferrell: Well, the other thing about what you just brought up there. To me, this episode was just Holly Hunter and Paul Giamatti showing why they're some of the greatest actors. The whole aspect of him playing her past against her and the fact that she wasn't taking the bait. She was never taking the bait. She was. She was, in her own way, knew what game he was playing and was not going to give him any ground at all. And so she was choking back the tears, she was holding it back. But she didn't take the bait and confront him the way he wanted her to, which I thought was fantastic. But it also, that what you just brought up about her son, it gives so much more weight to the previous episode where the Captain, the head of the war college, was like, finally broke at her and said, you left us. Like, he just lashed out at her like, you, you left Starfleet, you left us, you abandoned us. And he was angry that she had left, and that's why he was holding a grudge against her. And it's like, whoa. Does he not understand? The reason she left was probably because she was broken, because she had to make this hard decision and sacrifice her son. So it's like, I just love the whole kind of layers here of the hidden agendas or the hidden histories that some people may not understand, but if they did, they wouldn't be lashing out the way they're lashing out. And Paul Giamatti just being this cruel, cruel, menacing guy. It's just. I loved it. It's a great villain.
Sean Ferrell: We've jumped right into the conversation without really paying attention to discussing the plot, discussing the setup of what we talked about. So let's roll it back a minute to. This all starts as a training exercise. This all starts with them talking about. The voiceover at the beginning, I thought was very, very haunting. I like the fact that it starts with her talking about, at one time, Starfleet vessels would have been able to fly through Federation space without worry. But now here's a spaceship graveyard and the burn is responsible. And the difficulties of remaining connected are put right in front of us. And they're really doing a great job. You think about all the things that they did from Next Generation to Deep Space Nine through Voyager, to basically paint that Starfleet's ability to walk safely in its own territory was expanding. We were moving into the Gamma Quadrant, we were moving into the Delta Quadrant. It was difficult. There were challenges. There was a war, but we were able to do it. We were able to be ourselves and bring that to those places. And in doing that, change ourselves and the people there. And now this has dropped a 10 ton rock into the pond and all the things that have swirled up from the bottom are still resettling. And it's created a sense of newness to the galaxy without it being a new galaxy. I find that really compelling that they managed to. Yeah, they managed to come up with a way of saying, like, okay, how do we accept the old Allegian? How do we take in the old villains without them still being villains? We're now seeing Starfleet Academy is depicting Orion's Ferengi. We have the Klingon main character in Jay-Den. We have like, they're. They're putting all these things in front of us saying like, Cardassians are not bad guys. Klingons are not bad guys. Jem’Hadar are not bad guys.
Who are the bad guys? The bad guy is turmoil. The bad guy is chaos. The bad guy is the unknown in the form of people still suffering from the after effects of the burn. And so let's talk about the Furies in this moment.
Matt Ferrell: Oh man.
Sean Ferrell: I mentioned to you in a previous episode how much of a whiff of Farscape I was getting in Starfleet Academy. This for me was just like, oh yeah, they watched Farscape. This was straight on Farscape almost. And I don't use this term as a negative in any way, shape or form. It almost felt like watching Muppets being used in the episode. Sort of like hyper. A hyper performance coming out of the people. It's all physical. They're twisting themselves. They're using effects to create that kind of weird warping effect of the main guy. And they're all nightmarish. And I found myself looking at it and saying like, this isn't your typical Star Trek. It had that farscapish kind of dark crystally energy to it. But I really liked the menace that came out of it. And I liked the fact that they were not just being hinted at being cannibals. It was straight up like, oh yeah, they're cannibals. They will eat anybody. So it was this.
Matt Ferrell: Well, it's dark.
Sean Ferrell: Almost throwback to almost a medieval fantasy. Yeah. As opposed to being a futuristic sci fi. And I really, really found that compelling. What did you think about them?
Matt Ferrell: It's like a ghost story. Like the, the thing that. The story that Paul Giamatti says when he goes on this like very colorful language of like, they're in constant pain and so they're not very pleasant to be around. And it's this ass puckering, like he goes through this whole, like, diatribe of like, that's one funny. It's actually funny what he says. Terrifying. And it sets them up as these ghouls that are just meant to be feared. And I don't want to say that they're the Borg in the sense of like, they're the Borg, but it feels like this is a modern era version of a Borg in the sense of it's the big boogeyman. On the surface, it's just these robots and cyborgs that just want to take over everything. And here are these things that just don't really have a sense of anything. They're just angry and in pain and they will eat you. It's like, yeah, it's the same kind of just this evil force that's just driving through this section of the galaxy, which is like a booga booga. I hope they don't give up on the Furies. It would be interesting to learn more about them and if Starfleet can figure out why they are the way they are and if they can find basically a cure for them, that will solve their pain issue and kind of bring them back. It's like, it will be interesting to see if they do anything with the storyline or not, because I think there's a lot of like, interesting stories that could be told around this.
Sean Ferrell: It hadn't occurred to me, the link to the Borg, but they really are. That's really keen insight on your part. They're really kind of an inverse Borg where instead of it coming across as such, one of the things about the Borg that's so unnerving is the calm of, yes, like, don't, you know, don't try and do anything. We're not here to hurt you, but you will learn how to service us and you will become us. And it's cold, it's intellectual, it's communicated. The Borg constantly show up and won't stop talking. And here come the Furies and they were basically modern, dancing their way through the corridors of that ship with a like, like, they're not asking for anything other than like, like, we want, we want stuff and we might eat these people and we're going to make an example of one. And when they end up attacking the training officer on the away mission and end up ejecting his body that has been literally pulled apart. He is missing a leg. Not because he was in an accident,
Matt Ferrell: they ripped it off.
Sean Ferrell: They ripped off leg and it was like it was. It made all of that scarier in a Monster movie way you mentioned, like a ghost story, it really had that feel. One of the things about the setup of this. This fell into the category for me of, oh, you can see exactly what's coming. It's a training mission. Go aboard this ship and see if you can reactivate the drive. Like, oh, things are going to happen. It's telegraphed. But even with that, I think this episode did a really good job of. And this, to me, is a sign of good writing and good directorial choices of when everybody knows where you're getting. Still, making it compelling to get there is the trick. And I felt like this episode did a bunch of things with separating the groups so that it was a mix of War College and Starfleet Academy. Them learning. We've talked about it in the past of if this is simply Saved by the Bell in space, it's not gonna remain compelling in a way that's gonna knock it up to a higher level of storytelling. This one was the one where it pushes it like, oh, we've got rivalries and we don't like working together. And then like, oh, and push comes to shove. We’re given the Vulcan member of the military academy, the War College sacrifices himself in, I found it a very interesting way. I love the fact that they depicted him as a comic book nerd. Why are you here? Because he grew up reading these stories and he found it compelling and he followed that pursuit. And even the use of the comic book as the means of teaching the computer about what happened to its crew. I found that that. That's, like, nerdy to the nerdegree. It's just an amazing level of geekdom that's consuming itself. And I ate up every moment of that. Like, it's reading the comic book and getting to the point where you get Sam yelling at it. We're your new crew. Do you understand? Like, this is, like, you have to engage with us.
We are your new crew. And. And having that moment where everything kind of, like, locks into place simply because they've all begun to figure out how to work together and to rely on each other and come together as a team. We've seen it building with the Starfleet group, but this was the first one where it was like, here comes the military school people. And they have a place to play here, too. They're as important. How'd you feel about the gelling across those lines and taking some of the teenagery feel and putting it to the side and moving it to the bigger adult world is scary. And they're gonna have to grow into it.
Matt Ferrell: Okay. So the thing I wanted to bring up from the beginning, and I haven't yet, is the show is basically the way they're handling the school. It's now Harry Potter.
Sean Ferrell: Yeah.
Matt Ferrell: You know, this fantastical world, children. Oh, isn't this fancy? And then the adult world starts to creep in, and it creeps in scary ways. And so here we are, One of the students is now dead. And I was really surprised they did that. It actually caught me by surprise. It really reminded me of Harry Potter. It's like, just really ratcheting it up of, like. This is not a happy go lucky childhood. This is a rough place they're in. And the students are going to learn some hard lessons in what they're doing, and they're gonna have to kind of help out to push back against this adult world that's doing some really nasty things. So I kind of. I love that. And in that school stuff, the way they set it up. I'm with you. You knew exactly where this was gonna go. But the show did subvert the expectations enough that it kept it entertaining and kept me glued to it. I loved how when they went aboard the ship, there's people betting on, like, they're gonna. They're gonna get this back up and running under two minutes.
Sean Ferrell: Yeah.
Matt Ferrell: And, like, the captain's betting on it. And, like. And like, Caleb, like, sitting down, he pulls that, like, metamorphosis thing and puts it on there. And what they.
Sean Ferrell: Programming.
Matt Ferrell: I think it was.
Sean Ferrell: Yeah.
Matt Ferrell: Yeah, I think. I think it was. The Vulcan was like, is he allowed to do that? And the guy who's running it had a smirk on his face. And it's just like, no restriction, no reason why not. And so it's like. It's like. It's. It was cool to see that. Here's the sergeant, or whoever it was that was leading them, knows about Caleb. He knows all these students. He knows what their strengths are. And he knew this kid who's doing this thing is a genius. He knows he's going to figure it out. It was just fun to see how all the adults, all the teachers, all the people that are in charge know what the strengths of the students are. And we're, like, betting on them and, like, having fun with it before it turned upside down when things went wrong. But again, Harry Potter, ratcheting it up, killing that student was, I think, kind of brilliant because it makes. It sets the stage for whatever episodes are to come or whatever seasons are to come. There's real danger here. These kids could die. So it's like, it's very interesting that they took that turn.
Sean Ferrell: Yeah. I also think that the way that they manage that relationship between Caleb and that, that Vulcan student. You talk about subverting expectations, you know, where you're getting to, but getting there is the point. And that was a series of scenes where the two of them are getting to like, get to know each other and like, oh, we're, we're okay to work together. Like there is, there can be. Like we're not on opposite sides in reality. And I was like, oh, he's going to become kind of Caleb's counterpart in the military school. So. And then he died. And I was not expecting that, but that's the thing.
Matt Ferrell: But after the episode's over, it's like, it's clear. It's kind of clear from a readily point of view why they did that. Because like, yeah, when they were going, starting the mission, Caleb made those really derogatory remarks about Starfleet, like those. He made some horrible comments about Starfleet as they were boarding the ship, boarding the shuttle. And when that student sacrificed himself, basically saved Caleb's life by jumping in front of the line of fire, the look on Caleb's face, without saying it was clearly, why would you do that? Like, why would you sacrifice yourself to save me? It was just this, why would you do that? That's Starfleet. That's part of being a team. That's part of being this group that works together to help each other and it's the greater good. And he sacrificed himself. I got choked up because it's like I'm blanking the actor's name, his portrayal in that moment, the shock of why would you. Why would you do that? For me, it's like you can see that this was deliberate to help Caleb's evolution into probably becoming this fantastic Starfleet officer because he's learning what it means to be Starfleet and that his opinions of Starfleet are colored and he's probably learning the hard way through something like this.
Sean Ferrell: Yeah, we've mentioned a couple of times emerging into the adult world. You start off with the younger, more immature, somewhat innocent experience of these young characters. And then they step forward into the more adult world and the dangers there. This episode did something very interesting which I think ties that emergence into the dangerous world, also into sexual intimacy and relationship building in a way that isn't. They don't necessarily do that in Star Trek in this way. Relationships and romance are usually secondary. They're in the background and they're hinted at and if they are put front and center, they are between people of maturity. You know that Riker and Troi were in a relationship. You see Kirk go to a planet and start to flirt with and have a relationship with a individual on that planet. Or you end up with some of the longer term. Miles o' Brien marries his spouse and they have a child. And that carries over into Deep Space Nine where you see the family life developing. But this kind of depiction of sexual awakening and early romance and. And the foibles that exist in that terrain hasn't really been shown in quite this way. Certainly not in this explicity. And one of the things that I found myself thinking when the show starts showing them Caleb and Tarima in bed together and it's a full blown sex scene. I found myself thinking finally they're having this kind of scene without it being smarmy. I kept thinking about how they used to treat the Vulcan in Enterprise with Jolene Blaylock, where. And 7 of 9 on Voyager put them in a catsuit and let them walk around. And it's just about the visuals of it all. It's just about the looking at these women in tight clothing. And here we have Tarima, who is a beautiful young woman, but her uniform is a uniform no different from anybody else.
Matt Ferrell: She's not a. She's not objective.
Sean Ferrell: The relationship between the two of them didn't come out of left field. It is not being put there just explicitly for us to ogle her. He is also naked. We see him shirtless. We see him lying in bed with a physique. And that if I could get a tenth of the musculature and healthy physique that that gentleman has, Mr. Sandro Rosta. I don't know what amount I wouldn't pay in order to get that. And I say that here, sitting here with a cold and feeling bad about myself. So I found this episode was touching on the same theme in multiple. In multiple paths. They as a couple are emerging into a more mature adult world of what it means to be coupling in this way. And they're making missteps. They have what is effectively a awkward argument born of a certain level of secrecy and sensitivity around how open is open and how much is too much. And how do you share yourself with somebody when you don't know how to even process the things that you're not certain about. And I felt like the sequence which had that kind of dream quality the way it was presented. Tarima takes him into her psyche and presents him with imagery that is totally unreal and dreamlike. And I found myself. And I don't know if you did this, Matt. I found myself thinking, is this some of the foundation between Riker and Troi? Is this what that would be like, where it would be, oh, the intimacy, the depth of knowledge. Is it. Because in those moments of, you know, the term that they put forward in Next Generation was Imzadi. And it's that kind of. Is this what it was like for them of her bringing him in into a psychic world of such self exposure that the intimacies between them take on an incredible depth? And here we see that being portrayed and effectively, they're not ready for it because something is there which is from him.
She's curious about it because it doesn't make sense to her because it just doesn't gel. I think it's literally a moment of the visual presentation that we're shown is not necessarily the reality of what they're experiencing. It's just a symbol for us, the viewer, so. So that when she is like, it's all beautiful flowers and petals and sunshine and what is this weird thing? And touches it and immediately it erupts into memory of trauma. And neither of them are ready for that moment, and they do not handle it well. And I felt like it set up a starting point for this episode that really spoke. It was a warning shot to me as a viewer. I felt of this episode is going to take you to places where they have not been yet. We're going to places that are going to be a little darker, a little harder to process than we're accustomed to. So I felt like it was a great opening to get us into a place of, oh, there are going to be challenges here, which mean growing up. And then that's physically what they went through with the Paul Giamatti villain showing up and saying, they're going to eat your kids. How do you feel about that, really? I'm just going back to the writing.
I think the writing on this one was really, really great.
Matt Ferrell: I agree. I also like where it ended up with her basically popping everybody's heads.
Sean Ferrell: I mean, it was pretty intense. And her brother's protectiveness. I loved. I loved her brother first. Her brother revealing what the experience is like for her, kind of speaking for her a little bit, but doing it out of a brotherly protectiveness, but also trying to, like, undermine the trauma of it a bit with a little bit of humor and trying to, like, it's okay, sis. Like, like, I love you. There's no, like, he comes to her without any kind of judgment, which is what she's terrified of from Caleb. So it's this nice balance where on the one side she's got Caleb, who she wants to move toward, and. And on the other side she's got her brother who's just got her back. Regardless, I thought it was a really lovely depiction of the sibling relationship that they have. And I agree, when you get to that, she's got the thing. She pulls it out of her own neck. I was not anticipating that. I thought it was going to be a. She turns it off and the doctor is going to come back and be like, I have to turn it back on. She's going to be like, no. And it's going to be this dramatic. And instead it's literally she's pulled these wires out of her neck that must go into her spine and she proceeds to pop heads on a different ship. It's a little bit like, oh, boy. That wasn't where I was expecting it. And again, it goes into a kind of. I found in that moment there's been some complaints about modern Star Trek feeling just like superhero stuff as opposed to feeling like Star Trek. And that does have a bit of that flavor. But I don't mind it. I don't mind having a character who's depicted as being a one in a million of a planet that we have come to know because of a major character in an earlier series. I don't mind the idea of her being a standout amongst the Betazed. No different than Spock being a standout or Data being one of a kind or Sam being one of a kind. I think that
Matt Ferrell: it's true to Star Trek, in my opinion, it's true to the series. It's not out there in a way that's like the Marvelification of storytelling is like, no, this is like you just brought up Data, one of a kind Android, and Starfleet, no different. Super strength, super smart, all that kind of stuff. She's no different. So why the judgment? That's what I don't get.
Sean Ferrell: Yeah. Finally, I wanted to touch on the ramifications of the episode. They set it up that this has been a action, that Paul Giamatti's character set everything into motion. Everybody knows that he hates the Furies. Paul worked with the Furies to set all this up so that he could steal a bunch of stuff that was in development at a space station. And nobody quite knows yet what he got away with. So we end up with this. Ultimately, Starfleet has failed this test. It goes in saying, like, this is a test of the students. Well, it's a test of everybody. And did they pass the test? Well, the students were able to do the thing that they were sent to do, start this drive back up. It's part of saving the day. But they won the battle only to lose the war. Effectively, something worse has taken place and they've been got. And we end up with Oded Fehr, who plays Charles Vance, the admiral, who plays. Who made the call about bringing in the bad guy in order to help them solve the Furies problem. He really. He blew it. Yeah, he did. And everybody at the end of it is just like, yeah, you blew it. And she. And we have Holly Hunter. Nahla is kicking herself because she had a sense that something, something was amiss. We're missing something here. It never occurred to her that it might be that he was working with the people he hated in order to get the best of Starfleet and in order to get the best of her. And then she gets the message in a bottle from him saying, I'm going to make sure you twist before I'm done with you. This is my mission. I hate you. And I will find you and I will make sure that you suffer. So it's a definite tone turner. Here we are, episode six, second half of the first season, and it really feels like they did what you and I were speculating had to happen. It needs to emerge into the bigger world. And they've done that.
And I felt like, for me, they did it in a way that really worked and I really enjoyed the episode. How about you?
Matt Ferrell: Yeah, this comes back, Sean, to episode two was what were you thinking? Because three, four, five and six, I wouldn't say they've consistently gotten better than the last one, but they have been, I would say, consistently good, like entertaining. Some have been great, others have been just adequate. But it's like two is turning out to be the anomaly of the season. The pilot was rough. A lot of pilots are rough, so you kind of grade that on a curve. But once you get past the pilot and that awful season, that episode two, the show's actually been doing pretty well. I'm really starting to like the show a lot.
Sean Ferrell: Yeah, I like it quite a bit as well. And I keep going to the. If I could go back in time and sit down with the producers and say, like, why are you splitting out episode two? It's very clearly a part of episode one. Just make an hour and a half long TV movie.
Matt Ferrell: I didn't mean to be the devil's
Sean Ferrell: movie, introduce the entire show and then take it from there. I mean, we're talking about. It's a streaming service. It's not commercial television. This isn't being broadcast on CBS. You don't need to limit things to under an hour. If you had an hour and 15 minutes, an hour and 20 minutes of first episode, do it. Because everything that, everything that deserved to be broadcast from episode two absolutely could have fit into episode one.
Matt Ferrell: Yep.
Sean Ferrell: And then you get rid of the rest of it and you move on to episode three. And at that point, I'm saying there hasn't been a bad apple in the bunch.
Matt Ferrell: So I agree.
Sean Ferrell: Yeah, it's really an outlier. And for people who have checked out of even the other episodes and don't agree with us, we hope you're enjoying the conversations, if nothing else, because I think that the things that they're attempting to do with this program, I think, are worth watching. And I am enjoying watching them try to figure out how do we tell this kind of story. And I think the Harry Potter model is a very good one because we could be looking at, if this is given the fair shake it may deserve and is given, let's say, five seasons, then you take them all the way through Starfleet Academy and, and then give them a year in a ship somewhere as a training year. And you've got a great set of characters being given an interesting, an interesting opportunity to grow. So we'll see where it goes. Viewers, listeners, what did you think about this conversation? Is there anything here that you think we missed or anything that you wish we had explored more? Jump into the comments. As always, your comments, your likes, your subscribes, you're sharing with your friends, all of those are very easy ways for you to support us, and we appreciate that. But if you'd like to support us more directly, you can go to trekintime.show. Click the join button there. It allows you to throw coins at our heads and we appreciate the welts. And then we get down to the heavy, heavy business of trying to figure out if this show has what it takes. Thank you so much, everybody, for the taking the time to watch or listen and we'll talk to you next time.