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VOY: "Threshold" (s2e15) with Tom Salinsky (Star Trek: Discovering the TV Series)
159 Plays1 year ago
INFINITE VELOCITY = INFINITE REGRETS. Bryan is joined by author Tom Salinsky whose book, Star Trek: Discovering the TV Series: The Original Series, The Animated Series and The Next Generation, releases on July 30th. He committed himself to a daily journey of Star Trek and catalogued his findings all for your reading pleasure. But what did he think of one of the weirdest, wildest swings in the history of Star Trek?
When Tom Paris achieves Warp 10, he begins to evolve into a real headache for the crew. Does anything that happens after that make even a bit of sense? Will they TREK, MARRY, or KILL the one where Paris & Janeway become space salamanders and have salamander babies?
The grades begin at (26:34).
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Transcript
Introduction to the Episode
00:00:00
Speaker
this week on Trek Mary Kill, Infinity, Pizza, Lizards, next. fasten your seat belts or Warped 8. For the wildest ride. This could get us home. In Star Trek history. 9.9. 9.95. But be warned. Warped 10. Nobody's ever broken this barrier before. Oh my God. And there's a reason why. I can't find him. A terrifying reason why. Star Trek Voyager.
00:00:45
Speaker
Hi,
Meet Tom Selinski: Star Trek Enthusiast
00:00:46
Speaker
I'm Brian. Hi, I'm Tom. Welcome to Trek Mary Kill, a Star Trek podcast that's thought about having children, but never with Tom Paris. Joining me this week as a special guest co-host is writer, actor, and podcaster Tom Selinski, who has authored the book Star Trek, Discovering the TV Series, that you can buy right now at your local bookstore or online. It's about his 723-day journey to watch every episode of Trek from the original series through enterprise and catalog his thoughts. He's come out the other side of that experience that he's here with me now.
The Star Trek Journey of Watching and Writing
00:01:18
Speaker
You've crossed the threshold all of your own. Yes. I crossed the enterprise barrier. Hi, hi, hi. Thanks for having me. I usually like to ask people if they remember the first time they saw Star Trek or or what made them fall in love with it. But here I'll start with what made you want to begin this viewing journey and then write about it.
00:01:35
Speaker
So a combination of a couple of things. One was that um I've always been a big science fiction fan, but I didn't know Star Trek terribly well. And then the other was I just finished a project where ah this was my best pick podcast. And we also turned that into a book. ah With two friends, we watched every film that had won best picture at the Academy Awards in an order determined by pulling them out of a hat at random. I like a project. and ah So when it occurred to me to wonder how much of Star Trek had actually seen and how much time it would take to to watch it all, I did a little bit of spread sheeting and I discovered that if I started watching the original series on the 1st of January, 2022, then I could finish watching Enterprise on Christmas Day, 2023. Too neat not to do it.
00:02:32
Speaker
There we go. What ah what a start. to ah And did you go in production order or viewing order, I guess? Strict strict viewing order. So um that even meant interlacing episodes of Next Generation and Deep Space Nine and Deep Space Nine and Voyager. Strict transmission order. I wanted to experience it the way people watched it for the first time, experienced it. So from the Man Trap through to These Are The Voyages, what a journey. Yes. it's a hello journey yeah there' ah all human life is there
00:03:04
Speaker
but was there a moment in particular while you were working on the book that i mean did you like star trek in some way beforehand that change or was there a moment while doing this a you i've I've fallen in love. Next Gen was the one I knew the best. And I've always thought that was pretty terrific. That was the one that was actually on TV when I was growing up. Although after about the first three seasons, it came off BBC Two and was bought by Rupert Murdoch's Sky TV. And only about 20% of the British population had satellite dishes at that point. So it became much harder to watch. ah But then about 10 years ago, I bought the Blu-ray box set.
00:03:42
Speaker
and worked most of the way through that. I think I might have ah for broken down but in the middle of Season 7, not quite made it to the end. ah so It's a good stopping point. Well, you watched the finale, I would have seen. Yes, and I know watched the finale when it first went out. So it wasn't that I was like, yeah, I don't care how this finishes. No, I was well aware. And I can't remember now, but very likely I would have thought, OK, I'm just going to put the the last disc in now. That was very smart. ah
Conceptual Swings in Star Trek Voyager
00:04:11
Speaker
Yeah, i it would have been funny if you just said, no, this was a commercial exercise in watching. And I dispassionately completed this journey. ah Well, this episode that we're about to talk about threshold is perhaps the biggest swing because that's what Strange New World season was all about, taking the biggest swings in Star Trek history. But threshold is, I think, maybe the biggest swing Star Trek
00:04:35
Speaker
has ever taken conceptually within its own universe. Just the wackiest, weirdest idea that only could have come about through pitching and breaking Star Trek stories for years and years and being like, what else could we do? What haven't we done? What makes sense? What sounds interesting? ah Threshold is the 15th episode of Star Trek Voyager's second season. and That's the other part that just boggles my mind. They're 15 episodes into their second season. And I guess you could say, are they out of ideas or are they like, where can we go with this? We're already needing to like make this interesting for ourselves. It's a teleplay by Brandon Braga, who was not yet the showrunner for ah Voyager.
00:05:15
Speaker
And his his big run, his claim to fame, his elevation, his stature hadn't yet happened yet. ah He got the story because first contact would come out later in 1996. This one came out in January 29th, 1996. It first aired on UPN, the United Paramount Network. did Does anyone over there know what UPN is? No, only Star Trek fans. And only because it was this doomed attempt to launch a new network. That's right. I was just saying a minute ago, only 20% of British homes are subtle. It's just how many American homes got UPN?
00:05:50
Speaker
Well, it's a good question. I'm not entirely sure. so But they would. The number was like it was broadcast like two hours a day, three days a week, something like that. Well, I had the Fox model where Fox was basically one of their things was like, we give you affiliates. We give you the 10 o'clock on block rolling on two hours a night. So that was its big selling point. I remember there were times when Fox was getting popular that they were threatening to jump into the 11 o'clock hour and do those types of things. um Teleplay by Brandon Braga from a story by Michael DeLuca. And if anyone who's a savvy Hollywood person, and you must know, because you did an Academy Awards podcast, he was the head of physical production at New Line Cinema. ah He pitched this idea. He approached Brandon Braga and Ron Moore about ah some ideas, and I have reasons for that. I thought there would be a more elaborate story. It turns out there's not, but ah
00:06:43
Speaker
But anyway, Lord of the Rings Awesome Powers, you know, he was there for a certain time of New Line where it was really going from just not just, you know, your your horror movies, your nightmare of on Elm Streets. your your Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It was trying to gain some more acclaim, and it got there in part because of him. The episode is directed by Alexander Singer. I didn't write that down. There we go. Memory Alpha describes it. Especially outfitted warp-capable shuttlecraft, piloted by Tom Paris, successfully reaches warp 10, breaking the transwarp barrier. But the side effects of breaking the barrier may cost the crew of Voyager their best helmsman. What Memory
Evolving into Salamanders: Plot Critique
00:07:20
Speaker
Alpha is not telling us is that by reaching warp 10,
00:07:24
Speaker
aka infinite velocity, it causes Tom Parris's DNA to evolve into a salamander ah who gets so horny to reproduce that he kidnaps Captain Janeway, warp tends her into a lizard salamander, and the two have a trio of babies. um That's not what the episode is ultimately about. That's just a bunch of incident that happens at the end. It's unclear what the episode is about. Maybe the two of us can piece it together as we go along. this to me feels like it's the ah cause and effect is for suckers school of script writing that's right because most things that happen in this episode happen for very little reason and most of the reasons offered don't actually make sense
00:08:09
Speaker
Yes, there's Trey Parker, Matt Stone, the creators of South Park. Every couple of years, they're one of their in-class instructions. They were guest speakers. It will go around and talk about their thoughts on writing, which makes the most sense if you just need to boil down what what the essence of drama is. But especially if you're writing a screenplay is if you're writing a lot of beats of your story and you say, and then this happens, and then this happens, and then this happens. that's far less interesting than this happens but then this happens or this happens and this happens therefore this happens because of that yes really important phrase for script writers this happens and because of that this happens
00:08:49
Speaker
Also, if then and you know you can boil it down to some very but the point is a complication. And this is a lot of incident. ah We'll get into some more of that. But you wrote a piece about us your Star Trek in promotion for your book. It was in Reader's Digest. And so you did kind of just touch on this when we were talking about UPN. Paramount has been trying to launch a network with Star Trek for many years, all the way back in the 70s and all that. But Voyager wound up being the show. And I guess my question it is Isn't it funny that that's what wound up being the show, I guess, is my question. Yeah, but I can't remember if I put this in that article or not, but i've recently it's dawned on me that it is just kind of odd. It's one of those things that you simply wouldn't sit down and plan it out like this. ah But the ah iteration of Star Trek in which the characters hang out in a shopping mall in space
00:09:41
Speaker
is the one about generational trauma and the horrors of war. And the one about being a tiny band of survivors flung to the other side of the galaxy, clinging to this life broth for grim death, hoping that they'll someday get home, is the one about ah bonkers time travel and Star Trek signature optimism. ah yeah yeah You wouldn't sit down and plan it out like that. ah But the the problem that they always had ah from Deep Space Nine onwards is how do you do a Star Trek show that's not just another Star Trek show? And it had to be some kind of gimmick. And the problem with Voyager is that they ended up with a ah few plot lines that they kept repeating. And so this is an example of the plot line, which I call something like, ah Captain, wait, I think I found a way home. Oh, no, nevermind.
00:10:28
Speaker
Right, because you've got to have this. You've got to always tease the possibility. This was, yeah, absolutely. When you look at like phase two, though, it's a good how everything worked out, because if phase two had launched the Paramount channel or the Paramount Network. back in the day, Star Trek would have been dead. ah you know People like to romanticize maybe, I don't know, I'm just creating a straw man. The romanticize of Star Trek had continued in TV in the 70s. It would have died. It would have been gone. It was the motion picture that made it all possible, gave us Star Trek II, kept in the pop culture in a way that was not
00:11:06
Speaker
too corny, not too 70s. You know, it would have been the Brady Bunch. It would have looked like the Brady Bunch. It would have been very silly, even sillier than how it was in the 60s. The movies kind of gave it a patina of respectability, which then got us into the next generation, which is incredibly 80s. And Voyager is incredibly 90s. It's like very safely, patly in the 90s in a way that's like inoffensive, a lot of grays and muted colors, and everyone's very professional and serious. So when you get an episode like Thresholds, which has elements of camp or could, or just elements that's just completely silly, it's so stark that it I think everyone's first reaction is to
00:11:52
Speaker
deny it, disregard it. But if you look at like what's in season two of Voyager, there's a lot of wacky ideas. Tuvix is in this season, for example. ah Deadlock is ah is a crazy concept that's in there. I believe the season started with them finding Amelia Earhart. yep you know so There's quite a lot going on in Voyager Season 2, but it all has this very kind of serious professional tone to it because it's the 90s. There's something I spotted ah right back at the beginning of Next Generation. There's a terrible tendency to write these characters as their positions.
00:12:28
Speaker
Yes, very, very professional and very, very thing we know about them is what they do is going to say for a living but of course it's a post scarcity society so it's just what they do. And so often what you're hoping is that the actors that you cast. will be sufficiently enthusiastic and sufficiently skilled, that they'll be able to kind of flow into some of the gaps left between the lines. And then if you're really lucky, the writers will notice that and I'll start writing towards that. And actually that that did happen with that first cast. You watch Encounter at Farpoint, not all those actors seem very comfortable.
00:13:07
Speaker
but they get more comfortable and even the ones who are never going to be world-class. There's very few actors, I think, ever born who can hammer out technobabble with the pure commitment of LeVar Burton. I mean, that is ah that is a significant skill and he should be recognized for it. So
Voyager Cast Performance Analysis
00:13:24
Speaker
it takes it takes different actors, different amounts of time to get there, ah but they all eventually do, except obviously Denise Crosby, who just said, no, yeah screw this for again the game of soldiers, i'm i'm I'm out of here. Which is a shame, because I think she's very strong when she's given the chance. Which she very rarely got. Very, very rarely. And then in Deep Space Nine, you have this incredible bench of secondary and tertiary characters. It's a world that feels very, very rich.
00:13:50
Speaker
ah So it almost doesn't matter. ah I think, um for example, Dr. Bashir takes ages to come into focus, for me at least. Really, it's not until he gains that backstory about him being a a superhuman that I can see ah what the actor's doing and what the script's giving him being anything other than he's a young, cocky doctor. and it starts to become a bit more nuanced and a bit more interesting. As opposed to, you know, columnar, you had the advantage of having played that part for ages already. He was just such a, a relaxed and skillful actor. He just sort of, he can, he can make anything work and and seem plausible. And Voyager, everyone seems to struggle. I would say maybe apart from
00:14:32
Speaker
Kate Mulgrew and Robert Picardo, like everybody struggles in these first few years and most of them get better. I think Robert Beltran at some point just decides to take the paycheck. That's we've been very clear on this show is that. you know, Kate Mulgrew and Robert Bacardo are the standouts. I mean, I like Tim Russ's Tuvok and I, Kristen and I, we call Tuvok and Janeway, you know, mom and dad. It's just like, they're they're the only adults on the ship because, you know, Chikote is basically the rowdy uncle, ah you know, that kind of thing. But
00:15:06
Speaker
Absolutely. You're totally right. ah I think the next generation cast, you know, everyone's like, oh, it's obviously Patrick Stewart. And love LaVar Burton is great. I mean, I think Marina Sertes is fantastic. I think I think she's kind of the second best actor on the show because she's so consistent and she's gets thrown a lot of curveballs. But yeah, that's an interesting cast. The Deep Space Nine cast probably, though, overall top to bottom. Every performer has some sort of range to them ah that, you know, the other cast lack. I think they're the best and The Voyager cast, you know, they're doing what they can. It kind of is a weird energy, though, because then you think about the Enterprise cast. And, you know, Jolene Blaylock is greatest to Paul. To Paul is like a constantly changing character. You know, Connor Trenier, Tripp is very consistent. He's really good in that. But that's kind of an unremarkable cast. Yeah. When you think about it. So. I think it has some good moments. Sure. Yeah. But when you get into the later, the newer shows, I think, you know,
00:16:05
Speaker
Part of the reason why Stranging Worlds has hit as much as it has is that, you know, the cast, they at least cast for a look. Yeah. so So when you've got this cast, where all we really know about them is what their jobs are. How do you generate story? The actors would ask the writers that all the time. They'd ask the producers. They'd be like, I don't know. but We cast you because of how you are. So just play on that. It's a tough act. There's supposed to be this huge two warring crews conflict going on, but they kind of can't be bothered to do that apart from that one episode a year.
00:16:39
Speaker
So the way you generate stories is by doing these great big bonkers swings. And I don't know whether it was a form of Stockholm syndrome, but I did find, ah watching through seven years worth of episodes, ah when the much more kind of grounded, realistic, normal enterprise took over, I missed those bonkers swings. um I missed how crazy Voyager was willing to be, because it's just like, just make something happen. Yeah, that's a great point. This is why I wanted to bring you on, though, Tom, because not only your book, but also your podcast best pick that you mentioned a journey through film history in the Academy Awards. You're basically a scholar, a historian. So there's something fun to me about having what is essentially a highbrow position ah talk about a lowbrow thing, which is either Star Trek or this episode. in particular. ah But do you see this goofy stuff and do you see it part and parcel with Star Trek storytelling? You're kind of already getting at this. Or is it really did this one feels more like an outlier, even as wacky or as pushy as it would get? Well, it's funny because ah but with Deep Space Nine and Voyager and Enterprise, actually, I didn't know them nearly as well. So there are some episodes you can't escape the reputation. like yeah I knew when I sat down to watch in the pale moonlight.
00:17:57
Speaker
I was going to be in for something special. But a lot of these, especially Voyager stories have really dull, forgettable names. yeah And so I didn't know I was supposed to hate this one.
00:18:10
Speaker
Well, there's another one, there's another one the um the Thor, which I didn't know I was supposed to love. And I thought it was dreadful, absolutely dreadful. But the people go nuts for that show. So this is also, so I think it's really important to emphasize that the book and this conversation is is about my opinions. And my opinions are not only the but ah individual to me, they're, to a certain extent, individual to the reaction that i happen to have at the moment when i put it on which is called by all sorts of things but i've been really disappointed by the very previous episodes i just thought it was a huge waste of ah all sorts of interesting opportunities not the least of which is sesco i think is' ah that's a brilliant performance and a character who just.
00:18:50
Speaker
vanishes. It just gets progressively less and less to do as time goes on. And early on watching this, I thought, you know, there's some decent stuff here. There's some decent characterisation.
Warp 10: Flawed Concepts
00:19:01
Speaker
The banter between Neelix and Tom Paris and Torres isn't bad. So I ended up giving this one two stars, which is, you know, it's it's not not great, but it's not, a act in my book, a complete one-star clunker either. But the ending is complete and utter bollocks. I mean, it's just... The list of things that writers of this show don't appear to understand is extraordinary, from evolution to numbers to distances. Tom Price is at one point, he's going to get to warp 10, which means infinite velocity. He's going to cut the engines and come back. What?
00:19:44
Speaker
Yeah, they walk you right into the problem and you're immediately thinking, hold on a minute, you can't measure it in the way that we measure things if you were talking about infinity and all that. And it's just, how does he know where to go back if he doesn't know where he's going? You know what I mean? Kim says at one point he's looked for Tom in a range, I think it's something like five parsecs. That would be like 30 stars. And that's as far as they can look. But yeah, they were in contact with him for several minutes as he shot off at warp 9.9.
00:20:18
Speaker
but also Wouldn't warp 9.9 be good enough for any at all practical purposes? Well, there the way that the warp drive is, I understand it. So 9.9, let's say to put the crystals in Voyager. So those dilithium crystals would allow the the higher warp stress. But the ship still, the warp drive is still powered by antimatter. And that would basically, you'd be burning at a faster speed for a longer period of time. So you'd still have the same burnout issues. Like Voyager can only, at its current maximum warp,
00:20:50
Speaker
can only travel so long at its current maximum warp. So even if you up that capacity, you couldn't do it long enough to close the gap significantly. You'd still have to stop and start. Their whole thing is like, what if we could just do it in the push of a button? That was the whole point. But it is one of those things. It wasn't until later where they started doing these shortcuts where they're like, well, let's at least use it for a little while. So to your point, like they could have put the crystals in Voyager and gone 9.999 for a little while and cut some time off the trip. That would have worked. But if it if it's supposed to be an asymptote, if it's meant to be tending towards infinity, then warp 9.99 is hella fast. Yes. I would probably get them home in half a second anyway. Yeah.
00:21:33
Speaker
so Uh, it is funny to think about the warp scale. I mean, obviously in, in the original series, they're going to warp 13. Yeah. All that's been retconned with a, well, the warp scale was changed and it was different. I'm fine with all that, but you, you brought up my main thing of like, it seems like they had an idea. And as much as they worked out the details of his evolution, they didn't really work on the details of this infinite velocity problem. yeah and I I just thought it was funny. But I'm interested to find out what two stars and bollocks translates to in our Trek Mary Kill format. I guess we're going to find out. But a few specific thoughts before we get into the grades from Memory Alpha. So you were wondering how many, what was the audience share of UPN across the nation? This episode achieved a Nielsen rating of 6.2 million homes and a 9% share. so
00:22:26
Speaker
Out of all the people watching TV at the time this was on, 9% of the TV viewing audience was watching it. 6.2 million homes watching an episode of television on network today would be like the one of the biggest hits of the 2020s for sure. Anyway, it was the third most watched episode of Voyager's second season. Just absolutely stunning. Just think about how much time has passed. In 2003, so seven years after writing, The episode Brandon Braga said, it's a terrible episode. People are very unforgiving about that episode. I've written well over a hundred episodes of Star Trek, yet it seems to be the only episode anyone brings up. You know, Brandon Braga, who wrote Thresholds, out of a hundred and some episodes, they're going to have some stinkers. Unfortunately, that was a royal steaming stinker. He said that in the Voyager season two DVD.
00:23:15
Speaker
at a 2009 New Jersey Star Trek convention. Kate Mulgrew remarked to the audience that Threshold was the episode of Star Trek Voyager she was most uncomfortable with, noting that she didn't like the thought of mating with Paris as a lizard. ah Despite its lack of popularity, this episode of Star Trek Voyager was one of only a few that were commemorated by Playmates Toys with the launch of an episode-specific Voyager action figure release. In this case, it was the Evolve Tom Paris who had a phaser and three mutant offspring, um which were very well done in the episode. Maybe we'll talk about them more. Anyway, furthermore, the episode won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Makeup for a Series. Robert Duncan McNeil noted that putting on his makeup here helped them win an Emmy. ah The episode beat out Deep Space Nine's The Visitor, which was nominated in the same character now a category. Now, The Visitor is a superior episode of Star Trek compared to this one, but I think that i think the Emmy's got it right.
00:24:12
Speaker
that the makeup, aging Tony taught up to be a crusty old man versus what they do with Robert Duncan McNeil and Tom Paris here. This was better, I'm sorry. and two In 2018, an anonymous contributor submitted a fake science paper entitled, rabid genetic ah Rapid Genetic and Developmental Morphological Change Following Extreme Celerity, under the name Louis Zimmerman, describing Paris's experiment in ah in different words, to several predatory science journals. Four accepted it, and one published it. that's just for Just for people to understand what science journals are all about. It's about making money. So science. The truth in science is secondary. There's not really a big story with Michael Duca, like I said, but I i feel compelled to mention he began his writing career in 1988 as a writer for the TV series, Freddy's Nightmares.
00:25:02
Speaker
In 1990, he was the associate producer of Leatherface, Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3, which was followed quickly by writing producing Freddie's Dead, The Final Nightmare. Then in 1993, he became president of production at New Line Cinema when he was only 27. And he held on to that job until New Line merged with Time Warner in 2001. In between that, he wrote the 1999 horror film In the Mouth of Madness, directed by John Carpenter. And in 95, he adapted Judge Dredd. And he approached Brandon Braga and Ron Moore with this idea. And so I think it's In the Mouth of Madness that we actually get to the core of where this episode came from. Wouldn't it be cool if you
00:25:46
Speaker
Traveled warp 10 and warp 10 by the way is infinite velocity and you evolved but evolution didn't go as you thought it would and that was something that got cut from the whole storyline Brandon Braga mentions that they were going to talk about how evolution is not linear or it's not you we don't necessarily evolve into beings of light if we evolve into something superior and that's the mouth of madness thing where it's like This blessing is actually a curse or there's some sort of evil undercurrent to all of this or something's not quite right about it How we get to the salamander babies, I don't know we're gonna have to figure this out as we talk about it here Are you ready to go to the greats? Sure. All right, great scenes. Why don't you start this off here? So there's that big dialogue scene between Janeway and Tom I should point out by the way ah that ah Prior to this podcast immediately practice podcast. I did go and rewatch threshold and I do blame you for that ah Because of you
00:26:44
Speaker
I went and watched Threshold a second time on purpose, and I don't think that's entirely fair. But anyway, but it is it is fresh in my mind. There's that big dialogue scene between Janeway and Tom, and it's sort of reaching for something, but it can't decide whether this is proper, deep, good character work, or whether it should just be embracing how ridiculous it all is. And so it kind of falls awkwardly between these two stools. If it had been even more ridiculous, it could have been incredible fun. And if they'd somehow managed to find something real among all the latex foam rubber, then ah it it could have been really powerful, particularly I think if it had come later in the episode, if it had been some kind of catharsis. it Unfortunately, it feels a little bit like making but marking time.
00:27:34
Speaker
i i but I don't know how this was written, but I wouldn't mind betting that they were five pages short. And that was a place where ah week we could pause and and have a longer conversation and pad it out because let's be clear, you don't want to pad this one out with more incident. I think what they got was this concept, and then they were trying to figure out what's the emotional drive of the story. And they settled on a perfectly reasonable storyline, which is Tom Paris having this ah this monster inside him, this doubt that he has to overcome. And once it's it's threatened that he might lose this opportunity, that he stands up and tries to fight for it, it's just,
00:28:18
Speaker
there's that There's that weird bit, I hadn't spotted this when I watched it last time around, but there's this weird bit where Janeway says, Tom, they're going to like they're going to name buildings after you. It's going to be Tom Paris Day. And then she's like, Psych, you're off the ship. You don't get a chance to do this after all. Like, what are you doing? What kind of leadership is this? And of course, it's ah like the the the next person in line clearly is Junior Ensign Harry Kim. and this is one of the Not one of the expendable Baqui people.
00:28:51
Speaker
ah because that and this this is something that's not i didn't I didn't perceive this as an issue watching Next Gen. It's not an issue in Deep Space 9 really at all because it's got that deep bench of secondary and tertiary characters. But there's a trope that starts here, which is that the only people who do anything on this ship are the people whose names are in the opening titles. And it's worse in enterprise. In enterprise, when the when the chief engineer needs help solving an engineering problem, he asks the weapons guy Because nobody else exists. I swear to you, Captain Archer does not know the name of anyone on that ship apart from those six people. He has no clue who they are. and Even when he's delivering a eulogy to the his fallen comrades, he doesn't name them. He has no idea who they are.
00:29:38
Speaker
it is it's I think it's just the symbol of largess or success is that you stop forgetting all the little things that helped build your success. And so you, not the characters, but when you're writing, just the paying attention to detail, you're so used to getting these scripts in shape just to be shot. Cause you're and trying to stay in front of the production train that, and Brandon Braga, this happens in Voyager, he stops, He stops trusting his writers.
Voyager's Writing and Story Challenges
00:30:05
Speaker
And he as he takes over, he's writing them more and more himself. He's closing himself off. And it's just like, get it out there. That's why Manicoto, when he takes over Enterprise, you know there's a famous story that you can listen to where Manicoto is like, the script's great. There's no reason to change it. And it was like just having so one person tell Brandon Braga he's working too hard. But you're totally right. it's just
00:30:27
Speaker
it I think with Voyager, there's like an an excuse of sorts where it's like there's not that many people on the ship, you know what I mean? And it seems like you could get away with it. 150, they're trying to keep it running. You know what I mean? They're trying to conserve resources too. So maybe there's like multiple, I don't know. The second best pilot is Junior Ensign Harry Kim. ah Well, not okay, that's a fair point. That's a fair point um But I'm sure the thinking there was that to monitor the equipment that he installed like this is the flight team It's a Paris Kim and and Torres and they're the only people that are working on this project. So clouds but But again, why why are they the only three people working on this project?
00:31:12
Speaker
you know uh think that's a great point about your about the scene you point out i have wanted to put that as a great scene but i just for me i'm like this isn't chrisism of your choice it's just like for me a great scene has to sort of be like what is going on between the two characters with drama is it doing and you said it's reaching for something but it really is just cable group going into the room saying three things that gets a guy to yell Like that's that's all well wides up it kind of reveals what what's underneath Tom Paris underneath the surface. And I kind of appreciated that. And I'll talk about that some more later. But ah yeah, that that's a good choice. I i like it. ah My first great thing, though, was when he successfully crosses the warp threshold, not necessarily because it was anything too dynamic. I think the direction in this episode doesn't help.
00:32:03
Speaker
pick what you said, pick a side. What is it going for? Is it going to be campy? Is it going for you know big ideas? Is it trying to be weird? Or is it trying to be super serious? I feel like it's just trying to be very rote and super serious. And and now that I think about it, I'm like, that's to its detriment. But I really liked the ten the mild tension but that gets elevated when he actually breaks the threshold and we hear him say, oh my God. And then it just like zips out. I never saw 2001 until a few years ago. And I saw it in ah and the Cineramidome in Los Angeles. oh wow But I had seen 2010 first when I was like 12.
00:32:41
Speaker
And I saw that it came on at like midnight on TV. And the beginning of that movie is where he goes, oh, my God, it's full of stars. And it's just a recording. And it's so creepy. It captures you. And I didn't know anything about 2001. I'm like, what the is that? So it was like a grabber. So I was reminded reminded of that. when Tom Paris breaks the threshold and we don't exactly know what happens to him. Which, if you're watching it for the first time, that might seem kind of exciting. so But now that we know what happens to him, far less so. Any other great scenes? I have a couple more. I think it's quite a snappy teaser. I think Voyager does does well with its teasers.
00:33:18
Speaker
No, it does. It does hook you in. You'd want to watch the rest of the episode. I think having seen that fair enough. I thought the scene where Tom Paris dies was good. I liked it. I liked what what they were going for. And I thought Robert Duncan McNeil was playing. as best as he could play the changing emotions that we see him going through and he he doesn't look good and it's all very weird. um And then later I thought a greater scene yet was when he was really deeval or really evolving and they've got the air pumps in the skull piece he's wearing and his
00:33:55
Speaker
His his ah temples are throbbing. and And then he's kind of saying, you know you're all liars and you know maybe I'll be better when I turn into whatever I'm turning into, whatever I'm becoming. You're a witness to a great becoming. It turns into Hannibal here for a second. ah but But then he pulls his tongue out. His tongue just, it's a vestigial suddenly. And that was cool and gross. And I'm sure it was in Michael DeLuca's bitch. And I thought that was great. du to your point about like what Voyager is reaching for trying to do different things. I'd never seen that in Star Trek. I was fine with that. My one sentence review of this episode was even more scientific gibberish than usual in which being in a hurry turns Paris into Brundlefly.
00:34:40
Speaker
that's right He got better. Yes, that's right. ah But I guess it's not a great scene. and Do you have any more great scenes? um i haveve Not really. You don't have to. But we need to talk about the the salamander scene. We need to talk about it. It's not a great scene. We need to talk about it, though. I mean, it looks good. It looks fantastic. they They shoot it in the low light. That's great. The creature effects are really nice. And I got to tell you, when I saw this episode and I was maybe 15, my Star Trek interest was like, impress me, do a good episode and I'll watch it. And this one held my interest till the end. And then the end, even as a teenager, I'm like, what the hell is this?
00:35:17
Speaker
ah well ah This is weird. It's just basically we've been watching, you know, the whole episode is like one plus one plus one plus one plus one plus a ham sandwich. That's what it feels like. it the It just it really feels like it's coming out of not quite nowhere. They're setting us up that he's evolving. But the whole last five or 10 minutes where he breaks out of the ship, because again, the Voyager crew, they're the Keystone cops. You know, and and he kidnaps Janeway and then there's the babies and Chikote decides to just leave him there. so I'll be fine. Yeah, exactly.
00:35:55
Speaker
ah It's just a very strange sequence of events that doesn't pay off anything, raises a lot of questions. And it's just so weird that it doesn't it's incongruous with the story that came before it, ah which I'll talk about in a little bit. But that's- Again, if I can quote myself, this is how I put it in the in the book. It's often said that Deep Space Nine was far more interested in the consequence of its character's actions and had no need to return to the status quo at the end of each episode, whereas Voyager always had its finger on the reset button. If so, this is Voyager's hold my beer moment as the last act is practically made of reset button, taking mere seconds to reverse the biological calamity visited on the captain only minutes earlier and all off screen. Yeah. Which it's not even the most interesting part, at least to me. So I mean, for network television in 1996, I'm sure this was the most interesting part. But to me, there's
00:36:49
Speaker
The most interesting part of the story is that you're occupying space and time at all points in you know in one moment. And Tom Paris has this ah incredible experience that he can't even really talk about, but then Janeway has the same experience, but it all happens off camera. It's sort of got this ADHD quality to it. It's like we can we can go faster than him has ever gone before. Wait, I'm turning into a lizard. Wait, I'm dead. Wait, I'm not dead. well Wait, I've kidnapped the captain. It's just just stop, stop and tell me one of those stories. And I would be really interested. To your point, though, it does have the fly element to it. That makes a lot of sense. Like the the
00:37:30
Speaker
Teleportation is the warp drive and then everything that comes with that. But that's born of character. We're like set up right away. And it's just about exploring that in this one. Yeah, I don't know. I think the having the kids is the is the beat too far. Maybe if they find found him or them doing something else, maybe we wouldn't go. Wait a minute. All right. Best trek tropes. I'll kick it off. So I mean, the obvious one is techno babble. I put it as a best trek trope. though, because the scene in the mess after Neelix kick-starts their imagination, it is like a parody of Star Trek. Paris says, maybe we've been looking in the wrong place. What if the nacelles aren't being torn from the ship? What if the ship is being torn from the nacelles? And then Kim gets excited. the whole of the ship is made of tritanium alloy. At the speeds we're talking about, that ally could depolarize in the Paris and create a velocity differential. The fuselage would be traveling at a faster rate of speed than the nacelles. That means we just have to set up a depolarization matrix around the fuselage. That's it! Neelix, you're a genius! Neelix, I have no idea what they just said. I mean, that is, that's a TikTok bit if you're doing like all techno babble on Star Trek, you can see that label.
00:38:41
Speaker
But at the same time, I appreciated it because it was so such a well done parody by the people themselves. and You probably know this, but after a certain time, and this was but think particularly true on Voyager, because they had scientific consultants who would be able to invent this gibberish for them. And so after all, the the the writers were just put in the script. ah Paris colon. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What what if we like with the tech and Andre Bomanus would have to come in and and fill in all those jargon words? I love that he finally finally they're just like, all right, because we've been making you do this, you can write a script. to ah But yeah, I think with me with Voyager, it's it's not a love hate. They definitely made me hate techno babble, which I loved the next generation as like a little kid. But once we get into Voyager's interferometric polls, I'm like, I'm done. I'm stop.
00:39:35
Speaker
ah Any other best trick drugs you want to mention? Well, it's sort of adjacent to that. I do quite like, especially in Voyager, where they are in theory ah stuck out in this remote part of the galaxy with only what they brought with them to hand. I do quite like this sort of, um ah what a friend of mine's mother would call making Mandy do's. ah You just have to, you have so like i I can make that out of an old phaser and and a kettle and some string. ah that That spirit of, i well I'll put it together, I'll lash it up. ah There is something kind of fun about that. It's not done well here, but I think it's a good trope.
00:40:13
Speaker
No, I totally agree. I think it gets boiled down to you like people like seeing the best the professionals be professional or do the best at your jobs. But but I like the way you phrase it of like that gung ho spirit, like let's just do what we can and make it happen. um Very, very, ah you know, space race or 60s NASA kind of. Yeah, too. I did put one other best trick trope. I love when Star Trek does future lists where they drop in ah like our human history and then put in a Star Trek reference. So Janeway says, if this works, you'll be joining an elite group of pilots, Orville Wright, Neil Armstrong, Zefram Cochran and Tom Paris. So I love the drop of Zefram Cochran there.
00:40:53
Speaker
I always like a good Neil Armstrong reference. Maybe Chuck Yeager would have been more appropriate here. He was the one who broke the sound barrier, whatever. I still like it. Discovery, of course, kind of ruined the trope or killed it when they dropped an Elon Musk in there, which even at the time, it was like, no, yeah you didn't think about this enough. so ah But that kind of, and that's the end of the line, I couldn't think, but I still mostly- That's kind of having Blade Runner. That doesn't make sense. That's always the trope, isn't it? It's always two names you've heard of and then one made up science fiction one. One of the greatest writers the world has ever seen. Another Shelley, another Shakespeare, another Balthazar Fortescue the Fifteenth. That's right. Gorgok the Strangler, yes, exactly. All right, worst Trek tropes.
00:41:40
Speaker
well It's got to be these these instantly reversible medical cameal calamities. It sends the message, don't worry, nothing really matters. Nothing's going to happen, nothing means anything, and ah sit back and watch the flashing lights. And it just it you do that too much, and Voyager did it a lot, and it just sucks the drama out. Whatever medical stuff the doctor was doing there, whenever they got back to the Alpha Quadrant, It must have just changed medical history completely. There's an episode of Voyager in like the fourth season ah where Seven of Nine cures death. Yeah. And every episode after that, when someone dies, I was like, shouldn't someone call Seven? She's got a whole thing that she can do, which we'll just reverse that shit. And no one ever bothers us. No, we're forgetting about that. People only watch one in four episodes anyway.
00:42:34
Speaker
Well, I put the techno babble as a worst trick trope, too. It can be both ah because there are too many layers to it. So that scene I presented, I highlighted as a best because it's like a classic version of them solving a problem through just their own made up shit. yeah But all the transwarp stuff, you know, the warp going fast, like there's just too many layers ultimately. So they fix a problem. How are we going to launch this shuttle? But then even within that, there's kind of like ah Harry Kim's like, we can reinforce it with geranium. And then Balana dismisses that she goes, it's too brittle. And I know that maybe because I just recently watched an episode or I just know because I heard it when I was 10 and I never forgot. But like starships are made out of geranium. That's actually one of the strongest metals. that Star Trek has. So again, it's just like there's so much technobabble that they actually don't. They've lost track of their own definitions and they're just throwing it in there. And it's just weird. And the other layer is what you just said. The medical stuff using focused anti protons to erase specific DNA. The DNA stuff especially sounds very flimsy. It sounds like if you're going on a mission to eradicate DNA, which calls mutant DNA, it seems like you can't be that specific.
00:43:52
Speaker
You can't just get rid of the bad DNA. It's going to damage the good DNA because it's all it's doing is destroying DNA. It's not like it's linear where, oh, these DNA strings up. I'll just cut this off and it'll be fine. So I always say about devan cancer. Killing cancer cells is easy. You can put cancer cells in a Petri dish and pour bleach on and you will kill the cancer cells. The drinking is how to kill the cancer cells without killing the patient. That's right. And I think Voyager has done more thoughtful ways of, I think there's literally been episodes of like the doctor's like, I can inject this and it will tag everything I need to remove. I think that's what happens in two weeks. You know, there's thought that there's also the idea of like, although they use the the transporter as a kind of ah ah yeah body body backup. That's right. And they could have done that too. And it doesn't even get mentioned. But, you know, I don't know. But it's it's just too much. so Like, so just to your point about what you're saying before, if they could have done the transporter trick, let's say, and they knew that, but the episode you could have dragged out Tom's transformation and made it a lot more like the fly and gotten that something emotional and interesting, but it didn't seem like they wanted to do that. They just wanted.
00:45:07
Speaker
to do what they did. so
Voyager's Strongest Episodes
00:45:08
Speaker
it's It's not trusting any one of these ideas is going to be strong enough or interesting enough. and We've got something new, something new, something new. And a lot of the episodes I like the best, including the episodes I like the best in Voyager are the ones that know they've found a ah really strong idea and are just exploiting that consistently over the course of the episode. Just to mention Deadlock, there's not an emotional story for that except the urgency and the desperation. But it's such an interesting idea that they use every every element, like you just said, like they do, okay, well, if this is true, then this is true. And if this happens, therefore this happens. But then, you know, it's a very complicated, interesting story. That's a lot of technobabble, but it holds together and keeps your interest.
00:45:48
Speaker
and it has an ending that pays off the setup. Anyway, ah two more were strict trips for me. ah Shut up, Neelix. You liked that scene. Neelix is annoying. he's ah yeah He's just offering coffee. i um I was fine with him relaying his experience of giving him the idea. That was fine, but just shut up, Neelix. And then it's so easy to steal a shuttlecraft. I mean, this is a Star Trek joke. This is not a Voyager joke, so that's why it's here. It's the worst Trek joke, but like, come on. yeah He's in a ah degraded state. he's He is not at a peak physical efficiency. He's transforming, and he mops the floor with the Voyager crew. He gets there very easily.
00:46:30
Speaker
So I was a little annoyed by that. Any other worst Trek tropes? I don't think so. i mean it's it's you know the In some ways, this this whole, and this is maybe coming onto the next thing on the list, but this is that Bran and Braga ADHD, nothing really matters, say the Tenobabble faster iteration of Star Trek, like to the max. Yeah. Faster, more and more intense. um but ah Yeah, it's it kind of it depends what you're looking for out of 45 minutes of television. Are you looking for deep character stuff? Are you looking for a high action adventure? Are you looking for deep philosophical concepts? I mean, you won't find any of them here, but you will find fish fornication. So there's there's that. So most of it's time quality.
00:47:21
Speaker
um I think so the other thing I'd say is that ah this is almost celebrating achievements in in makeup and creature effects like what you can do on a television budget ah and it is And just about pre the CGI revolution, ah there is CGI in Voyager. It's one of the reasons why it and Deep Space Nine haven't been reissued on Blu-ray, apart from the fact that not enough people bought the next generation box sets. ah But ah they do have CGI in them and that CGI was only ever done at TV resolution.
00:47:58
Speaker
ah So to upscale that, you either have to AI upscale it, which never looks great, or you have to remake all that from scratch. So it's an even bigger job but than the job that was done on TNG, g which didn't prove to be cost effective. But what you can do with foam latex is really impressive at this point, even on a TV budget. ah And ah so I think ah partly what might have been going through Brown and Braga's coffee-fueled, speed-induced brain was, I bet we could do some really good creature effects. And he was right. Yeah. The salamanders, when they slither into the pond, though, that that was visual. v The VFX were very of its time. And it was just a quick enough shot that the animation looked fine. yeah I think it's convincing. Yeah. But when he's in that bed, when he's restrained, when they're doing the anti-protons, and we, for the first time, see his fully evolved face,
00:48:53
Speaker
That looked incredible. say now Like I said, I really liked his temples throbbing and the tongue coming out. But once he was actually transformed, it was you know it wasn't just as a guy wearing a forehead appliance. He wasn't just via the alien they find in the chase. He was he looked like amphibious or salamander-like. And then as silly and goofy as the salamanders looked on the beach, there were little kids sticking their head out of the hole. That was all great. i Yeah, hang on a minute. While we're kind of just ah picking arbitrary knits, he becomes allergic to water great while turning into an amphibian. Then he yes then he evolves back. ah Yeah, that's exactly right.
00:49:39
Speaker
but And didn't didn't somebody say that humans are ugly banks of mostly water anyway? That's right. That's right. He also evolves out of he also can't metabolize oxygen or he has struggles with oxygen and then he can. So I don't know. It could have just been an in between stage. Who knows? It's entirely possible they had a different at final act and they were just like, no, this doesn't work. It's too much talking. We need to change it into something more exciting. Oh, just to have different writers writing alternate pages.
00:50:10
Speaker
Now it's time for the line message on here. Great lines. Kick us off. I mean, this is not a very literary script. I guess the line that stands out for me just because it it does sort of run you smack into the observatory of it and because Robert Mercado delivers it with his usual dry precision is just congratulations. You're human again. Yeah, that's that's why I have great lines in this one at all. Janeway, Tuvok, could the shuttle have been destroyed? Tuvok, I don't believe so. Sensors indicate that he did cross the warp threshold. Kim, if that's true, then he could be anywhere in the universe. That's funny to me. Paris, what ah what I'm becoming will probably be better than what I was. That's the emotional core of the episode and that...
00:50:55
Speaker
We notice, and I can't give them credit for it at the same time, ah the doctor's line is pretty long. The only difference between natural evolution and what happened to Mr. Paris is that his changes took place over a 24 hour period, somehow traveling at infinite velocity, accelerated the natural human evolutionary process by millions of years. It's possible that Mr. Paris represents a future stage in human development, although I can't say it's very attractive. This is the before they figured it out tone for the EMH. that he's playing in this one, and I wonder if they do this a season later, if they did this episode, how the different tone and performance, how he's written and all that stuff, how that changes the episode. Because here, he's a pretty straightforward doctor. He even like offers to consult Cass after Paris dies. He is not the doctor that he becomes. I'm not sure he should have let Cass kiss Paris.
00:51:50
Speaker
right yeah goes go ahead intimate physical contact with this man who's just died from a pathogen we know nothing about nothing nothing went we we're very certain it isn't contagious so go ahead get involved so i guess i did pick the two emotional lines paris that this is my last one i guess this whole experience has left me feeling a little a little overwhelmed flying at warp 10 evolving into a new new life form mating having alien offspring But i the episode is, like you said, it's reaching for something, but that that is a line that should have very well underscored the camp of the episode. And it's not played for that. It's just very straight to the episodes. that And later on, you know, in in much later seasons when we have the Doctor and Seven switching bodies, ah then you're kind of really leaning into that whole camp and just having fun with what these actors can do and who these characters are. And it's a much more entertaining show.
00:52:47
Speaker
The Anton Caridian Award for Best Performance. I'm interested to hear who you are. So a Robert Duncan McNeil, I have to say, is really good here. And one of the problems I had with Voyager is that too often, the characters of ah Kim, Chakotay and Paris are basically interchangeable. yeah know Often you'll need you'll be one of them to be ah impulsive and headstrong and one of them to be cautious and ah siding with the the captain. And it kind of doesn't matter which one does work does what. see it's all They're all a bit interchangeable. But ah given something resembling
00:53:22
Speaker
a characterization and something resembling an arc, even though it doesn't really make sense. I think Robert Duncan McNeil really he does good work here. And he there are in every season there's little flashes, I think shows that he actually is a really good actor. It's just that the script can't decide who the character is and really actually give him anything to do. But
Praising Performances Amidst Challenges
00:53:39
Speaker
he's really good here. I totally agree. i there is a quote There's some posts online, now I can't remember the whole words, but the content of it was basically, yes, there are good actors who give questionable performances or whatever. You'll watch stuff and and the performances maybe don't light you on fire or inspire you. But the difference between a professional acting job and and and an amateur acting job
00:54:04
Speaker
is so stark most of the time because the the key to acting is creating a reality. it's being It's being real in a version of reality. And so Robert Duncan McNeil ultimately in this performance just result, everything kind of rounds up to him shouting. But he is committing and he is being Tom Paris and he is being in that moment. And it's helping to create what we're all saying is not a very good one, but in this case, a reality. And, you know, they were throwing stuff at him and he it was a consistent performance. And I guess what I'm saying is like I'm not giving him ah damning him with faint praise. I'm saying, yeah, he rose to the challenge. It's also hard to act when you've got all those appliances on and all that. And he's not used to doing that. It's like he gets, ah he's one of the few actors who gets, you know, barely anything put on him. So this was a challenge and I think he rose to it pretty well. The Shatner, who do you have?
00:55:03
Speaker
Well, I mean, it's probably the same one. and because that's The other the other you have a but candidate for best performance is Kate Margreaux, who just, even when she's given complete nonsense like this to recite, just manages to make it all sound totally believable. yeah She doesn't really get a chance to go for it here. And again, you have that same sort of slippage of character with her in later episodes where ah she just sprouts a new personality trait because the plot requires it and then it disappears again. ah But yeah, the the one who goes for it is once again Robert Duncan McNeil. Absolutely. And it it is it is rewarding, even if, as we've as we've said, this episode falls between not being campy enough and being far too silly to be taken seriously. Yeah. What part of this will they teach at Starfleet Academy? Do you know what? I think one of the lessons here is, if at first you don't succeed, quit.
00:55:56
Speaker
Because the transport drive basically worked. Yeah, that's true. And they and even the Kazon, take one look at it and go, I'm not going to hear that. yeah It basically works. yeah And it needs short needs a little bit of fine tuning, maybe some sort of, I don't know, like screaming to stop that lizardy stuff happening. But you now have a device that will take you to anywhere in the universe instantaneously. And they just look at it and go, nah. Yeah. that we are told by Harry Kim in the first act that warp 10 was thought to be impossible. Well, now we know it isn't. And then as memory I'm taking a memory alpha note here, which I never do, but it's just, it makes sense. So you can break the warp threshold and then the doctor developed a way to recover from hyper evolution. Yes. So in theory, they could have just gotten home and then anti-protoned everybody back to normal and problem solved. So I just think that they would also Voyager. There's so much of the Voyager mission log that who knows what what they were. Staff and engineers were working on this, abandoned it.
00:57:07
Speaker
it took what was like a couple of weeks and one I thought fairly like trivial insight for ah a an engineer, a pilot, and a whatever Neelix is so to figure it out. A jack of all trades. Yeah. so The staff of engineers must have been really super close. Once again, they're just like, nah, too much like hard work. Well, I guess if you were to really try to defend it canonically, it's it involves that special kind of dilithium that they found.
00:57:39
Speaker
Which, again, seems like an important thing to have. Well, now, even if we don't want to use the threshold drive, we have these cool new dilithium crystals that will make it easier for us to travel. Only if we had some sort of device that could just, like, make anything we wanted, if where we could just program it right. But I guess that's a pipe dream. A pipe blast, yes. Could this episode have been hornier, and would that have made it better? ah So you ah youre you're pitching a version of this episode which is like 10 or 15 minutes of all this technobabble and messing around ah with Transwarp drives and then 30 minutes of ah Fish Janeway and Fish Paris ah holding a life together.
00:58:19
Speaker
ah Or just much more of the fly where he gets much more horny and then it starts to get really gross and she dreams of having his salamander baby, I don't know. I think it should have been ear, weirder, campier, anything, or like more of something hornier and I think it would have made it better because it would have pushed it in some direction. Like, even if it winds up being campier and people don't like it, it's like, well, we'll remember it for all the the weirdness that it leaned into instead of like the delicate way. It's almost like a bunch of ah normies going to like a a drag show is how this episode felt like, oh, that's very interesting. Oh, his tongue came out like that. It's all very clinical. There's kind of these wild ideas going on. So I think Hornier would have obey this one better.
00:59:10
Speaker
As you say as well, like it kind of plays like bad parody Star Trek. You know, it's ah if if there's a show you love, especially a science fiction show and you're watching an episode and a non-fan joins you, you kind of hope it's not going to be stupid. it's And a non-fan watching just this episode of Voyager would have all of their worst fears confirmed about science fiction in general and Star Trek in particular. Right. so ah They had to go so far as to be like, wait, did Tom Paris rape his captain? And they're like, we got to put a line in there. Which anyways, like, yeah oh, no, sometimes the women come on to the man, you know, but let's not talk about this anymore. So there's this a big swing that connects.
00:59:52
Speaker
and your No, no, no, this is us we're gonna miss. yeah if If this is Trek, Marry or Kill, this should be killed, burned, fired the ashes into space. ah This is, it's not it's not irredeemable, like I said, that there's there's a little threads here that are are interesting. There are things that I thought were, it didn't disappoint me in the way that other stories this season did, ah but it's a hell of a mess. it really is a hell of a mess. Yeah, I was surprised just on rewatching it that it is a soft kill insofar as everything you said, but I wasn't like, you know, Spock's brain is one I keep thinking about when I think about kills, because on the surface of that one, you're like, that one seems like it's so dumb, it might be fun. And it kind of is. But if you pay attention to it, it's like,
01:00:40
Speaker
What was Gene Roddenberry going through? What was Gene Kuhn going through? like the The chauvinism, the misogyny in that one is so loud. It's like, that's kind of a nasty one. And this one doesn't really get there in any kind of way, but it also doesn't go anywhere. like It doesn't have a voice. It's just a half-baked, harebrained concept. I've heard Brandon Braga talk. about a lot of his bad episodes or ones considered bad and he called Subrosa hairbrained and it's like you go and watch that one and that is what this one if this one had been more like Subrosa in time would have been more favorable to it because Subrosa was going for something and nailed it
01:01:24
Speaker
And whether or not you're into that, it's like it had a point of view. It had a style. Jonathan Frakes directed the hell out of it. I think the direction of this one, let's whatever is here down. And this one didn't really go for anything. It just kind of like I think it was just the middle of the season and they're like, we got to get these episodes in the hopper and produce them. And so we get kind of some cool creature effects. I mean, ultimately, what has stood out for me is him pulling the tongue out. Yeah. um It's fine if it's the salamander babies for other people, but yeah. All right, Tom, tell the people about your book some more, where they can find it, what you hope to leave them with.
01:02:00
Speaker
Yeah, so ah Star Trek, ah discovering the TV series of volume one, which covers the original series, the animated series and the next generation is out. I think now ah there have been a few delays at the publishers, but you can definitely order it now wherever books are sold and you might even be able to buy it by the time this comes out. um It's terribly good. It's ah me and my interesting thoughts about Star Trek and sprinkled through there are a few comments from other noteworthy individuals who sometimes agree with me and sometimes disagree with me just to further emphasize the fact that this is all very personal ah but hopefully entertaining and interesting and I don't much mind whether you read it going well this guy gets it I agree completely whether you go this person is insane and I couldn't disagree more but I hope you at least understand how I arrived at my conclusions even if you don't share them.
01:02:52
Speaker
And then also um the the podcast that I mentioned, that feed is still active and we put stuff in it occasionally and I've ah shown a few willing friends episodes of Star Trek over the last few weeks to ah to to help promote the book. And there's a few interesting conversations there. ah Dan Stonke and I watched Devil in the Dark. ah Jessica Regan and I watched Chain of Command. ah So those are all worth checking out. And finally, I am on Twitter at Tom Selinski, T-O-M-S-A-L-I-N-S-K-Y.
01:03:25
Speaker
ah' Be sure to rate and review us. Check us out on social media, Trek Mary K Pod, trekmarikillpod.com. On the internet, you can see all of our standings. Tom, it's been so great talking to you. i your Great perspective. I, again, love the idea of having the highbrow historian come in and deal with the threshold that tickled me to nowhere. I'm very much a dilettante. All right. So thanks again for listening. Until next week, TMK out.