#017 - Star Trek: Starfleet Academy - Season 1 Review

0:01 This ship is yours, Captain Ake. Thank you #1 I'm Captain Nala Ake, Chancellor of Starfleet Academy at Astra Parespera. Through struggle the stars. Being a cadet in Starfleet Academy means being open to the people around you. I'm Genesis. Nice to meet you. I'm. Saying, are we friends now? Can I ring me Cadet Mirror for the affirmative Cadet Crawl for the negatives? Incoming warp signatures Benari RAW. Red alert Shields up, Nusraka. Time, with its infinite sense of will, always fall upon itself like an origami chicken.

0:33 This is the single dumbest idea I've ever heard. This moment is that chicken. I took a bath for the first time. Would you bathe in a ball? I think I swallowed my combat. Already. Keep a close eye on your bowel movements for the next three days. Chancellor, we were basically naked. It absolutely will close it always you've. Got like 4 pairs of boots in here. You don't even wear shoes. Speak your mind, cadet. Don't hold back. You speak Samsung, one of my favorite dead languages. It is not the Federation's advantage or place to tell the Klingons who they are.

1:03 I'm here to affirm the resolution. The Federation must provide and indeed enforce asylum for the Klingons. What about our Honor A? Smart mouth isn't worth a damn without wisdom. Wakey. Wakey directed, you know, and Bakey, I'm Lieutenant Sylvia Chili. Theater is statecraft. Statecraft is theater. It's the kind of stuff you overachievers get all hot and bothered over. And for those of you still bristling with confusion and or resentment. I don't care. Strike until your opponent's in his liquefy. You'll do it all while wearing really snazzy uniforms.

1:35 Whatever challenges came before today LED you to this woman. I know you decide. If they define you, it's time. To build in the future.

1:47 Welcome to the Alienating Ourselves podcast review of Star Trek Starfleet Academy Season 1. Now here are your professors of nerd demand geekiness, Nick and Todd. Greetings, Humans, Klingons, Betazoids, Kayonians, Kaskans, Darsha, Lanthanites, Jim Haddar and various hybrids and welcome to another episode of Alienating Ourselves, the podcast that explores the relationships between humans and aliens that sometimes look really human, even if they have a completely alternate form that we only see in one freaking episode.

2:26 I am one of your hosts, Todd. I hope to exercise extreme caution in what I have to say tonight and how I say it. And joining me, as always, is my classmate, I mean Co host, who may have less reason to receive a formal reprimand on his record than I will tonight. It's Nick. Nick, how's it going? I'm, I'm doing good, Todd. It's great to be here. Freshman class, Starfleet Academy. We are getting in there, taking our exobiology and temporal mechanics classes and Oh my goodness, I'm going to be written up for not turning things in on time and running into class at the last minute and asking which class I'm in.

3:04 So let's get into it. Today we interrupt our regularly scheduled program to take a look at a new show that just finished its first season. Starfleet Academy is the 12th Star Trek series. Wow. You go Star Trek and it follows the lives of a handful of young people as they join the 1st freshman class, depending on how you look at it, of a newly reformed Academy in what you could describe as the next, next, next next generation of Star Trek characters at the farthest future point in the timeline that they've made ongoing adventures so far.

3:41 This takes place in a future established by other shows in an expanded universe created by Alex Kurtzman, including Discovery, Strange New Worlds, Picard, Lower Decks, Short Tracks, Prodigy, and Section 31. Rotten Tomatoes give Starfleet Academy an 88% critics score and a 51% audience score. That's tomato meter and popcorn meter, respectively. There are a lot of relative unknowns in the cast, a few legacy Star Trek characters, and dramatic high profile anchors. Paul Giamatti as a big bad guy and Holly Hunter as a big good guy.

4:19 Todd and I are pretty enthusiastic Star Trek fans, so we're going to look over this first season, what it's done and hasn't done, it's placed in the fandom, and what's next. So what's your overall first take on this series, this first season, Todd? Wow, 12th series. 12th series. It's about 5 or 6 too many. OK, all right, so this show has a few good points and even has some potential. Or at least it would if it were so unlikely to get a third season due to shake UPS caused by Skydance taking over Paramount.

4:59 However, sadly I still mostly dislike it. I think it's a very wayward show that doesn't really know what it wants to be and does everything kind of half ass. And since we're reviewing entire series, let me kind of breakdown the episodes a little bit. Episodes 16 and 10 are all squandered by the unbelievably atrocious dialogue of the main villain. Episodes 2-3 and seven are big balls of nothing. Episodes 8 and 9 are mild improvements, but not enough. Episode 4 is actually kind of OK, and episode 5, despite it supposedly being a love letter to Deep Space 9, I consider to be blasphemy against Deep Space 9.

5:47 Lastly, while I usually save grades for later, I think I can sum up my mix but leaning negative feelings for the whole season by saying that I give 6 out of 10 episodes. AC -2 are just plain C1 gets all the way up to C Plus, and there's an F in the bunch. So mostly consistently. Not terrible, but not really good enough either. So what did you think? Well, and I mean long time listeners and devotees to the Alienating podcast, I and Todd, we, we match up on a lot of things and there are a few things that we contrast on.

6:26 So with a deep breath, I will say I like this show. There's some good stuff in here. I know I said both of those as though they were a question and I'm sorry about that. I still don't feel like I'm the target demographic in a few ways, and I may get into that a little bit more later, but in tone and in the type of storytelling, I'm not necessarily the person this is aimed at, but I like several cast members. The storytelling is striking me as I praise here mostly OK, and I'm enjoying it more than much of the other Kurtzman LED Star Trek content.

7:08 So that's that's where Nick is starting here. So our first section, are we at warp or at impulse power? Todd and Nick are going to share some positives, some great things or, or maybe we're just at impulse and some things that, you know, you guys were almost there, you were getting close to something good.

7:28 So Todd, do you want to start with something that you felt like they were they were nailing or they were getting close to nailing or they were almost nearly getting close to? Yeah. So my first one is female leadership. You know, no matter how progressive Star Trek has been, even if it has a woman in either the captain role or first officer role, I don't know if we've ever seen it in both. And I've kind of been waiting for that and thinking, when are we finally going to get it? And we finally got it.

7:55 So we have a female mixed species captain, a female mixed species non human first officer. And I say it that way because I think the captain is, well, I know she's part lanthanite. I don't know by how much, I don't know if it's like 1/4, a half 3/4, but I assume that her other portion is human, but the female mixed species non human first officer is half Klingon and half Jim Adar and we'll say more about that in a minute. There are several female professors including Jet Reno who is played by the stand up comedian Tig Notaro and she is a carryover from Star Trek Discovery.

8:34 Also two somewhat likable characters are Nala Ake, the Captain. I don't like her name, but I like her, her personality in Quirks, and the aforementioned Jet Reno. Todd forgot to elaborate that some of Nala a case quirks and eccentricities, such as her tendencies to go barefoot or to lie down, slump, or scrunch up comfortably on furniture, actually grew on him in the first episode. Some of her weird posture and chairs looked more like poses than the way someone would actually sit, but Holly Hunter's physical performance felt more natural as the series progressed.

9:10 And quite possibly the best thing in the entire season was seeing Tig Notaro as Jet Reno taking command of the Athena in episode 10 and utilizing the only crew that she had, which was the six main cadets that we follow throughout the season and actually teaching them along the way. In fact, I was like, that should that should have been what the whole season should have been about. Why did we not get more of that? So yeah, female leadership I think is definitely a strength of the show. Well, once again Todd and I have accidentally matched up without conferring ahead of time.

9:44 Y'all can believe that or not. My first warp speed is casting and I am a crotchety old guy devotee of the original series, The next Generation. My my interest and passion wanes as we move forward in time. So the truth is, I will not name names, but there are beloved old series from the original 123456 series is before the Kelvin thing. And there are episodes in series where I didn't especially like cast members very much. I they're not bad people. They're great, great people. Thank you for being in Star Trek.

10:26 But I didn't take to the cast. And in this I really like the casting. So the high profile casting choices, we got Holly Hunter, we've got Robert Picardo. I liked Robert Picardo back in, gosh, a lot of things he's done throughout his career before Star Trek, but Innerspace, Oh my gosh, Tig Notaro, Todd mentioned Tig Notaro has Han Solo swagger. I don't know what it is. Ladies and gentlemen, if you have a person interact with Muppets and they don't act like they're acting with a Muppet, they act like they're acting with someone who is annoying them.

11:02 They just make the Muppet more real. And Han Solo, Harrison Ford gets that. Tig Notaro gets that. So Jet Reno is great from the first second she walks on. Being a cadet in Starfleet Academy means being open to the people around you, and that connection is where time and space really live. I don't need. Yeah, yeah, you're a genius who owns all the suffering. I only know two things, kid #1 old age and treachery. Always triumph over youth and a smart mouth. Oscar Wilde. Love that dude. Fun fact, when he died they had to put glass over his tombstone because people kept trying to make out with it #2 a smart mouth isn't worth a damn without wisdom.

11:51 But what do I know? I'm old and boring. But unlike a few other shows, I'm I'm pretty OK with a lot of the actor other actors too, including the kids. I I don't even like kids very much. I work with them. That's really don't pay too much attention to that. So my personal favorite in this cast is Gina Sheer. Yes sheer as the gem Hadar halfling on drill Sergeant Laura Thak second in command. The credits kind of call her No, I lost it. It's somewhere here, but she's I don't know disciplinarian second in command to Ala Ake and and she may have won me over at the beginning just because she's like yelling at teens and I read that resonates with but spoiler casting for those that hadn't heard the Academy computer voice.

12:41 They call it the Digital Dean is Stephen Colbert and they throw in some pretty silly bits for him, which I've enjoyed very much. I may come back to that. Genesis Life, played by Bella Shepherd is the best actor in the kid crew in my opinion, and I think they make good use of her. I like that she's not being used for a lame, obvious love triangle. She seems to be a fully formed character capable of affection without any kind of romantic interest being a part of her current character arc at all. They let a pretty girl be in the show without being all over some boy.

13:14 In fact, she like grabs one of our heroes Episode 1 and it's like, look, don't get tangled up with somebody in the first year. It's just going to drag you down, man. And she actually sticks to that. They'll screw that up in Season 2. The truth is, I haven't especially taken to a lot of Trek characters before or after Kurtzman's arrival on the scene. So the fact that these people are OK for me is a pretty big win. You said a few things there that I kind of only halfway agree with some, some of your positives are kind of well, OK, so I, I know we're in the positives, but these are my responses to the positive.

13:47 So, all right. So Genesis, I don't think they're doing enough with her. It's fair. Todd said he would also add that Genesis Live is the least annoying of all the cadet characters, which is a real ringing endorsement. Let me see, You talked about Stephen Colbert. Yeah. And I usually like Stephen Colbert, and I'm so glad that he's a geek. And I, I, I haven't heard any updates about it, but I know he made an announcement on on his show that I think his production company is going to do the Roger Zelazny Chronicles of Amber and.

14:17 Oh, my goodness, Great. Get on with it. Todd also wanted to clarify that he's looking forward to that because he did actually read those books all 10, mostly during high school and college, but that he's even read some of those books twice. Todd actually does read sometimes. Also, Stephen Colbert announced his companies work on the Amber series in January 2023 and there's been little or no update since. Hopefully it's still in progress. So I'm glad that he's a geek, but they give him some terrible comedic lines in this.

14:48 I can't stand. It's just it's so unstar Trek like some of the stuff that they give him to do. And then let me see, I'm trying to think what some of the other stuff you said. I said a lot. Oh. Oh, So Laura thought she's OK. She's OK, she's fine. But there was something that you were saying about her. Oh, you were talking about the rank. I think her kind of rank or position or whatever is cadet master as far as rank. Yeah. And as far as rank, I think she is either commander or Lieutenant Commander.

15:24 I think I read somewhere she's Lieutenant Commander, but I don't know if that's can or not. They refer to as commander, but sometimes that's an abbreviation. And I'm a little bit unclear as to whether she's also first officer of the ship or just first officer of the school, because in a way, the school and the ship are the same thing. Yeah, she has no military range. She is cadet master at the Academy, so which means she's a drill Sergeant and that's literally all she is. According to Memory Alpha, the online wiki that tracks Canon Trek info, Laura Thak holds the rank of Lieutenant Commander and is also first officer of the USS Athena, the Starship that makes up part of the Starfleet Academy campus.

16:03 Todd is not convinced these additional facts were officially said on screen, but Memory Alpha says that Laura Thak rose through the ranks serving on the USS Nog, USS Transcendence, and USS Locker. Listeners, uh, the show is a weird hybrid where they essentially have made the school a ship and the ship a school. So the ship lands, breaks into pieces and turns into a mini mall kind of thing. And then it takes off and I, they convey that kind of the school takes off and that sort of happens. So that's why we have this weird hybrid of Ake is the chancellor of the Academy and she's also the captain of the ship, which is conflicting.

16:45 But Laura Thak is the cadet major drill Sergeant, and she's also nothing on the ship so far. But we'll see all that. So moving on to my second good one, and frankly this is just an extension of my first one and that is diversity of the cast and of the characters. At least half the cast is female, including characters in leadership positions of our As I've already mentioned, over half the main characters are non human. Out of these 6 main student characters, only one is fully human. Out of the main recurring and significant guest characters, there are five mixed species.

17:25 Character Nala Ake is partly Anthonite as I've already mentioned. Laura thought is half Jim and Dar and half Klingon. Genesis is half Darsha and I assume half human. I assume that's where her kind of human like name comes from, but supposedly she is half Darsha. Whatever Darsha is. The villain NUS Bracha is supposedly half Tellurite and half Klingon even though he doesn't really look like either. And there is a professor named Isla who is half Kardashian and half something else. And we forgot to.

18:01 Despite how much Nick and I discussed ahead of time, we forgot to discuss how much we're going to explore. So I won't say Isla's last name or what the other half of her mixed species is, but yeah, she's another hybrid. There are some great. Twists coming listeners, if you haven't gotten to episode 5 and you love twists, but we might give you another warning. But warning now twists reveal to become. And out of the main and recurring cast at least 4 characters are LGBT and that would be Laura, Thak, Jet, Reno, Jaden, Krog, and Kyle.

18:40 And yes Kyle does have last name but I forgot to look it up. And then the leader of beta Zed is hearing impaired so we see a non human style of sign language. Or at least I hope and assume it's not human because if he's beta Zoid they should have their own. You know I don't think he was doing American standard. And in episode 2, we also see an exo cop riding a turbo lift and Nala knows 3 droids by name. So robotics are also treated like people sometime. And one of the main reasons I wanted to point out diversity and also female leadership as two of the main positives is one of the things I was worried about in this episode was obviously I'm going to have some negative things to say.

19:23 And I know out there on the Internet things can get some people call it toxic where some people might call it divisive. But regardless, sometimes when some people get negative, they will dip into the, oh, it's too woke type negative. I'm not one of those people. That is not one of my complaints. I'm actually OK with the diversity and the progressiveness and whatever else you want to call it in Star Trek, I'm OK with that is some of the other things that I have problems with. So, so yeah, I diversity is actually one of the positives with me.

19:54 And oddly enough, I feel that way about Star Trek Discovery too. Just by how much? How many other problems I had with Star Trek Discovery? That's not one of them. So just to be clear, when when Todd and I say that we are frustrated with, for example, if he's, we say the writing is a problem, we are not using coded language to try and say we're trying not to say we don't like a character not being a heteronormative or something. We're really OK with most of that stuff. We really might be talking about the writing.

20:24 So yeah, this is a provoke. Same space. Cool. Let people be people podcast so it's all good here and y'all can tune us out if you don't like that. My second positive is that the series OK so the series is trying to sell Starfleet Academy because the series is Starfleet Academy. We are living in an age of hating and hot takes and in order to sell the show they the the series necessitates being pro Starfleet. So for me personally as an older fan, even when the show is off track, it's still promoting something I believe in.

21:06 I like that it's pro Starfleet. It has no choice but to be pro Starfleet because it's Starfleet Academy. Honestly, Michael Burnham has struggles every other episode with Starfleet. Starfleet is constantly making mistakes. But this show is Starfleet Academy, so they want you to like the Academy. They want you to buy their jacket. They sell it in between episodes. So it means a lot to me as people are tearing down everything beloved or popular with hot takes on the Internet and in person. You know that thing you like?

21:44 Here's why it's terrible. This show is trying its hardest to make these new recruits and you, the viewer, and Caleb Mir, our resident hater on the show, is not buying any of this crap. It's trying to make y'all pumped about Starfleet and Starfleet Academy. So they're forced into it, they are promoting it, they're pushing it. And I appreciate that tone as a rank and file supporter from my child. So yes, that is nice. OK. All right. That's interesting. Yeah, I'll, I'll go along with that. Yeah, I can, I can see that as positive.

22:21 All right, so my last one here is production quality. The sets are definitely impressive in size, scope and futuristic look. And the center atrium in the Academy, that set feels almost like it's inspired by the Marriott Marquis in Atlanta, even if it isn't. And I bring that up because because Nick and I are both veterans of Dragon Con and that con takes place at 5 hotels and two other buildings in downtown Atlanta once a year, Labor Day weekend and the main hotels, Marriott Marquis. It definitely has some very interesting architecture on the inside.

23:00 And yeah, the atrium kind of reminds me about that, even if it's not intentional. Yeah, honestly, y'all come out to Dragon Con, find Todd and me, We're on, we're doing stuff, we're around. But they use that set for a lot of stuff. It's in Loki, especially season 2. But yes, there I think my third one is that I think the obvious brush strokes are mostly working for me in this series. If you're over 20 and I think you can, I think you the older viewers can constantly tell what the writers are doing like this character grow sympathetic toward this character.

23:38 Be concerned about this challenge. So things like Holly Hunter's character's quirkiness or the struggle, the structure of each episode in character building or the structure of the season and universe building, I'm mostly buying what they're selling. I think the major criticisms you guys are going to see is that it feels juvenile or cartoonish or melodramatic melodrama. For those of you that don't know, let me define it really, really badly. Think about a person acting on stage and acting for people really far away, where it's like I am the bad guy and I'm twirling my mustache and evil music is played.

24:13 I'm walking over in a big way. So people may say that this series is like that. You may hear it stated more harshly than juvenile or cartoonish or melodramatic. I think those criticisms are true. I think they're fair. However, if you make peace with that, if you accept that that's kind of what it is, they do pretty well with that format. I think most of these new shows are written. This is not intended as a harsh stab or a hot take or mean attack. I think most of these new shows in the Kurtzman era are written for a younger audience.

24:51 They are trying to entice a new generation of viewers, and making this one intentionally about emotional young people was a wise choice since they were already kind of writing in that vein. You're going to have characters who are flying off the handle and dealing with their emotional state and struggling with who they are as a person in their place in the universe. And that's been the process for a lot of shows, especially Discovery. And, you know, they're like, well, why don't we make a show about young people?

25:22 And it kind of fits. So I think it was wise of them to lean into that. I predicted that. And that has kind of been borne out. In fact, I would argue the kids at Starfleet Academy are more mature than I thought they were going to be. Boom. That is kind of a hot tank, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. So you finished your third. Are we ready for Klingon opera? Well, it was that all your positives. That's all my positives. OK, well I this I don't have on my notes, but I'll just say I kind of implied that there's one episode that was a little bit better than the others.

25:54 It's episode 4. It's the Klingon centered episode and they're actually some pretty good things in there, including Captain Dala Ake kind of flirting with an albino Klingon. And it's so weird because she's apparently really short. He's super tall. And and they were reminiscing by the whole time they kind of hitting on each other again. And Jaden Krog, just regardless of what are the problems you might have with that character, it was interesting kind of seeing some of his back story and getting that.

26:21 And so, yeah, that was a a good episode, sort of. Well, and Todd and I talked about this before and we're not necessarily going to delve into every episode, but since you brought Episode 4 up, this is box in Excel. So written, directed by Doug and written by Violo and Glover. And I liked Jaden's back story. It was, you're right, it's a it was a clever episode. We see a young Klingon kind of struggling with not wanting to be a typical Klingon. He's not that interested in eviscerating his enemies.

26:53 He kind of wants to go into medicine.

26:57 I have some negatives to say about that possibly. I don't think it's going to come up in this episode of our podcast, but it's just for the purposes of this episode 4. You know, he's struggling with his family and essentially they disown him and it's a struggle for him. He's wrestling with that. He's shamed because of that because he's been disowned by his family. I don't want to draw a real world comparison, but y'all can imagine a real world comparison where a conservative family disowns a child.

27:27 He carries that shame with him and my character that I was really supporting. Laura thought, kind of suggests to him that in Klingon dogma, his father might have been giving him a kindness or even blessing him in Klingon terms by leaving him behind. Which was just like I was floored. I don't have favorite episodes in this season, but that is that was a cool moment where you take a a shame and you say, you know what? This man saw you where you were and he might have this thing you thought was a a hurtful act was actually possibly as close as this person can come to a generous act.

28:09 I want you all to take that in if it's a good thing. If you take that in as enabling a negative thing, please disregard everything. But yes, so I saw some great stuff in that episode for sure. So Klingon opera if y'all don't know. I think this first came up in Deep Space 9 is. What do you think, Todd? Oh, I think there was a Next Generation episode where I think they might have been looking for Picard or, I don't know, they were looking for somebody. Or maybe it was the the Spock episode. I can't remember if they went somewhere.

28:42 It was kind of like a an alien nightclub and Wharf asked somebody to play a certain song. Yeah, it asked somebody to play a certain song on some kind of futuristic piano or harpsichord or something, and he started singing Klingon opera. You are right listeners. There's an episode of Next Generation where they did a starter wars cantina scene and Wharf brings up Klingon opera and the lady says I don't get a lot of requests for that. Well, in our episode today, Klingon opera is going to fill in for something that others may like and enjoy and that's fine.

29:18 Maybe it's not for me like Klingon opera or Gach if you prefer. That could be this section. So let me start off this section with the first one. And this is a thing of mine that it's the anti authoritarian tone. So I had this conversation with Anthony from over at the Fandom Hybrid podcast when I was unintentionally attacking Discovery and he was defending its positives. The world has changed listeners. It's not a military. I'm not a military loving person, but the formality of Starfleet in Star Trek's original series and even more so in The Next Generation really appealed to me.

29:57 I like the chain of command, people working as a team with respect for leaders who had the final say but listen to all the input and then made decisions that 99% of the time turned out to be right. But times have changed and attitudes towards police, the military, the government, those with authority and power have changed, especially right here at home in the United States. I don't think young audiences appreciate the idea of saying your piece and then letting the person in charge make the call.

30:28 So these news stories in the Kurtzman era have a strong undercurrent of needing to ignore orders and do the right thing, not once or twice, but on a semi weekly basis. Instead of the captain and team turning out to be right, the rebellious upstart who follows their gut and ignores the rules is usually vindicated. And I'm not saying that's right or wrong, I'm just saying it's for a modern audience and I respect that. But I miss people having a coherent team based on trust, respect, hierarchy. It was kind of part of the the the series is that I really like.

31:03 So that was my first thing. Yeah, yeah. I'm saying where I kind of missed the team aspect and the aspirational aspect and just the people being good at their jobs aspect. There's a scene in the first episode where a cadet, now granted she's a cadet, but she's in line. And the first thing she says is I swallowed my calm badge and the doctor's like already I'm like, just how hard do you have to like have a calm badge near your mouth to swallow it? And just maybe you should not be in Starfleet if you're swallowing calm badges.

31:36 So yeah, competence isn't is an issue in some of these shows. Let me see. So my first one, how is this even about a school? Episode 1 is just about getting to San Francisco for the beginning of the school year because as we talked about the school, is it part of the school is a ship. And apparently the ship is out there somewhere. They're bringing it back to San Francisco to reestablish a school there. So episode 1 is just about getting to San Francisco. Todd also feels that the rendition of San Francisco Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair that was played as the Athena hovered past the Golden Gate Bridge and then settled into its spot at Starfleet Academy.

32:12 Campus was an awkward song to play during that moment. Also, it bugs him that the ship is still floating several dozen feet, if not several 100 feet above the ground, which means students and teachers still have to use transporters or shuttles to get to and from the ship part of campus and the ground part of campus. So why bother parking the ship in San Francisco at all? Half of episode 2 was about a about diplomatic stuff that shouldn't have anything to do with Starfleet Academy. Episode 7 is about the equivalent of spring break.

32:43 The beginning of episode 9 already marks the end of the school year, which means the last two episodes don't have anything to do with school. So in a way, there's really only 5 1/2 out of 10 episodes that are even about school. And those episodes were dominated by a prank war, a theater Class, A debate class, one students independent and mishandled research project into Benjamin Cisco. That's episode 5, folks. And an actual training simulation gone awry by a real life threat. So I'm wondering, when exactly do these students ever learn anything about what it means to be Starfleet officers?

33:21 And that's why I love that one scene from episode 10 when Jet Reno is like teaching them on the fly. And it's like, I need more of that scene. That was just one scene. I need more of that. We learned in the first half of episode one that Jaden Krog declared early he's going to major in molecular biology and regenerative therapies. I don't think we ever see him for the rest of the season do anything with biology or therapy. Derren Ramey has already declared for the command division and wants to be a captain.

33:52 What did he ever do throughout the rest of the season that shows him being prepared or be or being prepared for being a captain someday? I think it's also mentioned that Genesis Lythe also wants to be a captain. And about the only significant thing that she's given to do all season is to try to break into records, to undo a recommendation that somebody is giving her to get in to command school. And it's like you're really shooting yourself in the foot here. And it's because of some kind of fear that she has.

34:23 But the fear that she has is very vaguely stated. And so it's like it they're not even given a good enough reason to back up. Why is she shooting herself in the foot? And so and getting into trouble actually messes up that opportunity for her. And it's like, do you want to be a captain or do you not? So it's like, how is this actually about school? It's it's like they're doing a whole bunch of other crap other than school. So following your lead, I am going to jump to one of mine about a similar topic, and that is the pacing about the series.

34:57 So the Harry Potter movies are also set in a school, and it sounds like a fun and exciting location with so many possible story ideas. But there's a problem in production. A school has like hundreds of students and dozens of classes and a host of teachers. And you can depict a lot of that in a book, but in a movie or a show, you often end up with showing Herbology like once for the entire school year. And you have to cut out all of the Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws. And it jumps from the first day of school to Christmas to the big game to final exams.

35:36 So something similar happens in Starfleet Academy, where they'll spend a whole show learning future laser tag, which, if y'all don't know, Starfleet Academy calls Calica, and choosing A-Team captain, which is really important in this episode. And Genesis and Rainey are up for it. And this is going to really determine their entire lives. This is very similar to Quidditch. And then they are never going to mention it again. This is going to happen again for the debate team episode. Or they'll have one class with Jet Reno, and it's the part of the one class where she's saying to do your best.

36:16 And that's like it. That's all we get. Just because in the interest of time and production, just like in Harry Potter movies, you can feel like the entire student body is made-up of three Gryffindors, 3 Slytherins, and Neville. So this first class of a new generation of Starfleet Academy can feel a lot like the same six kids. So Laura Thak, second in command, kind of is often conspicuously absent. And you end up with Jayden the cling. I'm sorry, Jayden the Klingon taking up the entire makeup budget of and his five mostly human friends in every class, every club, every counseling session, every war games, every crisis.

37:00 So there's an actor named Romeo Carrera and he plays he plays the underdeveloped character Occam Sidal. And just because he's a little bit different from our favorites, I've become really excited to see him used. He'll show up every now and then and and expand things a little. Or Jayden's war college boyfriend Kyle, you mentioned you don't need to know Kyle's last name. Todd. It's OK, but. His full name is Kyle Djokovic. He's been given a cardboard personality, Kyle of a producer's son that was sneaked onto the set.

37:37 But it doesn't matter because we see so few kids that I'm like, oh, hey, it's Kyle now. I'll mention this later, but the narrative shortcuts are too obvious and I hope they double the cast in the second season. Likewise, it feels like the show spends a ton of its money on big set pieces, technology, or kooky creatures in the lab so it cuts costs. Like they're the mostly human kids in Starfleet Academy and Todd already mentioned one of them is a full-fledged fish person. But because of plot devices, he's only going to be that for like a second and one episode, and then he's going to be human for quote reasons for the whole rest of the show.

38:22 And there's for mostly human kids over in the War College that are, you know, human ish with a bit of appliques and stuff. So yeah, that's that there. There are some concerns there. Yeah, And there's one kind I, I don't want to say who it is in case it's a spoiler. I don't want to, you know, spoil somebody's surprise. But there is one character, it's kind of a side character, maybe not the best character in the world at 1st. And then just when that character becomes a little bit like almost like, wait a minute, I want to see more of that character, That character, you know, let's just say, is written out, so to speak.

38:59 And it's like, wait a minute. Seriously.

39:04 So yeah, I, I totally agree with you that that's kind of one of my things too. I don't have it written down, but yeah, you're right. What's your next Klingon opera? Everything about this show is half baked, so everything in the show is either underdeveloped, half baked, or at best only half earned. The show should have been about a school, but but it's barely about a school. Character backstories are still underdeveloped. Characters still don't have chemistry or believable camaraderie with each other.

39:34 Almost none of the individual characters are intriguing enough, sympathetic enough, nor just plain cool enough all in their own to be likable. And I've already mentioned the two exceptions, the the concept of the Venari Rawl seems underdeveloped and the Venari Rawl is kind of like a terrorist group that kind of, you know, terrorizes the the whole Galaxy or whatever. Some concepts introduced in episodes seem to have vague or open-ended conclusions. We never see or hear any of Captain Ake's alleged attempts or progress to find Caleb Mears mother, which is an ongoing storyline.

40:10 At least that's what I have in my notes. I was skimming through some episodes of. And I am wrong about that. We do see a hint of her continuing to search for Kayla's mother in episode 2, but I'm not sure it's ever mentioned again. Yeah, I'm not sure she's actually searching like she should be. And then the you've already mentioned this, but the first officer character, Lurethought is missing from several episodes, especially in the second-half of the season. So yeah, it's like they give us stuff, but they don't dive deep and they don't go all the way, and they've only got 10 episodes to do it.

40:44 So if they're going to go deep on anything, they need to step on it. And it's like they're just shallow into the pool the whole season. So I'm glad you mentioned the Venari raw because that brings me to my last thing on opera moment and that is the the amazing Paul Giamatti. So Paul Giamatti has never had a bad performance like Jeffrey Wright. There are there are these actors that if you bring them in, they're going just give them the script. They're going to nail sit back. So he he does a lot with the script, especially in episode 6 where he gets to chew the scenery up with Holly Hunter in this prolonged discussion.

41:27 But I think this high profile bad guy might have been too high profile for me. Like we see him at the beginning flashback as the dirtbag who ruined the lives of multiple major characters and then later he's back as the now leader of the one obvious major threat in the series. We don't know what the Venari Rawl are exactly. They're literally all them guys with Paul Giamatti, like that's, that's their designation. Who are the Venari raw Paul Giamatti's boys. He shows up and there's just these what do they look like?

42:00 Todd and I don't know, we've watched this here. We don't know. They could be in sunglasses, it doesn't matter. Umm, but they're Paul Giamatti's guys. They have no uniform. Umm, they're space pirates, but they couldn't say space pirates. So for the purposes of this show, we can only afford one bad guy, and we got this great actor. So my gosh, we're going to focus on that. Star Trek hasn't usually been Batman where it's defined by like a singular bad guy. Even when you have Osira in the Emerald Chain or the Board Queen, they tend to be presented as though they're one of a handful of bad guys.

42:36 And I mean, you're an adult. Gold Ducat. It's like Gold Ducat is not twirling his mustache in every other episode he he pops in and out. So they write Paul Giamatti, his first appearance, way over the top. I mean, he is acting for the back row, WWF intro music, sparkler fountains. He's like. I'm here, baby. Like you have to be, you have to be braced for. We are trying to get the attention of kids, you know, looking at their phones and and he's doing his darndest. It didn't work especially well for me.

43:18 I think it was I got where they were going with it. He did everything he could with it, but it was frustrating for him. Yeah, everything about that character was frustrating for me. He's Noose, ladies and gentlemen. Noose. His first name is Noose. Yeah, he he basically ruined what could have been some halfway decent episodes. Yeah, he's only in three, but Oh my goodness, the dialogue they give him. We, we love you, Paul. Come on the show, talk to us about the production process. You did great. And I know what they were asking you to do.

43:54 I know what they were. But yeah, if if he had been in a few, let the guy who gets locked up with the lady in the first episode be a rando, you know, let news show up as head of the Nari Rawl in like 3 episodes and be like what are you guys doing? No, we're not doing that, you know. But anyway, he was supposed to carry the whole and the Discovery team has never seen him or heard of him. He's literally everywhere in the universe. If you, you know, ring the doorbell too loud news, Brock and the Venari roll are going to show up and destroy.

44:32 No one else has ever heard of him. It's outside of Starfleet Academy. But anyway, I'm sorry that was one of. The OK, yeah, and there's a reference to something about an origami chicken. What? Don't know what? Does that even mean that's that's one of his lines in the first episode and I can't remember some of his lines in the other episodes that he's in. Like I said, I think he's in three. But yeah, just terrible dialogue. Our supply is fluctuating ship wide. It adds an instructors in lockdown. Polo Transmission.

44:59 Paget throw. 15 long years, but you look radiant as ever a captain. OK. Nusraka. So many things I didn't get to say when last we met. For instance, time, with its infinite sense of humor, will always fold upon itself like an origami chicken. What? Yeah, and this moment, Captain, OK, this moment is that chicken. In other words, paybacks up. So weird. Wait, what did he say? Time, with its infinite sense of humor, will always fall upon itself like an origami chicken. What does that even mean? I don't know.

45:46 Holy makes no sense whatsoever. Who wrote this crap? Who wrote this? I'm going to file a grievance. And actually, when it comes to like fleet stuff and him being everywhere, you're reminding me of something else that bugs me not just about this show, but new Trek in general. And that is giant fleets all warping in at once. You know, in before in Star Trek, it's like this ship is 3 days away, this ship is 1 hour away, This ship is half a day away. Nowadays in Star Trek, it's and it's just two fleets just instantly against each and I'm like, how are they coordinating the arrival of coming out of warp all within like 5 seconds of each other?

46:33 That that's not how this works. That's not how any of this works. That is correct. That those were special circumstances, Todd. They were in a bubble and they were lined up at the border, ready to. Yeah, I mean, it's it's crazy. What what are they on the why? It's like, oh, I'm going a little too fast. I might get there 10 seconds before somebody else let me slow down like one 100th of a war factors. Crazy. Do you have any more? Click on Opera to share. Oh yeah. Oh yeah, yeah. The rest of mine are small.

47:13 I've still got three more with one of them being the, the, the big one that we talked about, Roger. Roger, Roger. Wait, who's Roger? So remember that one of my good things was diversity, one of my bad things, also diversity. So, and this is where I got to be really careful. This is the part that was that was making me nervous ahead of time. So out of our five hybrid characters, it rarely matters that Nala Ake is 422 years old. Laura Thalk is missing in several episodes and she barely looks half Klingon.

47:48 Also depending on the lighting she sometimes looks blue. But Jim Adar have Gray skin and Klingons have much more of like human type skin tones. Genesis Life is half Darsha and probably half human but we never learned anything about the Darsha species. Not they have weird eyebrows, that's all we know. Yeah, I'm sorry, ladies, gentlemen, her her genetic species that makes her not human is a fancy applique eyebrows. She's a very pretty young woman and she's her her Star Trek makeup is cool, bedazzled bejeweled eyebrows, which is just it's great.

48:30 It's a great look it unless you're going for diversity and species. So yeah, I'm sorry. I could take. We never see our half Kardashian half something else professor again. Also her makeup look terrible. Granted Kardashian makeup never looks stellar in the 1st place, but hers look more plasticky than usual. Also when her other nature is revealed, those features are barely visible. And Nusbraka doesn't resemble 1/2 Tellurite nor 1/2 Klingon. His his features just don't look like either. He basically looks like a funky looking human.

49:03 Darem Raimi is fully Taonian who can look human most of the time, but we only see his other form in episode 1. So that's what I was alluding to in the intro. We never see the other form again the entire season, even when he visits his not exactly home world but the moon of his home world. And I think their excuse there was his alternate form is supposed to be aquatic maybe. And instead of going to the home world, they went the moon and the moon is dried up. So supposedly that's why they didn't go in their alternate form.

49:36 But they were also doing a very formal ceremony. So you'd think they would, you know, cave in and and do their their more natural form instead of their human looking form. But they didn't. So we really only see that one time. The only reminder that that character is nonhuman is when he occasionally throws up glitter, which is stupid. Let me see. They introduced the concept of All Worlds Day and instead of making it a cultural exchange learning event like they should because this is a school, it's basically a fancy term for spring break and everybody just goes home.

50:11 Let me see. As for LGBT, we learned that Jet Reno and Laura Thak are a couple, but we barely see any of their relationship. And the show makes a big deal out of having the first gay Klingon. But after he starts dating Kyle, we never really see them together except maybe like in the background. I think there's once they're going somewhere and they're holding hands or something, it's like really? So you're going to the trouble of taking off a whole lot of people who don't want to see a gay Klingon and those of us who are like open minded to it and don't mind it so much, once you make him gay, then it's like you're not even going to do anything with it.

50:46 And I think that's my problem with the diversity overall is sure we have like 5 hybrid characters and a whole bunch of non human characters and they don't do anything with it. This is far trick. Do something with your diversity. Hopefully I did not take anybody. That's you made some really good points there. I hadn't actually thought about that, but you're right. So we live in a very hostile time where there is an element of our society that sees everything they don't like or don't understand. Is it attack on them?

51:19 Yeah. So ladies and gentlemen, if you haven't seen Star Trek Academy yet, and for some reason your introduction to it is listening to Todd and me talk about it, that's wonderful. That's beautiful. Most of the way through this season, Todd and I already mentioned, we've got Jayden, who is a Klingon who's decided he doesn't really like shedding his enemy's blood necessarily, and he's thinking about going into medicine and Starfleet Academy, much to his family's chagrin, because those things are just so patently and Klingon.

51:44 If that was not enough, and that's plenty, Jayden shows up. He starts having feelings for a very nice boy over at the War College. Kyle just love Kyle as the random guy's name. But Kyle and Kyle is about as normal, middle of the road milk toast random as you can get. He's just Kyle. He's just that guy and and Jaden. So I don't believe people pick fights with the angry, sensitive, hypersensitive people. But if they were going to pick a fight, putting a Klingon in a skirt is a pretty good way to do it.

52:20 And, and what Todd is saying resonates with me because you're right, man. I mean, they make a Klingon a medic, OK, And then they make him like a boy, OK, And then they put him in a skirt. Yep, Yep. And then, and then what happens next, viewers? Well, I mean, he puts on pants in the next episode and we don't see Kyle that much. There's a whole thing with the War College. Somebody gets shot, and then the War College kind of isn't mentioned for the last few episodes. Kyle's around, I guess, but we don't really see him again.

52:58 So yeah, we kind of pick those things and then drop them. That's a. That's a very valid point. Yes, you mentioned. Yeah. Oh, I was just going to say I totally agree with you because those weren't in my nose. But I was debating about bringing up the thing about the cling. I don't mind him being gay. I don't mind him being wearing a skirt or a kilt, whatever you want to call it. I don't mind him having stage fright. I don't mind him having daddy issues. I don't mind him. What was the other thing you said?

53:26 Oh, being a scientist instead of a warrior, what is a little bit weird is all those things all at once. It's like it's too many eggs in one basket. And and like I said, you're already going to take off some people with just one of those things and they just keep piling on. And I just can't help but wonder if it's too much for for one character. I kind of feel like they need to ease people into this stuff a little bit better. And then the War College. What is the War College? I don't get it. Why?

53:53 Why is it War College there? Is it a is it a part of Starfleet Academy? Is it not? Why do they share a campus? Why does it matter? It's it's basically just there for them to have an adversary against for stuff like prank wars. And then the war College doesn't even matter later. It's like, what is War College? Why is it there? Yeah. Yeah, the war colleges, the Slytherins, for you listeners, they're just over to the side and they serve a purpose when they serve a purpose. But yeah, it's I have the first half of a thought and bless y'all, I'm going to just throw it out there without resolving it.

54:27 But Klingons have a natural character, and it has to do with a code system of Bushido and courage and honor and these things. And you introduce a Klingon that daringly does not love these things. And that's fine. It's daring and it's different, that's true. But in taking away the essential characteristics of a Klingon, you also run the risk of making a character who's just a character, which is fine. Jaden is an interesting character, but we'd no longer really have a Klingon character necessarily if you're going to take those things away.

55:00 So they kind of hedge their bets. And occasionally he'll lean over and, you know, in tone to a classmate, you know, you never leave a friend alone in battle, you know? And it's like, oh, OK, OK. He's kind of a cling on there for a minute. It's the same thing if we want a Vulcan, but we want him to be like Cybok and Star Trek 5, where he doesn't really believe in logic. You really got a human with pointy ears, which is fine. It's daring, but it's really like an episode. It's not so much. You don't have a Vulcan character.

55:27 So I'm not sure what they're going to do with Jayden. We may see that. My other weird little nitpicks, I guess, are Tatiana Maslany's eyebrows. I'm not sure what they were doing here. And she's she's a wonderful actress. I haven't watched Orphan Black yet, but I've heard nothing but good things. And I'm one of the few people that respect her and she Hulk. But yeah, it's there are weird choices in the show. So are we good on Klingon opera? We've covered a lot. I'm going to look up origami chickens later.

55:57 But the first thing I found was the Internet saying Giamatti admits his character doesn't necessarily make sense, which is great. No, no, no, no he doesn't. Understatement of the century. No, I've still got more. So you refresh my memory and I forgot the one thing about Jaden Krog. Well, for one thing, he also has the the non Klingon sounding name Jayden. I've heard people on the Internet pick about that. But the other thing I, I would, I would be OK with everything else that they would change this one thing and that he's got an annoying voice.

56:30 And I know that Klingons speak with a deeper voice and, and you know, they, they build that extra inflection. But his is so fake sounding. And it's, it's the worst thing is it limits his range. It's like my name is Jayden. I am very sad right now. I am very angry. I am very happy. It all sounds the same and. This is my fault, Todd. I planted these two things in your head. So the first one, the first one is that Nick cracks up because they named the Klingon Jayden. All right, Don't fool yourselves.

57:01 His name's Jayden, all right? It's just the same as naming a Vulcan Justin Timberlake. It's like his name is Justin. Yeah, we all know his name's Justin. You don't have to pretend his name is Jayden, which is funny. That's Will Smith's son's name, Jayden. But the other thing is that in especially in I think the the wedding episode where Raimi is kind of getting married and then getting married and then not married, the director has asked this actor to pronounce Klingon words as though he is having trouble getting them out.

57:35 And the way he does it, this is Kareem Diane, and he is saying each word like that. And that's just how he sucks. It's not as bad in some of the later episodes, but the more you make him talk like Christian Bale's Batman voice, if you make him say a bunch of stuff together, it gets kind of conspicuous. Todd said he can't find a clip from the episode where Jaden gives a wedding speech, but here's a clip from the debate class episode so you can hear what Jaden's voice sounds like. Cadets Mirror. And crop Cadet Mirror for the affirmative, Cadet Craw for the negative.

58:19 Book 12, Code 2398, Subsection 8-9. If engaged in diplomatic relations with species that are not allies, Starfleet officers need not contradict alien morality. There's legal precedent that amends Code 2398 star date 2930.8. Vulcan versus Ka concedes that mortal danger is a matter of subjective perception. How many Klingons are left in the quadrants? Jada enough to know that each Klingon matters? Cadence. Holy crap this hurts my throat just hearing it. It is not the Federation's advantage or place to tell the Klingons who they are, or yours.

59:09 Ever. Seriously, I'm looking through my purse for a throat lozenge right now. I know a Klingon who's rejected the isolationism you say defines all Klingons and now enjoys Federation provided food, safety and resources. A Klingon, please return to your. Podium. To belong to anything, stop. For those who are willing to die for you, stop. And now I left your family because they were willing. You have no idea what? Family needs Ouch. He did fine in episode 10 where he's just sort of like, I don't know what's wrong with your dad, but yeah, for some reason episode 5 was the height of, dude, take a breath, you're allowed to just do a voice.

59:56 But yeah, he was having trouble. That's on me. Yeah, Yeah. All right, so one other thing I have in the negatives, so you know how I talked about production quality in the positives, also in the negatives, production quality, the atrium set, while impressive, is also overdone and not school looking. It looks like that it's where all the money went. And I'm like, you know, cut back on the set, like maybe use like a historical setting and just say we're using old timey sets because I don't know why.

1:00:26 I'm just making an excuse and use something that is, you know, less futuristic. And they work on the writing, you know, pay, pay the writers better, you know, give them a bonus for doing something right every once in a while or something. I don't know. But I wish that there was more focus on writing dialogue and characters. And instead they just went hog wild with the set. And it's like, it is too much. I can see where all the dollars went. And that's not the most important thing. And also, I hate the excessive color correction in outdoor scenes.

1:00:54 This is my complaint in other movies and TV shows. Even the TV show Lois and Clark did that. Todd meant to say Superman and Lois, not Lois and Clark. He makes the mistake again a minute or two from now. Especially in the earlier seasons, I think they might have gotten away with it by the time of season 4, which is like their very best season. I mean, in fact, that was the my favorite season of TV whatever year it was like two or three years ago when Lois and Clark season 4 came out. But I wish that I wish that people would cut it out with the over color correction because I want blue skies to actually look blue and instead they all look washed out in monotone.

1:01:35 And Earth is supposed to be a paradise and I want those outdoor scenes to have blue sky. So yeah, that bugs me. Interesting. Yeah, I missed that.

1:01:46 So our our next section, Section 6, we're talking about the Undiscovered Country. Where would you like to see the show or the franchise go next? And as Todd mentioned, this is a unique time for Paramount and Paramount Plus. We've got hostile takeovers, we've got change of management. Most of the shows are kind of being dropped or officially let go. And Starfleet Academy is unique because I think it was in the middle of filming. So it's about done. So Season 2 is a done deal and they did like to take it back, but it is it's in the books.

1:02:19 So we're going to see another season of this, but everything else seems to be kind of wrapping up. So let me start us off here and where I would like to see things go. I would like the show to increase its cast of students, its variety of bad guys, and its depiction of classes. If it's going to be a school, if they're starting something like the Calico combat game, I need it to come up a couple more times. If they're in a class with Jet Reno teaching temporal mechanics, they need to go back to that Class A couple of times, and they need to mention doing work for temporal mechanics.

1:02:59 It makes it more real for me, so I need to see those things more often. I was really short with that one. Yeah, I yeah, I agree with you on that. In fact, you made some good points and reminded me of something else. I don't know how true this is, but somebody somewhere said that the makers of the show supposedly wanted to do Harry Potter meets X-Men First Class. And I can kind of, yeah, I can kind of see where they're getting that from. I'm thinking it should be kind of like Community, the show about the Community College where we follow a study group, because you were also talking about how sometimes it seems like we only have six students.

1:03:36 And I totally agree with that. I didn't write that down, but I was thinking the same thing you were. And that would help with that by saying that these students, they're a study group, they're or like they are on some kind of team or maybe they could do something kind of like the Sorting Hat and Harry Potter and say that certain people are in pods or something. And that's why these six are the six while we're following them all the time, because it feels like they're in every single class together, no matter how different those classes are.

1:04:06 And like you say, we never see those classes again. It would be more interesting if like we saw them follow one class and maybe they're the study group for that class. But then for other classes, maybe there are other background students and maybe only one or two of them are in this class and only one or two of them are in this other class or something like that. But I know I'm complaining about it needs to feel more like a school. And yes, it would be boring to watch people go to class and for the teacher to say, OK, get on your pads and go to page so and so with this textbook and blah blah blah.

1:04:39 I know that would be boring. But right now it's not enough like a school. I still need to. I still need to see kids following their classes and especially in their concentrations. If they if Jaden Krog is being established as being a scientist or or a future scientist, that we need to see him actually doing lab work or something. And if two of our characters are supposed to be future captains, then I want to see them do command work also. We did see them in a Starship simulation one time this season already, but it was in a scene after something bad had happened in season 6 that the kids were kind of still depressed about.

1:05:24 You mean episode 6, not season 6? It was making them not work well together. And so Jet Reno, as much as I like the character, she was like, you guys suck, just get out of here. And I was like, no, make a teaching moment. So I know that they're doing these Starship simulations, but we're not seeing them. And that's what I want to see more. I want to see these these students actually being prepared to be Starfleet officers. I would think that's what the show should be about. And we're not seeing that.

1:05:52 And even if somebody makes the argument, well, this isn't made for you, it's supposed to be about teenagers and people are in their 20s. So it's supposed to be more of a young show, and it can be a little bit more soap opera. OK, I could actually accept that, too. Except, as I said in one of my complaints, I really don't like these characters that much. You know, I went through a phase. I can't remember if I was in my 20s or in my 30s, but one of the channels was doing, like, marathons of nine O 21-O on Sundays.

1:06:25 And I used to watch several episodes of nine O 21-O in a row, even though I was like 10-15 years older than those characters, not much older than the actors, but 10 or 15 years older. So I can watch that stuff and follow it and say like, OK, yeah, these are younger. I have to adjust my thinking, but I still have to like the characters too. And I just don't like these characters enough. So even if it's going to be less about their classes and more about their social structure and them as characters, OK, well then just make them cooler characters then.

1:06:58 And so. Yeah, I I'm hoping that we see an improvement in the overall writing and character development in Season 2, which like I said, might be the only season we get left. So I'm going to save my comments on that to #3 and I'm going to go to number 2. So to any of our listeners who don't know, there has been a fan push for a completely made-up, completely not validated project called Star Trek Legacy, partly based on the last moments of the Picard series, where we see a Star Trek alum becoming captain of a new Enterprise and fans want to see a series that brings back a bunch of beloved characters and actors from the franchise's past.

1:07:40 I'm fine with that. I don't need to see it per SE, because my favorite people are TOS and TNG, and we've probably gotten the most we're going to get out of those characters. But I do think it taps into our phantom desire for more connections to the entire franchise. So I want to see whether it be that way or in the show like this, I want to see more continuity connections. Every time we see the name of a past ship or character, the Phantom gets all excited and people chalk it up to fan service. They say, oh it's just fan service, but I think it's about universe building.

1:08:19 The more you connect these things, the more you lift up the past. It actually makes the present a lot more weighted as well, and I don't think people appreciate that enough. So like Doctor Who, if you guys have been watching Doctor Who will make up a new creepy alien every other episode. But there's a reason that we keep coming back to the Daleks and the Cybermen and why we keep mentioning previous Doctor from the Golden Age. It's not just fan service. We don't mention Tom Baker because Nick is like, I like Tom Baker.

1:08:51 We mention it because it gives the present more weight as well, if you tie it into a whole elaborate history. So I want to see more of that. I want the Star Trek writers to do what The Who writers did and pour through these old stories, mining them for even more characters and planets and plot devices. I don't mean have a cadet in the background with their face half black and half white. Yes, that's nice, but it's more like fun set decoration than writing. We've gotten a bunch of fun set decoration in Starfleet Academy.

1:09:24 They do what I'm talking about now, like the Gem Hadar lady. But we need more. A lot more. There's a ton of established Canon Star Trek universe out there. So like bringing in the planet Beta Zed was a very smart move. They did not make this about Deanna Troi or Lawaksana Troi. No one in the whole show mentioned the Chalice of Reeks. OK, I don't think they did. They maybe they did, but it's not just callbacks. It's not fanservice, it's connection. So if you mention the planet Beta Zed, you're really not saying, hey, we see you, Star Trek Next Generation fans.

1:10:02 What you're really saying is Beta Zed still exists because this is a real universe and we're not pretending like everything is new every five. It makes everything better. So yeah, it lifts up the old series, but it also makes the new series very, very valid. Want to see a lot more of that? Yeah, and as far as Beta ZI think that's another half baked thing is that they spent a whole episode concentrating on Beta Z as if it's the most important thing in the world. And I think, OK, but why? And I don't think they really explain why Beta Z is so great in the in the future.

1:10:34 That's true. And then let me see the other thing that you mentioned. Oh, Star Trek Legacy. Yeah. So that is supposed to be a continuation of Star Trek Picard Season 3 with Seven of Nine as the captain. Rafi Musiker, A character I can't stand being first officer. It would have a character named Jack. I won't say what his last name is in case that's a spoiler. At least one of Jordy Laforge's kids in there. And they would be on a Starship that gets renamed at the end of that season to a name that it doesn't deserve.

1:11:16 So yeah. So yeah, a whole bunch of fans are like, oh, please let Star Trek Legacy happen. For the love of everything good and holy, let Star Trek Legacy not happen. I don't want to see Star Trek Legacy. It is way too connected to Star Trek Picard. And everybody's like, oh, Star Trek Picard. Season 3 was a redemption, and it was so much better than the first season. No, it it was terrible too. In fact, I would say Season 2, oddly enough, is the least egregious of the three seasons. I mean, yes, it was great for nostalgic purposes to see everybody come back for Season 3.

1:11:48 How? How could it not be great or not great? How could it not be nostalgic? But it was nostalgia for the sake of nostalgia. The story still was terrible. As I complained in one of our previous episodes, when we did the Star Trek Primer, they lifted like half of the story from something they already did in the Star Trek original series movies. No, no, no, like no legacy. So, yeah, I would be OK. Never seen that happen. As far as where I do want to go, I don't know exactly. Just pick, as far as I'm concerned, just pick a direction and then do it well.

1:12:29 Because right now, I just think that the people in charge of Star Trek, I don't know, I've heard people accuse Alex Kurtzman of not even liking Star Trek. And I'm not in the guy's head and I haven't had a conversation with him and I haven't looked for every interview that he's in. But when people make that argument, I'm like, there might be something to that. Because here lately, it seems like with Star Trek, they keep wanting to reshape it into something new. And don't get me wrong, I know that that's kind of what they have to do to a certain extent with each new series, but it likes, it's like they want to take it too far and then it's not enough to just go a different direction.

1:13:10 Kind of like Deep Space 9 went. It was very controversial in that it went more political and religious, and more importantly, it was on a space station instead of a spaceship. And so that was a very different format, but they made it work and it still felt like Star Trek, just a different kind of Star Trek. And nowadays it feels like they just want to take Star Trek and just do something different with it. But not just that, they want to take stuff that was in the past and change it too. And it's like they want to rewrite the history.

1:13:40 And I wish they would stop doing that. And I think one of the best things that they could do is go ahead and establish that Star Trek takes place in a multiverse. And in a way they already have. You've got the prime universe with the with the shows that were out in the 60s and the 90s and the early 2000s. That's all like the prime universe. But you also have the mirror universe, which was dealt with in the original series, Deep Space 9, and yes, even a little bit of Discovery. And so that's its own universe.

1:14:14 And then you've also got the Kelvin universe. So right there you've got potentially 4 universes. I know they want to say that all modern Star Trek is also part of the prime universe. They need to get over that because, you know, I've talked a little bit about the whole takeover. I don't know how true this is, but according to one resource online I follow, if he is right, if he is accurate, Alex Kurtzman's production company owns half of all the stuff that they have done in new Star Trek. Like if they talk about the Enterprise Oregon spot that was already there so Paramount owns that.

1:14:47 But if they in in Captain Pike and stuff like that. But any character or concept that is new, like the Discovery or or Michael Burnham, that is technically owned by Alex Kurtzman's production company at least. Yeah. So when they continue the Star Trek franchise, and if they do it without Kurdsman, they're either going to have to get his permission or pay him a little extra if they want to include the things from his era. So the thing I think they ought to do is just consider his era an entirely separate universe and then never reference it again.

1:15:20 And that way it makes the fans of those shows happy because they're still technically Canon, just Canon in another universe. And it makes fans like me happy because even though I don't like those shows, it's separate. It's a separate sandbox, and it's not ruining it for everybody else. But then we can either get back to the Prime universe or do an entirely new spin off universe. And then that way it's its own sandbox and it's not harming anything else either. So that's what I think they ought to do, is establish A multiverse and let everything be its own separate thing.

1:15:53 Well, I mean, I'd like to disagree with you, but the system that you're describing sounds like that's the most conducive thing. I mean, and once you do that. So if I sift through everything that I've seen in all of these serieses and I decide I like one thing like the Kardashian lady or Jet Reno or something, and I'm like, it ends up being like Venom and Spider Man and I'm going to like make a small pocket deal to bring 1 character over or something. So yeah, I don't have a dog in that race. That that makes sense to me.

1:16:32 I'm I'm not sure what they should do with the the whole shake up with ownership. Licensing and ownership is like an ugly convoluted thing. And it ticks me off that lawyers will dictate where characters go. That seems just like a terrible thing in at least a bad places. But my next undiscovered Country, I mentioned limited casting and it frustrates me in Discovery that they keep having OK, so over in the show Discovery, there is this character played by Emily Koots and Emily Koots, she goes through elaborate makeup to play Detmer.

1:17:14 Detmer has, she gets blown up in the first episode and then she has a prosthetic for like the rest of the series. And week after week, they give Detmer almost nothing to do. I'm watching Detmer and I'm like this poor woman, Emily Kuz, She's showing up. She's part of the crew, She's on the bridge. There's so many people on the bridge and there's nothing for Detmer to. They eventually give her a few lines. But in this show at the Starfleet Academy, frankly, we need a lot of debtors. We need to pay several actors and actresses to be that one Andorian or Kelpian or Nausican student who it feels is it feels like they're always around in these classes.

1:17:58 Yes, you have to give them some lines. Sometimes you're going to have to pay them more than the basic fee. But maybe in Season 2 they'll have more budget and flush out the student body. If the crew wants to cut some corners, fine. You know we can get some mostly static rubber masks, some fast applique Cyborg bits or helmets or something. We could have a few characters like Mourn in Deep Space 9. Fans love when a character is ridiculously overtly sidelined. So there's like a person in a hood with like little elephant trunk sticking out.

1:18:33 We never see their face, but everyone keeps referring to how opinionated their personality is off screen. You get crazy with it. People love that stuff. And I mean, Todd mentions Community. So Community has that crew, that core central group, but it also has Leonard and Vicki Starburn's Garrett magnitude. Todd frankly. So you convinced me, Todd. I don't want it to be silly like Community, but I want the writers to watch episodes of Community just to appreciate the role of B tier characters. I need Season 2 of Starfleet Academy to have a bunch of B tier characters like Vicki who are wandering through and they're always Vicki, but they're just like, you know, they're like star burns.

1:19:17 What are you doing? It's like, my name is Alex. Will you guys quit calling me that? It's just, that would be great. It would flesh it out. I I'm so glad that you remembered those names because I was racking my brain for those names and I could only think of Leonard. I love community. Yeah, I'm, I'm big on community, y'all. And and based on what Todd said earlier, if you guys are listening to this quietly in the background and you'd love nothing more than to hear and me and Todd go through and talk about Star Trek Picard, You know, write us those emails.

1:19:45 Let us know because otherwise we are not going to. But you'd have to write quite a bit for us to actually rewatch it. I don't, I don't plan on doing that. But I mean, I guess we could cut just to season 2, like you said, Todd, But yeah, yeah, let us know if you're interested in that because currently that is not the plan. Oh my goodness, do I do I have the strength to rewatch Season 1? Barely. Not likely, but. Possible. Barely. I seriously doubt that. Do you know what kind of torture? That is, that would be a hell no.

1:20:15 For me, thanks. Oh my goodness. Well, we can still do an episode just about the card, but yes y'all let us know what you want. Are we, are we ready for section 6.5? Yeah. I think so, yeah. All right, so we are going to take a minute because there's one episode of this entire series that's a little bit different from the others. Yeah, there's some fanservice. I don't like that term. I just call it references. But throughout the show, there are random aliens and stuff thrown in different times. But Episode 5 stood out from the whole series.

1:20:52 Todd and I were ready to just talk about episode 5 when it came out. But I'm like, you know what? Hold off, Todd. Let's see if there's another episode 5. Let's see if there's something else. And there was not. Episode 5 was the most callback reference to established lore episode of the whole season. So we're just going to take just just a minute. It will take a lot longer than that. How long? Five. Maybe 6 minutes? This will take a little. While to sink in I suppose, and longer than that to comprehend the data.

1:21:22 This will not be a walk in the pun all decks brace for. Impact and do sort of what Todd is casually called a drive by. We're going to take a look at a few of the choices that were made in episode 5. This is directed by Larry Tang and written by Kirsten Bayer and Tawny Newsome. Yes, listeners, the tawny Newsome from Star Trek lower decks who is a self-proclaimed Star Trek nerd lover of many things track Tommy Newsome. She is mariner in that show and she's an interesting lady. So this is the one where Sam, our hologram girl series acquisition mill, is told that she only has a couple of days to understand everything about humans, even though on the makers planet those couple of days are like years.

1:22:09 And she latches on to the word emissary because she's an ambassador. But instead she latches on the emissary. So she starts researching Benjamin Cisco from Deep Space 9. She's determined to figure out what happened to him. This is a hologram of Jake Cisco talking about his dad and her Kardashian teacher, you know, encourages her, I guess you could say without me getting more into it. At the same time, we have Nala Ake cutting the ice with the War College chancellor Kelrick, who doesn't like her because she's quit Starfleet, so he's kind of counting her out.

1:22:42 We haven't talked about Kill Rick. He's the up top guy, uptight guy next door who doesn't seem to actually affect the plot in much way. And he likes tea. There you go, listeners. And she works with Jet Reno and the Doctor to prep him for a big ambassador meeting. Our hologram girl gets drunk, mirror modifies for code so that she can drink and get drunk. And mirror. And Tarima, this is Troy Junior, pretty, pretty girl playing the beta Zed girl. They hook up some more and Jaden and Kyle hang out some at the club.

1:23:12 So that's generally what happens in this episode. But Todd, if you want to take it away and say a couple of things that struck you about this episode. OK, so if you haven't figured out already, this is the one that I struggle with. In fact, I was going to try to articulate myself as carefully and thoroughly as possible. I even started writing basically an essay on this, but when I practiced it in my head, the unfinished version I wasn't all the way done was already going to take me 8 minutes. So that's why Nick says we're going to do like a drive by of this because I'm not going to be able to do the deep dive into.

1:23:46 It just a warning folks, he does the deep dive anyway. If you have wine, start drinking now like me. But anyway, my first complaint is just the overall presentation aspect of this episode, because that starts from like second one. It starts before we even get like a shot of the school. It's when it says like this is a CBS production, then there's like a squiggle on top of that and there's like weird writing on top of that that shows that that this is going to be a very weirdly presented episode.

1:24:18 And just in that first minute, everything about the music, the voiceover, the graphics, the editing, the performance of the Sam character, the 4th wall breaking, etcetera. All of that was annoying and or immature and or off putting. So more complaints later, but I mean it just gets off to a weird start and is just presented in a strange way. OK, in the 90s a movie came out called Stardust, and one of the things that made me not like it was that one of the reviews overshot it. It tried to blow it up by saying this was better than The Princess Bride.

1:25:04 The Discerning Geeks Portal Podcast reviewed the movie Stardust in their episode #46 Todd was a grump Meister general in that episode too. Ruin Stardust for me, ladies and gentlemen, because Stardust is good. It's a fine movie, go enjoy it, It's fun. But it is no Princess Bride. No one thinks it's The Princess Bride, but by comparing it, they dropped it horribly. So Todd and I, before seeing episode 5 of Starfleet Academy, heard the phrase. One of us is going to say it eventually, a love letter to fan of Deep Space 9 and and one of us is a deep fan of Deep Space 9.

1:25:45 And that I got to say, man, if you're going to put it on a pedestal, you are just setting yourself up. So yeah, I did not have the visceral reaction Todd did, but it's already sounding the way you described it. Like once you put it up there, some of the little things that might not have been that big a deal in the other episodes are going to be a bigger deal in this episode because it's trying to be something it's not. Yeah. So you've already talked about how Sam is the character that kind of researches Benjamin Cisco because she considers herself to be an emissary herself because she is the only photonic person who has left her planet.

1:26:30 She is basically like a hologram and they don't do a great job of ever explaining what exactly is projecting the hologram. Does she have like a projector inside of her, kind of the way the Doctor does, who is also a character of this. But regardless, Sam is just an annoying character. So on top of the annoying presentation, we get the annoying character who's looking into all of this. Oh and also I almost forgot about this, but I've also got my notes that she is basically the equivalent of a 17 year old.

1:27:01 So she acts kind of immature and she was created 217 days ago. But you also brought up something that we don't even discover until I think it's episode 8, which is that her planet runs on a different speed of time than the rest of the universe. So which 217 days? Is that 217 Earth days? Or is it 217 Caskeian days? And if it's 200 70 Earth days and that means years in CAT scan. And I don't know it, it's it's weird. So But anyway, the whole story about her researching Benjamin Sisko is annoying, at least partially because she is annoying.

1:27:42 And I'm still not even getting to the the the worst part yet. But yeah, so did. Did you have problems with this episode or is it just me? I did not have the problems with it that you had. It bothered me because the plot of the episode is this kid and she is she's, she's not even a kid like the other kids in the series who are all late teens, 20s kids. She's like Todd just said, she's practically a newborn. She is a 5 year old who can walk around and talk as though she's a 20 something, but she is completely wide eyed enjoying the experience of the world.

1:28:23 What this plot is, is this toddler wandering into Star Trek lore and saying this is really cool, I'm going to experience it and she wanders around excited about it for the episode. So part of this is them going to a bar that Cisco once went to hundreds of years before and getting drunk and dancing in the bar that Cisco was in once. This is kind of what the episode is about. It's not about Cisco exactly. It's about it's about this young girl's experience. So it's exactly the same. If you guys hung out with me at college and I said that I was really into Faulkner, so I was going to get loaded on whiskey and walk through the park talking about Faulkner.

1:29:09 It's not. If you really liked Faulkner a lot, you might be kind of frustrated with me, and I think that's kind of Todd's experience. So I can understand why the episode was weird. It wasn't, especially for Deep Space 9 fans. It was still like the rest of the series for a younger demographic, but with these olive branches that were intended to hoax determined fans into the series. And there were some nice ones. So I appreciated the things that might have frustrated Todd Moore. I think if you come close to doing something good, sometimes it can be a bigger insult.

1:29:52 And I didn't have that, so I'm not. I'm not devoted to Deep Space 9 the same way. So there are meager attempts. To me, work came across as what's nice. Y'all try. All right, so, so you're, you're getting me there. All right, so the so you talked about her going and getting drunk. That was the worst part of all because it was to a bar that technically did not exist anymore. But they were like, oh, yeah, it doesn't have the same name, but there's a spot in the same place. We could always go to it.

1:30:19 So of course, you know, it's been 800 years. They probably tore down the old one and they got a new one. So it's like, it's not even the same place, but she goes there thinking she's going to have some kind of spiritual experience getting close to Cisco or, or learning what it's like to be an emissary just by going to a bar and getting drunk. She usually can't even get drunk. Not Darren. What's the other guy's name? Caleb has to mess with her programming. And at first I thought he just started doing it without her permission.

1:30:44 But I was rewatching it today and yes, he was like, hey, give me access to your program. And he pulled it up and he was like, oh, I can adjust this. And, you know, a lot of you get drunk and then later he just turns it off and she's instantly sober and everything. But anyway, so yeah, she's very misguided how she's even doing this research and trying to figure out what it's like to be an emissary. So she's just going to a bar? That's dumb. Let me see. There was something else that you mentioned, but I think I forgot that.

1:31:09 Well, anyway, the reason my brain explodes on this, it takes some knowledge of what the series finale was for Deep Space 9. So if anybody wants to watch Deep Space 9, but this is a spoiler for anybody, you might have to skip ahead a little bit. And the only way to truly understand this episode because it deals with something that was in the series finale. So it's not just me giving the spoiler, the show the spoiler too. So here we go. It is that in the series finale of D Space 9, Cisco is confronted with, let's just say the bad guy won't give every detail away, but he's conferring with the bad guy.

1:31:46 There's a confrontation. They both kind of fall down, something the bad guy burns up. Cisco would too, But because Cisco has a special relationship with the prophets, who are these aliens in the wormhole who the Bajorans worship as prophets and they call the wormhole the Celestial Temple. He is saved by them, pulled into the Celestial Temple, and so he's supposedly not killed. And that's one of the things that they're exploring in this episode is whether he died or whether he's in the Celestial temple or something else happened.

1:32:19 But the original plan from the writers, and I did a little bit of searching on the Internet, supposedly this is true. The writers intended for Cisco to be in the Celestial Temple forever. The problem with that was his character. And again, more spoilers here for season 7, but his character had recently gotten married and his second wife was pregnant with their first child together. And so if Cisco had been with the prophets forever, he basically would have been leaving his pregnant wife. So Avery Brooks, the actor that played him, had a problem with that.

1:32:51 And rightly so. Expressed with the producers, they agreed and they put in a line of dialogue where he would kind of appear to Cassie Yates, his wife, in a vision, saying the prophets want me to do something. I had to stay with them, but I will return. And he kind of comes up with like a nonlinear, cryptic way of saying it could be a year from now, it could be yesterday or something like that. But anyway. Where are we? That's the last June temple. This is Kim. Let's go home.

1:33:25 Oh God, this is. It's difficult to explain. It's not linear. I like my destiny. The prophets saved and cast. I'm their emissary and they still have a great deal for me to do. But first, there is much to learn, Things only the prophets can teach me. I hope you be there. It's hard to say, maybe a year, maybe yesterday, but I will be back. And I will be waiting. But I will be back. But I will be back. He he very clearly says he will return and that is the hope of me and a lot of other fans that he would return.

1:34:22 And because it was serious finale, of course we don't know that he returned, but the assumption was there. We even see in the very last shot of all of Deep Space 9, we see his all his teenage, maybe possibly almost adult son looking out the window of Deep Space 9 and his father being in the wormhole. Up walks Colonel Kira who looks out and instead she's looking at the Celestial Temple and saying that her friend, her commanding officer, and more importantly her emissary is in the Celestial Temple and they're both like waiting for him to return.

1:34:55 And the part that makes my head explode is this episode of Star Trek Starfleet Academy basically implies very heavily that he never returned. So here it is. You've got this thing that should have been like this religious thing. He he said that he would return. It was Avery Brooks. Who? Who? Who campaign for this to say, look, he needs return. I don't like the the optics of a father, especially a black father, skipping out on his pregnant wife. And they agreed and they said OK, your turn. And now these writers, including the one you mentioned who is also black herself, which is why I don't get this, says Oh no, he skipped out on his pregnant wife and he never returned.

1:35:38 I just I don't get it. And to me it is just blasphemy to deep space 9 and there's even a character. OK I did see this in my notes because I didn't remember this but it I I noticed it in the in my rewatch today. It was Derrim Ramey the guy who is supposedly like a blue skin alien but we only see it one time. He even says, crap, where is it? Well, anyway, I'll try to do it from memory. He says that basically this guy is Schrodinger's prophet. Either he exists in one way or he exists in another, but as long as the as long as we don't ask the question, either answer exists and everybody wins.

1:36:20 He even says that everybody wins and he's right. If you want to be one of those people that believes that he's in the Celestial temple and that means something to you, maybe that happened. If one of the people that believes that he burned up in the fire caves and and everything that happened, the prophets was just spiritual and not physical, OK, then you're satisfied. But if you're one of the people like me, that was like, no, he should have returned. He should not have skipped down on his pregnant wife.

1:36:43 The actor got the producers to agree. They put in the lion dialogue to say that he returned. He should have returned. There's still a possibility that he returned. In fact, I forgot I did have time to do the research on this, but supposedly there's like a novel that says he returned. There's a comic book series that says he returned and they both handled it different ways. But obviously everybody thinks that he should return except the writers of this show. They think Nah and we're just going to say that he skipped on his pregnant wife.

1:37:10 And they justify it by saying that C Rock Lofton, the actor that played Jake is, is already established adult son appears in this as an adult, you know, talking about his dad as a hologram in one scene in the museum. And then also as something I don't know, he appears to Sam later. I can't tell if it's another hologram, if it's her a hallucination, if it's her inner dialogue, if he himself is in a celestial temple and he's actually appearing to her as a, as a, as a not an image of what I want to say.

1:37:48 Yeah, a manifestation. He's appearing to her, to her in, in some way. I don't know. It's so super vague. It's like the show wants to say something while at the same time saying nothing at all. But basically, despite saying nothing at all, still getting enough of the point across that he never returned. And a lot of fans I've seen online are saying, well, there's still wiggle room. Maybe he did come back, but his family's keeping it secret. Or maybe he pulled them into the celestial temple with them.

1:38:16 The thing is, they're not saying any of that. And there's even a thing on the wall that she goes to at the that Sam goes to at the museum that shows a a family tree and it shows him being married to Cassidy. But there's no kid. So are they implying that the kid is like a secret to the rest of the world? Or does she have a miscarriage? Which is super depressing, which I wouldn't put it past these writers because that's another thing that they keep doing. Star Trek is is keep putting a whole bunch of depressing stuff in like like Ryker Troy losing a kid and stuff like that.

1:38:48 It's like these writers are just super depressing. Like let something happy happen every once in a while. But anyway, we don't know what happened to that other kid. And so sure, Jake shows up, but what about his half sister or half brother? And what if maybe Cisco and Cassidy had multiple kids if he had come back? Todd paused the scene with the family tree in the museum scene and in addition to the tree not showing Cassidy's son or daughter, Cassidy Yates is the only person on the whole tree without the last name Cisco.

1:39:17 Does that mean that every single person in the Cisco family except Cassidy take on the Cisco family name? Wouldn't it make sense that there would be at least a few ancestors and or descendants who took the last names of their respective spouses? Also, Memory Alphalis Cassidy is hyphenating her last name Yates Cisco, so the episode gets that wrong too. Sweet Christmas. I hate agreeing with Todd but he's right. This really is a dumb episode. It just, it blows my mind that they missed such an opportunity to say, yeah, he came back.

1:39:49 Also, this show ends without Bejor joining the Federation. What if he had come back and he helped Bejor, you know, get in the Federation, and that continued his work as the emissary? But no, they just miss all that by saying, Nah, after this, after the series finale of D Space Nine. Yeah, now he's just gone. Deceivable. I see and my brain just explodes all over again just thinking about it. To add some context, OK, And I'm going to give away the thing that you were doing a really good job of not giving away.

1:40:19 So Sam's teacher that accidentally puts her on this path by accidentally using the word emissary instead of ambassador and the whole episode crumbles if Sam just seizes on the word ambassador instead of emissary. He makes another good point. But her she turns out this Kardashian woman turns out to be Dax years and years and years in the future, generations later, Dax has survived. And this is John Zia and Esri but in a new body generations later. So she's personally been a friend with Cisco, and she's teaching at Starfleet Academy now in a Cardassian Trill hybrid body.

1:41:06 And this is a twist and. What? What strikes me about everything Todd just said is that people are going to take this one of two ways. You can take it as a positive or a negative. So what what you're talking about, Todd, I see as passion because you have taken something so seriously that you can imagine that universe and you care about the details. And all you ask is that writers feel like they too care about the details and it makes a huge difference if they do or don't. So when I was a slow reader in the 90s, I started reading the Heir to the Empire Star Wars books by Timothy Zahn.

1:41:52 These are the much lauded favorite books are of a lot of extended universe fans. And the truth is Timothy Zahn, I think did the same thing that these writers of this episode did. There is a sort of, I don't want to be mean, but the world is full of hot takes right now. A coward's way out where you you aren't sure what to do, so you try not to answer a question. And in those books, they have a problem because they depict what happens to our trio after the events of the Star Wars movies in the 80s.

1:42:27 Well, what do you do? Are you going to write new content for Yoda and Obi Wan? And what they did essentially do is they don't. They say that the two of them sort of faded away. And what they were trying to do was not put words into the mouth of legendary characters. They were trying to honor something by not saying something, but like Cisco, what you end up doing by trying to honor something and not put words in its mouth is you end up saying something disappears and doesn't matter and doesn't do anything else.

1:43:02 Yeah, yeah. Thank you. Yeah, that's a good way to put it. Why would they do that to me? I I think that they thought they could hedge their bets and leave Cisco's fate ambiguous. And Sam is told this at the beginning, that it's a mystery without an answer and they thought they could get all the way through. But there were these threads and somebody on the production team knew that Cisco had a child with Cassidy. I'm not a devotee of Deep Space 9, but I knew about Cassidy and I knew that these things would matter.

1:43:41 So the choice not to have the child listed in a chronology on the screen like you, if you hire anybody off the street to write a Cisco family tree, we're going to put it on a screen. They're going to ask that question. So they deliberately omitted it. Tell me what? Are the writers? Doing to my baby. Are they killing it? What does that say? Sometimes it's interesting to see just how bad bad writing can be. Well, the people who are frustrated are going to be more frustrated now. The people like me who weren't that committed, we are going to fall for a lot of the things that are fond and nice.

1:44:20 So I like this Dax shows up. I like that Cerec Lofton is in there. When Todd might talk about it the first time, I'm like, well, you know, these things were good and kind and generous and sweet and nice. It's just they were not caring about those details. And This is why. If you guys hear me rant about a couple of the Star Trek ventures that set me off, it's the exact same thing Todd is talking about where there is a bit of lore that matters to me. And that's a good thing. It means I'm invested.

1:44:58 I should be your bread and butter. You know you want to. I'm not being nitpicky. And I think that's the problem. They will listen to us older Trekkies talk and they will either say they really care about it. Let's let's look at the details. Or they will say nothing will satisfy these people, shake them off. And a lot of the new content is going to lean in that direction. The thing is, the writers got away with it. This one didn't all the way do it. I think it might frustrate Todd me more because it it tried to be in the middle.

1:45:28 If it's bad, I'll hate it because I hate bad, right? If it was the Kelvin universe and Trills were all blonde women from Earth and it was all made-up and weird, you know, it might hurt less because it's just random, you know, and Cisco is a Vulcan. It doesn't, you know, we're just making stuff up. It's crazy, It's fun, let's have fun. But if you try and you put it in the same universe, it maybe it's more hurtful somehow because you're like, how could you just drop this? But yes, I get where you're coming from man.

1:46:06 Yeah, and I've also seen some people online make the argument, well, Avery Brooks is retired from acting and some people, if you can say he's a little eccentric in his age. And I don't know, the one time I saw him at Dragon Con, I'm like, yeah, maybe he is. But anyway, they said he's retired from acting, so they couldn't get him for the episode. And I'm like, So what? That doesn't make any difference whether you make his character return because it's 800 years ago. It's going to be history either way.

1:46:31 So say that he returned and you don't have to show him that's that. Again, that's the whole point of this. This is supposed to be a school. So she could be learning this through, you know, books, computer screens, whatever. And they don't even have to show his face or whatever. They can just, they can just learn that yes, he he did return. And then you, you don't need the actor, but some people want to make the excuse that that's why they did it the way they did, because they couldn't get the actor.

1:46:54 You can still do it the other way and still not have the actor. I, I don't see how that is the reason. And I, I kind of got off on a tangent, but I was trying to explain earlier that some people justify it by saying that Siric will often appear on the show. So that must be kind of like the justification saying that that was his blessing that this episode was OK. Also, they did have Ciscos voice, but it turns out it wasn't even Cisco. It was an album of poetry that Avery Brooks did a few years after Deep Space 9 and he somehow gave them permission to use a few lines from that poetry and that's what they stick at the end.

1:47:31 So it's yes, it's Avery Brooks voice, but it wasn't something that he recorded brand new for this episode. And people have said, well, he must have given them his blessing or, or whatever. OK Cerec Lofton is still an actor. I don't know if he's a working actor all the time, but I'm sure he got paid for the appearance. And and if Cisco or Avery Brooks is retired from from acting, he hadn't given them permission for a few lines of, of poetry is like rags. That's bread crumbs. I mean, he's he's like here.

1:48:02 Yeah, take, take this. Leave me alone. So I don't see how that is supposed to be any big endorsement. As far as the Dax thing, I have mixed feelings about that. I'm I'm mostly OK with it. There were also some people online who nitpick about that and said that symbios aren't supposed to live that long. And I admit I didn't even know that. But I can hand away that and say in 800 years they found ways of advancing the life of of symbios. And so I can, I can deal with that. But yeah, my main problem is no matter what, no matter what, get the act, not get the the actor, get Sarah Loft and not get him.

1:48:38 Have a blessing, not a blessing. Make Cisco return because he said he would and because it's important. And I know I factored in the the part about him being a black father, about that being important. And I know a white guy, so I'm probably totally unqualified to talk about that. But I like I said, I did like a little bit of research. I probably should have done more to to like make this super solid. But it doesn't take much of A Google search to get that. Yes, apparently Avery Brooks did say that by by him abandoning his pregnant wife.

1:49:11 It did. Let me see what is the way that Google AI worded this. It echoed negative tropes of black fathers abandoning their families. And again, I don't know how bad that trope is. I don't know if that's was only in the 90s. I don't know if it's still going on. Again, I'm I'm unqualified to talk about this subject, but apparently it did matter to him and and that's why they changed it and to to where he said he would come back. And it's why when they did in the novels and they did in comics that they did their own version of him coming back.

1:49:45 Why did this show do a version of him not coming back? It is just absolute insanity to me. I do not get that is the last thing. If they said, well, you know what? He actually did burn up in the fire caves and only his spirit was taken into the celestial temple so he couldn't come back. I would like that explanation better than just saying Nah. He just skipped out on his pregnant wife. So we leave it to you, the listener. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, and if you want to say, well, he may have said that he would come back, but maybe he shouldn't have said that because maybe he didn't have the permission of the prophets.

1:50:21 Maybe they're the ones that wouldn't let him or something. Well, then screw the prophets. If he if he says he's coming back, then he should have, you know, checked with him ahead of time. It's like, I'm going to tell my wife and come back. I, you better let me mean it. And they should have been like, yeah, yeah, you can do it. We've got some stuff for you to do. You're the emissary. We've got some tests for you to do. But yes, we'll let you go back every once in a while because we know that you had this.

1:50:43 You're the bridge between our nonlinear way of existing and the linear lifestyle. And so yes, we realized that even if we get you to do things, we're going to have to let you go back. Also, some people have said online, well, because they're nonlinear, they could like have him do like thousands of years of tasks for them and then put him right back in the timeline where he was. OK, great. We'll say that that's what happened, but they didn't even say that. And that's what frustrates me so much is that they so clearly say that he either did not return or if he did, he did so super in secret and nobody really knew about it.

1:51:24 But it they really make it sound like he did not return. But then why? It's like it's not saying anything at all. All it does is undo something that was done in Deep Space 9, which is which was him saying that he would return. And again, that's what drives me bananas about these writers is they keep wanting to undo the way Star Trek was. They want to put their own little, they want to put their own little grubby mints on it and, and do their own thing with it and rewrite the pass. And it just drives me bananas if if they had said that he had returned.

1:52:00 All right, all right, OK, think about this. I have seen a whole lot of comments online where people were saying that, oh, I cried so much of this episode. They did such a an honor, an homage to Deep Space 9. And it got me so emotional. And I want to be clear, I do not want to take anything away from anybody. If it did make you emotional in that way, that's fine. That that's you. I, I totally respect that. It is not my place to take that away from you. But close your eyes and imagine a world where they did say he came back.

1:52:36 You know, we don't just go to a museum and say, oh, there's the baseball. There's the baseball card in his MIT. Oh, and there's the typewriter from that one hallucin hallucination he had that really nobody should really know about. But there's the typewriter from when he was Benny Russell. And there's a uniform. You know, instead of just doing that, let's say that he'd actually come back and he could have been there to be there for his wife. And I'm going to say daughter because and somehow I just get the feeling that next kid was going to be a daughter.

1:53:04 And let's say that maybe they had another kid. And so he was there for the for their second, his third overall. And he got to see maybe his grandkids too. And along the way, like I said, maybe he had ushered in Bajor, finally joining the Federation, which had kind of been a goal all along. And maybe he was there for that. Also, I talked about how Jake Siska want to be a writer and reporter. So he did not follow in his dad's footsteps. What if his daughter did? What if she had become a captain and she did something great?

1:53:32 What if Cassidy used her knowledge of trade and transportation to like be a some kind of like trade related diplomat or transportation related diplomat and maybe she helped usher in some kind of great new phase of the Federation. What if the entire family did something great? Think about how much more people would have cried then knowing that him coming back led to great things and he could have continued to be the emissary. Instead, he was just like this person who used to exist and somebody who they didn't want to draw images of anymore.

1:54:06 What if he had come back and he actually worked directly with them and, and, and had ushered in a new phase for not just the Federation but Bajor and how they would have connected? And what if he had led to peace with the Cardassians and maybe even the Brain and maybe even the remnants of the Dominion? What if he came back and was responsible for at least some, if not all of that? Or what if his kids were his grandkids were what? You know, think about how much better that story would have been if all of that was there instead.

1:54:34 No, he didn't come back. What is that even saying? And why go to so much trouble to even say nothing? I just I don't get it and my head explodes again. Well, and I mean, if you're right and Avery Brooks is eccentric and I don't know, we live in a weird age where we may see some sort of bizarre hybrid AI version in the future or, you know, heaven forbid kids Cisco, but they they may do something with this down the road. I just, I, I think that all of you listeners and people online, when you encounter people who care, caring is not a bad thing.

1:55:22 Everything Todd just said. I struggle with this because of, you know, what we ended up with was Jean Luc Picard, who is this amazing diplomatist, archaeologist, Shakespearean leader. And he ends up, you know, in a winery, in a vineyard, making wine that everybody agrees it's crap. So I struggle with all that. And but I'm, I'm past it now to the point we're talking about Cisco. And I'm like, yeah, it sucks. Why, why, why, why Why was not at least why was not at least one season 1 or maybe just half, maybe just one episode?

1:56:05 Why was there not at least a little bit in Star Trek Picard about his love of archaeology? What they could have done like an old Man of Indiana Jones type adventure for him in in at least one episode, if not an entire season? Why? Why did they on his love of. Archaeology you, you said it yourself, I think the creatives, they seem to draw a line where if you have Avery Brooks on board, you do story A and if you don't have Avery Brooks on board, I liked all of your suggestions. I there's no reason to not say he where where he went is a mystery.

1:56:47 After he returned for his wife and son and child, he you know, he disappeared again and we were not it'd take 2 seconds, but instead they decided since they didn't have him, they would just not do anything and and hope that that rounded up. Just insanity. Insanity. But yes, so I would encourage you listeners when you encounter your, your fans in general, especially your Star Trek fans, and they seem to care deeply. It's a good thing, it's a good thing it comes from a place. It's not Todd's fault.

1:57:22 It's we were taught to care about details. That's a good sign of a franchise. So this is a new iteration for possibly a different crowd. And there were good things, but maybe it wasn't as tailored at Todd and me and our demographic. You have any final thoughts on that or do you want to move on to the next section? I know, I know. I feel you man. I'll just sum up, Cisco should have come back and Picard's ass should have been teaching archaeology. I'll just leave that. So our final section is rating the entire first season of Starfleet Academy, which Todd already kind of went down the episodes.

1:58:00 I have lots to say about individual episodes, but we're going to skip that for now. And just I'll say that I give this season and this new show AC because there is good stuff in here. With a few choices, the second season could be even better. As I said, I don't think I'm the target demographic, which I think is a combination of viewers who are more youthful and viewers who are less interested in established Star Trek elements, tone, style, choices, lore, etcetera. In 2019, there was a new cartoon that came out just before the pandemic.

1:58:35 It was called DC Superhero Girls. They attend superhero high that's capitalized. That's an actual name of the school, Superhero high school. And the cartoon is not bad. If you have a young person in your life, they might enjoy watching it with you. It is for a certain age group and demographic. This show that Todd and I are talking about tonight is Star Trek High. Now, once you accept that, that's OK, If you want to go see, you know, the Batman with Robert Pattinson, you're going to have a very different superhero experience than if you watch DC Superhero Girls.

1:59:15 So this was Star Trek High, and it may not be my favorite way to tell Star Trek stories, but I feel like all the Kurtzman live action Trek shows are emotional, rebellious, young, young adult targeted content. So I think it was smart of them to lean into that with a show featuring obviously emotional, rebellious young adults. And they did better than I expected. And like I said before, I like several of the characters and actors. How about you, Todd? Yes. So like I said, 6 out of 10 got C minus the others weren't that much higher.

1:59:53 And then I did only have this one F Oh, and if just in case it wasn't clear, yes, it was. It was the. D Space 9 episode that got the F. So yeah, it's it's pretty obvious that my average comes to AC minus. So I know as much crap as I gave it for that one episode and as many nitpicks as I had along the way, it still isn't terrible. I don't like it overall, but it there are some good things there and it did have potential and I even like a few things. It's just it doesn't quite get there. So yeah, my average is C minus.

2:00:29 So if you guys are established Trekkie fans or new Trekkie fans or you've never tried it and Kurtzman wants to lure you in and try it out between parts of the episode, there are forced commercial breaks on Paramount Plus that you can't turn off that try and sell you really handsome leather jackets and sunglasses and merch targeted at young people. And I kind of tell you they're they're working me over. I'm starting to think I would like one of those Starfleet Academy jackets. I look cool like Mirror.

2:01:02 Mirror is built by the way, guys, our hero, Caleb Mirror. He is well put together. I would tear his appearance apart except you guys would just accuse me of being jealous. And you would be right. So, you know, they're trying to target a youthful group. And if that's you, you may want to check it out. You know, maybe it'll sneaky gets you into Trek in general and then you'll try some of these other things that Todd and I love very much. And that's good stuff. But as we said, it is in the period of transition.

2:01:32 So we'll see what happens next. Coming up next time on alienating ourselves, Todd and I are going to return to Earth in the very near future of the early 90s. And I, I know that'll that doesn't seem to make sense, but it does. And the exploits of a streetwise cop and his alien partner. So join us for all that and more in our next thrilling episode. I continue to be Nick. I'm Todd. Thank you for attending class with us tonight. If you love us, like us, or wish we would transfer to the War College, please give us five stars.

2:02:05 If you'd like to get us expelled by framing us on a prank gone too far, please give us four stars. If you give us three stars or lower, everyone in your life will start talking like Noose Braca. And that's not a life worth living. As always, live long and prosper, even if today is a good day to die. Well, don't. And remember, if Starfleet Academy, Strange New Worlds, Lower Decks, Picard and Discovery aren't your thing, they're still always the original and animated series. Next Gen. DS9, Enterprise, and even Voyager if you're so inclined.

2:02:39 Through infinite diversity and infinite combinations, the right Trek is out there for you. Have a great week. Good night everybody.