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Matt and Sean talk about amusing ourselves pointlessly in Star Trek: The Original Series’, “Gamesters of Triskelion.” Can rubber brains be defeated?
Matt and Sean talk about amusing ourselves pointlessly in Star Trek: The Original Series’, “Gamesters of Triskelion.” Can rubber brains be defeated?
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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.
In this episode of Trek In Time, show me the Quatloos. That's right. We're talking about the Gamesters of Triskellion. Star Trek, the Original Series originally broadcast on January 5th, 1968, episode number 46 in shooting order. 45th in broadcast order, 16th of the second season. Welcome everybody to Trek in Time where we're watching every episode of Star Trek in Chronological stardate order.
We're also taking a look at the world at the time of original broadcast, so we are talking about, we did it Matt, we just tripped forward in time just enough last week we were into February of 1968, but this time we're at January 5th. Just past that New Year's line. Exciting stuff. Time travel.
Who are we? I'm Sean Ferrell. I'm a writer. I write some sci-fi. I write some stuff for kids. And with me as always, is my brother Matt. He is that Matt behind Undecided with Matt Ferrell, which takes a look at emerging tech and its impact on our lives. Matt, how are you doing today? Doing good.
I, I, I just got back from a trip as we talked about on our other podcast and on that trip, Sean, our next Out of Time, I'm gonna have to talk about the show, the Devil's Plan on Netflix.
Okay. I watched, I watched all of season one when it came out, I don't know, less than a year ago, and then they had just released season two. It's a South Korean show, reality TV show where people are playing games, Sean. They're playing games like board games and poker like games, and it's kind of, it's like the taking the show Big Brother.
Mm-hmm. And then putting it with just complete, utter brilliant nerds. Okay. It's, it is, I'm in a reality show that could never exist in the United States because it's nerds, uh, but South Korea. Slow clap for such a compelling, fantastic bananas crazy show. I highly recommend the Devil's Plan. I watched it nonstop on my flight there back, so I, I, I binged season two on my trip.
It was fantastic.
I feel like we are, I feel like we are this far away from people in the US doing what people in other countries have been doing, which is figuring out how to use YouTube to make shows like that, that a network would not pick up, but be able to actually find a, a way to, to do it on a, on a, uh, YouTube platform.
Because as you're describing that, I'm like, well, you wanna see nerds nerding with all their nerding nerd muscles. Gameplay channels exists around like D&D, D&D playing, like watching people play D&D has become a cottage industry, which is strange, but it exists. Yeah. That doesn't seem too far away from what you're describing.
Yeah, and I'm reminded of the success in the United States, of Taskmaster, the British Game Show. Good show, which is popular here because they started putting it on YouTube. As simple as that. Uh, 24 hours after its broadcast in the Uk, they put it on YouTube. That is their channel here in the US. There was actually a US-based attempt to make that show.
It failed. The original version is successful simply because of YouTube. So, yep. Maybe we're not too far away from somebody being able to put together a show like you've just described. On this show before we get into con our conversation about the newest episode that we're gonna be talking about, we always like to dip in the mailbag and see what you had to say about our previous episode.
So Matt, what have you found in the mailbag for us this week?
Well, Sean, as a YouTuber. One of the things I tell people is like when they ask me like, you know, that they're interested in doing this, any recommendations about what to do? I always say, don't read the comments. Mm. But also you have to read the comments.
Sure. Uh, I'm gonna read a negative comment about us Sean, okay. That had me laughing hysterically this morning, which was from Gino Russo. Mm-hmm. Who wrote two Dipsticks yapping about a Star Trek episode. In all caps with exclamation mark.
Mm-hmm.
I like that he called us dipsticks. Yeah. My response to him was, my response to him, Sean, was that's
the channel description.
What is he doing? Cribbing, our channel description. You know what,
what? What I responded to him was, you just described every podcast minus Star Trek. Yeah. Like I'm wearing right now, the Accidental Tech podcast, which is one of my favorite tech podcast. That's three dipsticks yapping about Apple. Yeah, so it's like, it's like what are complaining about?
Yeah. Why are you watching a podcast?
I mean, yeah. Why are you watching a podcast? Why are you looking? What were you looking for? I reminded of the guy who, this was like a year and a half ago, I think, where somebody jumped into our comments and said, this isn't the episode. This is two people. I don't know, talking about an episode I haven't watched.
Yeah,
exactly.
Are you confused about where you are?
Ah, man. Anyway, onto the real comments. Uh, we have one from Pale Ghost 69 on private Little War. He wrote at 39 52 in our podcast, Sean. He wrote Bones was probably drunk the whole time. I think that was in response to me going, Bones keep screwing up left and right, and his response was Bones was probably drunk the whole time.
Also, glad I'm not the only one not liking these latest episodes. I've been holding off on commenting because of negativity. Yeah. My first comment to PaleGhost would be don't hold back
Yeah. Jump in and let us know. Like, yeah, I, I encourage that for all of our listeners, if you are on this ride with us and you're sitting through episodes like these that you don't feel crazy about, you're doing, god's work with us. We're trying. We're trying to, I say
just, yeah, just wait till we get to the first two seasons of Next Generation. Next Generation is my show. That's my jam. I love Next Generation. Yeah. But the first two seasons are, yeah. Woo. Gonna be really hard to get through. Yeah. So yeah, be negative.
We also have Happy Flappy Farm writing, the only redeeming factor on of this episode is the appearance of Dr. M'Benga. M'Benga, M'Benga, M'Benga with a whole bunch of like little, uh, happy horns blowing off there. Yep. Kirk's healing session with Nona was disturbing. Yeah, it seemed voyeuristic. Next! Yeah.
Yeah. Really disturbing. Yeah. And then of course Babarudra came in with a very quick, snappy. Dammit. He's a doctor, not a bureaucrat, which I thought was, which was pretty funny. And as far as what the next episode, the one we're talking about today, is gonna be about plot of Gamesters of Triskelion from Mark Loveless.
Mark, this is the first time for both of us here. I just copied and pasted this in 'cause I just wanna enjoy it with you. Right. An elaborate episode where a complex board adventure game is developed by Chekov and Sulu. It becomes even more interesting when they say, ask Spock for help with improving various parts of it and to use, and to their surprise, it seems to make it both additive and more complex. More than half the crew take up the the game nearly religiously, which is called Triskelion. The game, the Gamesters are so consumed with the gameplay that duties are ignored, causing maintenance problems, which finally cause an onboard crisis. The game is banned and Chekov and Sulu get latrine duty as partial punishment. Mark, you're ob, you're kind of obsessed. Yeah. With poop, latrines, space, latrines
on the enterprise, it seems to consume a lot of people as to like where were they and how did they clean them?
Exactly. With the main punishment in their eyes, in their eyes is that they can't play Triskelion anymore. In modern times in the series, I didn't read that well.
The game is banned and Checkov and Sulu get latrine duty as partial punishment, with the main punishment in their eyes is that they can't play Triskelion anymore. In modern times in the series Parks and Rec, there is a game developed by Adam Scott's character Ben called the Cones of Dunshire. It's all about the cones, Matthew, which is strikingly similar to Triskelion, to the point that they, that Roddenberry estate sued.
It's still in litigation to this day. Again, Mark, you're taking a fictional world and you're breaking it out into reality. I love it.
I like it very much. Uh, yeah. Yeah. Cones of Dunshire, it's all about the cones and I mean, some of my favorite Parks and Rec episodes revolve around that game and I couldn't help.
But as you were reading that description, thinking, wouldn't it be wild if in the next generation episode where Wesley Crusher comes back and visits and people are putting on headsets and.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. With Ashley Judd as guest
star, and they discovered that people are putting on these headsets and playing a game.
Wouldn't it be wild to find out that the name of that game was Treskelion. Treskelion. Yeah. We'll have to remember that when we get to that episode in six years,
uh. That noise you hear in the background. Those lights you see flashing before your eyes.
No, you're not slipping into sleep. You are hearing the read alert. It's time for Matt to tackle the Wikipedia description, Matt. Have at it.
Captain Kirk, Chekov and Uhura are kidnapped by powerful disembodied aliens and forced to fight in gladiatorial contests for the aliens gambling entertainment. While trying to beam down to Planet Gamma 2, Kirk, Uhura and Chekov are transported to a mysterious planet, Triskelion, that has never been mapped by the Federation. There, the three of them are captured and trained in fighting skills by trainers called Thralls. Okay, they're called Thralls. Okay. Any act of disobedience is met with pain through collars around their necks.
The Enterprise now commanded by Spock leaves the Gamma two system and finds a hydrogen cloud with mysterious energy fields. On Triskelion Kirk manages to impress the providers and bonds with his Thrall to learn more about the Providers. While trying to run away, the Providers show their true selves and wager a deal with Kirk.
For one last fight between Kirk and three Thralls, Kirk manages to defeat them setting all the Thralls free and making the Providers teach the Thralls using all the knowledge they possess.
It actually hits all the points of the episode, but does it in a really weird roundabout way with sentences Yes.
That are constructed very, very poorly. Thank you everybody for jumping onto Wikipedia and writing these synopsis for us, really doing our work for us. This episode, episode number 16 of season two, directed by Gene Nelson, written by Margaret Arman. Includes of the original cast, pretty much everybody appears including a brief appearance by George Takei as Sulu.
This episode originally was supposed to include Sulu going down to the planet instead of Chekov. George Takei was still filming the Green Berets at this point, so this is one of those episodes where his involvement would've been heightened, and he was looking forward to doing some of the scenes that would've been on the planet with the Thralls because he thought it was a good opportunity for Sulu to get some character expansion that went instead to Chekov.
So Chekov at this point is getting a little bit more airtime, and as I mentioned last week. The relationship between the two of them was initially kind of tense because they had to share a single dressing room and a script. That's weird. Yes, you couldn't print another script, but they would eventually become friends as they realized that neither of them was a threat to the other.
In this episode, guest appearances include Dick Crockett as the Andorian Thrall. He was also the stunt coordinator. So he's the guy who's coordinating all these fights. Quite a few fights in this one. Victoria George, Mickey Morton as Kloog, Angelique Pettyjohn as Shahna, Jane Ross as Tamoon, Joseph Ruskin as the Master Thrall Galt.
We'll be talking about him and his vampiric appearances quite a bit in this one. Steve Sandor as Lars. Also were Roger Holloway, Frank Da Vinci, Bartell LaRue, Eddie Pasky, William Blackburn, Walker Edmiston, and Robert Johnson as a variety of Enterprise crewmen, Provider voices and Thralls. And for some reason, Matt is losing his mind.
And is laughing at something, I'm having difficulty understanding what I be. I have so many
typos in the text. I have Jane Ross as Tampon. Okay,
there you go. Oops. I will fix that. Okay. Sorry. It was Jane Ross is Tamoon. Yes. So not a tampon. Not a
tampon. Oh boy. Oh gosh. Okay. Okay.
At the time of original broadcast January 5th, 1968, what was the world like?
Well, Matt, believe it or not, we've been doing episodes from the sixties now for I a full season and a half at this point. So we've probably crossed, I would say, probably 40 episodes of the original series. 45. As a matter of fact, I believe we refer back to our own show notes, which do tell us how many episodes of the original series we talked about.
So, 45, 46 episodes. And we have only talked about this band, I believe once or twice before, which I found surprising because yeah, from our perspective, you look into the, you look into the past, you look back to the 1960s and you're like, there is like. Half a dozen, maybe 10 bands that you're just like, oh, these were the big ones.
And then you hear the other songs, but you don't know who they're by. And so, you know, it kind of all becomes kind of cloudy. And I, to be honest, was kind of pleasantly surprised to discover that the number one song this week was, Hello Goodbye by The Beatles. And I was suddenly like, oh yeah, the Beatles.
And I was especially excited about this one for you, Matt, because I know how much you love to sing this song, so take it away, Matt.
Great as always. Little bit of an interesting tidbit about this song that I found to be the most Paul McCartney story ever. A man whose last name was Taylor, was the assistant manager to the band, and he was talking with Paul McCartney in McCartney's home asking him a question. Led to the writing of this song where he basically asked McCartney, what is your songwriting process?
According to Taylor's recollection, he was visiting McCartney at his home in St. John's Wood London, and asked the Beatle how he went about writing a song. In response, McCartney took Taylor into the dining room where they both sat at a harmonium McCartney, then began playing the instrument and asked Taylor to call out the opposite of each word he was happened to sing. Steve Turner, a writer about the, the relationship between the Beatles writes of the result, and so it went black and white. Yes and no. Stop and go. Hello and goodbye. Taylor later reflected, I have no memory at all of the tune. I wonder whether Paul really made it up the melody to that song as he went along, or whether it was running through his head already.
I think that that is the most Paul McCartney song, most Paul McCartney anecdote I've ever heard, which is, what is your songwriting approach, and he just sits down and says, we'll say the opposite of whatever I say, and then writes a song that goes on to be the number one song in the United States the week of January 5th.
And at the box office, we have a continuation of the Reign of the Valley of the Dolls in the number one spot. As I've mentioned before, this 1967 American drama features the pursuit of stardom by three people, Barbara Parkins, Patty Duke, and Sharon Tate, who are pursuing a career in Hollywood and also become addicted to barbiturates because that's the danger of everybody who goes anywhere near Hollywood, ca, Hollywood, California.
The barbiturates grow on trees there. And in television I've been looking at the Nielsen ratings, trying to compare apples to apples, but I've also taken opportunities here and there to dip out of comparisons that are directly about the ratings and just more about what are the kinds of shows were out there.
We've talked about some strange superhero shows that were similar to the Greatest American hero. We have talked about some strange sci-fi shows that were also ran, such as the Land of the Giants. Great concept there. Let's make a bunch of people look really big every week. Well, we're gonna return to the list to compare actual ratings to ratings.
Star Trek earning an 11.5, and here's a little show that was earning a 19.9, so it's beating Star trekking the ratings and what would that be? Well, it's a dog of a show, Matt. It is, of course. Lassie. Lassie, the American television series that followed the adventures of a female rough collie named Lassie and her companions, both human and animal.
I love that phrase. Her companions, both human and animal. That's right. The show was the creation of producer Robert Maxwell and animal trainer Rud. Weather. Weather, max. Sorry, I'm gonna read that once again. Animal Trainer Rudd Weatherwax. Hard name to say and was televised from September 12th, 1954 to March 25th, 1973, making it the ninth longest running scripted American primetime television series.
The show ran for 17 seasons before entering first run syndication for its final two seasons. Initially filmed in black and white. The show transitioned to color in 1965. That's right. Show about a dog who had animal and human companions was getting almost twice as much in the Nielsen's as Star Trek. In the news on this day, Friday, January 5th, 1968, we are of course moving backwards in time from last week.
Last week we were looking at headlines that all had to do with what would become called the Ted Offensive. It included an iconic photograph of a man being executed on the street in Saigon, and we see here moving backward in time to January 5th. Well, what do we see here? A couple of headlines that have to do with, yes.
Vietnam Hanoi's Mission in Paris repeats offer on talks. The North Vietnamese were reaching out and making offers about ways to end the war. They would not be listened to, and of course, in less than a month the major offense, it would be launched. Also Rusk asserts US strives to learn Hanoi intentions.
Here's an article about the US approach to it is to not fully know what the North Vietnamese wanted in order to reach peace. Oh, if only they had talked a bit more. And also a small little tidbit of an article, middle of the page on the left hand side. Nixon backers fail in second effort to fill key campaign job.
Yes, it's an article which is painting the idea that Richard Nixon was struggling to put together a campaign effort. We do know from last week's episode that in February, he would be not only announcing. His campaign, but he would've done it through a letter writing campaign to New Hampshire voters. So he definitely entered the race.
And spoiler alert, I already knew that because he was president, elected twice in landslides. Taking a look at the episode itself, Matt, we, I feel like this conversation may be a bit of a broken record from previous weeks, in particular, our episode in which we talked about, oh, they happened to find a parallel earth where Ancient Rome existed.
Mm-hmm. And they were forced into gladiatorial combat. Boy, does that sound familiar? Wonder why? Yeah. Anyway, this episode, Matt, would it surprise you to find out that on certain lists, it ranks at number 12?
What?
Yeah. In the list of the worst episodes.
Okay. There we go. There we go. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, I was a little concerned.
Yeah. Uh, but yes, yes. Yeah, I believe that. Yeah.
Oh, Sean, let us, let us start by saying like, let's talk about a good thing and a bad thing. Each of us sharing what we thought was like, is there anything here that you were like, that's what I like about this one. Then here's the major thing that I didn't like about this one.
I'll start so you can take a few minutes to figure out what you're gonna say. I will say, yet again, the thing that stands out to me as a likable aspect of this episode is I like everything that takes place aboard ship. I liked everything that had to do with Spock being in command. If we remember back to all the previous episodes that we've talked about up to this point, we do have episodes where Spock takes command and there are challenges to his command approach. There are questions about whether or not a Vulcan can command a ship of humans appropriately. In some of the earlier episodes, they dealt with that as the challenge.
That's all in the past. Now they've moved forward. Now it is not, can a Vulcan do this? They, there are simply questions about, is this the right tack to take? Are we doing the right thing in this moment? Not is a Vulcan capable of doing this, but is he making good choices? And we end up with an episode which revolves around very, I think, understandable questioning of choices.
That leads to what I think is a fantastic moment when Spock steps aside with Scotty and McCoy and whispers to them, gentlemen, if you are set on trying to commit a mutiny, let me know now so that I can make adjustments as necessary, and the two of them are absolutely like. Oh no, we were just talking like we, yeah.
Yeah. McCoy wants no part of that. Scotty says, I'd be more than happy to do whatever you command. Like let's get that done. Uh, I like the sciencyness of it. I like that you get the unnamed crewman woman who's at the science station saying like, I've identified a cloud that has energized particles that don't make sense.
I like the fact that they're doing sciencey things to say like, oh, we figured out the direction it's coming from. We have no other clues here. We're gonna follow the only difference that we find, which is that path. It is a needle in a haystack. I like the setup of the episode as well. I like the, we're gonna beam down to this planet.
We blink off the pad. Clearly it's not working. It didn't happen the way it's supposed to, and they have no idea where they are. I like that as a setup. I think that there are things about this episode that set up some really neat ideas around powerful beings. The, the skills and tools of the crew and the questioning of power dynamics while still relying on, oh, we we're never going to like try and unseat you from this position.
We do trust you. We just are afraid for our friends, and that's creating this tension. I liked that stuff on the ship. What I didn't like was a lot of the depiction on the planet around. What we've seen before, not that it was badly done, but just to what end. It felt a little bit like, but to what end here?
There's some interesting ideas that are different from the Roman episode in the form of the thrall behavior, the thrall training, the collar aspect, like we haven't really seen those things, but it does feel very. To go back to the damning words that Matt has used before, it's cartoonish. It's a little bit like this is, okay, so they've, they've slapped American gladiators onto Star Trek and there is a very unfortunate use of sexual assault against Uhura used as a defining factor of nefarious by one of the thrall. Um. I was happy to see that she was amongst the group that was going to go to the planet. I was like, oh, great. Uhura's going. And then it turned out she didn't have a line beyond going down to the planet other than screaming as a result of a thrall coming in and trying to assault her.
I thought that was pretty bad. And again, we have another slave makeout session between Kirk and a woman with no power. Um. All right, not great. Like can we stop doing that?
And the rest of it just revolves around the cartoonish combat. And I found myself like, okay, we've seen stuff like this before and it's not really mounting to much as far as character development. We, we see Kirk panicking more than we've ever seen before, but even that doesn't feel like it does much, like it felt like they could have done certain things here that could have pushed Kirk's legitimate panic.
Showing him in like a full blown like, I don't know what to do, doesn't seem to happen, but it was potentially there giving Uhura a more to do, making Chekov yet again, really interested in being powerless, but also sexually tittilated. They've done that now with him multiple times where it's just like, well, if this is prisonership, sign me up.
And I'm like, ah, gosh. Like, yep. Sorry, George Takei that You didn't get to say that, but Oh my. It would've been, oh my like, yeah. So again, I find myself landing on this one with like, there were nuggets that I was just like, that feels fine. This doesn't feel so great. And at the end of it, I found myself thinking, this is.
Even if you remove those plot moments, that to me stood out as being like really dated in a negative way. Like the, the sexual stuff, the making out with a slave stuff. The Kirk will awaken self-awareness in this woman just by making out with her. Um mm-hmm. You remove those things, you're still left with, like, this is an under bake, this is an under baked idea, but there's potential within it. Like they could have really done some interesting things. They just didn't go there.
Yeah. My, my good and bad parallel is yours. It's basically, I liked what happened on the ship. I didn't like what happened on the planet. It's the most succinct way to boil it down and on the ship, I have a note and it was the exact scene you're talking about, but what I wrote was, I like how Spock politely told Bones and Scotty to shut the F up.
Yeah. It was just like, I love the way he handled that. It was so perfect. Um, and the dynamic between all of them on the ship was great. Like all that kind of stuff. The sciencey stuff, it reminded me of stuff that we see all the time on Next Generation and Deep Space Nine and Voyager. Yeah. It's like. If there's, there's elements of what happens on the ship that is Super Trek.
It's what I love about Trek, and then everything that happened on the planet felt like a Saturday morning cartoon. There was no depth to it. There was no, there was, you couldn't even say the show is about slavery or a comment on anything. It felt like there, it was so skin deep. There's not even a commentary on society.
It was just like omnipotent being, making you fight for pleasure. And it was just like, it was just meant to have lots of fight scenes. It was just another fun scene, stunt scene of people rolling around and fake kicking each other and then rolling around and fake kicking each other. It's all it was, um. They could have done so much more with what it was.
My biggest problem was how the episode wrapped up on the planet. Yeah. It felt so trite, so neat and tidy and just, it just happened where it's like, okay, here's these omnipotent beings. They can do whatever they want, and they're clearly bored and they like watching people fight and they place bets on it.
Yeah. How do you outsmart a being like that? To make them change their mind. Oh, Kirk put them up to the, you know, making a bet. Zing. Okay. Second, why would they, that's not gonna happen. And two, even if they, even if they won, Kirk won, which he did, they could just go, yeah, we're not gonna pay off for this.
They could do our own same thing. Yeah. Because, you know, they held the power. Yeah. So it's like, why would they stop doing what they like to do? So they, the show should have spent more time on Kirk. Yeah. Basically negotiating with them and trying to outsmart them and trying to convince them there's something that's gonna be more entertaining to you than what you're doing right now.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you could have convinced them to say, it's gonna be way more entertaining to let train these people to do X, Y, and Z, and to do this thing and do that over here, it's like if he had succeeded at that, it would've made the ending feel better. Yeah. But the fact that it was just like, so Saturday morning cartoon ripping the mask off you darn kids.
It was just like, yeah, come on. Come on. Yeah. I think I, I, a Picard, outsmarted Q Yeah. In so many episodes in such wonderful ways. And in this, it was like they didn't even try. Yeah. And it, it's just. That part makes me angry again. The original series makes Matt angry a lot. This is one of those things that made me the
takeaway here is that the Original Series is Matt's Achilles Heel.
If you ever need to undo him, just show him an old episode. I agree with your, your summary up to a point. I disagree that there's no social commentary here. I think that there is the seed of it. They just don't go to it. I think the idea, that's what I'm saying, of like entertainment for entertainment's sake.
Is potentially there, but that's my point is like it's skin deep. It's like they, they kind of brush up against it and then just stop exploring it and then just do Saturday, Saturday morning cartoon fights. That's all. It's, yeah. And I think served the commentary you're left at the end is just not served.
And when they were having Uhura basically get raped. Yeah. That scene is so out of place for everything that else that happens. I thought it was bold that they did that. Yeah. But they should have done something more with it. Like they should have made a bigger deal out of it. They should have, you know what I mean?
It's like the fact that they just kind of like wiped it off and like, like why even have that in there? Because there, there was no, that was from it.
Yeah. I think if, I think if that episode was being, I think if this episode was being used as a skeleton to make an episode today, it would revolve. I could potentially see it as Uhura goes through an experience where then she forms allegiances with the other members of the Thrall cast who are also viewed as powerless in that way and begins to explore the idea of like, societally, where does this lack of, where does this impression that this is okay come from? And challenging the power structure in that way. And I also agree that there's the potential for, as you said, like wouldn't it have been an interesting episode to have some of the climactic fight scenes happen in the first act?
Mm-hmm. And then the gist of the episode be Kirk trying to get these beings to recognize you hold all the cards and you've made a circumstance where you think the most interesting thing is taking away all the autonomy away from these beings and make them play like puppets when the greater challenge would be to really release them to their own abilities and try to help them build a society of their own and to view that as the, like, what a great challenge that would be. And it would take you generations mm-hmm. To, to actually have a group of people develop into a working society that could then maybe even potentially go to the stars. Like what a challenge that would be.
I don't think you're up to it and have them like wrestle with that still would've had a cartoonish ending, I think. Mm-hmm. But still, it would've been more meat on the bone at the end of it. And I think that this is just an example of. They were leaning so heavily into, okay. I think our audience has to be kids.
I think we have to lean into the action. Yeah. And we have to have multiple fight sequences, each one of Exactly. Which is interchangeable. You could swap these, fight scene, you could re-edit this episode and show it to somebody swapping out the climactic final battle with any of the earlier ones. And it wouldn't stand out as being unusual because at the end of the day, there's nothing about the final fight that is different from the first fight.
And. You end up with like people. I, I, and, but part of me was also the campiness of this episode. There's certain campy elements of this episode that did make me laugh, and I did enjoy it from that perspective. Almost like watching Mystery science theater. I enjoyed the, here is your combat arena. Yeah, and it's just, it looks like somebody's basement floor has been painted with these arrows and they're like.
The thralls can only step in the blue. You can only step up in the gold area. If you step in the wrong color, you will be punished by loss of a weapon. And then that happens. Everybody's running around. Everybody's just like, oh, stepping everywhere. The combat just is just chaos. It's just absolute lunacy.
Uh, and I also like some of the stunt work in the final fight around, uh, this guy's gonna throw a gigantic unwieldy spear and then whoop it lands in the stomach. They apparently had a second shot of that that they wanted to use. They really were hoping it would work out. But when they did it, the fake spear point coming out of the guy's back didn't line up properly with the point that going into his chest. Oh no. So they couldn't use it. But I found myself watching a lot of the secondary actors playing the Thralls and I was like, these guys are doing a pretty good job considering they're not given a lot of lines. Yes. They're just supposed to be menacing alien like figures. And as far as like, well, providing a little bit of color in the background, like the big ogre looking guy, I'm like, I'm like, this is actually like from that angle.
That's not that bad.
Yes. I was gonna actually bring that up in my, one of my notes was I really liked the alien species. Yeah. The variety they had there. But I also got a kick out of like, people make fun of Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, that era, because it was like different alien species Yeah. Is just a different forehead.
Like Yeah. And then paint a different color. And sixties it was just give 'em a different outfit. Yeah. And paint them different colors. They were all just like, oh, it's green and blue and, and I love that Galt, was like the complexion of a Ferrell.
Yeah, he looked like I was gonna bring that up too. It was like, oh, they put our uncle in a black robe.
He looks like he looks like one of us dressing up as manos hands of feet. It's this, it's this fantastic look. Yes, he, he is absurdly. Like I found myself at the end of the episode when the, you have the camera shot pull up above them and it's supposed to represent, like now they have hope, now they're looking upward.
Mm-hmm. And Shahna has her, you know, tearful like, I will look at the stars and I will dream of you. She's clearly fallen in love with Kirk and she wanted to go and he's like, I'm gonna free you from slavery by making out with you, and I'm gonna leave you good luck. And like leaving a trail of broken hearts across the galaxy in this season.
But as that camera shot was happening and Galt was with them. And I was like, oh yeah, he was a, he was a slave too. Like it hadn't occurred to me like, yeah, he's wearing the device as well, and like, oh, now he's been freed. So he's one of the people who's looking to the sky and is hopeful. And I was like, you go uncle.
You go. So, listeners, viewers, I think you can tell by now, Matt and I, yeah. We're so crazy about this one. I, we talked last week about an episode that we were like, this isn't the best. But it averages out to watchable because it has some really nice moments that outweigh a bit of the subpar lesser moments.
And I wish I could say the same thing about this one because I really did like quite a bit aboard the ship. I liked that. I think if I were to suggest anything to anybody about this one? It would be like it's worth having on in the background maybe if you would just wanna hear some nice bits of dialogue between Spock and the crew people and tune into the episode when it's those moments when it, when you hear it's aboard ship.
Yeah. You know, peek at the screen. But other than that, I'm just like, yeah, this isn't, this isn't great. It's a skip. So, viewers, listeners, jump into the comments, let us know how you felt about this one, and if there was anything about it that we forgot to talk about. As always, your comments, liking, subscribing, sharing with your friends, all of those are very easy ways for you to support the podcast, and we thank you for doing that.
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