https://youtu.be/erR63zfi8WU
Matt and Sean talk about out of control AIs… no, not ChatGPT… Star Trek: The Original Series, The Apple. An apple a day keeps Bones away. Wait … what?
Matt and Sean talk about out of control AIs… no, not ChatGPT… Star Trek: The Original Series, The Apple. An apple a day keeps Bones away. Wait … what?
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Creators & 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, we're talking about Starsky and Hutch and Giant Snakes. Yes, you heard me right. Starsky and Hutch and Giant Snake. Let's call back. Welcome everybody to Trek in Time where we take a look at the world of Star Trek in chronological stardate order. We're also taking a look at the world at the time of original broadcast.
So we're currently talking about the original series, which means we're also talking about 1967. And 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.
So between the two of us, we've got the, the writing and the tech, and we got the Star Trek. Matt, how are you doing today?
I'm doing really good. At some point, Sean, I'm gonna have to show on camera for people. I spent more money than I'd like to admit on a couple of Star Trek replica props, which Sean has seen.
Um, yes. One is a replica of Geordi La Forge's visor. That is incredible to hold. Sean, it's like all metal. It's like. It's awesome. I love it. Uh, it's proudly on display in my living room. And the other one is a tri, tricorder replica from Next Generation, uh, the kind that like Dr. Crusher was always using.
And, um, it works not, not works, like works, but it works. You open it up, all the lights come on, it's got a little LCD screen on it. It's so cool. Love it.
So when, uh, you watch these episodes, do you watch them wearing Geordi's visor? Oh my God.
Start doing that. My wife walk in the room and I'll be sitting there like in a costume wearing his visor, holding a tricorder.
Oh man. Oh, oh, nerd dom. Yeah. We love you so much. Yes. So today we're gonna be talking about The Apple from the original series. This is the 38th episode in shooting order, 34th in broadcast order. It was the fifth of the second season, originally broadcast on October 13th, 1967. Before we get into our conversation about that, however, we always like to revisit your comments for our previous episode.
So Matt, what did you find in the comments for us this week?
Alright, well, from the Changeling episode, Sean and I were talking, he was like. I wonder if they've ever done an episode. I can't remember that. They did an episode where they took two people that transported into one. Yes. They should have done that.
Well, guess what, Sean? They did. Oh boy. Did they? Yeah. And we completely, both of us completely forgot. Lots of comments from old Trekky, Wayouts, Dan Sims, Happy Flappy farm. No need to reimagine the transporter scenario. You will. I guess some years from now, reach the episode of Voyager where Tuvok and Nelix became Tuvix.
Completely forgot about that episode, right? Yes. As soon as he said that was like, oh yeah, the narrative plays out exactly as you describe. And then way outside came here to say this Tuvix, and then Dan Sims brought up Tuvix as well. Um, yeah, I can't believe I forgot that. But also Dan Sims pointed out, I think it was Dan Sims said in lower decks episode, they parody that because it happens again.
Hmm. So again, it's not just once. Brought up twice. So
yeah, that's, that's interesting. And it, it's a demonstration of how long it's been since I watched Voyager. I haven't watched Voyager since the original broadcast. So it's decades now for, it's been about a decade.
Yeah, it's been
about a decade for me.
Then we have a comment from PaleGhost who said, I just realized Uhura's mind wipe could have been solved with transporter patterns.
Yes.
Yep. Yep. Gotta cut them as slack. It's brand new, 1960s. The convenience. The
convenience of fixing things and breaking things, and not being able to do things and otherwise doing things. And somebody pointed out on a, I saw something, I think it was in Reddit of all places, somebody jumped in to make a comment about one of the first episodes that we talked about of the original series, which was the one where there's the transporter accident and they duplicate Kirk. And Kirk is separated. Mm-hmm. And somebody jumped into Reddit of all places and was like, how come they didn't send down a shuttle pod? And yep, somebody responded in the vein of our conversation when we did that episode, which was shuttles hadn't been introduced in the show at that point. They didn't do it because of costs.
They created the transporters because it would be easier to film. So strangely the transporters existed because it was too tricky to do the shuttles and then obviously they had shuttles later. But then we end up with episodes like this one
where the one we're about to talk about,
the one we're about to talk about, where a lot of the dilemma could have been solved if they had simply said, well, let's start using shuttles.
Got, but we'll get into that.
And of course, Sean, Mark Loveless. Yes, wrong answers only for today's episode, the Apple Plot of the Apple. Scotty comes up with a new computer and names it after one of his favorite singers from an age gone by, Fiona Apple. Yes, Scotty's Apple computer becomes extremely popular and is everywhere in Starfleet.
However, an unexpected visitor arrives in a somewhat handmade shuttle. It's the head of Steve Jobs in a jar, Futurama style, and he insists on Scotty changing the name to something else. Jobs body is a headless android whose primary function is to simply carry Jobs's head around. So when Jobs challenges Scotty in a fight to the death jobs starts using his tongue to poorly work the android's controls to fist fight Scotty. One Scotty eye roll and flick of the android power switch Jobs is defeated. He leaves and disgusted, and Scotty is teased by the crew for defeating a head in combat, saying things like. Good jobs scotty, you beat. You beat him. No handedly.
That should be a lower deck episode.
Yes. Yeah, a hundred percent.
That noise you hear and those lights you see, no, that's not a migraine coming on. That's the read alert, which means it's time for Matt to tackle the Wikipedia description. Matt, take it away.
All right. The crew of the enterprise visits a mysterious and deadly paradise planet, which they discover is controlled by a machine called Vaal.
The landing party, which includes Kirk, Spock, Bones and Chekov are enchanted by the planet, but encounter, enchanted by the planet,
but encounter a strange flower that kills two members of the party. And yet they still don't leave. A mysterious bolt of lightning hurts Spock and disrupts the transporter room of the Enterprise. The surviving landing party finds a group of men and women who are controlled by Vaal. Vaal reacts restrict Vaal, restricts their knowledge of human interactions such as sexual encount intercourse, and has the islands inhabitants feed it an explosive mineral found on the island in order to fuel itself.
Vaal orders the inhabitants to kill the landing party by morning when it becomes clear that they represent a threat to the inhabitants' current way of life. Scotty finds a way to root all the power of the ship's phasers while Kirk and Bones prevent Vaal from being fed any more explosive mineral. I'm sorry, just reading.
This is how ridiculous this episode is. Vaal loses strength as a result and becomes vulnerable, which allows the enterprise to destroy Vaal and free the inhabitants.
This episode originally released on October 13th, 1967, directed by Joseph Pevney, written by Max Ehrlich. Guest appearances include Keith Andes as Akuta, Shari Nims as Sayana, David Soul as Makora, and here we go.
This is the Starsky and Hutch connection. David Soul is Makora. That's right. It's David Soul who played Hutch, from Starsky and Hutch and Keith Andes in a nice little weird flashback. Turns out he was the voice of Birdman in Birdman and the Galaxy Trio. When I first read that, I thought, wait a minute. No, it's not.
He's not Stephen Colbert. And then I realized, no, that's Harvey Birdman, attorney at law, which of course was inspired by Birdman and the Galaxy Trio. Which Keith Andes was the voice of, which means that Keith Andes, at a certain point in his career, had to go into a sound booth and go, bird Man. Also on hand were Eddie Pasky, William Blackburn, Celeste Yarnall, Jay Jones, Jerry Daniels, Mal Friedman, Dick Dial, John Winston, Paul Baxley and Bobby Clark. A lot of extras in this one because we have a lot of stuff happening on the enterprise. We have a lot of people on the planet. They're just everywhere. There's like a cast of thousands.
It's a little bit like the 10 Commandments in this one.
Can I just pause you for a second? Yes, absolutely. One of the most unfortunate names in that list. Do you know what I'm talking about,
Dick Dial.
Yes. High brow entertainment here on Trek in Time.
That's right.
Oh boy. Okay, so in the episode we also have William Shatner, Leonard Nemoy, DeForest Kelly, James Doohan. We don't see much of the rest of the bridge crew. It seems like they all had the day off so that Scotty could order a bunch of who are theys about the Enterprise.
And what was the world like at time of original broadcast on October 13th, 1967. That's right, Matt. Everybody was still dancing along to the Box Tops, singing The Letter. This, of course, a song that Matthew and I are just like the what now? But still, Matt has gone above and beyond to learn the song so he could sing it for you here right now, like this.
That's great. Great, great, great. And at the movies, people were still lining up to Sir With Love, which is of course the 1967 British drama that deals with social and racial issues. This is a number one film for about six weeks at this time of the year in 1967. And on television, we've been trying to take a look at the Nielsen ratings to give a sense of what was the type of show that was considered a wild popular show? We're looking at the Nielsen numbers, which are in the high twenties to get the Andy Griffith Show, the Lucy Show, Gomer Pile. Those are your top shows of the year, the Enter, the Star Trek nielsen's were about 11.5, so it was not a wildly popular show, and at this point in time it had been relegated to Friday nights, which was considered and is still considered to be kind of the death night of TV programming.
If you're on Tuesday to Thursday, you get bigger audiences. Friday nights people don't tune in as much, so at this point, the network was treating Star Trek like it was a kids show mainly, and relegating it to an evening when usually only younger viewers were watching. So the types of shows we've been looking at, we've, we've skipped over a larger number of shows, which we've talked about.
For season one of the original series, rather than recycle all of that, again, I thought it would be more interesting to jump down to other types of programming, like number 20 on the list, which is the Tuesday night at the movies on NBC, which averaged about a 21 in the Nielsen's. And this of course would be their bringing in movies that had originally been broadcast in theaters. But here we have a program that I wanted to talk about. Matt and I have been enjoying finding those little nuggets that are just like, wait, what happened? Like this one, which was originally broadcast on a Friday, Off to see the wizard. This was broadcast the week this episode of Star Trek was broadcast, so people on Friday in competition with Star Trek might have been tuning in instead to see Off to see The Wizard, which featured an original musical Who's afraid of Mother Goose, and it had an all star cast, including Maureen O'Hara, Frankie Avalon, Nancy Sinatra, Margaret Hamilton, Dan Rowan, and Dick Martin, Dick Sean, and Joni Summers. Who wouldn't wanna see Nancy Sinatra in who's afraid of Mother Goose? And in the news, we are of course talking about a lot of current events that revolved around the strife in Vietnam. The ongoing political machinations of people who were thinking of running for president.
We haven't yet gotten to the point where President Johnson has announced that he will not run that would happen in the spring of 68. So at this point, we're seeing the recurring stories around Vietnam, the Cold War. What is the Soviet Union up to and we'll, here, no different than previous weeks. There is in this episode or this issue on Friday, October 13th, the St. Louis Cardinals had just won the World Series. But beside that headline, well, yeah. Another headline about Vietnam in which Rusk says, stake in Vietnam War is US Security. This follows in the vein of the headline that we talked about last week in which they were moving the goalposts. Yep. It doesn't really matter if we win Vietnam was last week's headline.
Well then why are we there? Well, now they're trying to make it about US security. If we don't do this well, things will fall apart here at home. That's an argument that we've heard many times in many largely unpopular wars. Yeah. Yep. And little sub headline, uh, I don't think this is accidental placement beneath Rusk says, stake in Vietnam war is US security.
Well, beside that, China peril sighted, and beneath that, the Soviet broadens military draft. I think there's some careful placement of stories saying, Hey, look at the horizon. There are some nations that we need to be careful about. And I think the New York Times was doing a little bit of, um, I won't call it propaganda, but some interesting story placement to kind of mm-hmm create a theme. Now to our discussion about the Apple, I think the past couple of weeks when we've talked about episodes, I've kind of thrown it your way and asked for you to share your thoughts. So this time around, I think I'll jump in and I'm just gonna give my big response very briefly and then you can respond to that.
I didn't hate this. That's a good way to start Sean. Take it away Matt. That's all you're gonna say. I've got reasons, but I'll let you respond to the idea that I didn't hate this.
Okay. One I'm surprised and not surprised at the same time you said that. Yeah. As I'm watching this episode, Sean, I kept thinking, this is bad.
Mm-hmm. Wow. This is, this is getting worse. I. Yeah. Oh wow. This is just horrendous. Yeah. Oh, this feels like I'm watching a kid show like Land of the Lost. Yes. Like so bad. So not what I like about Star Trek is this episode and I got very sad and then the first thought in my head was, I have a feeling Sean's gonna defend this one.
I have a feeling Sean's gonna defend this one. I don't know how you're gonna defend this and I'm gonna be really, that's why I'm I, when we started recording, I said, I'm really interested to hear how you. This discussion 'cause yeah, I'm all ears. So all I'm gonna say is, this episode sucked. So, Sean, take it away.
There, here's where it gets weird for me because my notes, I'll just, I'll literally just share my notes. Okay. I don't hate this. It's corny. There are problems. Still don't hate it. Scotty! Spock gets the spin knot knocked out, knocked out of him, snarky Spock, lots of guilt in Kirk. Pulled back from a very brash captain in season one, Vaal.
And then I have a theory about Vaal, so, okay. And what I ended up with, yeah, go ahead. Hold on.
Let me just read my notes as a juxtaposition to your notes. Okay. Red shirt, three exclamation parts marks. The second time they've encountered weird plants. Mm-hmm. Subsurface vibrations for miles. Okay. That's kind of an interesting idea, but we couldn't beam up a fly.
But what about the shuttle? Mm-hmm. 14 minutes in and this feels aimless.
Yeah. Why did Kirk just punch him and then say, I won't hurt you. Yeah. Why? That's my notes. Yeah, I just stopped taking notes 'cause I woof.
Yeah. I won't defend this. I will just say that this is one, and I kind of remember this from when I was a kid watching this one. Yeah. Like you can't get past the bad stuff.
There's like terrible schlocky pulpy writing here, the wig, the wigs, and it is aimless. And the costumes are goofy. And it's like we found the planet of the Oompa Lupas, like, yeah, but they grow bigger here. And it's, it's this weird sort of like, like, okay, this is not a great look. You have a bunch of white people beaming down to a planet with a bunch of white actors in bronzer, okay?
Um, they're gonna be dressed in loin clothes. They're gonna be living in huts. Like it's not a good look. But I watch this and I'm just like, it's kind of just goofy fun to me. So I'm like, I don't see something different than you saw, but it landed okay for me. Right. And I would not put this at the top of a list of like the best of Trek at all.
I would recommend that people skip it, but there were enough moments where I was just like. Spock saying like, your potions are doing what they always do, doctor, turning my stomach, like a little bit of a snarky Spock, a little bit of winking at the camera. I enjoyed that. I, I enjoyed the unintentioned humor of crack.
I won't hurt you. It's, it's moments like this episode I felt like, I feel like w. In this rewatch, I am gaining an appreciation for Shatner's acting in a very unique way. Mm-hmm. When he believed in an episode, he's really good. Yes. When he doesn't believe in an episode, he's not good. He's the Shatner that we parody.
He's the, you've got to be human. He's that guy. Yep. And he's that here. This episode looks like he's giving it like the once over. He's giving him two takes and he is just like, let's move on to the next episode, which is gonna be a much better one. This one doesn't strike me as anybody's favorite, except for maybe Doohan who is on camera a lot and gets to do, I have in my notes Scotty exclamation mark because Scotty gets to do some really great work.
I like certain moments very, very much. Kirk desperate to get the enterprise to safety from the planet, saying to him like, Scotty, if you don't fix this, and he's talking to a man that he's effectively within the confines of this episode, if Scotty doesn't do what he's supposed to do, everybody aboard will die.
They have, they've just willfully ignored the shuttle crafts. So like we just put that out of our minds. Everybody will die unless Scotty can do what he's supposed to do. So Kirk is talking to a guy that he's thinking, I'm talking to a man who may die and says, if you don't do this, you're fired. And then you have the later scene when Scotty says, I think you're gonna have to fire me.
And he ends the call with, you're fired. And the hang and then ends the conversation. I found that incredibly, like, I like that moment a lot. The kind of rep, the back and forth of , the two of them. The fact that Kirk believes in Scotty that much and has the audacity in that moment to be humorous in his conversation in such a dark moment.
And Scotty gives it back like this is the relationship they, they have. I really like what that demonstrates. I also recognize that this feels like, like the killer flowers feels like they shot most of the episode and they were like, uh, we're short 10 minutes. Because there are certain things in this episode that bear no impact on the larger story.
Why are the flowers killing people with darts? Mm-hmm. They never do it again. It feels like they shot that later and added it in. Why do the rocks explode? Is this even necessary? Okay. For the powering of the engines that keep this computer running? No, it's just, it feels like so much padding. It feels like so much hot air.
And I sat there that why this, this, this episode feels aimless entertained. That's Yeah, it does. That's it does,
it feels aimless. 'cause the first half of it, the, the first half you could cut out and it would change nothing. You could just literally cut it all out. They're just wandering like, this place is beautiful.
Oh, somebody just died. Let's go wander some more. Oh, somebody just died. Let's, uh, keep wandering. Oh, wait, maybe we should get outta here. Oh, we can't. Okay. Oh, somebody just died. It was like, it was like, what are you doing? You're just wandering around this forest with no purpose. And my favorite part was Sean was right after I wrote this, 14 minutes in, and it feels aimless, right?
Like immediately after I wrote that, my notes. Ross comes running through the forest going, Captain Kirk, Captain Kirk. And there's the most brutal explosion I've ever seen on the show. You remember there was a previous episode where like there was an ex, like a explosion went off and it was Kirk or Spock went flying through the air.
Yeah. And we were both like, wow, it looks like somebody could have gotten hurt in that. Yeah. I'm surprised nobody got killed in this one. 'cause like the explosion is so brutal looking. Everything else that we see. It's like a kid show. It's like land of the loss. It's all kinda like fluffy and just weird.
And then there's this one random explosion that looks like it's from some gritty cop show or Vietnam reenactment. Bananas, just absolutely bananas.
I was gonna say that was my favorite death in the episode, um, because he has been watching the village. Yep. He comes running back sounding and looking panicked.
Saying quote, I've never seen anything like it before. What did he see? What? Nope. Why is he panicked?
Nope.
Why is he running?
Nope, we never find out.
None of this. Never find out. Makes any sense. It is like all we see of him is like, there's a village and there are people who are like doing stuff and he's just like,
holy crap.
These people look at, but there, there's also Sean, the scene where Spock picks up the, the exploding mineral and the way he throw up piece of styrofoam. It's a clearly piece of styrofoam, but my favorite part is he goes, crack, snaps it in half and then tosses it and it explodes. It's like it would've exploded in his hands and we would've seen something like the Ross explosion was Spock getting blown apart.
It's like as soon as you went crack, it would've blown up. It's like they don't even follow their own logic. It's just stupid. It's just, there's so much
dumb stuff. I mean, it is, it is absolutely goofy. It's, you know, the, I mean, Chekhov has to back off. He is all over that Yeoman, in a way that is so not professional.
It's, it's like, it's fine to have the idea like he is dating this woman. I don't have a problem with that. Yes. It's like, but there he, he's doing this in front of his captain. Like there's a point where it's just like, hmm, don't do that. You could still have the scene where they're off by themselves. Like you could still have that moment.
And I actually kind of like that moment because it's not Kirk, it's like the show has a reputation for like, Kirk was always like swaggering in and like making out with every woman who was on the show. No, they understood like it can't always be Kirk, so in this case it's Chekhov and he was brought on to be a younger heartthrob.
So it's like, okay, this is what he's supposed to be doing. Kind of a nice little moment between him and the yeomen, witnessed by two people who apparently have zero concept of this, and it turns into suddenly they're making out. Yeah. In the jungle. In a like blue lagoon style way that is just like, okay, why do we need to watch this?
And ending with Kirk saying to the group of collected people, like, well, just keep going the way you're going. And eventually figure it out. Like, bro. Mm-hmm. Like, no, but the whole arc of the machine that is in control, like I couldn't help. It. I know this is not intended, but I couldn't help but think of the animated episode, how sharper than a Serpent's tooth, in which the enterprise meets an alien named Kukulkan.
That is a giant flying snake lizard thing, and it reveals that it is responsible, in similar style of the episode we watched just recently, which was who Mourns for Adonis, the the, they find the Greek Gods planet where Apollo is still living. And it turns out, yes, these are beings that had visited Earth.
Kukulkan is a character that is along the same lines. And Kukulkan in that episode is like, I visited your world and you worship me. Worship me now I need you to do that again. And it is a story of Kirk and the crew trapped in what looks like a mixture of various Macedonian and Aztec temples. Trying to defeat this creature that sees itself as like, you should be treating me like a parent.
I am, I am. I am the father of your civilization. So it's practically the same story, but part of me in the depiction of that animated episode, Kukulkan, is literally a giant flying serpent. So here we have what looks like a serpent built into a mountain, and I'm like, in my head canon, I'm like, oh, this is another planet the Kukulkan visited and he left technology behind to stand in his place and somehow it's broken down over time. I couldn't help, but like that part of me that just wants these things to all kind of make sense, like mm-hmm. To, to the idea of like, why would this thing be there? And like what if it was connected to Kukulkan?
What if it was part of a bigger mythology? That to me, I think carries a lot of my enjoyment of this story because the story itself as presented is no different really from the changeling. It's just an AI outta control. It is absolutely just like we showed up and there's this thing, it is controlling these people.
Last week it was, there's this thing and it's destroying these people. Like it's the same story once again. They've hit a point where we're just like, oh, we need to, we need to figure out how to defeat this.
The thing that drives me nuts about this episode is it doesn't bother to explore the most interesting questions it raises.
Yes. Where did that AI come from? Why is it outta control? How did they end up worshiping it? Why the hell is it a snakehead it coming out of a mountain? Yeah, like look, there's so many questions about it, but they don't even bother because the message they're trying to deliver. And my interpretation is this is an anti-communist storyline. Yes. Yes. It's a, the big bad, which is communism. Uh, it's, it causes stagnation and all that kind of stuff. You have to be free like us, and then you'll, you've been desexed as well.
It's the idea of like, if everybody's interchangeable, then what is, then, then where does passion live? Where does romance live?
It's, it's, it's all of that.
But for me, the more interesting story would've been so easy of like explored the AI thing. Like you could have just like you're saying like it is this space thing that came through and dropped it off. What if they don't know how old these people are? They could be thousands of years old.
What if a millennia go, they're the ones that created this AI and this is a society that ended up ending up subjecting them becoming subjected to this AI that kind of took over and took care of everything and because it took care of everything, they didn't have to do anything anymore, and they ended up becoming what they are.
Like it, it becomes a kind of a Wall-E experience.
Correct. So it's like that to me would've been far more interesting to find out that they actually built it from themselves and they've trapped themselves in this loop that they can't get out of. Yeah. And they're so far gone now. They need help getting out of this loop that they're stuck in.
Yeah. So it's like that to me would've been more interesting an, an explanation why Kirk should probably help them destroy this thing
to get them out.
Yeah. There's, I mean, there there are various versions of this that would be far more engaging.
Yeah.
And challenging. And I think that there is also, in everything you just said of exploring all of that. The stuff that is raised in the conversation between Spock and Kirk and McCoy mm-hmm. Is also like they could have followed any of that. They had the conversations in the episode, but then they were like, yeah, but we're not gonna explore any of that. The idea of like, these people are healthy and they live and they're happy, like are we rescuing them from anything?
If we introduce these ideas that, of independence and freedom that they don't even recognize as existing, like mm-hmm. They don't challenge, the writing doesn't challenge itself, even though it presents a really interesting dilemma, and I think a more nuanced program, and especially if it was like, I think that this is something that Star Trek Next Generation did much better than the original series is ending an episode with a challenging question and not answering it.
This at this point, the original series leans very heavily on there is a right way to live and saying like, we are here to explore and meet new cultures and see how people are in other places and work collectively is all part of the DNA of Trek. But in this episode, it reveals the the blinders that are on because they do believe in all of that, and yet they also do eventually land on the side of, but there is also a right way to live.
And I think the more nuanced storytelling of later series did a better job of saying we aren't going to, there is no rescuing people from their way of life. Mm-hmm. There is something that may be a challenge between us that causes the dilemma that we're in, but sometimes ending the dilemma means withdrawal and moving away as opposed to jumping in and saying like, don't worry about it.
I'm gonna fix it for you and then I'm gonna leave you. Effectively this episodes ends with them leaving these people in a mess. Yeah, this is no different. Like you could have had Star Trek two, the Wrath of Khan being Star Trek two, the wrath of Vaal. It could have been these people were just like you left us on the planet by ourselves and it turned into a nightmare.
And like you have no idea the fallout from this episode what these people are possibly going to do to survive. Yet. I sat there and I was just like, yeah, give me a bottle. Give me a a, a soda and a box of popcorn and I'm gonna be happy watching this story. So it's like it landed in a way that as I was watching and I'm just like, why am I enjoying this?
That's the questions not a whole lot. Here's why do you enjoy this? Like, why am I enjoying it? And there's just a part of it, like maybe it's just fun to sometimes see. Like the rocks blow up and the flowers kill people, and like they beam down with it seems like 15 people. And as soon as you see all those people beam down to the planet, you're like, oh, there's a lot of red shirts in here.
It's gonna be a lot of dying. Like, it's, it's goofy. And I just, it just landed in a way that when we've had previous conversations where I've been like, this episode isn't working for me, it missed something that this one somehow has, and I'm not sure what it was. Maybe it was simply just kind of like leaning into the goofiness.
Leaning into, yeah. Like, all right, this is what we're doing this week, and it carried me so yeah. Any final thoughts? I'm glad. I'm glad somebody enjoyed it. Yeah. So viewers, listeners, where do you land on this? Are you, I, I imagine most of you are probably like, yeah, goofball, this is not great, but was there anybody out there who like me was like, yeah, it's goofball, but yeah, gimme the popcorn.
I'm into it. Let us know in the comments. And of course as always, we are going to be looking forward to your wrong answers only about what next week's episode is about. Next week is Mirror Mirror. We move from the ridiculous to the sublime next week, but I look forward to your thoughts. Mirror Mirror, wrong answers only.
What's that one about? And before we sign off, Matt, is there anything you wanted to share about what you have coming up on your main channel?
I'm in a bit of a battery glut on my channel right now. There's a whole bunch of videos about batteries that are happening right now and by the time this episode's out, my most recent one will be about a how lithium sulfur batteries are kind of an overlooked battery technology that looks like it might take over certain parts of the industry.
Um, it's a very interesting technology that's been well understood for a very long time, but it's only now people are figuring out how to actually use them in very surprising ways.
Interesting. As for me, if you'd like to find out more about my writing, you can visit my website, sean ferrell.com, or you can go wherever books are sold in your neck of the woods, that it's everything from Amazon on down to your public library or local bookstore.
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