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Matt and Sean talk about the cadets continued recovery in Starfleet Academy Season 1, Episode 8, “The Life of the Stars.”
Matt and Sean talk about the cadets continued recovery in Starfleet Academy Season 1, Episode 8, “The Life of the Stars.”
- (00:00) - - Intro
- (02:33) - - Viewer Feedback
- (05:58) - - Today's Episode
- (07:25) - - This Time in History
- (09:42) - - 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: In this episode of Trek in Time, we're talking about recovery. That's right. We're talking about Starfleet Academy. Season 1, episode 8 aired on February 26, 2026. Welcome, everybody, to Trek in Time. This is the podcast that takes a look at all of Star Trek in chronological stardate order. However, we've kind of tabled that for the time being as we have a brand new program, Starfleet Academy. So we've put a pause on our rewatch. We are partway through season three of the original series. We'll return to that after completion of season one of Starfleet Academy. We hope you'll be interested in joining us for that. In the meantime, here we are almost done with season one of Starfleet Academy, and today we're going to be taking a look at the episode that broadcast on February 26th. This is the life of the stars. I'm Sean Ferrell. I'm a writer. I write some sci fi. I write some horror. 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 good. Looking forward to talking about today's episode.
Sean Ferrell: We talked last week about an episode that revolved around recovery efforts after a traumatic experience from the week before that. And during last week's episode, as we were recording it, I said this episode focused on several of the characters. It was the Ko’Zeine episode. And I said it focused on several characters. I wonder if we'll get an episode that focuses on some of the other characters. And you got a smirk. And in that moment, I was like, this MF’er has actually watched the next episode. Was I right? Had you watched this one last week? No, no.
Matt Ferrell: And the reason I say that is I got that smirk because every time either one of us has said, you know, I really hope they do blank, guess what? They did the exact next week. I wish they would do something with Sam next week. It's all about Sam. So it's like the show keeps hitting every comment we bring up. That's why I was smirking.
Sean Ferrell: I had no question yet. Okay, well, with that being said, that means that by the end of this episode, both of us should say, I hope they do an episode about X and see which one of us is right. So, yes, we'll try to do that. Before we finish, before we get into the conversation about this newest episode, we always like to take a look at what you had to say about our previous episode. So, Matt what did you find in the mailbag for us this week?
Matt Ferrell: Well, from the episode Come Let's Away, we had Happy Flappy Farm, who wrote good episode. Overall, great acting, great writing, believable bad guys paired with characters that are compelling. We both felt like the graphic part of the intimate scenes would be best left out. Show us intimacy without the naked details. It was a big improvement over other new Star Trek shows. I cringe remembering those scenes in Enterprise with the lotion in the quarantine room.
Sean Ferrell: I would rather have. And of course, you know, times change. So in the 1960s it would be cue the kiss, cut away and then heavily imply that Kirk or whomever had had romantic relations with somebody without showing anything. And today, of course, we get what is effectively a nudity, including sex scene in an episode of television from Star Trek, which as it was happening, I was like, this is, this is an evolution. But as a viewer, I wasn't put off by that. I could see how though, somebody saying to the kids, oh, let's go watch Star Trek. I grew up watching Star Trek. You'll like Star Trek, if you weren't ready for that.
Matt Ferrell: Yes.
Sean Ferrell: You're going to be caught unaware. So I'm like, okay, I completely understand the desire to say like, why is this here? Maybe it doesn't belong. But I as a viewer, for myself, I was like, this is, this is fine. I thought it was fine. And wow, is it better than what? The voyeurism of Enterprise was so uncomfortable. And Voyager and Voyager, both of those shows did a lot of things that were just like, let's just look at this woman and boy, like, come on.
Matt Ferrell: Pretty woman in a catsuit. There you go.
Sean Ferrell: Pretty woman in a catsuit.
Matt Ferrell: Look at this.
Sean Ferrell: She's in space and she's walking around in high heels. It was just. Yeah, so, yeah, so I land. I land on. I. I co signed that comment. Yes, it's better than it used to be.
Matt Ferrell: Then we also had Jason Dumb writing. Really good episode. Lots of positives. I thought Giamatti was great. The ending I did not love. I prefer no superpowers in my Trek, diminished an otherwise great episode. I get it, I get it. It didn't feel like superpowers to me though, because still kind of felt on brand for an empath that maybe they could like if they were super powered Betazoids, could theoretically do something kind of nasty to people potentially. So it didn't feel off brand. And then of course in the episode we're about to discuss, it's not like she's gonna be doing this every day because it could kill her. There's a whole aspect of it. It's not superpowers. It's more of a kind of like almost a one shot deal. So, yeah, yeah, I get it. I totally. I totally get it. And then there's of course, Mark Loveless. Plot of Ko’Zeine. Genesis asks Caleb about being Ko’Zeine, to which Caleb thinks she said cozy and figured it's a 32nd century version of Netflix and chill. He makes a move for what he thinks is a hookup and causes a massive misunderstanding. Hilarity ensues. And just note, Sean, he's either sex or farts. Hi, I'm 12.
Sean Ferrell: Thank you, Mark, as always, hitting it out of the park. Now, before we get into our conversation, those lights you see, those noises you hear in the background. No, it's not you having to go into the backyard and figure out what's happening to your cat. It is in fact the read alert. It's time for Matt to tackle the Wikipedia, shall we call it, truncated summary.
Matt Ferrell: With the cadets struggling with their recent trauma, Ake calls in Sylvia Tilly to help bring them back together through the play Our Town.
Sean Ferrell: I like the fact that this gives the impression that the entire episode is built around like, let's put on a performance of Our Town. Our Town is in the episode. But this doesn't really capture the spirit
Matt Ferrell: in which it is. No.
Sean Ferrell: So this present, this is the first time for this series where the Wikipedia summary is not quite working the way that the other ones did. But I thought it was funny, so I left it in there. As we mentioned, this is Starfleet Academy episode 8 from season 1. The series is created by Gaia Violo. It's based on Gene Roddenberry, Star Trek, of course, and it stars Holly Hunter, Sandro Rosta, Karim Diane, Kerrice Brooks, George Hawkins, Bella Shepherd, Zoe Steiner. This episode also includes Tig Notaro and Mary Wiseman, who of course was from Discovery. I will admit, Matt, the moment she made an appearance, I got a smile on my face. I was very pleased to see this character. I thought, what a neat opportunity to catch up with. And what was the world like at this time in history? Well, we're living it, but I'm going to talk about it anyway. From February 26, 2026. What was the song that Matt couldn't stop singing? Well, I can't. I can't believe I'm saying this. We get to hear him sing Opalite by Taylor Swift from the life of a showgirl. Take it away, Matt. Matt as always, Chef's Kiss. And at the movies? The number one film this week, Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi in Wuthering Heights. And on television, this one came out of left field for me. Matt. I think I was sort of aware that this documentary existed, but when it turned out to be the top streamed program on this day in February, I heard a record scratch a lot of laughter and then thought, I think I want to watch that. Yes, Reality Check, Inside America's Next Top Model, the documentary series on Netflix that takes a look at America's top model and the shenanigans and in some cases abuse that took place on that show.
Matt Ferrell: Do you know who watched this immediately?
Sean Ferrell: I would be willing to bet if your wife.
Matt Ferrell: My wife.
Sean Ferrell: I'd be willing to bet that if my wife finds out about it, she will also want to watch it. And in the news on this day, February 26, 2026, the top headline from the New York Times, the Epstein files are missing records about women who made claim against Trump. The documents released by the Justice Department briefly mention a woman's unverified accusation that Donald J. Trump assaulted her in the 1980s when she was a minor. But several memos related to her account are not in the files. This is of course, part of the slow motion release of files from the Justice Department regarding Epstein. Who knew him, who knew him when, who was involved. It is just one of many slow rolling nightmares that America is currently dealing with. So leave it at that.
Matt Ferrell: Not to laugh, but you have to.
Sean Ferrell: It's just there's a lot going on. There's a lot going on, everybody, including this episode. So here we go. Let's dive into this episode and take Matt. We've gone back and forth again and again. Who's going to talk about what, when? And I'm going to invite you to jump in first on this one. It's a bit of a. A quieter episode. I think it follows on the heels of one that was so directly involved with the repercussions of the attack that the cadets had experienced the deaths that they had witnessed too early and too young as students to see that kind of thing. And then we see an episode that focused intensely on a couple of the key figures, but left others out. And then this one follows up again, focusing in on a couple. But we get a general sense of how they, as a collective are responding. And it does revolve, as the summary pointed out, around a theater workshop sort of therapy where Ake leans into the idea that they need a kind of therapy that won't be recognized right away as therapy. So there's this push to bring in somebody who can help. It turns out that one of the Academy professors who works remotely not in the school, but works out in the field with third year students, is now Lieutenant Tilly, who is of course one of the main characters from Discovery. So we get some neat catch up with her. I want to start talking about her in particular, if that's okay with you. We see see a different Tilly. It's the same Tilly, but it's a different Tilly. You want to talk about what you see in the evolution of the character here. That is nicely received, I think, from how she was depicted in Discovery.
Matt Ferrell: She's an older, wiser Tilly and she's been through some stuff. We saw it on Discovery. She's been through stuff and she had a character arc and a growth over that show. But this comes across as there's been more growth since Discovery and she's using that wisdom of what she had to go through. Flying into the future is one of those things that she did. Never being able to go back. Talk about sacrifice. She's able to kind of take her own trauma and things that she's dealt with, to be able to kind of understand what these kids are going through and trying to help them find a way through it. So I really enjoyed how they've evolved that character. And I'm with you as much as I say Discovery cheated a lot of characters to try to get us to care about them, and we never did. She's one of the characters you do care about. She was there from the beginning. They evolved her character. You felt very connected to her. She's kind of like that just likable, affable goofball that you kind of like. So it was nice to see her again. Like, of all the characters, it's nice that they brought her over because it's fun to see how she interacts as a Starfleet Academy teacher. Yeah, it's kind of neat to see how she's. How she's applying what she's learned over the years. And it was also kind of cool in the episode to see how she and Ake and Reno. Yeah, yeah. Were having those kind of those threesome kind of conversations and stuff with each other about how to deal with the kids. And all of them, all of them have horribly traumatic backgrounds. Rino being stranded on that planet by herself, all those that time and struggling. And then you got Ake losing her son. And so all these characters have trauma that they can connect with. And they have history and they all know each of us has history. And they all seem to have a great respect for each other in what they bring to the table.
And it was just really nice to see them as kind of a school teachers sitting around saying, how can we help our kids? It was really neat to see that.
Sean Ferrell: Yeah. I really appreciated when she reconnects with Reno, that it's like a shared experience. There's no conversation about that shared experience. But the moment they see each other, it's just like she's referring to her as Red. And there's this unspoken relationship that they don't have to go into the nuts and bolts of it. It felt very Trek like. It felt like when you see in some of the movies where the characters come back together for the first time. Spock arrives on the Enterprise and everybody. Nobody anticipated he's going to show up. And everybody's like, Mr. Spock, it's him. Like, it's that exciting moment of just like, yeah, they don't need to say, like, here's your backstory. Tell me about yourself. It's just right there. I also like the fact that it was a little bit like the framing of this is a little tricky. She's learned how to utilize what were originally character quirks as tools in her arsenal. And that's a design of a good character. When you start with, she's nervous, she's uncomfortable, she's constantly second guessing herself. There was a lot of the original performance of this character that revolved around a. My social awkwardness is my driving force and I don't know what to do. That's gone, but it's not. It's evolved into this new frame of theater can be a way that you can practice social norms and explore different facets of yourself and society in order to be prepared for those moments that might come up in reality. And I thought, what a fantastic framing of who would latch onto that model of dealing with life through art but her, where she now has a confidence. She was a quietly confident teacher.
She was calling out students in a way that demonstrated no cruelty, but shining a light on them in a way to force them to reckon and to push back on their assumptions and to push back on their defensiveness in the situation in a way that looked like growth as opposed to. She's not prepared to. Even in the original. In Discovery, when she's first introduced, it's like she's not even ready to live in a room with a person. She's put together as a roommate. With the ostensibly main character in that show. And she's like a flibbity jibbet bouncing off the walls with this kind of like, this is gonna be weird for you because I know I'm strange and that's all gone. So I really enjoyed that aspect of it, too. Both feet on the ground because she has grown, but she's still the same
Matt Ferrell: character kind of bouncing off of that to how she was using the theater to. There's so many layers to this, Sean, that not to get too precious. You and I, our father and mom, both theater people, the arts.
Sean Ferrell: Matt and I are theater kids without being theater kids, if that makes any sense.
Matt Ferrell: Well, I kind of was. I was a theater minor shot into college. I actually had dad for a class, so that was a little weird. Anyway, I have a big appreciation for the arts. I know you do too. You're being a writer, you're an artist. It was nice to see them make this a key point of the show for therapy. Art has a purpose. It can help you process your own life in a way that without that art might be very difficult for some people. And I really appreciated that they used this as kind of like a leg in. And when they first brought it up in the episode, I thought, oh, God, oh, this could go very bad, was my first reaction when they started down this path. But they executed it, I think, beautifully. And I also really appreciated, again, coming back to how smart this show is, how it's written. They had point blank say to her, I know what you're doing. All of us know what you're doing. We're not going to fall for this trick of, like, trying to make us talk about our feelings when we don't want to. I like that they came right out and just said it and had. And then of course, she had to rebut and say, yeah, just kind of like push through it to kind of challenge her of. Yeah, that's the whole point here. Your resistance is the point. The dialogue between Tarima and Tilly in that scene was just, for me, riveting to watch. Of how they were making arguments for trying to manipulate me. I'm not manipulating you. I'm trying to help you. The subtext argument that was going on there was so well written. The show keeps surprising me in fun new ways.
Sean Ferrell: Yeah.
Matt Ferrell: Which brings me back to just the meta commentary of people are hating on the show because they want to hate on Kurtzman and Modern Trek. I don't think they're hating on the show because it's a bad show.
Sean Ferrell: Yeah, I agree. And ultimately it's the show almost talking about itself in that way of this is the role of art. Art is the opportunity for society to show itself a mirror and to have to wrestle with is this accurate. And when it's a image that is displeasing, it's very hard to deal with. So when you have that piece of art that challenges you and your knee jerk response is, this can't be art because I don't like it. It's a moment of reckoning. And that conversation takes place all the time. And sometimes it takes place out loud, like we're seeing in social media the pushback on shows like this. And sometimes it's very quiet. A show just doesn't catch on. It drifts away. A movie or a artist doesn't see success in their time and then years later are embraced like a Van Gogh who's just like toils, dies in somewhat obscurity and poverty, and then years later suddenly is considered the father of an entire movement. You don't know how you're going to be perceived in the moment. And that ultimately is one of the elements of this episode that I liked so much, was that it's not about the rest of the program. It's not about the future. It's about their needs in the moment. It's about right now. What can they process? How can they process it right now? Because otherwise this becomes an anchor around all of them that will just keep them down.
Matt Ferrell: You brought it up in last episode. Jean Luc Picard going back to France to see his brother after he's recovered from being a Borg. And the catharsis, when he's having that argument with his brother and his brother, he says, you're a bully. He says sometimes you need to be bullied. The catharsis he needed was to be with his brother. And to see this episode is basically doing the same exact thing. It's like that episode from Next Gen is one of the better episodes. That story, that plotline of him dealing with his trauma is riveting. Here we are seeing Tarima specifically how traumatic this has been for her and seeing how she's having to reckon with it.
Sean Ferrell: Yeah, it's just. Come on, let's talk Tarima specifically and then we can talk about Sam. And there's also. The other characters in the episode are dealt with in a variety of ways. Jay’Den, the Klingon, is given kind of a hall pass. He suddenly just kind of like he's got a cold. So he disappears from the episode. I Felt like that was the writer saying, like, we can only have so many moving parts.
Matt Ferrell: Yeah.
Sean Ferrell: So, like, I didn't quite endorse that, but I understood it. So I'm like, okay, I get why. I get why. He steps into the hallway. One of the characters that I didn't anticipate would get as much on camera moments was Darem, where he's pushing back in a way that reflects his personal experience of having gone back to his home planet, getting married, and then it all being annulled and having to deal with the fact that his best friend, as he put it, called him out for having been selfish. And so he's got a double echo because the episode doesn't say, I just went through a thing. But what he says is, yeah, you're talking about expectations. People try to live up to expectations, but they don't do a good job of it. Or their path takes them someplace else and they're scared to reveal it. So he's like bringing in the previous episode into this. But Tarima really is at center stage with right behind her, Caleb. Because the question is, what will their relationship be given she is carrying a small sting of his having not reached out to her for a month. So she's very obviously come back with a lot of hurt around that. But that is vastly outweighed by the bigger picture of. They don't have her say this, but she killed people with her brain and she did it in a way that they revealed she had hurt family members in a similar way. One of the most subtle aspects of this that I really liked was that her brother. They don't go into his personal trauma what it might be, but they don't have to because to me, it was. He's watched her do this thing. Yeah. And he knows the impact on her. So there's this. The layers around her are so much deeper than everybody else. Not that they're short shrifting anybody. I don't think in this. In this experience, like, Genesis is not given a lot of, like, meat to chew on. But it's enough.
It's the questions around, like, just recovery from the trauma is enough for her character and for Darem. But with, with Tarima, it really is this shining light of she has personally done so much. And when she shows up, it's with this new and improved thing on her neck that will keep it from ever happening again. And as you mentioned, it's hinted that like, oh, yeah, if anything like that happens again, she will potentially be dying. It's gonna take a piece of her. Every time that she does this, the kind of hollow expression, the anger. How did you feel about the plot element? That it was decided without her input that she would be navigated from the War College into the Starfleet Academy as opposed to staying where she had been. The Is described as. She wasn't even questioned about this. It simply happened. And how did you feel about that element of this plot?
Matt Ferrell: Oh, it was great because it. It put. It kind of amplified her trauma. She's. She, in a way, is a victim. And instead of talking to her about what she needs, they made these. You know, they jumped to this. You shouldn't be in the War College. You should be over here because, well, it'll help you. Well, you should talk to her. She's the victim and you're kind of victimizing her again. So it kind of amplified it. I thought that was a great way to kind of, not great way. This is the wrong way to put that. But from a storytelling perspective, it alienates her from any kind of support structure she had in the War College because she had friends over there. But it's alienated her and made her feel even more alone than she already was, which helps to kind of amplify the emotions and the stuff that she's struggling with. So from a storytelling perspective, I understood why they did it and it made perfect sense to me. So I never. It never hit me as a kind of a discordant note in the storytelling. It made perfect sense as to the logic of why they did it. Made sense and how she reacted to it made sense. So it felt very authentic and true in the context of the story.
Sean Ferrell: Yeah. I found myself wondering what it will look like when. When they have a scene with her, with War College people. Will there be a familiarity there? Will there be any kind of reference to the experience and questions around, will anybody misjudge the move as her choice? And will it become something where it's along the lines of like, oh, you abandoned us. So there's some interesting opportunities there that I wonder if they'll. They'll play with any of those threads. There's also the sequence where she basically just drinks herself into really a really interesting scene, recreating the moment when she's in the aquarium with Caleb and she invites him to join her there and he does. Were you like me? Did you go into that scene thinking, oh, she's building a bridge, she's opening a door, and then it turns out the door is just slammed shut because her anger is boiling over with the alcohol. How did you feel about that sequence?
Matt Ferrell: They pulled the rug out pretty quick because, like, he shows up there. It's like, oh, she's putting on an olive branch. And, like, within the first few sentences of what she's saying, oh, no, there's an anger here. There's something going on here. That's not what we think it is. The thing that stood out to me for that is Caleb. It's awesome to see his character growing because the way he reacted in that entire scene and pretty much the way he reacted in this entire episode was so mature. He didn't put himself first. It was not a why are you doing this to me? Kind of reaction.
Sean Ferrell: Yeah, he was.
Matt Ferrell: He's clearly taken the notes that his. That Ake has been giving him and that Genesis has been giving him. And he's taken it to heart because he's just letting her process, never coming back at her, hurt for hurt. He's getting punched and he's taking it, and he just removes himself from the situation. Cause she's got to deal with. So for me, it wasn't just hearkening back to when they first met and had that nice moment. It was just also really cool to see how they evolved Caleb's character in this relationship and have given him another level of kind of maturity. And you can see him growing.
Sean Ferrell: Yeah, they had. You mentioned earlier, the writing keeps surprising you. I think that's one of the elements that stood out to me in this moment was earlier on, they did have some initial friction. And he took it very personally. He took it very, like, who are you to, like, do this to me? Like, you don't understand me. And then they had the moment where she inadvertently dives into his history, his memory. And that felt different from the previous one, because now he's like, I'm defensive about this because I'm. I hate it. Not. I'm judging you for, you know, wanting to know, but it's this kind of awkward, immature relationship scene. And now you get, as you just said, he is really digesting some of these layers of, like, I gotta let other people be other people. These people are not props in my life. He's lived a history where he's clearly been a thief, a scoundrel, a rogue. He's been going around and doing whatever he has to in order to survive, which means you have to view other people as props. You have to be able to dismiss their needs and their inner lives because you need to get what you need. And he's finding himself in a position where that's no longer working and no longer necessary. And he made a speech in this where he talked very briefly about. Yeah, they keep telling you all these things that are supposed to be okay and. And then suddenly you find out that you're agreeing with them and you're taking it all in. And he makes this little speech that for me was ringing the exact same note. I don't know if you'll remember this scene.
Matt Ferrell: Deep Space 9. Root beer.
Sean Ferrell: Deep Space 9. Best scene of Deep Space 9. The Federation is root beer. The sequence in that scene is my favorite moment in Star Trek where Garak is talking to Quark and do you think that we'll be able to survive the Dominion invasion? Because they're coming. And Quark gets this weird look on his face and looks off in the distance and says, have you ever had root beer? It's sweet cloying. And Garak's response is just like the Federation. And they are both left with Quark saying, yeah. The worst part is eventually you start to like it. And I found myself thinking about that scene in this scene because I was like, the way that Caleb talked about it, I was just like, it's root beer. The Federation is root beer. Starfleet Academy is root beer.
Matt Ferrell: It's of that somebody who hated Starfleet is now starting to like Starfleet. And him grappling with the fact that he's changing his mind and he. Not that he feels like he's being tricked by the same exact you can brothers. I thought the same. The root beer scene is stuck in my mind too, as one of the best outsiders commenting on Starfleet and what it stands for in a really interesting way because it's spreading like a virus and it kind of goes everywhere and it's taking everything over. But it's like root beer. And I kind of like it. And that's kind of the same speech here again. Chef's kiss. But Sean, can we. Can we get to the B plot? Which I think is a killer B plot. And I almost wished the B plot had been the A plot because holy crap. When they go the Doctor and Ake to go save Sam to go to Kasq, the homeworld of.
Sean Ferrell: Of the photonics. Yeah.
Matt Ferrell: Yes. They. They fly to Kasq. And Kasq is inside of a time
Sean Ferrell: they describe it as being. It's in a sector of space where the gravity is so intense that it effectively is like singularity. So time moves faster there.
Matt Ferrell: Yes.
Sean Ferrell: The construction of the planet alone is enough to make this dune. This is cool. This is like.
Matt Ferrell: Yes.
Sean Ferrell: This giant mothership cube.
Matt Ferrell: It was. It was. This is one of the things I love about sci fi. It's like, if you're gonna go sci fi, just go hard sci fi. Make it like really hard sci fi, go crazy pants. It's like, I love that stuff.
Sean Ferrell: It's like the Dune movies or Foundation,
Matt Ferrell: like with the space folding and all that kind of stuff is awesome. And I was very surprised to see a Star Trek show going hard sci fi. Like, they show up the planet and the way it's folding like a bananas. I was like, more of this, please? Yeah, can we get in there and get into the whole root of like? And my mind was spinning because, wait, the photonics are living. Not only are they, like way more advanced and they're basically computers just evolving on their own.
Sean Ferrell: They're evolving on their own exponentially rapidly. Yeah, yeah.
Matt Ferrell: Which made me go, oh, my God, Sam, as she's in school, her own species is evolving beyond her maybe hundreds of years in the number of years that she's going through school. What's the ramification of that? Because by the time she finishes her diplomacy and says, we're good to go, they will be like looking at her like a relic.
Sean Ferrell: Right.
Matt Ferrell: And I just thought that was fascinating. Of what the dynamic they're setting up between her and her homeworld is crazy. It's absolutely crazy. And then with the Doctor, my favorite character probably in all of Star Trek, it's like, you got Jean Luc Picard, you got Data. The Doctor's right up there. Having him be part of this, and him dealing with his immortality and talking about it with Ake, who's also not immortal, but she's incredibly long lived. The conversations that they had with each other about that, the weight of that, and the Doctor not wanting to connect with people anymore because it hurts too much. He's lost so much. Holy cow. I did not expect them to have another character arc for a character I already loved and is so fully developed. Oh, you can develop them further. That's really cool. They did really fun stuff with a character we already know. The B plot shot to me was just like, no notes, just more of that.
Sean Ferrell: I found myself looking forward to the first time we see Sam interact with the Doctor in a different episode.
Matt Ferrell: Yes.
Sean Ferrell: Because their relationship has now fundamentally flipped 180 degrees from where it was where I'm anticipating, like, what if she calls him father? Like, what if that happens? And I'm like, I'm saying that. Prepping myself for that gut punch moment where I'm gonna sit there and I'm gonna see him and her reflect to each other their background, their. Their history with each other that they've had now in this accelerated childhood and adolescence. The depiction of that I thought was so lovely. It was a B plot version of, again, one of the best episodes of Star Trek. The. The story of Picard having the alternate life, inner light. Inner light as a result of an alien probe. That episode is. The entire episode is that arc. It's. It's lovely and it's beautiful. This is the nutshell version of that. We get this beautiful little set of images of a little girl growing up with him as her caretaker. And then they return and we're given the flip image of the. The return of the other character where we got the first person perspective walking into the school and everybody's mouths gape and everybody stares because nobody's quite sure how to deal with Tarima. And this time at the end, you get the same imagery, but everybody breaks into smiles because everybody is embracing Sam. So I agree with you. This could have been the A plot. I would argue that this is an episode that doesn't have an A or a B. It just has two A plots. It just happens to be one of them starts the episode and one of them ends the episode. Because the mirroring in that way is. I think it's like a perfect book in that it's one thing neither of them overshadows, the other one and the fact that they managed to construct a storyline so that you get moments of Ake with Tilly and Reno and you get all of that, and you also get Ake with the Doctor and Sam.
It's like Ake is subtly featured in this episode without it feeling like she's featured and that, like, the mechanics of this episode, the way it's written and the way it was directed. I'm like, they really managed to do something special here because Holly Hunter's throughout it, but it doesn't feel like it's focused on her, but it's her tone that's being echoed everywhere. Her sort of parental role in the lives of these cadets. Her relationship to Sam in particular on that journey where she's trying so hard to understand what will it be like for us to see your homeworld. The Doctor. I loved when they got to the. When they got to Kasq and they're introducing themselves and this photonic world is like, oh, Doctor, we're familiar with you.
Matt Ferrell: Like the idea that, like, we are
Sean Ferrell: aware of the Doctor who traversed the galaxy and has lived for a thousand years and there's this element to them where, as they said that I was like, they're impressed because he's lived amongst the organics for a thousand years. And there is an element to that that I was like, they're impressed that he hasn't been killed or destroyed in some way. He hasn't been viewed as an Other. He's been accepted into their culture. And there's an element to it that I'm like, did they make Sam because they found out the Doctor exists? Is there an opportunity for us to like, is he in fact the father spiritually of Sam already? It's like this really neat nutshell.
Matt Ferrell: But if you remember in Voyager, he's spiritually. He's kind of the father of all of them.
Sean Ferrell: Yeah.
Matt Ferrell: What I liked about how that conversation went between. Between the photonics and the Doctor, they weren't in reverence of him.
Sean Ferrell: Yeah.
Matt Ferrell: But there was clearly a deep respect and honor for him of, we know who you are, we like you. We understand our roots and we like you. It was very clear that there was that respect there between them.
Sean Ferrell: It depicts Sam as. She looks like she's an adolescent. She looks like she's a young woman. She might as well be two. And it's that it's. There's an interesting portrayal there in that moment of, like, she was emotionally unprepared for any kind of trauma. So the first trauma that really knocked her on her butt starts to literally tear her apart. And that's. I found that fascinating. Like you mentioned hard sci fi. I'm like, that is. You mentioned that. And you mentioned, oh, she's at school. And while she's at school, her own homeworld is gonna be evolving the equivalent of centuries beyond where she is. And then it becomes. Well, their culture wouldn't be linear. It would be segmented. It would be something could be plugged in and incorporated instantly. Because it's a computer hive mind, effectively. It's not Borg. It's beyond different. It's different from that. So it's this entire thing of like, yeah, she might be out evolved by her own homeworld, but the moment she comes back, the point is she comes back with experiences that get plugged in and then incorporated into the whole in a way that allows them to say, do we reach out or not? Do we build bridges? I'm like, this is so cool. It's so big.
Matt Ferrell: It's such a big. It's huge.
Sean Ferrell: It's very heady huge. It's a big B plot.
Matt Ferrell: The photonics are truly alien. It's hard to understand. Like, what are they like you just brought up, they may not experience time in a linear fashion, so they're. They are completely alien, which is super, super cool. But when Sam showed back up at the final shot of showing her walking back and it was like the top down shot of showing all the kids coming over and everybody's trying to embrace her and is excited to have her back, it is tragic when you compare it to what Tarima experienced when she came back. But at the same time, it brought a smile to my face because Sam is just a bundle of joy and everything is new and every experience is fantastic and she's made friends with literally everybody. And so it seems like everybody in the school just loves Sam. And so when she's coming back, everybody's genuinely excited to see her coming back. I thought that was very touching of just seeing the warmth and the reception, not just from the core group, but from random students. Just she's back, all super excited to see her.
Sean Ferrell: Yeah. It also is a very subtle way of demonstrating, again, the use of art being a mechanism for growth, because it is about revelation between what is known and what is unknown, how to communicate past those gaps. And they show us two characters for whom the students, on the one hand, know something about Tarima that has now informed their perception of her. She killed people with her mind. It is un. Like the lack of reception to her is of the strangeness of that moment. And with Sam, they don't know when she walks back into the room any of the stuff that happened on Kasq. It is still a hidden element. So I'm like, the unfairness that you're talking about is another demonstration of what the episode has been pointing out, which is it's about understanding and revelation that is part of the processing. And Sam hasn't had to be incorporated into the group in the same way that Tarima does, despite the fact that if they. If the students knew what she had just gone through. The strangeness of. What do you mean? You effectively had to reboot with a father who is our Doctor and live as 17?
Matt Ferrell: What do you mean? You've been just 18 years. You've been.
Sean Ferrell: What do you mean? Relived your childhood and you now have simultaneous history of 17 years of being raised by the Doctor and the experiences in parallel to that of being just here and now you're back. What does that all mean? What is that like, what is Kasq? The strangeness of her personal background is still hidden, so she can be embraced immediately. She walks in, everybody's happy Tarima comes from a planet everybody's familiar with, but she did something strange that they know about now and they have trouble accepting it. It's really the episode. The more we talk about it, the more impressed I'm coming away. I'm really, really like, just like, this is the kind of geeking out grad school writing program conversations I used to love having. So, yeah, I hope our viewers and listeners have enjoyed this. Jump into the comments and let us know if there's anything about this that you're like, oh, you missed this part, or you missed that part, or you misinterpreted something. Jump into the comments, Let me, let us know. We really want to hear what you have to say. I hope, I mean, I really do. I hope that people are starting to catch on to this program of how good it is. Yeah, it doesn't deserve to be dismissed just because it's new. And I really hope that people, people are willing to take it for what it is because in this moment I'm sitting here, I'm just like, I'm really enjoying this and it is Star Trek to me. So, like, I'm. I'm not afraid to endorse it in that way. So jump into the comments, Let us know what you have to say. We, of course, are going to be talking about episode nine next week, so we're only two away from the conclusion of the first season. We hope you'll be interested in checking that out with us. As always, liking subscribing, sharing with your friends. Those are all very easy ways for you to support the podcast.
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