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

0:01 This ship is yours, Captain Ake. Thank you #1 I'm Captain Nala

0:05 Ake, Chancellor of Starfleet Academy at Astra Parespera.

0:09 Through struggle the stars. Being a cadet in Starfleet

0:13 Academy means being open to the people around you.

0:17 I'm Genesis. Nice to meet you.

0:18 I'm. Saying, are we friends now?

0:19 Can I ring me Cadet Mirror for the affirmative Cadet Crawl for

0:22 the negatives? Incoming warp signatures Benari

0:25 RAW. Red alert Shields up, Nusraka.

0:28 Time, with its infinite sense of will, always fall upon itself

0:32 like an origami chicken. This is the single dumbest idea

0:35 I've ever heard. This moment is that chicken.

0:38 I took a bath for the first time.

0:40 Would you bathe in a ball? I think I swallowed my combat.

0:43 Already. Keep a close eye on your bowel

0:45 movements for the next three days.

0:46 Chancellor, we were basically naked.

0:48 It absolutely will close it always you've.

0:50 Got like 4 pairs of boots in here.

0:51 You don't even wear shoes. Speak your mind, cadet.

0:54 Don't hold back. You speak Samsung, one of my

0:56 favorite dead languages. It is not the Federation's

0:59 advantage or place to tell the Klingons who they are.

1:03 I'm here to affirm the resolution.

1:05 The Federation must provide and indeed enforce asylum for the

1:08 Klingons. What about our Honor A?

1:10 Smart mouth isn't worth a damn without wisdom.

1:13 Wakey. Wakey directed, you know, and

1:16 Bakey, I'm Lieutenant Sylvia Chili.

1:17 Theater is statecraft. Statecraft is theater.

1:20 It's the kind of stuff you overachievers get all hot and

1:23 bothered over. And for those of you still

1:25 bristling with confusion and or resentment.

1:28 I don't care. Strike until your opponent's in

1:31 his liquefy. You'll do it all while wearing

1:34 really snazzy uniforms. Whatever challenges came before

1:37 today LED you to this woman. I know you decide.

1:41 If they define you, it's time. To build in the future.

1:47 Welcome to the Alienating Ourselves podcast review of Star

1:51 Trek Starfleet Academy Season 1. Now here are your professors of

1:56 nerd demand geekiness, Nick and Todd.

2:00 Greetings, Humans, Klingons, Betazoids, Kayonians, Kaskans,

2:05 Darsha, Lanthanites, Jim Haddar and various hybrids and welcome

2:10 to another episode of Alienating Ourselves, the podcast that

2:13 explores the relationships between humans and aliens that

2:17 sometimes look really human, even if they have a completely

2:21 alternate form that we only see in one freaking episode.

2:26 I am one of your hosts, Todd. I hope to exercise extreme

2:29 caution in what I have to say tonight and how I say it.

2:32 And joining me, as always, is my classmate, I mean Co host, who

2:36 may have less reason to receive a formal reprimand on his record

2:40 than I will tonight. It's Nick.

2:41 Nick, how's it going? I'm, I'm doing good, Todd.

2:44 It's great to be here. Freshman class, Starfleet

2:47 Academy. We are getting in there, taking

2:50 our exobiology and temporal mechanics classes and Oh my

2:55 goodness, I'm going to be written up for not turning

2:58 things in on time and running into class at the last minute

3:02 and asking which class I'm in. So let's get into it.

3:06 Today we interrupt our regularly scheduled program to take a look

3:10 at a new show that just finished its first season.

3:14 Starfleet Academy is the 12th Star Trek series.

3:18 Wow. You go Star Trek and it follows

3:20 the lives of a handful of young people as they join the 1st

3:24 freshman class, depending on how you look at it, of a newly

3:27 reformed Academy in what you could describe as the next,

3:31 next, next next generation of Star Trek characters at the

3:35 farthest future point in the timeline that they've made

3:39 ongoing adventures so far. This takes place in a future

3:43 established by other shows in an expanded universe created by

3:46 Alex Kurtzman, including Discovery, Strange New Worlds,

3:50 Picard, Lower Decks, Short Tracks, Prodigy, and Section 31.

3:55 Rotten Tomatoes give Starfleet Academy an 88% critics score and

4:00 a 51% audience score. That's tomato meter and popcorn

4:05 meter, respectively. There are a lot of relative

4:07 unknowns in the cast, a few legacy Star Trek characters, and

4:12 dramatic high profile anchors. Paul Giamatti as a big bad guy

4:17 and Holly Hunter as a big good guy.

4:19 Todd and I are pretty enthusiastic Star Trek fans, so

4:22 we're going to look over this first season, what it's done and

4:26 hasn't done, it's placed in the fandom, and what's next.

4:30 So what's your overall first take on this series, this first

4:35 season, Todd? Wow, 12th series. 12th series.

4:39 It's about 5 or 6 too many. OK, all right, so this show has

4:46 a few good points and even has some potential.

4:50 Or at least it would if it were so unlikely to get a third

4:54 season due to shake UPS caused by Skydance taking over

4:58 Paramount. However, sadly I still mostly

5:02 dislike it. I think it's a very wayward show

5:05 that doesn't really know what it wants to be and does everything

5:09 kind of half ass. And since we're reviewing entire

5:13 series, let me kind of breakdown the episodes a little bit.

5:16 Episodes 16 and 10 are all squandered by the unbelievably

5:22 atrocious dialogue of the main villain.

5:25 Episodes 2-3 and seven are big balls of nothing.

5:28 Episodes 8 and 9 are mild improvements, but not enough.

5:33 Episode 4 is actually kind of OK, and episode 5, despite it

5:39 supposedly being a love letter to Deep Space 9, I consider to

5:43 be blasphemy against Deep Space 9.

5:47 Lastly, while I usually save grades for later, I think I can

5:51 sum up my mix but leaning negative feelings for the whole

5:54 season by saying that I give 6 out of 10 episodes.

5:58 AC -2 are just plain C1 gets all the way up to C Plus, and

6:05 there's an F in the bunch. So mostly consistently.

6:10 Not terrible, but not really good enough either.

6:13 So what did you think? Well, and I mean long time

6:17 listeners and devotees to the Alienating podcast, I and Todd,

6:22 we, we match up on a lot of things and there are a few

6:24 things that we contrast on. So with a deep breath, I will

6:29 say I like this show. There's some good stuff in here.

6:34 I know I said both of those as though they were a question and

6:36 I'm sorry about that. I still don't feel like I'm the

6:40 target demographic in a few ways, and I may get into that a

6:43 little bit more later, but in tone and in the type of

6:47 storytelling, I'm not necessarily the person this is

6:52 aimed at, but I like several cast members.

6:56 The storytelling is striking me as I praise here mostly OK, and

7:03 I'm enjoying it more than much of the other Kurtzman LED Star

7:06 Trek content. So that's that's where Nick is

7:10 starting here. So our first section, are we at

7:13 warp or at impulse power? Todd and Nick are going to share

7:18 some positives, some great things or, or maybe we're just

7:21 at impulse and some things that, you know, you guys were almost

7:24 there, you were getting close to something good.

7:28 So Todd, do you want to start with something that you felt

7:31 like they were they were nailing or they were getting close to

7:34 nailing or they were almost nearly getting close to?

7:37 Yeah. So my first one is female

7:39 leadership. You know, no matter how

7:41 progressive Star Trek has been, even if it has a woman in either

7:46 the captain role or first officer role, I don't know if

7:49 we've ever seen it in both. And I've kind of been waiting

7:52 for that and thinking, when are we finally going to get it?

7:54 And we finally got it. So we have a female mixed

7:58 species captain, a female mixed species non human first officer.

8:04 And I say it that way because I think the captain is, well, I

8:08 know she's part lanthanite. I don't know by how much, I

8:10 don't know if it's like 1/4, a half 3/4, but I assume that her

8:14 other portion is human, but the female mixed species non human

8:17 first officer is half Klingon and half Jim Adar and we'll say

8:22 more about that in a minute. There are several female

8:25 professors including Jet Reno who is played by the stand up

8:30 comedian Tig Notaro and she is a carryover from Star Trek

8:33 Discovery. Also two somewhat likable

8:36 characters are Nala Ake, the Captain.

8:40 I don't like her name, but I like her, her personality in

8:42 Quirks, and the aforementioned Jet Reno.

8:46 Todd forgot to elaborate that some of Nala a case quirks and

8:49 eccentricities, such as her tendencies to go barefoot or to

8:53 lie down, slump, or scrunch up comfortably on furniture,

8:57 actually grew on him in the first episode.

9:00 Some of her weird posture and chairs looked more like poses

9:03 than the way someone would actually sit, but Holly Hunter's

9:06 physical performance felt more natural as the series

9:09 progressed. And quite possibly the best

9:12 thing in the entire season was seeing Tig Notaro as Jet Reno

9:17 taking command of the Athena in episode 10 and utilizing the

9:22 only crew that she had, which was the six main cadets that we

9:26 follow throughout the season and actually teaching them along the

9:29 way. In fact, I was like, that should

9:32 that should have been what the whole season should have been

9:34 about. Why did we not get more of that?

9:36 So yeah, female leadership I think is definitely a strength

9:39 of the show. Well, once again Todd and I have

9:42 accidentally matched up without conferring ahead of time.

9:44 Y'all can believe that or not. My first warp speed is casting

9:49 and I am a crotchety old guy devotee of the original series,

9:55 The next Generation. My my interest and passion wanes

10:00 as we move forward in time. So the truth is, I will not name

10:03 names, but there are beloved old series from the original 123456

10:14 series is before the Kelvin thing.

10:17 And there are episodes in series where I didn't especially like

10:21 cast members very much. I they're not bad people.

10:23 They're great, great people. Thank you for being in Star

10:26 Trek. But I didn't take to the cast.

10:28 And in this I really like the casting.

10:31 So the high profile casting choices, we got Holly Hunter,

10:35 we've got Robert Picardo. I liked Robert Picardo back in,

10:39 gosh, a lot of things he's done throughout his career before

10:43 Star Trek, but Innerspace, Oh my gosh, Tig Notaro, Todd mentioned

10:48 Tig Notaro has Han Solo swagger. I don't know what it is.

10:53 Ladies and gentlemen, if you have a person interact with

10:56 Muppets and they don't act like they're acting with a Muppet,

10:59 they act like they're acting with someone who is annoying

11:01 them. They just make the Muppet more

11:04 real. And Han Solo, Harrison Ford gets

11:07 that. Tig Notaro gets that.

11:09 So Jet Reno is great from the first second she walks on.

11:13 Being a cadet in Starfleet Academy means being open to the

11:18 people around you, and that connection is where time and

11:23 space really live. I don't need.

11:25 Yeah, yeah, you're a genius who owns all the suffering.

11:29 I only know two things, kid #1 old age and treachery.

11:33 Always triumph over youth and a smart mouth.

11:37 Oscar Wilde. Love that dude.

11:40 Fun fact, when he died they had to put glass over his tombstone

11:44 because people kept trying to make out with it #2 a smart

11:47 mouth isn't worth a damn without wisdom.

11:51 But what do I know? I'm old and boring.

11:54 But unlike a few other shows, I'm I'm pretty OK with a lot of

11:58 the actor other actors too, including the kids.

12:02 I I don't even like kids very much.

12:04 I work with them. That's really don't pay too much

12:06 attention to that. So my personal favorite in this

12:10 cast is Gina Sheer. Yes sheer as the gem Hadar

12:16 halfling on drill Sergeant Laura Thak second in command.

12:19 The credits kind of call her No, I lost it.

12:23 It's somewhere here, but she's I don't know disciplinarian second

12:27 in command to Ala Ake and and she may have won me over at the

12:31 beginning just because she's like yelling at teens and I read

12:34 that resonates with but spoiler casting for those that hadn't

12:38 heard the Academy computer voice.

12:41 They call it the Digital Dean is Stephen Colbert and they throw

12:46 in some pretty silly bits for him, which I've enjoyed very

12:49 much. I may come back to that.

12:51 Genesis Life, played by Bella Shepherd is the best actor in

12:55 the kid crew in my opinion, and I think they make good use of

12:58 her. I like that she's not being used

13:00 for a lame, obvious love triangle.

13:02 She seems to be a fully formed character capable of affection

13:06 without any kind of romantic interest being a part of her

13:09 current character arc at all. They let a pretty girl be in the

13:12 show without being all over some boy.

13:14 In fact, she like grabs one of our heroes Episode 1 and it's

13:17 like, look, don't get tangled up with somebody in the first year.

13:22 It's just going to drag you down, man.

13:23 And she actually sticks to that. They'll screw that up in Season

13:26 2. The truth is, I haven't

13:28 especially taken to a lot of Trek characters before or after

13:31 Kurtzman's arrival on the scene. So the fact that these people

13:33 are OK for me is a pretty big win.

13:36 You said a few things there that I kind of only halfway agree

13:38 with some, some of your positives are kind of well, OK,

13:43 so I, I know we're in the positives, but these are my

13:45 responses to the positive. So, all right.

13:48 So Genesis, I don't think they're doing enough with her.

13:51 It's fair. Todd said he would also add that

13:54 Genesis Live is the least annoying of all the cadet

13:57 characters, which is a real ringing endorsement.

13:59 Let me see, You talked about Stephen Colbert.

14:02 Yeah. And I usually like Stephen

14:03 Colbert, and I'm so glad that he's a geek.

14:06 And I, I, I haven't heard any updates about it, but I know he

14:09 made an announcement on on his show that I think his production

14:12 company is going to do the Roger Zelazny Chronicles of Amber and.

14:17 Oh, my goodness, Great. Get on with it.

14:19 Todd also wanted to clarify that he's looking forward to that

14:22 because he did actually read those books all 10, mostly

14:26 during high school and college, but that he's even read some of

14:29 those books twice. Todd actually does read

14:32 sometimes. Also, Stephen Colbert announced

14:35 his companies work on the Amber series in January 2023 and

14:39 there's been little or no update since.

14:41 Hopefully it's still in progress.

14:43 So I'm glad that he's a geek, but they give him some terrible

14:47 comedic lines in this. I can't stand.

14:49 It's just it's so unstar Trek like some of the stuff that they

14:53 give him to do. And then let me see, I'm trying

14:57 to think what some of the other stuff you said.

14:59 I said a lot. Oh.

15:01 Oh, So Laura thought she's OK. She's OK, she's fine.

15:08 But there was something that you were saying about her.

15:10 Oh, you were talking about the rank.

15:13 I think her kind of rank or position or whatever is cadet

15:16 master as far as rank. Yeah.

15:19 And as far as rank, I think she is either commander or

15:23 Lieutenant Commander. I think I read somewhere she's

15:26 Lieutenant Commander, but I don't know if that's can or not.

15:28 They refer to as commander, but sometimes that's an

15:30 abbreviation. And I'm a little bit unclear as

15:33 to whether she's also first officer of the ship or just

15:36 first officer of the school, because in a way, the school and

15:39 the ship are the same thing. Yeah, she has no military range.

15:43 She is cadet master at the Academy, so which means she's a

15:47 drill Sergeant and that's literally all she is.

15:49 According to Memory Alpha, the online wiki that tracks Canon

15:53 Trek info, Laura Thak holds the rank of Lieutenant Commander and

15:57 is also first officer of the USS Athena, the Starship that makes

16:01 up part of the Starfleet Academy campus.

16:03 Todd is not convinced these additional facts were officially

16:06 said on screen, but Memory Alpha says that Laura Thak rose

16:09 through the ranks serving on the USS Nog, USS Transcendence, and

16:13 USS Locker. Listeners, uh, the show is a

16:17 weird hybrid where they essentially have made the school

16:20 a ship and the ship a school. So the ship lands, breaks into

16:24 pieces and turns into a mini mall kind of thing.

16:28 And then it takes off and I, they convey that kind of the

16:33 school takes off and that sort of happens.

16:36 So that's why we have this weird hybrid of Ake is the chancellor

16:41 of the Academy and she's also the captain of the ship, which

16:44 is conflicting. But Laura Thak is the cadet

16:48 major drill Sergeant, and she's also nothing on the ship so far.

16:52 But we'll see all that. So moving on to my second good

16:56 one, and frankly this is just an extension of my first one and

16:59 that is diversity of the cast and of the characters.

17:04 At least half the cast is female, including characters in

17:07 leadership positions of our As I've already mentioned, over

17:10 half the main characters are non human.

17:13 Out of these 6 main student characters, only one is fully

17:17 human. Out of the main recurring and

17:21 significant guest characters, there are five mixed species.

17:25 Character Nala Ake is partly Anthonite as I've already

17:29 mentioned. Laura thought is half Jim and

17:31 Dar and half Klingon. Genesis is half Darsha and I

17:36 assume half human. I assume that's where her kind

17:39 of human like name comes from, but supposedly she is half

17:42 Darsha. Whatever Darsha is.

17:46 The villain NUS Bracha is supposedly half Tellurite and

17:51 half Klingon even though he doesn't really look like either.

17:54 And there is a professor named Isla who is half Kardashian and

17:59 half something else. And we forgot to.

18:01 Despite how much Nick and I discussed ahead of time, we

18:05 forgot to discuss how much we're going to explore.

18:07 So I won't say Isla's last name or what the other half of her

18:11 mixed species is, but yeah, she's another hybrid.

18:16 There are some great. Twists coming listeners, if you

18:20 haven't gotten to episode 5 and you love twists, but we might

18:24 give you another warning. But warning now twists reveal to

18:27 become. And out of the main and

18:31 recurring cast at least 4 characters are LGBT and that

18:35 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.

18:43 And then the leader of beta Zed is hearing impaired so we see a

18:49 non human style of sign language.

18:51 Or at least I hope and assume it's not human because if he's

18:54 beta Zoid they should have their own.

18:56 You know I don't think he was doing American standard.

18:59 And in episode 2, we also see an exo cop riding a turbo lift and

19:05 Nala knows 3 droids by name. So robotics are also treated

19:10 like people sometime. And one of the main reasons I

19:13 wanted to point out diversity and also female leadership as

19:16 two of the main positives is one of the things I was worried

19:19 about in this episode was obviously I'm going to have some

19:22 negative things to say. And I know out there on the

19:24 Internet things can get some people call it toxic where some

19:28 people might call it divisive. But regardless, sometimes when

19:32 some people get negative, they will dip into the, oh, it's too

19:36 woke type negative. I'm not one of those people.

19:38 That is not one of my complaints.

19:40 I'm actually OK with the diversity and the

19:44 progressiveness and whatever else you want to call it in Star

19:46 Trek, I'm OK with that is some of the other things that I have

19:49 problems with. So, so yeah, I diversity is

19:53 actually one of the positives with me.

19:54 And oddly enough, I feel that way about Star Trek Discovery

19:57 too. Just by how much?

19:58 How many other problems I had with Star Trek Discovery?

20:01 That's not one of them. So just to be clear, when when

20:04 Todd and I say that we are frustrated with, for example, if

20:07 he's, we say the writing is a problem, we are not using coded

20:11 language to try and say we're trying not to say we don't like

20:15 a character not being a heteronormative or something.

20:19 We're really OK with most of that stuff.

20:21 We really might be talking about the writing.

20:24 So yeah, this is a provoke. Same space.

20:27 Cool. Let people be people podcast so

20:31 it's all good here and y'all can tune us out if you don't like

20:34 that. My second positive is that the

20:38 series OK so the series is trying to sell Starfleet Academy

20:42 because the series is Starfleet Academy.

20:45 We are living in an age of hating and hot takes and in

20:50 order to sell the show they the the series necessitates being

20:56 pro Starfleet. So for me personally as an older

21:00 fan, even when the show is off track, it's still promoting

21:05 something I believe in. I like that it's pro Starfleet.

21:08 It has no choice but to be pro Starfleet because it's Starfleet

21:12 Academy. Honestly, Michael Burnham has

21:16 struggles every other episode with Starfleet.

21:20 Starfleet is constantly making mistakes.

21:22 But this show is Starfleet Academy, so they want you to

21:26 like the Academy. They want you to buy their

21:28 jacket. They sell it in between

21:31 episodes. So it means a lot to me as

21:35 people are tearing down everything beloved or popular

21:39 with hot takes on the Internet and in person.

21:43 You know that thing you like? Here's why it's terrible.

21:46 This show is trying its hardest to make these new recruits and

21:50 you, the viewer, and Caleb Mir, our resident hater on the show,

21:57 is not buying any of this crap. It's trying to make y'all pumped

22:01 about Starfleet and Starfleet Academy.

22:03 So they're forced into it, they are promoting it, they're

22:07 pushing it. And I appreciate that tone as a

22:11 rank and file supporter from my child.

22:13 So yes, that is nice. OK.

22:16 All right. That's interesting.

22:17 Yeah, I'll, I'll go along with that.

22:18 Yeah, I can, I can see that as positive.

22:21 All right, so my last one here is production quality.

22:27 The sets are definitely impressive in size, scope and

22:31 futuristic look. And the center atrium in the

22:34 Academy, that set feels almost like it's inspired by the

22:38 Marriott Marquis in Atlanta, even if it isn't.

22:42 And I bring that up because because Nick and I are both

22:46 veterans of Dragon Con and that con takes place at 5 hotels and

22:50 two other buildings in downtown Atlanta once a year, Labor Day

22:54 weekend and the main hotels, Marriott Marquis.

22:57 It definitely has some very interesting architecture on the

22:59 inside. And yeah, the atrium kind of

23:02 reminds me about that, even if it's not intentional.

23:04 Yeah, honestly, y'all come out to Dragon Con, find Todd and me,

23:08 We're on, we're doing stuff, we're around.

23:10 But they use that set for a lot of stuff.

23:14 It's in Loki, especially season 2.

23:18 But yes, there I think my third one is that I think the obvious

23:23 brush strokes are mostly working for me in this series.

23:27 If you're over 20 and I think you can, I think you the older

23:31 viewers can constantly tell what the writers are doing like this

23:35 character grow sympathetic toward this character.

23:38 Be concerned about this challenge.

23:40 So things like Holly Hunter's character's quirkiness or the

23:43 struggle, the structure of each episode in character building or

23:47 the structure of the season and universe building, I'm mostly

23:51 buying what they're selling. I think the major criticisms you

23:55 guys are going to see is that it feels juvenile or cartoonish or

23:58 melodramatic melodrama. For those of you that don't

24:02 know, let me define it really, really badly.

24:05 Think about a person acting on stage and acting for people

24:08 really far away, where it's like I am the bad guy and I'm

24:11 twirling my mustache and evil music is played.

24:13 I'm walking over in a big way. So people may say that this

24:17 series is like that. You may hear it stated more

24:20 harshly than juvenile or cartoonish or melodramatic.

24:23 I think those criticisms are true.

24:25 I think they're fair. However, if you make peace with

24:29 that, if you accept that that's kind of what it is, they do

24:34 pretty well with that format. I think most of these new shows

24:38 are written. This is not intended as a harsh

24:41 stab or a hot take or mean attack.

24:46 I think most of these new shows in the Kurtzman era are written

24:49 for a younger audience. They are trying to entice a new

24:53 generation of viewers, and making this one intentionally

24:57 about emotional young people was a wise choice since they were

25:01 already kind of writing in that vein.

25:04 You're going to have characters who are flying off the handle

25:09 and dealing with their emotional state and struggling with who

25:12 they are as a person in their place in the universe.

25:14 And that's been the process for a lot of shows, especially

25:17 Discovery. And, you know, they're like,

25:20 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

25:25 to lean into that. I predicted that.

25:27 And that has kind of been borne out.

25:29 In fact, I would argue the kids at Starfleet Academy are more

25:34 mature than I thought they were going to be.

25:37 Boom. That is kind of a hot tank, I

25:39 guess. Yeah.

25:40 Yeah. So you finished your third.

25:42 Are we ready for Klingon opera? Well, it was that all your

25:45 positives. That's all my positives.

25:48 OK, well I this I don't have on my notes, but I'll just say I

25:51 kind of implied that there's one episode that was a little bit

25:53 better than the others. It's episode 4.

25:55 It's the Klingon centered episode and they're actually

25:59 some pretty good things in there, including Captain Dala

26:03 Ake kind of flirting with an albino Klingon.

26:05 And it's so weird because she's apparently really short.

26:07 He's super tall. And and they were reminiscing by

26:10 the whole time they kind of hitting on each other again.

26:13 And Jaden Krog, just regardless of what are the problems you

26:16 might have with that character, it was interesting kind of

26:19 seeing some of his back story and getting that.

26:21 And so, yeah, that was a a good episode, sort of.

26:25 Well, and Todd and I talked about this before and we're not

26:28 necessarily going to delve into every episode, but since you

26:31 brought Episode 4 up, this is box in Excel.

26:33 So written, directed by Doug and written by Violo and Glover.

26:37 And I liked Jaden's back story. It was, you're right, it's a it

26:42 was a clever episode. We see a young Klingon kind of

26:46 struggling with not wanting to be a typical Klingon.

26:49 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.

26:59 I don't think it's going to come up in this episode of our

27:01 podcast, but it's just for the purposes of this episode 4.

27:07 You know, he's struggling with his family and essentially they

27:09 disown him and it's a struggle for him.

27:12 He's wrestling with that. He's shamed because of that

27:16 because he's been disowned by his family.

27:18 I don't want to draw a real world comparison, but y'all can

27:23 imagine a real world comparison where a conservative family

27:26 disowns a child. He carries that shame with him

27:30 and my character that I was really supporting.

27:32 Laura thought, kind of suggests to him that in Klingon dogma,

27:38 his father might have been giving him a kindness or even

27:43 blessing him in Klingon terms by leaving him behind.

27:49 Which was just like I was floored.

27:51 I don't have favorite episodes in this season, but that is that

27:55 was a cool moment where you take a a shame and you say, you know

27:59 what? This man saw you where you were

28:00 and he might have this thing you thought was a a hurtful act was

28:05 actually possibly as close as this person can come to a

28:08 generous act. I want you all to take that in

28:12 if it's a good thing. If you take that in as enabling

28:14 a negative thing, please disregard everything.

28:17 But yes, so I saw some great stuff in that episode for sure.

28:20 So Klingon opera if y'all don't know.

28:25 I think this first came up in Deep Space 9 is.

28:27 What do you think, Todd? Oh, I think there was a Next

28:31 Generation episode where I think they might have been looking for

28:35 Picard or, I don't know, they were looking for somebody.

28:37 Or maybe it was the the Spock episode.

28:40 I can't remember if they went somewhere.

28:42 It was kind of like a an alien nightclub and Wharf asked

28:45 somebody to play a certain song. Yeah, it asked somebody to play

28:49 a certain song on some kind of futuristic piano or harpsichord

28:53 or something, and he started singing Klingon opera.

28:55 You are right listeners. There's an episode of Next

28:58 Generation where they did a starter wars cantina scene and

29:02 Wharf brings up Klingon opera and the lady says I don't get a

29:05 lot of requests for that. Well, in our episode today,

29:11 Klingon opera is going to fill in for something that others may

29:15 like and enjoy and that's fine. Maybe it's not for me like

29:20 Klingon opera or Gach if you prefer.

29:23 That could be this section. So let me start off this section

29:26 with the first one. And this is a thing of mine that

29:30 it's the anti authoritarian tone.

29:33 So I had this conversation with Anthony from over at the Fandom

29:36 Hybrid podcast when I was unintentionally attacking

29:40 Discovery and he was defending its positives.

29:43 The world has changed listeners. It's not a military.

29:47 I'm not a military loving person, but the formality of

29:51 Starfleet in Star Trek's original series and even more so

29:55 in The Next Generation really appealed to me.

29:57 I like the chain of command, people working as a team with

30:01 respect for leaders who had the final say but listen to all the

30:05 input and then made decisions that 99% of the time turned out

30:09 to be right. But times have changed and

30:12 attitudes towards police, the military, the government, those

30:16 with authority and power have changed, especially right here

30:19 at home in the United States. I don't think young audiences

30:22 appreciate the idea of saying your piece and then letting the

30:26 person in charge make the call. So these news stories in the

30:30 Kurtzman era have a strong undercurrent of needing to

30:33 ignore orders and do the right thing, not once or twice, but on

30:37 a semi weekly basis. Instead of the captain and team

30:41 turning out to be right, the rebellious upstart who follows

30:45 their gut and ignores the rules is usually vindicated.

30:48 And I'm not saying that's right or wrong, I'm just saying it's

30:51 for a modern audience and I respect that.

30:53 But I miss people having a coherent team based on trust,

30:58 respect, hierarchy. It was kind of part of the the

31:02 the series is that I really like.

31:03 So that was my first thing. Yeah, yeah.

31:06 I'm saying where I kind of missed the team aspect and the

31:08 aspirational aspect and just the people being good at their jobs

31:12 aspect. There's a scene in the first

31:15 episode where a cadet, now granted she's a cadet, but she's

31:18 in line. And the first thing she says is

31:20 I swallowed my calm badge and the doctor's like already I'm

31:25 like, just how hard do you have to like have a calm badge near

31:29 your mouth to swallow it? And just maybe you should not be

31:33 in Starfleet if you're swallowing calm badges.

31:36 So yeah, competence isn't is an issue in some of these shows.

31:39 Let me see. So my first one, how is this

31:43 even about a school? Episode 1 is just about getting

31:47 to San Francisco for the beginning of the school year

31:49 because as we talked about the school, is it part of the school

31:52 is a ship. And apparently the ship is out

31:54 there somewhere. They're bringing it back to San

31:56 Francisco to reestablish a school there.

31:58 So episode 1 is just about getting to San Francisco.

32:01 Todd also feels that the rendition of San Francisco Be

32:04 Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair that was played as the

32:07 Athena hovered past the Golden Gate Bridge and then settled

32:10 into its spot at Starfleet Academy.

32:12 Campus was an awkward song to play during that moment.

32:16 Also, it bugs him that the ship is still floating several dozen

32:19 feet, if not several 100 feet above the ground, which means

32:23 students and teachers still have to use transporters or shuttles

32:26 to get to and from the ship part of campus and the ground part of

32:28 campus. So why bother parking the ship

32:31 in San Francisco at all? Half of episode 2 was about a

32:35 about diplomatic stuff that shouldn't have anything to do

32:38 with Starfleet Academy. Episode 7 is about the

32:41 equivalent of spring break. The beginning of episode 9

32:45 already marks the end of the school year, which means the

32:48 last two episodes don't have anything to do with school.

32:50 So in a way, there's really only 5 1/2 out of 10 episodes that

32:55 are even about school. And those episodes were

32:58 dominated by a prank war, a theater Class, A debate class,

33:03 one students independent and mishandled research project into

33:07 Benjamin Cisco. That's episode 5, folks.

33:10 And an actual training simulation gone awry by a real

33:14 life threat. So I'm wondering, when exactly

33:17 do these students ever learn anything about what it means to

33:20 be Starfleet officers? And that's why I love that one

33:22 scene from episode 10 when Jet Reno is like teaching them on

33:25 the fly. And it's like, I need more of

33:29 that scene. That was just one scene.

33:31 I need more of that. We learned in the first half of

33:34 episode one that Jaden Krog declared early he's going to

33:38 major in molecular biology and regenerative therapies.

33:42 I don't think we ever see him for the rest of the season do

33:44 anything with biology or therapy.

33:47 Derren Ramey has already declared for the command

33:50 division and wants to be a captain.

33:52 What did he ever do throughout the rest of the season that

33:54 shows him being prepared or be or being prepared for being a

33:59 captain someday? I think it's also mentioned that

34:02 Genesis Lythe also wants to be a captain.

34:04 And about the only significant thing that she's given to do all

34:08 season is to try to break into records, to undo a

34:13 recommendation that somebody is giving her to get in to command

34:17 school. And it's like you're really

34:19 shooting yourself in the foot here.

34:20 And it's because of some kind of fear that she has.

34:23 But the fear that she has is very vaguely stated.

34:26 And so it's like it they're not even given a good enough reason

34:30 to back up. Why is she shooting herself in

34:32 the foot? And so and getting into trouble

34:35 actually messes up that opportunity for her.

34:37 And it's like, do you want to be a captain or do you not?

34:40 So it's like, how is this actually about school?

34:43 It's it's like they're doing a whole bunch of other crap other

34:46 than school. So following your lead, I am

34:49 going to jump to one of mine about a similar topic, and that

34:54 is the pacing about the series. So the Harry Potter movies are

35:00 also set in a school, and it sounds like a fun and exciting

35:05 location with so many possible story ideas.

35:10 But there's a problem in production.

35:12 A school has like hundreds of students and dozens of classes

35:16 and a host of teachers. And you can depict a lot of that

35:20 in a book, but in a movie or a show, you often end up with

35:24 showing Herbology like once for the entire school year.

35:28 And you have to cut out all of the Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws.

35:31 And it jumps from the first day of school to Christmas to the

35:35 big game to final exams. So something similar happens in

35:39 Starfleet Academy, where they'll spend a whole show learning

35:42 future laser tag, which, if y'all don't know, Starfleet

35:46 Academy calls Calica, and choosing A-Team captain, which

35:50 is really important in this episode.

35:52 And Genesis and Rainey are up for it.

35:55 And this is going to really determine their entire lives.

35:58 This is very similar to Quidditch.

36:00 And then they are never going to mention it again.

36:05 This is going to happen again for the debate team episode.

36:08 Or they'll have one class with Jet Reno, and it's the part of

36:13 the one class where she's saying to do your best.

36:16 And that's like it. That's all we get.

36:18 Just because in the interest of time and production, just like

36:22 in Harry Potter movies, you can feel like the entire student

36:25 body is made-up of three Gryffindors, 3 Slytherins, and

36:29 Neville. So this first class of a new

36:31 generation of Starfleet Academy can feel a lot like the same six

36:35 kids. So Laura Thak, second in

36:39 command, kind of is often conspicuously absent.

36:43 And you end up with Jayden the cling.

36:45 I'm sorry, Jayden the Klingon taking up the entire makeup

36:49 budget of and his five mostly human friends in every class,

36:55 every club, every counseling session, every war games, every

36:59 crisis. So there's an actor named Romeo

37:04 Carrera and he plays he plays the underdeveloped character

37:11 Occam Sidal. And just because he's a little

37:14 bit different from our favorites, I've become really

37:17 excited to see him used. He'll show up every now and then

37:19 and and expand things a little. Or Jayden's war college

37:23 boyfriend Kyle, you mentioned you don't need to know Kyle's

37:26 last name. Todd.

37:27 It's OK, but. His full name is Kyle Djokovic.

37:31 He's been given a cardboard personality, Kyle of a

37:35 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,

37:41 oh, hey, it's Kyle now. I'll mention this later, but the

37:48 narrative shortcuts are too obvious and I hope they double

37:52 the cast in the second season. Likewise, it feels like the show

37:55 spends a ton of its money on big set pieces, technology, or kooky

37:59 creatures in the lab so it cuts costs.

38:02 Like they're the mostly human kids in Starfleet Academy and

38:06 Todd already mentioned one of them is a full-fledged fish

38:09 person. But because of plot devices,

38:13 he's only going to be that for like a second and one episode,

38:17 and then he's going to be human for quote reasons for the whole

38:21 rest of the show. And there's for mostly human

38:25 kids over in the War College that are, you know, human ish

38:28 with a bit of appliques and stuff.

38:31 So yeah, that's that there. There are some concerns there.

38:36 Yeah, And there's one kind I, I don't want to say who it is in

38:39 case it's a spoiler. I don't want to, you know, spoil

38:42 somebody's surprise. But there is one character, it's

38:45 kind of a side character, maybe not the best character in the

38:47 world at 1st. And then just when that

38:50 character becomes a little bit like almost like, wait a minute,

38:52 I want to see more of that character, That character, you

38:55 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

39:07 my things too. I don't have it written down,

39:09 but yeah, you're right. What's your next Klingon opera?

39:14 Everything about this show is half baked, so everything in the

39:18 show is either underdeveloped, half baked, or at best only half

39:22 earned. The show should have been about

39:24 a school, but but it's barely about a school.

39:27 Character backstories are still underdeveloped.

39:30 Characters still don't have chemistry or believable

39:32 camaraderie with each other. Almost none of the individual

39:35 characters are intriguing enough, sympathetic enough, nor

39:39 just plain cool enough all in their own to be likable.

39:42 And I've already mentioned the two exceptions, the the concept

39:46 of the Venari Rawl seems underdeveloped and the Venari

39:49 Rawl is kind of like a terrorist group that kind of, you know,

39:52 terrorizes the the whole Galaxy or whatever.

39:55 Some concepts introduced in episodes seem to have vague or

39:59 open-ended conclusions. We never see or hear any of

40:03 Captain Ake's alleged attempts or progress to find Caleb Mears

40:07 mother, which is an ongoing storyline.

40:10 At least that's what I have in my notes.

40:12 I was skimming through some episodes of.

40:14 And I am wrong about that. We do see a hint of her

40:17 continuing to search for Kayla's mother in episode 2, but I'm not

40:22 sure it's ever mentioned again. Yeah, I'm not sure she's

40:26 actually searching like she should be.

40:29 And then the you've already mentioned this, but the first

40:32 officer character, Lurethought is missing from several

40:34 episodes, especially in the second-half of the season.

40:37 So yeah, it's like they give us stuff, but they don't dive deep

40:41 and they don't go all the way, and they've only got 10 episodes

40:44 to do it. So if they're going to go deep

40:45 on anything, they need to step on it.

40:47 And it's like they're just shallow into the pool the whole

40:50 season. So I'm glad you mentioned the

40:53 Venari raw because that brings me to my last thing on opera

40:57 moment and that is the the amazing Paul Giamatti.

41:03 So Paul Giamatti has never had a bad performance like Jeffrey

41:08 Wright. There are there are these actors

41:10 that if you bring them in, they're going just give them the

41:13 script. They're going to nail sit back.

41:15 So he he does a lot with the script, especially in episode 6

41:22 where he gets to chew the scenery up with Holly Hunter in

41:25 this prolonged discussion. But I think this high profile

41:30 bad guy might have been too high profile for me.

41:33 Like we see him at the beginning flashback as the dirtbag who

41:37 ruined the lives of multiple major characters and then later

41:41 he's back as the now leader of the one obvious major threat in

41:45 the series. We don't know what the Venari

41:48 Rawl are exactly. They're literally all them guys

41:52 with Paul Giamatti, like that's, that's their designation.

41:55 Who are the Venari raw Paul Giamatti's boys.

41:58 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.

42:02 We don't know. They could be in sunglasses, it

42:04 doesn't matter. Umm, but they're Paul Giamatti's

42:07 guys. They have no uniform.

42:11 Umm, they're space pirates, but they couldn't say space pirates.

42:15 So for the purposes of this show, we can only afford one bad

42:18 guy, and we got this great actor.

42:20 So my gosh, we're going to focus on that.

42:23 Star Trek hasn't usually been Batman where it's defined by

42:26 like a singular bad guy. Even when you have Osira in the

42:30 Emerald Chain or the Board Queen, they tend to be presented

42:34 as though they're one of a handful of bad guys.

42:36 And I mean, you're an adult. Gold Ducat.

42:39 It's like Gold Ducat is not twirling his mustache in every

42:42 other episode he he pops in and out.

42:45 So they write Paul Giamatti, his first appearance, way over the

42:51 top. I mean, he is acting for the

42:53 back row, WWF intro music, sparkler fountains.

42:58 He's like. I'm here, baby.

43:00 Like you have to be, you have to be braced for.

43:07 We are trying to get the attention of kids, you know,

43:11 looking at their phones and and he's doing his darndest.

43:15 It didn't work especially well for me.

43:18 I think it was I got where they were going with it.

43:22 He did everything he could with it, but it was frustrating for

43:24 him. Yeah, everything about that

43:26 character was frustrating for me.

43:29 He's Noose, ladies and gentlemen.

43:31 Noose. His first name is Noose.

43:35 Yeah, he he basically ruined what could have been some

43:38 halfway decent episodes. Yeah, he's only in three, but Oh

43:43 my goodness, the dialogue they give him.

43:45 We, we love you, Paul. Come on the show, talk to us

43:48 about the production process. You did great.

43:52 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

43:58 few, let the guy who gets locked up with the lady in the first

44:01 episode be a rando, you know, let news show up as head of the

44:06 Nari Rawl in like 3 episodes and be like what are you guys doing?

44:10 No, we're not doing that, you know.

44:14 But anyway, he was supposed to carry the whole and the

44:19 Discovery team has never seen him or heard of him.

44:22 He's literally everywhere in the universe.

44:24 If you, you know, ring the doorbell too loud news, Brock

44:28 and the Venari roll are going to show up and destroy.

44:32 No one else has ever heard of him.

44:34 It's outside of Starfleet Academy.

44:36 But anyway, I'm sorry that was one of.

44:38 The OK, yeah, and there's a reference to something about an

44:41 origami chicken. What?

44:43 Don't know what? Does that even mean that's

44:44 that's one of his lines in the first episode and I can't

44:46 remember some of his lines in the other episodes that he's in.

44:49 Like I said, I think he's in three.

44:50 But yeah, just terrible dialogue.

44:51 Our supply is fluctuating ship wide.

44:54 It adds an instructors in lockdown.

44:57 Polo Transmission. Paget throw. 15 long years, but

45:04 you look radiant as ever a captain.

45:06 OK. Nusraka.

45:09 So many things I didn't get to say when last we met.

45:13 For instance, time, with its infinite sense of humor, will

45:18 always fold upon itself like an origami chicken.

45:23 What? Yeah, and this moment, Captain,

45:27 OK, this moment is that chicken. In other words, paybacks up.

45:34 So weird. Wait, what did he say?

45:37 Time, with its infinite sense of humor, will always fall upon

45:41 itself like an origami chicken. What does that even mean?

45:46 I don't know. Holy makes no sense whatsoever.

45:48 Who wrote this crap? Who wrote this?

45:51 I'm going to file a grievance. And actually, when it comes to

45:54 like fleet stuff and him being everywhere, you're reminding me

45:57 of something else that bugs me not just about this show, but

45:59 new Trek in general. And that is giant fleets all

46:03 warping in at once. You know, in before in Star

46:06 Trek, it's like this ship is 3 days away, this ship is 1 hour

46:10 away, This ship is half a day away.

46:13 Nowadays in Star Trek, it's and it's just two fleets just

46:21 instantly against each and I'm like, how are they coordinating

46:29 the arrival of coming out of warp all within like 5 seconds

46:32 of each other? That that's not how this works.

46:34 That's not how any of this works.

46:36 That is correct. That those were special

46:39 circumstances, Todd. They were in a bubble and they

46:43 were lined up at the border, ready to.

46:46 Yeah, I mean, it's it's crazy. What what are they on the why?

46:49 It's like, oh, I'm going a little too fast.

46:51 I might get there 10 seconds before somebody else let me slow

46:55 down like one 100th of a war factors.

47:00 Crazy. Do you have any more?

47:04 Click on Opera to share. Oh yeah.

47:07 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

47:16 big one that we talked about, Roger.

47:18 Roger, Roger. Wait, who's Roger?

47:21 So remember that one of my good things was diversity, one of my

47:26 bad things, also diversity. So, and this is where I got to

47:32 be really careful. This is the part that was that

47:34 was making me nervous ahead of time.

47:36 So out of our five hybrid characters, it rarely matters

47:40 that Nala Ake is 422 years old. Laura Thalk is missing in

47:45 several episodes and she barely looks half Klingon.

47:48 Also depending on the lighting she sometimes looks blue.

47:52 But Jim Adar have Gray skin and Klingons have much more of like

47:56 human type skin tones. Genesis Life is half Darsha and

48:01 probably half human but we never learned anything about the

48:04 Darsha species. Not they have weird eyebrows,

48:08 that's all we know. Yeah, I'm sorry, ladies,

48:10 gentlemen, her her genetic species that makes her not human

48:15 is a fancy applique eyebrows. She's a very pretty young woman

48:20 and she's her her Star Trek makeup is cool, bedazzled

48:26 bejeweled eyebrows, which is just it's great.

48:30 It's a great look it unless you're going for diversity and

48:33 species. So yeah, I'm sorry.

48:35 I could take. We never see our half Kardashian

48:37 half something else professor again.

48:40 Also her makeup look terrible. Granted Kardashian makeup never

48:44 looks stellar in the 1st place, but hers look more plasticky

48:48 than usual. Also when her other nature is

48:52 revealed, those features are barely visible.

48:55 And Nusbraka doesn't resemble 1/2 Tellurite nor 1/2 Klingon.

48:59 His his features just don't look like either.

49:01 He basically looks like a funky looking human.

49:03 Darem Raimi is fully Taonian who can look human most of the time,

49:08 but we only see his other form in episode 1.

49:12 So that's what I was alluding to in the intro.

49:15 We never see the other form again the entire season, even

49:18 when he visits his not exactly home world but the moon of his

49:23 home world. And I think their excuse there

49:26 was his alternate form is supposed to be aquatic maybe.

49:29 And instead of going to the home world, they went the moon and

49:32 the moon is dried up. So supposedly that's why they

49:34 didn't go in their alternate form.

49:36 But they were also doing a very formal ceremony.

49:38 So you'd think they would, you know, cave in and and do their

49:42 their more natural form instead of their human looking form.

49:45 But they didn't. So we really only see that one

49:47 time. The only reminder that that

49:49 character is nonhuman is when he occasionally throws up glitter,

49:54 which is stupid. Let me see.

49:56 They introduced the concept of All Worlds Day and instead of

50:00 making it a cultural exchange learning event like they should

50:05 because this is a school, it's basically a fancy term for

50:08 spring break and everybody just goes home.

50:11 Let me see. As for LGBT, we learned that Jet

50:15 Reno and Laura Thak are a couple, but we barely see any of

50:19 their relationship. And the show makes a big deal

50:22 out of having the first gay Klingon.

50:24 But after he starts dating Kyle, we never really see them

50:27 together except maybe like in the background.

50:30 I think there's once they're going somewhere and they're

50:32 holding hands or something, it's like really?

50:34 So you're going to the trouble of taking off a whole lot of

50:37 people who don't want to see a gay Klingon and those of us who

50:39 are like open minded to it and don't mind it so much, once you

50:43 make him gay, then it's like you're not even going to do

50:45 anything with it. And I think that's my problem

50:47 with the diversity overall is sure we have like 5 hybrid

50:51 characters and a whole bunch of non human characters and they

50:54 don't do anything with it. This is far trick.

50:57 Do something with your diversity.

50:59 Hopefully I did not take anybody.

51:00 That's you made some really good points there.

51:05 I hadn't actually thought about that, but you're right.

51:07 So we live in a very hostile time where there is an element

51:12 of our society that sees everything they don't like or

51:15 don't understand. Is it attack on them?

51:19 Yeah. So ladies and gentlemen, if you

51:21 haven't seen Star Trek Academy yet, and for some reason your

51:23 introduction to it is listening to Todd and me talk about it,

51:26 that's wonderful. That's beautiful.

51:28 Most of the way through this season, Todd and I already

51:31 mentioned, we've got Jayden, who is a Klingon who's decided he

51:35 doesn't really like shedding his enemy's blood necessarily, and

51:37 he's thinking about going into medicine and Starfleet Academy,

51:40 much to his family's chagrin, because those things are just so

51:43 patently and Klingon. If that was not enough, and

51:46 that's plenty, Jayden shows up. He starts having feelings for a

51:51 very nice boy over at the War College.

51:53 Kyle just love Kyle as the random guy's name.

51:57 But Kyle and Kyle is about as normal, middle of the road milk

52:01 toast random as you can get. He's just Kyle.

52:05 He's just that guy and and Jaden.

52:08 So I don't believe people pick fights with the angry,

52:13 sensitive, hypersensitive people.

52:15 But if they were going to pick a fight, putting a Klingon in a

52:18 skirt is a pretty good way to do it.

52:20 And, and what Todd is saying resonates with me because you're

52:23 right, man. I mean, they make a Klingon a

52:27 medic, OK, And then they make him like a boy, OK, And then

52:31 they put him in a skirt. Yep, Yep.

52:35 And then, and then what happens next, viewers?

52:38 Well, I mean, he puts on pants in the next episode and we don't

52:44 see Kyle that much. There's a whole thing with the

52:46 War College. Somebody gets shot, and then the

52:51 War College kind of isn't mentioned for the last few

52:54 episodes. Kyle's around, I guess, but we

52:56 don't really see him again. So yeah, we kind of pick those

53:00 things and then drop them. That's a.

53:02 That's a very valid point. Yes, you mentioned.

53:05 Yeah. Oh, I was just going to say I

53:07 totally agree with you because those weren't in my nose.

53:09 But I was debating about bringing up the thing about the

53:12 cling. I don't mind him being gay.

53:13 I don't mind him being wearing a skirt or a kilt, whatever you

53:16 want to call it. I don't mind him having stage

53:18 fright. I don't mind him having daddy

53:20 issues. I don't mind him.

53:22 What was the other thing you said?

53:26 Oh, being a scientist instead of a warrior, what is a little bit

53:30 weird is all those things all at once.

53:32 It's like it's too many eggs in one basket.

53:35 And and like I said, you're already going to take off some

53:37 people with just one of those things and they just keep piling

53:40 on. And I just can't help but wonder

53:42 if it's too much for for one character.

53:46 I kind of feel like they need to ease people into this stuff a

53:49 little bit better. And then the War College.

53:51 What is the War College? I don't get it.

53:53 Why? Why is it War College there?

53:54 Is it a is it a part of Starfleet Academy?

53:56 Is it not? Why do they share a campus?

54:00 Why does it matter? It's it's basically just there

54:03 for them to have an adversary against for stuff like prank

54:05 wars. And then the war College doesn't

54:07 even matter later. It's like, what is War College?

54:09 Why is it there? Yeah.

54:10 Yeah, the war colleges, the Slytherins, for you listeners,

54:14 they're just over to the side and they serve a purpose when

54:16 they serve a purpose. But yeah, it's I have the first

54:21 half of a thought and bless y'all, I'm going to just throw

54:25 it out there without resolving it.

54:27 But Klingons have a natural character, and it has to do with

54:30 a code system of Bushido and courage and honor and these

54:35 things. And you introduce a Klingon that

54:37 daringly does not love these things.

54:40 And that's fine. It's daring and it's different,

54:43 that's true. But in taking away the essential

54:46 characteristics of a Klingon, you also run the risk of making

54:49 a character who's just a character, which is fine.

54:52 Jaden is an interesting character, but we'd no longer

54:56 really have a Klingon character necessarily if you're going to

54:59 take those things away. So they kind of hedge their

55:01 bets. And occasionally he'll lean over

55:03 and, you know, in tone to a classmate, you know, you never

55:07 leave a friend alone in battle, you know?

55:09 And it's like, oh, OK, OK. He's kind of a cling on there

55:11 for a minute. It's the same thing if we want a

55:13 Vulcan, but we want him to be like Cybok and Star Trek 5,

55:17 where he doesn't really believe in logic.

55:19 You really got a human with pointy ears, which is fine.

55:22 It's daring, but it's really like an episode.

55:25 It's not so much. You don't have a Vulcan

55:26 character. So I'm not sure what they're

55:28 going to do with Jayden. We may see that.

55:31 My other weird little nitpicks, I guess, are Tatiana Maslany's

55:35 eyebrows. I'm not sure what they were

55:37 doing here. And she's she's a wonderful

55:41 actress. I haven't watched Orphan Black

55:43 yet, but I've heard nothing but good things.

55:45 And I'm one of the few people that respect her and she Hulk.

55:48 But yeah, it's there are weird choices in the show.

55:51 So are we good on Klingon opera? We've covered a lot.

55:55 I'm going to look up origami chickens later.

55:57 But the first thing I found was the Internet saying Giamatti

56:01 admits his character doesn't necessarily make sense, which is

56:04 great. No, no, no, no he doesn't.

56:07 Understatement of the century. No, I've still got more.

56:10 So you refresh my memory and I forgot the one thing about Jaden

56:15 Krog. Well, for one thing, he also has

56:17 the the non Klingon sounding name Jayden.

56:21 I've heard people on the Internet pick about that.

56:23 But the other thing I, I would, I would be OK with everything

56:27 else that they would change this one thing and that he's got an

56:29 annoying voice. And I know that Klingons speak

56:32 with a deeper voice and, and you know, they, they build that

56:35 extra inflection. But his is so fake sounding.

56:38 And it's, it's the worst thing is it limits his range.

56:43 It's like my name is Jayden. I am very sad right now.

56:46 I am very angry. I am very happy.

56:48 It all sounds the same and. This is my fault, Todd.

56:52 I planted these two things in your head.

56:54 So the first one, the first one is that Nick cracks up because

56:58 they named the Klingon Jayden. All right, Don't fool

57:01 yourselves. His name's Jayden, all right?

57:03 It's just the same as naming a Vulcan Justin Timberlake.

57:07 It's like his name is Justin. Yeah, we all know his name's

57:10 Justin. You don't have to pretend his

57:11 name is Jayden, which is funny. That's Will Smith's son's name,

57:15 Jayden. But the other thing is that in

57:18 especially in I think the the wedding episode where Raimi is

57:22 kind of getting married and then getting married and then not

57:24 married, the director has asked this actor to pronounce Klingon

57:30 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

57:42 each word like that. And that's just how he sucks.

57:48 It's not as bad in some of the later episodes, but the more you

57:52 make him talk like Christian Bale's Batman voice, if you make

57:56 him say a bunch of stuff together, it gets kind of

58:00 conspicuous. Todd said he can't find a clip

58:03 from the episode where Jaden gives a wedding speech, but

58:06 here's a clip from the debate class episode so you can hear

58:09 what Jaden's voice sounds like. Cadets Mirror.

58:12 And crop Cadet Mirror for the affirmative, Cadet Craw for the

58:17 negative. Book 12, Code 2398, Subsection

58:26 8-9. If engaged in diplomatic

58:29 relations with species that are not allies, Starfleet officers

58:35 need not contradict alien morality.

58:38 There's legal precedent that amends Code 2398 star date

58:43 2930.8. Vulcan versus Ka concedes that

58:47 mortal danger is a matter of subjective perception.

58:51 How many Klingons are left in the quadrants?

58:53 Jada enough to know that each Klingon matters?

58:56 Cadence. Holy crap this hurts my throat

58:59 just hearing it. It is not the Federation's

59:02 advantage or place to tell the Klingons who they are, or yours.

59:09 Ever. Seriously, I'm looking through

59:11 my purse for a throat lozenge right now.

59:14 I know a Klingon who's rejected the isolationism you say defines

59:18 all Klingons and now enjoys Federation provided food, safety

59:21 and resources. A Klingon, please return to

59:26 your. Podium.

59:27 To belong to anything, stop. For those who are willing to die

59:34 for you, stop. And now I left your family

59:36 because they were willing. You have no idea what?

59:40 Family needs Ouch. He did fine in episode 10 where

59:45 he's just sort of like, I don't know what's wrong with your dad,

59:48 but yeah, for some reason episode 5 was the height of,

59:52 dude, take a breath, you're allowed to just do a voice.

59:56 But yeah, he was having trouble. That's on me.

59:59 Yeah, Yeah. All right, so one other thing I

1:00:02 have in the negatives, so you know how I talked about

1:00:04 production quality in the positives, also in the

1:00:06 negatives, production quality, the atrium set, while

1:00:11 impressive, is also overdone and not school looking.

1:00:15 It looks like that it's where all the money went.

1:00:18 And I'm like, you know, cut back on the set, like maybe use like

1:00:22 a historical setting and just say we're using old timey sets

1:00:25 because I don't know why. I'm just making an excuse and

1:00:28 use something that is, you know, less futuristic.

1:00:32 And they work on the writing, you know, pay, pay the writers

1:00:34 better, you know, give them a bonus for doing something right

1:00:37 every once in a while or something.

1:00:38 I don't know. But I wish that there was more

1:00:40 focus on writing dialogue and characters.

1:00:42 And instead they just went hog wild with the set.

1:00:44 And it's like, it is too much. I can see where all the dollars

1:00:47 went. And that's not the most

1:00:49 important thing. And also, I hate the excessive

1:00:52 color correction in outdoor scenes.

1:00:54 This is my complaint in other movies and TV shows.

1:00:57 Even the TV show Lois and Clark did that.

1:01:00 Todd meant to say Superman and Lois, not Lois and Clark.

1:01:05 He makes the mistake again a minute or two from now.

1:01:07 Especially in the earlier seasons, I think they might have

1:01:10 gotten away with it by the time of season 4, which is like their

1:01:13 very best season. I mean, in fact, that was the my

1:01:16 favorite season of TV whatever year it was like two or three

1:01:20 years ago when Lois and Clark season 4 came out.

1:01:23 But I wish that I wish that people would cut it out with the

1:01:27 over color correction because I want blue skies to actually look

1:01:31 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

1:01:38 outdoor scenes to have blue sky. So yeah, that bugs me.

1:01:42 Interesting. Yeah, I missed that.

1:01:46 So our our next section, Section 6, we're talking about the

1:01:50 Undiscovered Country. Where would you like to see the

1:01:52 show or the franchise go next? And as Todd mentioned, this is a

1:01:56 unique time for Paramount and Paramount Plus.

1:02:00 We've got hostile takeovers, we've got change of management.

1:02:03 Most of the shows are kind of being dropped or officially let

1:02:07 go. And Starfleet Academy is unique

1:02:10 because I think it was in the middle of filming.

1:02:13 So it's about done. So Season 2 is a done deal and

1:02:17 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

1:02:23 else seems to be kind of wrapping up.

1:02:25 So let me start us off here and where I would like to see things

1:02:31 go. I would like the show to

1:02:34 increase its cast of students, its variety of bad guys, and its

1:02:39 depiction of classes. If it's going to be a school, if

1:02:43 they're starting something like the Calico combat game, I need

1:02:47 it to come up a couple more times.

1:02:49 If they're in a class with Jet Reno teaching temporal

1:02:52 mechanics, they need to go back to that Class A couple of times,

1:02:55 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

1:03:02 often. I was really short with that

1:03:04 one. Yeah, I yeah, I agree with you

1:03:08 on that. In fact, you made some good

1:03:09 points and reminded me of something else.

1:03:12 I don't know how true this is, but somebody somewhere said that

1:03:15 the makers of the show supposedly wanted to do Harry

1:03:18 Potter meets X-Men First Class. And I can kind of, yeah, I can

1:03:23 kind of see where they're getting that from.

1:03:25 I'm thinking it should be kind of like Community, the show

1:03:29 about the Community College where we follow a study group,

1:03:32 because you were also talking about how sometimes it seems

1:03:35 like we only have six students. And I totally agree with that.

1:03:38 I didn't write that down, but I was thinking the same thing you

1:03:41 were. And that would help with that by

1:03:43 saying that these students, they're a study group, they're

1:03:47 or like they are on some kind of team or maybe they could do

1:03:51 something kind of like the Sorting Hat and Harry Potter and

1:03:54 say that certain people are in pods or something.

1:03:56 And that's why these six are the six while we're following them

1:04:00 all the time, because it feels like they're in every single

1:04:03 class together, no matter how different those classes are.

1:04:06 And like you say, we never see those classes again.

1:04:08 It would be more interesting if like we saw them follow one

1:04:12 class and maybe they're the study group for that class.

1:04:15 But then for other classes, maybe there are other background

1:04:18 students and maybe only one or two of them are in this class

1:04:21 and only one or two of them are in this other class or something

1:04:24 like that. But I know I'm complaining about

1:04:28 it needs to feel more like a school.

1:04:30 And yes, it would be boring to watch people go to class and for

1:04:34 the teacher to say, OK, get on your pads and go to page so and

1:04:37 so with this textbook and blah blah blah.

1:04:39 I know that would be boring. But right now it's not enough

1:04:45 like a school. I still need to.

1:04:48 I still need to see kids following their classes and

1:04:52 especially in their concentrations.

1:04:54 If they if Jaden Krog is being established as being a scientist

1:04:58 or or a future scientist, that we need to see him actually

1:05:01 doing lab work or something. And if two of our characters are

1:05:06 supposed to be future captains, then I want to see them do

1:05:09 command work also. We did see them in a Starship

1:05:14 simulation one time this season already, but it was in a scene

1:05:19 after something bad had happened in season 6 that the kids were

1:05:22 kind of still depressed about. You mean episode 6, not season

1:05:26 6? It was making them not work well

1:05:27 together. And so Jet Reno, as much as I

1:05:29 like the character, she was like, you guys suck, just get

1:05:32 out of here. And I was like, no, make a

1:05:34 teaching moment. So I know that they're doing

1:05:37 these Starship simulations, but we're not seeing them.

1:05:41 And that's what I want to see more.

1:05:42 I want to see these these students actually being prepared

1:05:47 to be Starfleet officers. I would think that's what the

1:05:50 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

1:05:56 for you, it's supposed to be about teenagers and people are

1:05:59 in their 20s. So it's supposed to be more of a

1:06:02 young show, and it can be a little bit more soap opera.

1:06:05 OK, I could actually accept that, too.

1:06:08 Except, as I said in one of my complaints, I really don't like

1:06:12 these characters that much. You know, I went through a

1:06:15 phase. I can't remember if I was in my

1:06:17 20s or in my 30s, but one of the channels was doing, like,

1:06:21 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

1:06:28 row, even though I was like 10-15 years older than those

1:06:32 characters, not much older than the actors, but 10 or 15 years

1:06:35 older. So I can watch that stuff and

1:06:38 follow it and say like, OK, yeah, these are younger.

1:06:41 I have to adjust my thinking, but I still have to like the

1:06:44 characters too. And I just don't like these

1:06:46 characters enough. So even if it's going to be less

1:06:49 about their classes and more about their social structure and

1:06:54 them as characters, OK, well then just make them cooler

1:06:57 characters then. And so.

1:06:59 Yeah, I I'm hoping that we see an improvement in the overall

1:07:04 writing and character development in Season 2, which

1:07:07 like I said, might be the only season we get left.

1:07:11 So I'm going to save my comments on that to #3 and I'm going to

1:07:14 go to number 2. So to any of our listeners who

1:07:17 don't know, there has been a fan push for a completely made-up,

1:07:21 completely not validated project called Star Trek Legacy, partly

1:07:26 based on the last moments of the Picard series, where we see a

1:07:29 Star Trek alum becoming captain of a new Enterprise and fans

1:07:34 want to see a series that brings back a bunch of beloved

1:07:36 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,

1:07:43 because my favorite people are TOS and TNG, and we've probably

1:07:47 gotten the most we're going to get out of those characters.

1:07:50 But I do think it taps into our phantom desire for more

1:07:55 connections to the entire franchise.

1:07:58 So I want to see whether it be that way or in the show like

1:08:02 this, I want to see more continuity connections.

1:08:07 Every time we see the name of a past ship or character, the

1:08:10 Phantom gets all excited and people chalk it up to fan

1:08:14 service. They say, oh it's just fan

1:08:16 service, but I think it's about universe building.

1:08:19 The more you connect these things, the more you lift up the

1:08:22 past. It actually makes the present a

1:08:25 lot more weighted as well, and I don't think people appreciate

1:08:29 that enough. So like Doctor Who, if you guys

1:08:32 have been watching Doctor Who will make up a new creepy alien

1:08:36 every other episode. But there's a reason that we

1:08:39 keep coming back to the Daleks and the Cybermen and why we keep

1:08:43 mentioning previous Doctor from the Golden Age.

1:08:45 It's not just fan service. We don't mention Tom Baker

1:08:49 because Nick is like, I like Tom Baker.

1:08:51 We mention it because it gives the present more weight as well,

1:08:55 if you tie it into a whole elaborate history.

1:08:58 So I want to see more of that. I want the Star Trek writers to

1:09:01 do what The Who writers did and pour through these old stories,

1:09:05 mining them for even more characters and planets and plot

1:09:09 devices. I don't mean have a cadet in the

1:09:11 background with their face half black and half white.

1:09:15 Yes, that's nice, but it's more like fun set decoration than

1:09:19 writing. We've gotten a bunch of fun set

1:09:21 decoration in Starfleet Academy. They do what I'm talking about

1:09:26 now, like the Gem Hadar lady. But we need more.

1:09:30 A lot more. There's a ton of established

1:09:33 Canon Star Trek universe out there.

1:09:36 So like bringing in the planet Beta Zed was a very smart move.

1:09:40 They did not make this about Deanna Troi or Lawaksana Troi.

1:09:44 No one in the whole show mentioned the Chalice of Reeks.

1:09:49 OK, I don't think they did. They maybe they did, but it's

1:09:52 not just callbacks. It's not fanservice, it's

1:09:54 connection. So if you mention the planet

1:09:57 Beta Zed, you're really not saying, hey, we see you, Star

1:10:00 Trek Next Generation fans. What you're really saying is

1:10:04 Beta Zed still exists because this is a real universe and

1:10:08 we're not pretending like everything is new every five.

1:10:11 It makes everything better. So yeah, it lifts up the old

1:10:14 series, but it also makes the new series very, very valid.

1:10:17 Want to see a lot more of that? Yeah, and as far as Beta ZI

1:10:20 think that's another half baked thing is that they spent a whole

1:10:24 episode concentrating on Beta Z as if it's the most important

1:10:27 thing in the world. And I think, OK, but why?

1:10:29 And I don't think they really explain why Beta Z is so great

1:10:33 in the in the future. That's true.

1:10:36 And then let me see the other thing that you mentioned.

1:10:42 Oh, Star Trek Legacy. Yeah.

1:10:45 So that is supposed to be a continuation of Star Trek Picard

1:10:48 Season 3 with Seven of Nine as the captain.

1:10:53 Rafi Musiker, A character I can't stand being first officer.

1:10:59 It would have a character named Jack.

1:11:01 I won't say what his last name is in case that's a spoiler.

1:11:04 At least one of Jordy Laforge's kids in there.

1:11:07 And they would be on a Starship that gets renamed at the end of

1:11:13 that season to a name that it doesn't deserve.

1:11:16 So yeah. So yeah, a whole bunch of fans

1:11:18 are like, oh, please let Star Trek Legacy happen.

1:11:21 For the love of everything good and holy, let Star Trek Legacy

1:11:24 not happen. I don't want to see Star Trek

1:11:27 Legacy. It is way too connected to Star

1:11:29 Trek Picard. And everybody's like, oh, Star

1:11:31 Trek Picard. Season 3 was a redemption, and

1:11:33 it was so much better than the first season.

1:11:35 No, it it was terrible too. In fact, I would say Season 2,

1:11:40 oddly enough, is the least egregious of the three seasons.

1:11:43 I mean, yes, it was great for nostalgic purposes to see

1:11:46 everybody come back for Season 3.

1:11:48 How? How could it not be great or not

1:11:51 great? How could it not be nostalgic?

1:11:54 But it was nostalgia for the sake of nostalgia.

1:11:56 The story still was terrible. As I complained in one of our

1:12:00 previous episodes, when we did the Star Trek Primer, they

1:12:03 lifted like half of the story from something they already did

1:12:08 in the Star Trek original series movies.

1:12:12 No, no, no, like no legacy. So, yeah, I would be OK.

1:12:18 Never seen that happen. As far as where I do want to go,

1:12:21 I don't know exactly. Just pick, as far as I'm

1:12:25 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

1:12:32 Star Trek, I don't know, I've heard people accuse Alex

1:12:39 Kurtzman of not even liking Star Trek.

1:12:42 And I'm not in the guy's head and I haven't had a conversation

1:12:45 with him and I haven't looked for every interview that he's

1:12:48 in. But when people make that

1:12:50 argument, I'm like, there might be something to that.

1:12:52 Because here lately, it seems like with Star Trek, they keep

1:12:56 wanting to reshape it into something new.

1:12:58 And don't get me wrong, I know that that's kind of what they

1:13:02 have to do to a certain extent with each new series, but it

1:13:06 likes, it's like they want to take it too far and then it's

1:13:08 not enough to just go a different direction.

1:13:10 Kind of like Deep Space 9 went. It was very controversial in

1:13:13 that it went more political and religious, and more importantly,

1:13:17 it was on a space station instead of a spaceship.

1:13:20 And so that was a very different format, but they made it work

1:13:25 and it still felt like Star Trek, just a different kind of

1:13:27 Star Trek. And nowadays it feels like they

1:13:30 just want to take Star Trek and just do something different with

1:13:33 it. But not just that, they want to

1:13:35 take stuff that was in the past and change it too.

1:13:38 And it's like they want to rewrite the history.

1:13:40 And I wish they would stop doing that.

1:13:44 And I think one of the best things that they could do is go

1:13:47 ahead and establish that Star Trek takes place in a

1:13:50 multiverse. And in a way they already have.

1:13:54 You've got the prime universe with the with the shows that

1:13:56 were out in the 60s and the 90s and the early 2000s.

1:14:00 That's all like the prime universe.

1:14:02 But you also have the mirror universe, which was dealt with

1:14:07 in the original series, Deep Space 9, and yes, even a little

1:14:11 bit of Discovery. And so that's its own universe.

1:14:14 And then you've also got the Kelvin universe.

1:14:16 So right there you've got potentially 4 universes.

1:14:19 I know they want to say that all modern Star Trek is also part of

1:14:22 the prime universe. They need to get over that

1:14:25 because, you know, I've talked a little bit about the whole

1:14:27 takeover. I don't know how true this is,

1:14:28 but according to one resource online I follow, if he is right,

1:14:33 if he is accurate, Alex Kurtzman's production company

1:14:37 owns half of all the stuff that they have done in new Star Trek.

1:14:42 Like if they talk about the Enterprise Oregon spot that was

1:14:44 already there so Paramount owns that.

1:14:47 But if they in in Captain Pike and stuff like that.

1:14:50 But any character or concept that is new, like the Discovery

1:14:54 or or Michael Burnham, that is technically owned by Alex

1:14:59 Kurtzman's production company at least.

1:15:02 Yeah. So when they continue the Star

1:15:04 Trek franchise, and if they do it without Kurdsman, they're

1:15:08 either going to have to get his permission or pay him a little

1:15:10 extra if they want to include the things from his era.

1:15:13 So the thing I think they ought to do is just consider his era

1:15:17 an entirely separate universe and then never reference it

1:15:19 again. And that way it makes the fans

1:15:23 of those shows happy because they're still technically Canon,

1:15:26 just Canon in another universe. And it makes fans like me happy

1:15:31 because even though I don't like those shows, it's separate.

1:15:35 It's a separate sandbox, and it's not ruining it for

1:15:38 everybody else. But then we can either get back

1:15:40 to the Prime universe or do an entirely new spin off universe.

1:15:43 And then that way it's its own sandbox and it's not harming

1:15:46 anything else either. So that's what I think they

1:15:49 ought to do, is establish A multiverse and let everything be

1:15:52 its own separate thing. Well, I mean, I'd like to

1:15:55 disagree with you, but the system that you're describing

1:15:58 sounds like that's the most conducive thing.

1:16:01 I mean, and once you do that. So if I sift through everything

1:16:05 that I've seen in all of these serieses and I decide I like one

1:16:09 thing like the Kardashian lady or Jet Reno or something, and

1:16:16 I'm like, it ends up being like Venom and Spider Man and I'm

1:16:21 going to like make a small pocket deal to bring 1 character

1:16:25 over or something. So yeah, I don't have a dog in

1:16:29 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

1:16:37 shake up with ownership. Licensing and ownership is like

1:16:42 an ugly convoluted thing. And it ticks me off that lawyers

1:16:46 will dictate where characters go.

1:16:48 That seems just like a terrible thing in at least a bad places.

1:16:51 But my next undiscovered Country, I mentioned limited

1:16:57 casting and it frustrates me in Discovery that they keep having

1:17:02 OK, so over in the show Discovery, there is this

1:17:05 character played by Emily Koots and Emily Koots, she goes

1:17:10 through elaborate makeup to play Detmer.

1:17:14 Detmer has, she gets blown up in the first episode and then she

1:17:18 has a prosthetic for like the rest of the series.

1:17:21 And week after week, they give Detmer almost nothing to do.

1:17:25 I'm watching Detmer and I'm like this poor woman, Emily Kuz,

1:17:29 She's showing up. She's part of the crew, She's on

1:17:31 the bridge. There's so many people on the

1:17:32 bridge and there's nothing for Detmer to.

1:17:36 They eventually give her a few lines.

1:17:39 But in this show at the Starfleet Academy, frankly, we

1:17:45 need a lot of debtors. We need to pay several actors

1:17:48 and actresses to be that one Andorian or Kelpian or Nausican

1:17:53 student who it feels is it feels like they're always around in

1:17:57 these classes. Yes, you have to give them some

1:18:01 lines. Sometimes you're going to have

1:18:03 to pay them more than the basic fee.

1:18:06 But maybe in Season 2 they'll have more budget and flush out

1:18:09 the student body. If the crew wants to cut some

1:18:12 corners, fine. You know we can get some mostly

1:18:15 static rubber masks, some fast applique Cyborg bits or helmets

1:18:19 or something. We could have a few characters

1:18:21 like Mourn in Deep Space 9. Fans love when a character is

1:18:26 ridiculously overtly sidelined. So there's like a person in a

1:18:30 hood with like little elephant trunk sticking out.

1:18:33 We never see their face, but everyone keeps referring to how

1:18:36 opinionated their personality is off screen.

1:18:39 You get crazy with it. People love that stuff.

1:18:41 And I mean, Todd mentions Community.

1:18:43 So Community has that crew, that core central group, but it also

1:18:49 has Leonard and Vicki Starburn's Garrett magnitude.

1:18:53 Todd frankly. So you convinced me, Todd.

1:18:56 I don't want it to be silly like Community, but I want the

1:18:59 writers to watch episodes of Community just to appreciate the

1:19:02 role of B tier characters. I need Season 2 of Starfleet

1:19:07 Academy to have a bunch of B tier characters like Vicki who

1:19:12 are wandering through and they're always Vicki, but

1:19:15 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.

1:19:19 Will you guys quit calling me that?

1:19:20 It's just, that would be great. It would flesh it out.

1:19:23 I I'm so glad that you remembered those names because I

1:19:25 was racking my brain for those names and I could only think of

1:19:27 Leonard. I love community.

1:19:29 Yeah, I'm, I'm big on community, y'all.

1:19:32 And and based on what Todd said earlier, if you guys are

1:19:35 listening to this quietly in the background and you'd love

1:19:38 nothing more than to hear and me and Todd go through and talk

1:19:42 about Star Trek Picard, You know, write us those emails.

1:19:45 Let us know because otherwise we are not going to.

1:19:49 But you'd have to write quite a bit for us to actually rewatch

1:19:52 it. I don't, I don't plan on doing

1:19:53 that. But I mean, I guess we could cut

1:19:55 just to season 2, like you said, Todd, But yeah, yeah, let us

1:19:59 know if you're interested in that because currently that is

1:20:01 not the plan. Oh my goodness, do I do I have

1:20:04 the strength to rewatch Season 1?

1:20:06 Barely. Not likely, but.

1:20:08 Possible. Barely.

1:20:10 I seriously doubt that. Do you know what kind of

1:20:13 torture? That is, that would be a hell

1:20:14 no. For me, thanks.

1:20:16 Oh my goodness. Well, we can still do an episode

1:20:18 just about the card, but yes y'all let us know what you want.

1:20:23 Are we, are we ready for section 6.5?

1:20:25 Yeah. I think so, yeah.

1:20:28 All right, so we are going to take a minute because there's

1:20:31 one episode of this entire series that's a little bit

1:20:35 different from the others. Yeah, there's some fanservice.

1:20:38 I don't like that term. I just call it references.

1:20:42 But throughout the show, there are random aliens and stuff

1:20:48 thrown in different times. But Episode 5 stood out from the

1:20:52 whole series. Todd and I were ready to just

1:20:54 talk about episode 5 when it came out.

1:20:56 But I'm like, you know what? Hold off, Todd.

1:20:58 Let's see if there's another episode 5.

1:21:00 Let's see if there's something else.

1:21:02 And there was not. Episode 5 was the most callback

1:21:07 reference to established lore episode of the whole season.

1:21:11 So we're just going to take just just a minute.

1:21:14 It will take a lot longer than that.

1:21:15 How long? Five.

1:21:17 Maybe 6 minutes? This will take a little.

1:21:18 While to sink in I suppose, and longer than that to comprehend

1:21:21 the data. This will not be a walk in the

1:21:23 pun all decks brace for. Impact and do sort of what Todd

1:21:27 is casually called a drive by. We're going to take a look at a

1:21:31 few of the choices that were made in episode 5.

1:21:36 This is directed by Larry Tang and written by Kirsten Bayer and

1:21:39 Tawny Newsome. Yes, listeners, the tawny

1:21:42 Newsome from Star Trek lower decks who is a self-proclaimed

1:21:46 Star Trek nerd lover of many things track Tommy Newsome.

1:21:50 She is mariner in that show and she's an interesting lady.

1:21:54 So this is the one where Sam, our hologram girl series

1:21:59 acquisition mill, is told that she only has a couple of days to

1:22:03 understand everything about humans, even though on the

1:22:05 makers planet those couple of days are like years.

1:22:09 And she latches on to the word emissary because she's an

1:22:13 ambassador. But instead she latches on the

1:22:15 emissary. So she starts researching

1:22:18 Benjamin Cisco from Deep Space 9.

1:22:20 She's determined to figure out what happened to him.

1:22:23 This is a hologram of Jake Cisco talking about his dad and her

1:22:27 Kardashian teacher, you know, encourages her, I guess you

1:22:30 could say without me getting more into it.

1:22:32 At the same time, we have Nala Ake cutting the ice with the War

1:22:36 College chancellor Kelrick, who doesn't like her because she's

1:22:40 quit Starfleet, so he's kind of counting her out.

1:22:42 We haven't talked about Kill Rick.

1:22:43 He's the up top guy, uptight guy next door who doesn't seem to

1:22:46 actually affect the plot in much way.

1:22:48 And he likes tea. There you go, listeners.

1:22:51 And she works with Jet Reno and the Doctor to prep him for a big

1:22:54 ambassador meeting. Our hologram girl gets drunk,

1:22:58 mirror modifies for code so that she can drink and get drunk.

1:23:02 And mirror. And Tarima, this is Troy Junior,

1:23:05 pretty, pretty girl playing the beta Zed girl.

1:23:08 They hook up some more and Jaden and Kyle hang out some at the

1:23:12 club. So that's generally what happens

1:23:14 in this episode. But Todd, if you want to take it

1:23:16 away and say a couple of things that struck you about this

1:23:18 episode. OK, so if you haven't figured

1:23:22 out already, this is the one that I struggle with.

1:23:24 In fact, I was going to try to articulate myself as carefully

1:23:28 and thoroughly as possible. I even started writing basically

1:23:31 an essay on this, but when I practiced it in my head, the

1:23:35 unfinished version I wasn't all the way done was already going

1:23:38 to take me 8 minutes. So that's why Nick says we're

1:23:41 going to do like a drive by of this because I'm not going to be

1:23:44 able to do the deep dive into. It just a warning folks, he does

1:23:47 the deep dive anyway. If you have wine, start drinking

1:23:51 now like me. But anyway, my first complaint

1:23:54 is just the overall presentation aspect of this episode, because

1:24:00 that starts from like second one.

1:24:02 It starts before we even get like a shot of the school.

1:24:05 It's when it says like this is a CBS production, then there's

1:24:08 like a squiggle on top of that and there's like weird writing

1:24:11 on top of that that shows that that this is going to be a very

1:24:16 weirdly presented episode. And just in that first minute,

1:24:21 everything about the music, the voiceover, the graphics, the

1:24:25 editing, the performance of the Sam character, the 4th wall

1:24:29 breaking, etcetera. All of that was annoying and or

1:24:33 immature and or off putting. So more complaints later, but I

1:24:39 mean it just gets off to a weird start and is just presented in a

1:24:44 strange way. OK, in the 90s a movie came out

1:24:48 called Stardust, and one of the things that made me not like it

1:24:53 was that one of the reviews overshot it.

1:24:57 It tried to blow it up by saying this was better than The

1:25:02 Princess Bride. The Discerning Geeks Portal

1:25:06 Podcast reviewed the movie Stardust in their episode #46

1:25:11 Todd was a grump Meister general in that episode too.

1:25:14 Ruin Stardust for me, ladies and gentlemen, because Stardust is

1:25:17 good. It's a fine movie, go enjoy it,

1:25:19 It's fun. But it is no Princess Bride.

1:25:22 No one thinks it's The Princess Bride, but by comparing it, they

1:25:27 dropped it horribly. So Todd and I, before seeing

1:25:31 episode 5 of Starfleet Academy, heard the phrase.

1:25:35 One of us is going to say it eventually, a love letter to fan

1:25:39 of Deep Space 9 and and one of us is a deep fan of Deep Space

1:25:45 9. And that I got to say, man, if

1:25:48 you're going to put it on a pedestal, you are just setting

1:25:52 yourself up. So yeah, I did not have the

1:25:55 visceral reaction Todd did, but it's already sounding the way

1:25:59 you described it. Like once you put it up there,

1:26:05 some of the little things that might not have been that big a

1:26:07 deal in the other episodes are going to be a bigger deal in

1:26:09 this episode because it's trying to be something it's not.

1:26:13 Yeah. So you've already talked about

1:26:14 how Sam is the character that kind of researches Benjamin

1:26:18 Cisco because she considers herself to be an emissary

1:26:22 herself because she is the only photonic person who has left her

1:26:29 planet. She is basically like a hologram

1:26:33 and they don't do a great job of ever explaining what exactly is

1:26:36 projecting the hologram. Does she have like a projector

1:26:39 inside of her, kind of the way the Doctor does, who is also a

1:26:42 character of this. But regardless, Sam is just an

1:26:46 annoying character. So on top of the annoying

1:26:48 presentation, we get the annoying character who's looking

1:26:52 into all of this. Oh and also I almost forgot

1:26:55 about this, but I've also got my notes that she is basically the

1:26:58 equivalent of a 17 year old. So she acts kind of immature and

1:27:04 she was created 217 days ago. But you also brought up

1:27:08 something that we don't even discover until I think it's

1:27:11 episode 8, which is that her planet runs on a different speed

1:27:17 of time than the rest of the universe.

1:27:20 So which 217 days? Is that 217 Earth days?

1:27:23 Or is it 217 Caskeian days? And if it's 200 70 Earth days

1:27:28 and that means years in CAT scan.

1:27:30 And I don't know it, it's it's weird.

1:27:32 So But anyway, the whole story about her researching Benjamin

1:27:38 Sisko is annoying, at least partially because she is

1:27:42 annoying. And I'm still not even getting

1:27:44 to the the the worst part yet. But yeah, so did.

1:27:49 Did you have problems with this episode or is it just me?

1:27:52 I did not have the problems with it that you had.

1:27:54 It bothered me because the plot of the episode is this kid and

1:28:00 she is she's, she's not even a kid like the other kids in the

1:28:03 series who are all late teens, 20s kids.

1:28:07 She's like Todd just said, she's practically a newborn.

1:28:11 She is a 5 year old who can walk around and talk as though she's

1:28:16 a 20 something, but she is completely wide eyed enjoying

1:28:20 the experience of the world. What this plot is, is this

1:28:25 toddler wandering into Star Trek lore and saying this is really

1:28:31 cool, I'm going to experience it and she wanders around excited

1:28:35 about it for the episode. So part of this is them going to

1:28:39 a bar that Cisco once went to hundreds of years before and

1:28:44 getting drunk and dancing in the bar that Cisco was in once.

1:28:48 This is kind of what the episode is about.

1:28:49 It's not about Cisco exactly. It's about it's about this young

1:28:55 girl's experience. So it's exactly the same.

1:28:58 If you guys hung out with me at college and I said that I was

1:29:01 really into Faulkner, so I was going to get loaded on whiskey

1:29:05 and walk through the park talking about Faulkner.

1:29:09 It's not. If you really liked Faulkner a

1:29:12 lot, you might be kind of frustrated with me, and I think

1:29:15 that's kind of Todd's experience.

1:29:17 So I can understand why the episode was weird.

1:29:23 It wasn't, especially for Deep Space 9 fans.

1:29:27 It was still like the rest of the series for a younger

1:29:30 demographic, but with these olive branches that were

1:29:36 intended to hoax determined fans into the series.

1:29:41 And there were some nice ones. So I appreciated the things that

1:29:45 might have frustrated Todd Moore.

1:29:48 I think if you come close to doing something good, sometimes

1:29:50 it can be a bigger insult. And I didn't have that, so I'm

1:29:54 not. I'm not devoted to Deep Space 9

1:29:56 the same way. So there are meager attempts.

1:29:59 To me, work came across as what's nice.

1:30:01 Y'all try. All right, so, so you're, you're

1:30:04 getting me there. All right, so the so you talked

1:30:07 about her going and getting drunk.

1:30:08 That was the worst part of all because it was to a bar that

1:30:11 technically did not exist anymore.

1:30:13 But they were like, oh, yeah, it doesn't have the same name, but

1:30:16 there's a spot in the same place.

1:30:17 We could always go to it. So of course, you know, it's

1:30:20 been 800 years. They probably tore down the old

1:30:22 one and they got a new one. So it's like, it's not even the

1:30:24 same place, but she goes there thinking she's going to have

1:30:26 some kind of spiritual experience getting close to

1:30:29 Cisco or, or learning what it's like to be an emissary just by

1:30:32 going to a bar and getting drunk.

1:30:35 She usually can't even get drunk.

1:30:37 Not Darren. What's the other guy's name?

1:30:39 Caleb has to mess with her programming.

1:30:41 And at first I thought he just started doing it without her

1:30:43 permission. But I was rewatching it today

1:30:45 and yes, he was like, hey, give me access to your program.

1:30:48 And he pulled it up and he was like, oh, I can adjust this.

1:30:51 And, you know, a lot of you get drunk and then later he just

1:30:53 turns it off and she's instantly sober and everything.

1:30:56 But anyway, so yeah, she's very misguided how she's even doing

1:30:59 this research and trying to figure out what it's like to be

1:31:01 an emissary. So she's just going to a bar?

1:31:03 That's dumb. Let me see.

1:31:05 There was something else that you mentioned, but I think I

1:31:08 forgot that. Well, anyway, the reason my

1:31:10 brain explodes on this, it takes some knowledge of what the

1:31:16 series finale was for Deep Space 9.

1:31:18 So if anybody wants to watch Deep Space 9, but this is a

1:31:23 spoiler for anybody, you might have to skip ahead a little bit.

1:31:26 And the only way to truly understand this episode because

1:31:28 it deals with something that was in the series finale.

1:31:31 So it's not just me giving the spoiler, the show the spoiler

1:31:34 too. So here we go.

1:31:36 It is that in the series finale of D Space 9, Cisco is

1:31:41 confronted with, let's just say the bad guy won't give every

1:31:44 detail away, but he's conferring with the bad guy.

1:31:46 There's a confrontation. They both kind of fall down,

1:31:50 something the bad guy burns up. Cisco would too, But because

1:31:55 Cisco has a special relationship with the prophets, who are these

1:31:59 aliens in the wormhole who the Bajorans worship as prophets and

1:32:04 they call the wormhole the Celestial Temple.

1:32:06 He is saved by them, pulled into the Celestial Temple, and so

1:32:10 he's supposedly not killed. And that's one of the things

1:32:13 that they're exploring in this episode is whether he died or

1:32:16 whether he's in the Celestial temple or something else

1:32:18 happened. But the original plan from the

1:32:21 writers, and I did a little bit of searching on the Internet,

1:32:23 supposedly this is true. The writers intended for Cisco

1:32:27 to be in the Celestial Temple forever.

1:32:29 The problem with that was his character.

1:32:32 And again, more spoilers here for season 7, but his character

1:32:35 had recently gotten married and his second wife was pregnant

1:32:39 with their first child together. And so if Cisco had been with

1:32:43 the prophets forever, he basically would have been

1:32:46 leaving his pregnant wife. So Avery Brooks, the actor that

1:32:49 played him, had a problem with that.

1:32:51 And rightly so. Expressed with the producers,

1:32:54 they agreed and they put in a line of dialogue where he would

1:32:59 kind of appear to Cassie Yates, his wife, in a vision, saying

1:33:04 the prophets want me to do something.

1:33:05 I had to stay with them, but I will return.

1:33:07 And he kind of comes up with like a nonlinear, cryptic way of

1:33:11 saying it could be a year from now, it could be yesterday or

1:33:14 something like that. But anyway.

1:33:15 Where are we? That's the last June temple.

1:33:19 This is Kim. Let's go home.

1:33:25 Oh God, this is. It's difficult to explain.

1:33:33 It's not linear. I like my destiny.

1:33:40 The prophets saved and cast. I'm their emissary and they

1:33:45 still have a great deal for me to do.

1:33:50 But first, there is much to learn, Things only the prophets

1:33:55 can teach me. I hope you be there.

1:33:59 It's hard to say, maybe a year, maybe yesterday, but I will be

1:34:06 back. And I will be waiting.

1:34:10 But I will be back. But I will be back.

1:34:13 He he very clearly says he will return and that is the hope of

1:34:20 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

1:34:24 that he returned, but the assumption was there.

1:34:27 We even see in the very last shot of all of Deep Space 9, we

1:34:31 see his all his teenage, maybe possibly almost adult son

1:34:36 looking out the window of Deep Space 9 and his father being in

1:34:40 the wormhole. Up walks Colonel Kira who looks

1:34:43 out and instead she's looking at the Celestial Temple and saying

1:34:47 that her friend, her commanding officer, and more importantly

1:34:50 her emissary is in the Celestial Temple and they're both like

1:34:54 waiting for him to return. And the part that makes my head

1:34:57 explode is this episode of Star Trek Starfleet Academy basically

1:35:03 implies very heavily that he never returned.

1:35:07 So here it is. You've got this thing that

1:35:09 should have been like this religious thing.

1:35:11 He he said that he would return. It was Avery Brooks.

1:35:13 Who? Who?

1:35:14 Who campaign for this to say, look, he needs return.

1:35:18 I don't like the the optics of a father, especially a black

1:35:23 father, skipping out on his pregnant wife.

1:35:26 And they agreed and they said OK, your turn.

1:35:28 And now these writers, including the one you mentioned who is

1:35:32 also black herself, which is why I don't get this, says Oh no, he

1:35:35 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

1:35:43 to deep space 9 and there's even a character.

1:35:46 OK I did see this in my notes because I didn't remember this

1:35:49 but it I I noticed it in the in my rewatch today.

1:35:54 It was Derrim Ramey the guy who is supposedly like a blue skin

1:35:58 alien but we only see it one time.

1:36:00 He even says, crap, where is it? Well, anyway, I'll try to do it

1:36:06 from memory. He says that basically this guy

1:36:10 is Schrodinger's prophet. Either he exists in one way or

1:36:14 he exists in another, but as long as the as long as we don't

1:36:17 ask the question, either answer exists and everybody wins.

1:36:20 He even says that everybody wins and he's right.

1:36:23 If you want to be one of those people that believes that he's

1:36:25 in the Celestial temple and that means something to you, maybe

1:36:28 that happened. If one of the people that

1:36:30 believes that he burned up in the fire caves and and

1:36:33 everything that happened, the prophets was just spiritual and

1:36:35 not physical, OK, then you're satisfied.

1:36:37 But if you're one of the people like me, that was like, no, he

1:36:40 should have returned. He should not have skipped down

1:36:42 on his pregnant wife. The actor got the producers to

1:36:44 agree. They put in the lion dialogue to

1:36:46 say that he returned. He should have returned.

1:36:49 There's still a possibility that he returned.

1:36:51 In fact, I forgot I did have time to do the research on this,

1:36:54 but supposedly there's like a novel that says he returned.

1:36:57 There's a comic book series that says he returned and they both

1:37:00 handled it different ways. But obviously everybody thinks

1:37:03 that he should return except the writers of this show.

1:37:06 They think Nah and we're just going to say that he skipped on

1:37:09 his pregnant wife. And they justify it by saying

1:37:12 that C Rock Lofton, the actor that played Jake is, is already

1:37:17 established adult son appears in this as an adult, you know,

1:37:22 talking about his dad as a hologram in one scene in the

1:37:25 museum. And then also as something I

1:37:28 don't know, he appears to Sam later.

1:37:30 I can't tell if it's another hologram, if it's her a

1:37:32 hallucination, if it's her inner dialogue, if he himself is in a

1:37:36 celestial temple and he's actually appearing to her as a,

1:37:39 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

1:37:50 in, in some way. I don't know.

1:37:53 It's so super vague. It's like the show wants to say

1:37:56 something while at the same time saying nothing at all.

1:38:00 But basically, despite saying nothing at all, still getting

1:38:03 enough of the point across that he never returned.

1:38:06 And a lot of fans I've seen online are saying, well, there's

1:38:08 still wiggle room. Maybe he did come back, but his

1:38:12 family's keeping it secret. Or maybe he pulled them into the

1:38:15 celestial temple with them. The thing is, they're not saying

1:38:18 any of that. And there's even a thing on the

1:38:20 wall that she goes to at the that Sam goes to at the museum

1:38:26 that shows a a family tree and it shows him being married to

1:38:30 Cassidy. But there's no kid.

1:38:32 So are they implying that the kid is like a secret to the rest

1:38:35 of the world? Or does she have a miscarriage?

1:38:37 Which is super depressing, which I wouldn't put it past these

1:38:39 writers because that's another thing that they keep doing.

1:38:41 Star Trek is is keep putting a whole bunch of depressing stuff

1:38:44 in like like Ryker Troy losing a kid and stuff like that.

1:38:48 It's like these writers are just super depressing.

1:38:50 Like let something happy happen every once in a while.

1:38:52 But anyway, we don't know what happened to that other kid.

1:38:57 And so sure, Jake shows up, but what about his half sister or

1:39:01 half brother? And what if maybe Cisco and

1:39:04 Cassidy had multiple kids if he had come back?

1:39:06 Todd paused the scene with the family tree in the museum scene

1:39:09 and in addition to the tree not showing Cassidy's son or

1:39:12 daughter, Cassidy Yates is the only person on the whole tree

1:39:15 without the last name Cisco. Does that mean that every single

1:39:19 person in the Cisco family except Cassidy take on the Cisco

1:39:22 family name? Wouldn't it make sense that

1:39:25 there would be at least a few ancestors and or descendants who

1:39:28 took the last names of their respective spouses?

1:39:31 Also, Memory Alphalis Cassidy is hyphenating her last name Yates

1:39:35 Cisco, so the episode gets that wrong too.

1:39:38 Sweet Christmas. I hate agreeing with Todd but

1:39:41 he's right. This really is a dumb episode.

1:39:44 It just, it blows my mind that they missed such an opportunity

1:39:47 to say, yeah, he came back. Also, this show ends without

1:39:52 Bejor joining the Federation. What if he had come back and he

1:39:55 helped Bejor, you know, get in the Federation, and that

1:39:58 continued his work as the emissary?

1:40:00 But no, they just miss all that by saying, Nah, after this,

1:40:03 after the series finale of D Space Nine.

1:40:04 Yeah, now he's just gone. Deceivable.

1:40:08 I see and my brain just explodes all over again just thinking

1:40:11 about it. To add some context, OK, And I'm

1:40:15 going to give away the thing that you were doing a really

1:40:17 good job of not giving away. So Sam's teacher that

1:40:21 accidentally puts her on this path by accidentally using the

1:40:24 word emissary instead of ambassador and the whole episode

1:40:31 crumbles if Sam just seizes on the word ambassador instead of

1:40:34 emissary. He makes another good point.

1:40:38 But her she turns out this Kardashian woman turns out to be

1:40:44 Dax years and years and years in the future, generations later,

1:40:49 Dax has survived. And this is John Zia and Esri

1:40:54 but in a new body generations later.

1:40:57 So she's personally been a friend with Cisco, and she's

1:41:01 teaching at Starfleet Academy now in a Cardassian Trill hybrid

1:41:05 body. And this is a twist and.

1:41:10 What? What strikes me about everything

1:41:13 Todd just said is that people are going to take this one of

1:41:17 two ways. You can take it as a positive or

1:41:20 a negative. So what what you're talking

1:41:23 about, Todd, I see as passion because you have taken something

1:41:30 so seriously that you can imagine that universe and you

1:41:34 care about the details. And all you ask is that writers

1:41:38 feel like they too care about the details and it makes a huge

1:41:43 difference if they do or don't. So when I was a slow reader in

1:41:47 the 90s, I started reading the Heir to the Empire Star Wars

1:41:50 books by Timothy Zahn. These are the much lauded

1:41:54 favorite books are of a lot of extended universe fans.

1:41:58 And the truth is Timothy Zahn, I think did the same thing that

1:42:02 these writers of this episode did.

1:42:04 There is a sort of, I don't want to be mean, but the world is

1:42:08 full of hot takes right now. A coward's way out where you you

1:42:13 aren't sure what to do, so you try not to answer a question.

1:42:18 And in those books, they have a problem because they depict what

1:42:22 happens to our trio after the events of the Star Wars movies

1:42:27 in the 80s. Well, what do you do?

1:42:29 Are you going to write new content for Yoda and Obi Wan?

1:42:32 And what they did essentially do is they don't.

1:42:35 They say that the two of them sort of faded away.

1:42:39 And what they were trying to do was not put words into the mouth

1:42:43 of legendary characters. They were trying to honor

1:42:45 something by not saying something, but like Cisco, what

1:42:51 you end up doing by trying to honor something and not put

1:42:56 words in its mouth is you end up saying something disappears and

1:43:00 doesn't matter and doesn't do anything else.

1:43:02 Yeah, yeah. Thank you.

1:43:03 Yeah, that's a good way to put it.

1:43:05 Why would they do that to me? I I think that they thought they

1:43:11 could hedge their bets and leave Cisco's fate ambiguous.

1:43:17 And Sam is told this at the beginning, that it's a mystery

1:43:21 without an answer and they thought they could get all the

1:43:24 way through. But there were these threads and

1:43:28 somebody on the production team knew that Cisco had a child with

1:43:33 Cassidy. I'm not a devotee of Deep Space

1:43:36 9, but I knew about Cassidy and I knew that these things would

1:43:40 matter. So the choice not to have the

1:43:44 child listed in a chronology on the screen like you, if you hire

1:43:48 anybody off the street to write a Cisco family tree, we're going

1:43:52 to put it on a screen. They're going to ask that

1:43:55 question. So they deliberately omitted it.

1:43:58 Tell me what? Are the writers?

1:43:59 Doing to my baby. Are they killing it?

1:44:01 What does that say? Sometimes it's interesting to

1:44:03 see just how bad bad writing can be.

1:44:06 Well, the people who are frustrated are going to be more

1:44:11 frustrated now. The people like me who weren't

1:44:13 that committed, we are going to fall for a lot of the things

1:44:17 that are fond and nice. So I like this Dax shows up.

1:44:23 I like that Cerec Lofton is in there.

1:44:26 When Todd might talk about it the first time, I'm like, well,

1:44:31 you know, these things were good and kind and generous and sweet

1:44:35 and nice. It's just they were not caring

1:44:39 about those details. And This is why.

1:44:43 If you guys hear me rant about a couple of the Star Trek ventures

1:44:48 that set me off, it's the exact same thing Todd is talking about

1:44:52 where there is a bit of lore that matters to me.

1:44:54 And that's a good thing. It means I'm invested.

1:44:58 I should be your bread and butter.

1:44:59 You know you want to. I'm not being nitpicky.

1:45:01 And I think that's the problem. They will listen to us older

1:45:05 Trekkies talk and they will either say they really care

1:45:09 about it. Let's let's look at the details.

1:45:12 Or they will say nothing will satisfy these people, shake them

1:45:15 off. And a lot of the new content is

1:45:19 going to lean in that direction. The thing is, the writers got

1:45:22 away with it. This one didn't all the way do

1:45:24 it. I think it might frustrate Todd

1:45:26 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?

1:45:31 If it was the Kelvin universe and Trills were all blonde women

1:45:38 from Earth and it was all made-up and weird, you know, it

1:45:42 might hurt less because it's just random, you know, and Cisco

1:45:49 is a Vulcan. It doesn't, you know, we're just

1:45:51 making stuff up. It's crazy, It's fun, let's have

1:45:53 fun. But if you try and you put it in

1:45:55 the same universe, it maybe it's more hurtful somehow because

1:45:59 you're like, how could you just drop this?

1:46:02 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,

1:46:08 well, Avery Brooks is retired from acting and some people, if

1:46:11 you can say he's a little eccentric in his age.

1:46:14 And I don't know, the one time I saw him at Dragon Con, I'm like,

1:46:16 yeah, maybe he is. But anyway, they said he's

1:46:20 retired from acting, so they couldn't get him for the

1:46:22 episode. And I'm like, So what?

1:46:24 That doesn't make any difference whether you make his character

1:46:27 return because it's 800 years ago.

1:46:29 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

1:46:35 that. Again, that's the whole point of

1:46:36 this. This is supposed to be a school.

1:46:37 So she could be learning this through, you know, books,

1:46:41 computer screens, whatever. And they don't even have to show

1:46:43 his face or whatever. They can just, they can just

1:46:45 learn that yes, he he did return.

1:46:47 And then you, you don't need the actor, but some people want to

1:46:50 make the excuse that that's why they did it the way they did,

1:46:52 because they couldn't get the actor.

1:46:54 You can still do it the other way and still not have the

1:46:56 actor. I, I don't see how that is the

1:46:59 reason. And I, I kind of got off on a

1:47:01 tangent, but I was trying to explain earlier that some people

1:47:03 justify it by saying that Siric will often appear on the show.

1:47:06 So that must be kind of like the justification saying that that

1:47:10 was his blessing that this episode was OK.

1:47:13 Also, they did have Ciscos voice, but it turns out it

1:47:18 wasn't even Cisco. It was an album of poetry that

1:47:22 Avery Brooks did a few years after Deep Space 9 and he

1:47:25 somehow gave them permission to use a few lines from that poetry

1:47:29 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

1:47:34 that he recorded brand new for this episode.

1:47:38 And people have said, well, he must have given them his

1:47:41 blessing or, or whatever. OK Cerec Lofton is still an

1:47:45 actor. I don't know if he's a working

1:47:46 actor all the time, but I'm sure he got paid for the appearance.

1:47:49 And and if Cisco or Avery Brooks is retired from from acting, he

1:47:54 hadn't given them permission for a few lines of, of poetry is

1:47:58 like rags. That's bread crumbs.

1:48:01 I mean, he's he's like here. Yeah, take, take this.

1:48:03 Leave me alone. So I don't see how that is

1:48:07 supposed to be any big endorsement.

1:48:09 As far as the Dax thing, I have mixed feelings about that.

1:48:11 I'm I'm mostly OK with it. There were also some people

1:48:14 online who nitpick about that and said that symbios aren't

1:48:17 supposed to live that long. And I admit I didn't even know

1:48:21 that. But I can hand away that and say

1:48:24 in 800 years they found ways of advancing the life of of

1:48:27 symbios. And so I can, I can deal with

1:48:30 that. But yeah, my main problem is no

1:48:33 matter what, no matter what, get the act, not get the the actor,

1:48:37 get Sarah Loft and not get him. Have a blessing, not a blessing.

1:48:40 Make Cisco return because he said he would and because it's

1:48:44 important. And I know I factored in the the

1:48:47 part about him being a black father, about that being

1:48:49 important. And I know a white guy, so I'm

1:48:51 probably totally unqualified to talk about that.

1:48:54 But I like I said, I did like a little bit of research.

1:48:57 I probably should have done more to to like make this super

1:49:00 solid. But it doesn't take much of A

1:49:02 Google search to get that. Yes, apparently Avery Brooks did

1:49:06 say that by by him abandoning his pregnant wife.

1:49:11 It did. Let me see what is the way that

1:49:15 Google AI worded this. It echoed negative tropes of

1:49:19 black fathers abandoning their families.

1:49:21 And again, I don't know how bad that trope is.

1:49:24 I don't know if that's was only in the 90s.

1:49:26 I don't know if it's still going on.

1:49:27 Again, I'm I'm unqualified to talk about this subject, but

1:49:31 apparently it did matter to him and and that's why they changed

1:49:37 it and to to where he said he would come back.

1:49:40 And it's why when they did in the novels and they did in

1:49:43 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?

1:49:49 It is just absolute insanity to me.

1:49:52 I do not get that is the last thing.

1:49:54 If they said, well, you know what?

1:49:56 He actually did burn up in the fire caves and only his spirit

1:49:59 was taken into the celestial temple so he couldn't come back.

1:50:03 I would like that explanation better than just saying Nah.

1:50:07 He just skipped out on his pregnant wife.

1:50:10 So we leave it to you, the listener.

1:50:12 Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, and if you want to say,

1:50:15 well, he may have said that he would come back, but maybe he

1:50:18 shouldn't have said that because maybe he didn't have the

1:50:20 permission of the prophets. Maybe they're the ones that

1:50:22 wouldn't let him or something. Well, then screw the prophets.

1:50:25 If he if he says he's coming back, then he should have, you

1:50:28 know, checked with him ahead of time.

1:50:29 It's like, I'm going to tell my wife and come back.

1:50:31 I, you better let me mean it. And they should have been like,

1:50:34 yeah, yeah, you can do it. We've got some stuff for you to

1:50:36 do. You're the emissary.

1:50:38 We've got some tests for you to do.

1:50:39 But yes, we'll let you go back every once in a while because we

1:50:42 know that you had this. You're the bridge between our

1:50:45 nonlinear way of existing and the linear lifestyle.

1:50:49 And so yes, we realized that even if we get you to do things,

1:50:52 we're going to have to let you go back.

1:50:53 Also, some people have said online, well, because they're

1:50:56 nonlinear, they could like have him do like thousands of years

1:51:00 of tasks for them and then put him right back in the timeline

1:51:03 where he was. OK, great.

1:51:05 We'll say that that's what happened, but they didn't even

1:51:07 say that. And that's what frustrates me so

1:51:16 much is that they so clearly say that he either did not return or

1:51:21 if he did, he did so super in secret and nobody really knew

1:51:24 about it. But it they really make it sound

1:51:26 like he did not return. But then why?

1:51:30 It's like it's not saying anything at all.

1:51:33 All it does is undo something that was done in Deep Space 9,

1:51:37 which is which was him saying that he would return.

1:51:41 And again, that's what drives me bananas about these writers is

1:51:43 they keep wanting to undo the way Star Trek was.

1:51:47 They want to put their own little, they want to put their

1:51:49 own little grubby mints on it and, and do their own thing with

1:51:53 it and rewrite the pass. And it just drives me bananas if

1:51:57 if they had said that he had returned.

1:52:00 All right, all right, OK, think about this.

1:52:06 I have seen a whole lot of comments online where people

1:52:09 were saying that, oh, I cried so much of this episode.

1:52:12 They did such a an honor, an homage to Deep Space 9.

1:52:16 And it got me so emotional. And I want to be clear, I do not

1:52:19 want to take anything away from anybody.

1:52:21 If it did make you emotional in that way, that's fine.

1:52:24 That that's you. I, I totally respect that.

1:52:27 It is not my place to take that away from you.

1:52:30 But close your eyes and imagine a world where they did say he

1:52:35 came back. You know, we don't just go to a

1:52:37 museum and say, oh, there's the baseball.

1:52:40 There's the baseball card in his MIT.

1:52:42 Oh, and there's the typewriter from that one hallucin

1:52:45 hallucination he had that really nobody should really know about.

1:52:48 But there's the typewriter from when he was Benny Russell.

1:52:50 And there's a uniform. You know, instead of just doing

1:52:53 that, let's say that he'd actually come back and he could

1:52:57 have been there to be there for his wife.

1:53:00 And I'm going to say daughter because and somehow I just get

1:53:02 the feeling that next kid was going to be a daughter.

1:53:04 And let's say that maybe they had another kid.

1:53:06 And so he was there for the for their second, his third overall.

1:53:10 And he got to see maybe his grandkids too.

1:53:13 And along the way, like I said, maybe he had ushered in Bajor,

1:53:18 finally joining the Federation, which had kind of been a goal

1:53:20 all along. And maybe he was there for that.

1:53:23 Also, I talked about how Jake Siska want to be a writer and

1:53:25 reporter. So he did not follow in his

1:53:27 dad's footsteps. What if his daughter did?

1:53:29 What if she had become a captain and she did something great?

1:53:32 What if Cassidy used her knowledge of trade and

1:53:35 transportation to like be a some kind of like trade related

1:53:40 diplomat or transportation related diplomat and maybe she

1:53:44 helped usher in some kind of great new phase of the

1:53:47 Federation. What if the entire family did

1:53:50 something great? Think about how much more people

1:53:53 would have cried then knowing that him coming back led to

1:53:56 great things and he could have continued to be the emissary.

1:54:00 Instead, he was just like this person who used to exist and

1:54:03 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

1:54:09 them and, and, and had ushered in a new phase for not just the

1:54:13 Federation but Bajor and how they would have connected?

1:54:16 And what if he had led to peace with the Cardassians and maybe

1:54:19 even the Brain and maybe even the remnants of the Dominion?

1:54:22 What if he came back and was responsible for at least some,

1:54:25 if not all of that? Or what if his kids were his

1:54:28 grandkids were what? You know, think about how much

1:54:31 better that story would have been if all of that was there

1:54:34 instead. No, he didn't come back.

1:54:37 What is that even saying? And why go to so much trouble to

1:54:40 even say nothing? I just I don't get it and my

1:54:45 head explodes again. Well, and I mean, if you're

1:54:48 right and Avery Brooks is eccentric and I don't know, we

1:54:54 live in a weird age where we may see some sort of bizarre hybrid

1:55:00 AI version in the future or, you know, heaven forbid kids Cisco,

1:55:08 but they they may do something with this down the road.

1:55:13 I just, I, I think that all of you listeners and people online,

1:55:17 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,

1:55:26 you know, what we ended up with was Jean Luc Picard, who is this

1:55:31 amazing diplomatist, archaeologist, Shakespearean

1:55:36 leader. And he ends up, you know, in a

1:55:40 winery, in a vineyard, making wine that everybody agrees it's

1:55:44 crap. So I struggle with all that.

1:55:47 And but I'm, I'm past it now to the point we're talking about

1:55:51 Cisco. And I'm like, yeah, it sucks.

1:55:55 Why, why, why, why Why was not at least why was not at least

1:56:01 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

1:56:08 about his love of archaeology? What they could have done like

1:56:13 an old Man of Indiana Jones type adventure for him in in at least

1:56:18 one episode, if not an entire season?

1:56:20 Why? Why did they on his love of.

1:56:23 Archaeology you, you said it yourself, I think the creatives,

1:56:29 they seem to draw a line where if you have Avery Brooks on

1:56:34 board, you do story A and if you don't have Avery Brooks on

1:56:39 board, I liked all of your suggestions.

1:56:42 I there's no reason to not say he where where he went is a

1:56:46 mystery. After he returned for his wife

1:56:49 and son and child, he you know, he disappeared again and we were

1:56:54 not it'd take 2 seconds, but instead they decided since they

1:56:59 didn't have him, they would just not do anything and and hope

1:57:05 that that rounded up. Just insanity.

1:57:08 Insanity. But yes, so I would encourage

1:57:10 you listeners when you encounter your, your fans in general,

1:57:14 especially your Star Trek fans, and they seem to care deeply.

1:57:18 It's a good thing, it's a good thing it comes from a place.

1:57:21 It's not Todd's fault. It's we were taught to care

1:57:24 about details. That's a good sign of a

1:57:26 franchise. So this is a new iteration for

1:57:29 possibly a different crowd. And there were good things, but

1:57:34 maybe it wasn't as tailored at Todd and me and our demographic.

1:57:39 You have any final thoughts on that or do you want to move on

1:57:41 to the next section? I know, I know.

1:57:44 I feel you man. I'll just sum up, Cisco should

1:57:47 have come back and Picard's ass should have been teaching

1:57:50 archaeology. I'll just leave that.

1:57:53 So our final section is rating the entire first season of

1:57:57 Starfleet Academy, which Todd already kind of went down the

1:58:00 episodes. I have lots to say about

1:58:02 individual episodes, but we're going to skip that for now.

1:58:05 And just I'll say that I give this season and this new show AC

1:58:11 because there is good stuff in here.

1:58:13 With a few choices, the second season could be even better.

1:58:17 As I said, I don't think I'm the target demographic, which I

1:58:20 think is a combination of viewers who are more youthful

1:58:23 and viewers who are less interested in established Star

1:58:26 Trek elements, tone, style, choices, lore, etcetera.

1:58:31 In 2019, there was a new cartoon that came out just before the

1:58:35 pandemic. It was called DC Superhero

1:58:37 Girls. They attend superhero high

1:58:41 that's capitalized. That's an actual name of the

1:58:43 school, Superhero high school. And the cartoon is not bad.

1:58:47 If you have a young person in your life, they might enjoy

1:58:49 watching it with you. It is for a certain age group

1:58:53 and demographic. This show that Todd and I are

1:58:57 talking about tonight is Star Trek High.

1:59:00 Now, once you accept that, that's OK, If you want to go

1:59:07 see, you know, the Batman with Robert Pattinson, you're going

1:59:10 to have a very different superhero experience than if you

1:59:12 watch DC Superhero Girls. So this was Star Trek High, and

1:59:18 it may not be my favorite way to tell Star Trek stories, but I

1:59:23 feel like all the Kurtzman live action Trek shows are emotional,

1:59:27 rebellious, young, young adult targeted content.

1:59:32 So I think it was smart of them to lean into that with a show

1:59:35 featuring obviously emotional, rebellious young adults.

1:59:39 And they did better than I expected.

1:59:41 And like I said before, I like several of the characters and

1:59:45 actors. How about you, Todd?

1:59:48 Yes. So like I said, 6 out of 10 got

1:59:51 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

1:59:57 wasn't clear, yes, it was. It was the.

2:00:00 D Space 9 episode that got the F.

2:00:02 So yeah, it's it's pretty obvious that my average comes to

2:00:05 AC minus. So I know as much crap as I gave

2:00:08 it for that one episode and as many nitpicks as I had along the

2:00:11 way, it still isn't terrible. I don't like it overall, but it

2:00:18 there are some good things there and it did have potential and I

2:00:22 even like a few things. It's just it doesn't quite get

2:00:26 there. So yeah, my average is C minus.

2:00:29 So if you guys are established Trekkie fans or new Trekkie fans

2:00:35 or you've never tried it and Kurtzman wants to lure you in

2:00:39 and try it out between parts of the episode, there are forced

2:00:44 commercial breaks on Paramount Plus that you can't turn off

2:00:47 that try and sell you really handsome leather jackets and

2:00:51 sunglasses and merch targeted at young people.

2:00:54 And I kind of tell you they're they're working me over.

2:00:57 I'm starting to think I would like one of those Starfleet

2:00:58 Academy jackets. I look cool like Mirror.

2:01:02 Mirror is built by the way, guys, our hero, Caleb Mirror.

2:01:06 He is well put together. I would tear his appearance

2:01:10 apart except you guys would just accuse me of being jealous.

2:01:13 And you would be right. So, you know, they're trying to

2:01:17 target a youthful group. And if that's you, you may want

2:01:20 to check it out. You know, maybe it'll sneaky

2:01:23 gets you into Trek in general and then you'll try some of

2:01:25 these other things that Todd and I love very much.

2:01:28 And that's good stuff. But as we said, it is in the

2:01:32 period of transition. So we'll see what happens next.

2:01:35 Coming up next time on alienating ourselves, Todd and I

2:01:39 are going to return to Earth in the very near future of the

2:01:42 early 90s. And I, I know that'll that

2:01:45 doesn't seem to make sense, but it does.

2:01:47 And the exploits of a streetwise cop and his alien partner.

2:01:52 So join us for all that and more in our next thrilling episode.

2:01:55 I continue to be Nick. I'm Todd.

2:01:58 Thank you for attending class with us tonight.

2:02:00 If you love us, like us, or wish we would transfer to the War

2:02:03 College, please give us five stars.

2:02:05 If you'd like to get us expelled by framing us on a prank gone

2:02:08 too far, please give us four stars.

2:02:10 If you give us three stars or lower, everyone in your life

2:02:14 will start talking like Noose Braca.

2:02:16 And that's not a life worth living.

2:02:18 As always, live long and prosper, even if today is a good

2:02:21 day to die. Well, don't.

2:02:24 And remember, if Starfleet Academy, Strange New Worlds,

2:02:27 Lower Decks, Picard and Discovery aren't your thing,

2:02:30 they're still always the original and animated series.

2:02:34 Next Gen. DS9, Enterprise, and even

2:02:37 Voyager if you're so inclined. Through infinite diversity and

2:02:40 infinite combinations, the right Trek is out there for you.

2:02:44 Have a great week. Good night everybody.