In this episode of Trek In Time, we're testing out long-term memory. Does that make sense to anybody but me? Due to technical difficulties last week yeah. Matt and I were not able to record. As a result, we are recording the episode we were going to record now, which means a full week has passed, which means. Well, you're all about to see and hear what 50-year-old brains sound like. That's right. Everybody we're talking about By any other name from Star Trek, the Original Series. This is from February 23rd, 1968, episode number 51 in shooting order, 50th in broadcast order the 22nd of the second season. Welcome everybody to Trek in Time where we are watching every episode of Star Trek in chronological stardate order. I used to say we're in early days, but now we're watching the original series and we're not in early days. Riddle me that, Matt, how does this feel to you that we're talking about the original series, we finally got around to the original series and we've passed the halfway mark of the three seasons. Yep. And yet we're at episode number, what is it? 192. Hmm. Feels weird to me. And who are we? I'm Sean Ferrell. I'm a writer. I write some sci-fi. I write some stuff for kids. And with me as always is my brother Matt, who is also the host of Undecided with Matt Ferrell, which takes a look at emerging tech and its impact on our lives. And Matt, we had an impromptu week off. Yes, we did. But how are you doing today? I had an on purpose week off too. I took, I took a week off from everything in the same time period. So right now I'm kind of like. Wait, what are we talking about? Where am I? Is this my beautiful house? Is this my beautiful wife? How did I get here? Well, Matt, I think it'll all come back to you or we'll crash and burden terribly in this episode. But before we get onto crashing and burning, we always like to visit your comments on our previous episode. So, Matt, what did you find in the way back machine for us this week? Yeah, the comments I found way back were from Wayouts. This is from the episode, a piece of the action you guys need to do a combo of Matts, both of Matt's shows. What tech today will lead to Star Trek Tech? And I thought that was really, that's a pretty good one. Interesting idea. Yeah. Basically things that came from fiction that became reality. Mm-hmm. I think that could be actually a lot of fun. Yeah. So good suggestion layouts. I might actually do that. Then Jason Dumb wrote most sci-fi tv of the era was uneven. Sean, Sean and I have talked numerous times. Yeah. About how the original series Yo-Yos between brilliant television and then, oh my God, they thought this was good. Yeah, but he, uh, what Jason Dumb wrote most sci-fi tv of the era was uneven Outer limits Twilight Zone. Many episodes are bad. Strange New Worlds is similarly uneven, Murder Doctor episode one week, musical episode the next. That's right. The, the Holodeck shenanigans of later Trek owed their existence to these silly episodes. I agree with that. Vic Tayback character name on Alice, was Mel. A good show, spiritual progenitor, to a show like Roseanne. If you don't remember, you can kiss my grits. That one was chock full of pop culture. Yeah, and I remember. Yeah. So do I. Dan Sims wrote with how different the original series was with the quality of episodes. It was only acceptable back then because people only had like five TV channels to choose from. Luckily for them it didn't have much competition. I think there's a tr, I think there's truth to that for sure. I just remember you and I being kids and our big TV in the living room, which was something like a 19 inch black and white tv, or was it called tv? Yes, it 19 inch, 20 inch black and white. And we the big dial and we got like six channels. Yep. Wasn't a lot to choose from back then. It was six channels and that was with cable. Yeah. Then we had a comment from Mark Loveless on the concept of unevenness, let me state this. Watching this in reruns in the seventies and eighties, in the town I grew up in was a test bed for early cable access with multiple channels. I could watch Star Trek the Original Series more than once a week, and it was only an early version of binge watching. You'd see things like immunity syndrome and get really excited, and then you'd see use the existing sets on the lot with existing costumes from a gangster series episode and think, damn, the potential is there. But this sucks. As a result, only the true sci-fi nerds could stand getting through the series as it was a constant waffling between wonderful satisfaction and failed potential. Hence, the low ratings. Imagine how excited we the nerds all got when Star Trek, the motion picture was announced. We all thought finally a decent platform to really let loose with a decent budget for effects and sets and more thought out writing, something that was obviously desperately needed in the franchise up until that point. I think that's extremely well said. Like, I, I agree with that completely. Yeah. That all that puts it all into a deep contextual picture that I think is very, very useful. And I think that you and I, when we talk about the unevenness we're talking, it's almost as if we're putting ourselves back in the perspective of that viewer on the first time viewing. Yeah. Because we're sitting there and saying like, holy cow, that one was like a lot of fun. This one's not a lot of fun. As opposed to pulling back consistently and saying like, what was television like? Big picture in that moment. Mm-hmm. That it is a good reminder. Thank you for that Mark. And on the Mark Loveless train. Wrong answers only Sean? Yes. For the episode we're talking about today, plot of By Any Other Name. Chekov does some shots at a sketchy bar during shore leave and becomes infected with a rare virus that turns him into a woman. Unfortunately, the show simply dressed him in drag rather poorly. And Pavel Chekov changes his name to Patricia Cheeky. Patricia insists on being addressed as Cheeky at all times, and every time someone says, Chekov, Patricia goes sixties, male dominated social stereotype, angry. Only Spock seems to get the re, the renaming correct and seems to simply accept the situation. Later on Cheeky insists on getting a ch cherryade, a popular drink in the sixties marketed at women, which kills the virus. After a loud fart on the. They end in farts, don't they? There's always, yes. There's a scatological humor in every one of these. After a loud fart while on the bridge, the camera pans to a confused Chekov who can't understand why he's wearing a woman's uniform. Laughs all around. Note initially embraced by the gay community in the seventies. The episode was later panned as horribly offensive. It's still considered divisive in the L-G-B-T-Q community to this day. What I like about this is interesting that its kind a Trek in Time about a made up episode. It's really exactly, yeah, well done. Well that noise you hear, those flashing lights you see. That's not Matt blushing with excitement at what he just read. That is in fact movie alert. It's time for him to tackle the Wikipedia description for this episode. Take it away Matt. Beings from the Andromeda Galaxy steal the Enterprise, technologically modify it and attempt to return home. Kirk, Spock, Bones and some crew members beam down to a planet surface and find a group of people who demand Kirk surrender the ship by paralyzing everyone except Kirk. These people are the inhabitants of the planet, Kelvan in the Andromeda galaxy. They cross the intergalactic boundaries and intergalactic space to the Milky Way to find a sustainable system for their people, on journey, on a journey spanning over 300 years. Soon, Rojan controls the enterprise, and along with his people, immobilizes the entire crew aboard and begins the journey for Andromeda. Upon reaching the intergalactic boundary, Spock and Scotty make a plan to blow up the enterprise to defeat the Kelvan's mission. But Spock says no. Wait, that's wrong. That's not accurate, but keep going. Okay, I'm very confused. Later, Kirk and Spock realized these people though, they, they have taken human form, are unable to handle the flow of emotions. Spock, Kirk, Bones and Scotty began challenging those emotions to distract the Kelvans and regain control of the Enterprise. They help the  Kelvans  realize that with the help of the United Federation of Planets, that Kelvans can peacefully make their journey into the Milky Way and live in harmony with other civilizations. This episode directed by Mark Daniels, story by Jerome Bixby, teleplay by DC Fontana and Jerome Bixby. And I think that first name is a standout reason for me as to why I enjoyed this episode as much as I did. Original air date, February 23rd, 1968. And in addition to our regular crew, most of which is just we end up with mainly Kirk, Spock, McCoy and Scotty, we don't see much of most of the original crew, but we do get some guest appearances from Barbara Bouchet as Kelinda, Warren Stevens as Rojan, Stewart Moss as Hanar, Robert Fortier as Tomar, Lezlie Dalton as Drea, Carl Byrd as Lieutenant Shea, Julie Cobb as Yeoman Thompson. Frank DaVinci as Lieutenant Brent, Eddie Pasky as Lieutenant Leslie, William Blackburn as Lieutenant Hadley and Roger Holloway as Lieutenant Lemley. Little fun fact about Barbara Bouchet, she stood out in this episode for me because I was like, did I see her in anything else? She has a kind of star quality, and I think she's reminiscent of maybe Natasha Richardson. It just felt like there was a kind of quality there that reminded me of a, of a contemporary actress, but it's. Barbara Bouchet was a German Italian actress, dancer and model. She was born right at the end of World War II in what was still occupied by the Nazis, and after the war she ended up immigrating to the United States and she was regarded as a sex symbol and was in and like I am not trying to out myself. In any way when I said like, do I know her from anything else? She was in a ton of 1960s and seventies horror, Italian semi exploitive films, if you know what I mean. It's that kind of like, okay, we're gonna put a lot of very scantily clad women into a weird castle and there's a guy who's a vampire, but this entire thing is gonna be shot in a weekend. It's costing us $15,000, and I believe she was married to the director. So that's her career arc. From this I'm actually surprised that she didn't have a longer career in Hollywood because I thought she had a kind of star quality that stood out. The other actors who played these Kelvan's, Warren Steven as Rojan, he appeared. He's a, he's one of the original that guys. He, I had no question about have I seen this guy before? Yes. He was in 150 different primetime shows from the 1950s to the early eighties. He was a studio player at a time when actors were basically signed to contracts that were a little bit like indentured servitude. You ended up being contracted to a studio, you'd be in what they told you to be in, and if they didn't want you to be in a movie or a TV show that was made by a competitor, you would not be in it. He was in some things in the 1950s, he was viewed as having potential to be a leading man, and then just the pieces didn't come together, so he became a journeyman effectively. So he was on 150 different shows for over a 30 year period, and I remember seeing him as an older gentleman in like Magnum PI and as a younger man, as an extra in shows like The Twilight Zone. So it's that kind of career. And Hanar played by Stewart Moss. Well, he would go on to become a writer and director well into the eighties and early nineties and continued to work with Warren Stevens on a couple of things as a director. So. Interesting little connection there. And finally, Tomar, who, the name Tomar stands out to me. Matt, correct me if I'm wrong, is that not a name of one of the Martians in Santa Claus versus the Martians? I feel like the name Tomar is thrown around. It might be constantly in that episode. Yeah. Anyway, Robert Fortier played Scotty. What do I mean by that? I'll get to that in a minute, but for now, let's move on to what was the world like at the time of original broadcast. This was February 23rd, 1968. We're gonna see some of the familiar favorites that we've seen in past weeks. Matt, I know you'll be excited to sing along to this one. It is, once again, Paul Marais, Love is Blue. Take it away. Good as always. I don't know which angel it was that blessed your voice. But I thank that Angel every day. And guess what movie was the number one movie, Matt? Well, yes it was. Guess who's coming to dinner? This is of course, the romantic comedy drama directed by Stanley Kramer, written by William Rose, featuring Spencer Tracy, Sidney Poitier, Katherine Hepburn, and Katherine's young niece, Katherine Houghton as the love interest. And in movie wife of Sidney Poitier. And on television here, we get around to explaining what I meant by Robert Foitier played Scotty, a show from the late fifties. I had not. Once again, part of the fun for me, Matt, of doing this podcast is I'm digging into pop culture that, for all intents and purposes, didn't exist until I looked for it. It's a little bit of a Schrodinger's cat. Of pop culture, like what's in here? Oh my God. It's called the Troubleshooters. Yes. There was a show called The Troubleshooters. What did they do, Matt? If you're thinking they went around and shot trouble. You're right. Yeah. Yeah. The Troubleshooters was an American adventure television series about a construction team. Yes. What a construction team that takes on difficult jobs where. If you're thinking around the world, you're right, it starred Keenan Wynn, Bob Mathias and Robert Fortier. It aired on NBC beginning on September 11th, 1959. You'll never forget the date of that premier. So the show centered around the Keenan Wynn's character, Kodiak. Kodiak is a construction engineer who for five years has served as the chief troubleshooter for the Stenrud Corporation. If you're thinking Stenrud is an acronym. I hope you're right, but I'm not gonna take the time to figure out what it is. It's a heavy construction firm, and the work has taken him throughout the United States and around the world to solve difficult problems that crop up in construction projects. Ranging from highways to dams to skyscrapers, to airports, to nuclear facilities. Why that sounds realistic, that you could take a single construction team from the United States and that they would be responsible for solving all these problems, all these places all around the world. The pace of the work has begun to wear on Kodiak, and he's begun to slowly train his assistant to take over. The chief engineer Frank Dugan, to replace him eventually. There was a character who was supposed to be a young up and comer. His name is Scotty. Sean. He was played by Robert Fortier. I thought the overlap there was interesting and the synopsis of some of the episodes. I mean, it's very much like, oh, they're afraid the bridge is gonna collapse. The troubleshooters have to come in and fix the bridge. Okay. It's like, yeah, okay. That, like, I get it. But then there would be another episode which is like, they're on a site to fix a, a growing crack in a highway, and then there's a shooter who's this shooting at traveling cars. And it's a little bit like. Okay. What, what? Like I was gonna say, when you told me the premise, I had not heard of this show. I didn't even read about it when I saw it come into this. When you put it in the doc. Mm-hmm. It sounds like an awful idea for a TV show. It's like, I can't even imagine the actual job is here. Let's look at a, look at a bunch of men with the construction hats and you know, architect plans. Yeah. It's like it's not a good TV show. Like the opening sequence of like the thrill to people using a sextant. Like really like, oh, I, I just shot that trouble. What is it? It's, you are using the wrong gravel. It's the, at that grade you're using the wrong gravel, so that asphalt is just gonna keep cracking. Engineering is fascinating. We're gonna, yeah, engineering is fascinating. Yeah. It's not fascinating to watch. It's not fascinating to watch. It's like this should be called the house painters. But I love that there's a single crew of engineers that is like, oh, there's a crack in the wall of the nuclear power plant. We know a guy, he's currently doing my driveway, and then he has to go to a bridge site, but then he'll be right on your, he's just, he's, we got too many things piled up, but he'll be on it. And in the news, well. The big thing here for me is just like the slow drumbeat of the escalation in Vietnam just continues, a rather gripping and almost comically darkly comic photo on the front page of the New York Times from this day, February 23rd, 1968 saying. In Khesanh, a photo of a helicopter flying over a landing strip in Khesanh and Khesanh's Lifeline is the landing strip favorite target for the enemy. It's under such constant shell fire that planes do not have to do not come to a full stop while unloading, not the kind of wartime scenario you're looking for. And what strikes me about this photo more than anything, yes. Matt, perhaps we can include a zoom in at this moment in the video, but for those who are just listening to us, while I don't know, folding laundry, driving to work, commuting on a bus, maybe mowing the lawn. It's a photo of a military helicopter flying over the air base and the front of the helicopter has been painted with a face. So the photo looks amazingly like, yes, an angry helicopter from the world of Thomas the tank engine, as this helicopter looks for all the worlds, like it's just like, I gotta get outta here, this job's gonna kill me. Yes. Amongst the stories. Khesanh, why the US is making a stand. Spoiler alert, it's because if they lose Khesanh, it's not gonna go well for them in the war, US Marines gain a hue objective, but a foe fights on. The Pentagon studies a plan to call up, and here it begins. 40,000 reserves. Proposal would also include special alert to 130,000. This is after the Ted Offensive, which we talked about at the end of January. The North Vietnamese sprang an attack on the South and to the surprise of the US there was no prep for it, and it was a debacle for both sides. It was a debacle for the north because they didn't really gain much of an advantage. They lost a lot of troops. It was a debacle for the US and the South because it showed them, it showed that they were unprepared and it opened the door for the US having to escalate. Or leave in embarrassment, and rather than leave an embarrassment and save literally tens of thousands of lives, they stayed and escalated. On now to our conversation about this episode, I wanna start with a, we've talked about this a couple of times in the past few weeks, about how much of an impact DC Fontana has Yes. On this show. Here we have an idea from a different writer, but DC Fontana is heavily involved in the rewrites and crafts out a show, an episode that I think, once again, similar to the episode in which there's the Federation of Planets conference, there's a murder, Spock's parents show up and all of it is talking about. What is the federation in a way that hadn't really happened up to that point. And I feel like that's happening again indirectly in this one, but it really seems to me like when it came to, okay, what is the Federation of Planets, DC Fontana would've had a faster answer than Gene Roddenberry. She would've had a more satisfying answer than Gene Roddenberry. And in this episode, I feel like it is yet another cobbling out of deeper lore that would continue to resonate beyond the single episode that it appeared in. And the episode itself is largely, I'm not saying it's not well done. We've seen this concept before. We will see this concept again. The idea, oh, the weakness here of the enemy is, in fact human emotions. If we just out human them, they won't be able to keep up. How many times have we seen that now? It's, we've seen it so many times, but here I feel like this particular version of it is very well rendered. I think it is well acted. I think it is fun to watch. There are some subtleties in it that I think are fun to note and we'll get to those later. But overall, I think the biggest ripple here for me, is that DC Fontana and Jerome Bixby kind of splash a thing into the water that is causing ripples that are gonna be felt through the next several decades of Trek simply by defining what does the Federation stand for, if not looking at a potential invader and saying, let us help. And I think that's tremendous. I think it's really, really cool moment to see, because we've seen it on the small scale with that conference where there was the murder. Journey to Babel, where, oh, can we overcome the tensions between these different factors? That's the inner looking examination of the federation. Here's the external one and it's you plan to invade, but isn't it better to talk. Couldn't we find common ground? And I think that's amazing. So just to start off with that moment of looking at DC Fontana and saying Yes yet again. Holy cow. Like really? Yeah. Her DNA is so woven into this universe and do we give her every time I even close to the right amount of respect. Every time I see her name at the beginning of an episode, I usually sit up. Because it's like, you know, you sit down, we go, go to watch this episode on a Friday night, slouching back on the couch and watch it. And it's like, some of them's kinda like, and then the, the ones that when I see her name, it's like, oh, I wanna sit up and pay a little extra attention 'cause this one's gonna be better than the other ones. And that's usually the case. This one, we can debate this. I think this one is adequate for quality. Yeah, it's not great. It's not bad. And I think part of the reason it falls where it does is because it was a probably mediocre idea that got elevated based on what they did to the weaving in the, the federation and having all that kind of like the high level stuff you're talking about is, I think what rescues this episode. The other, the, the actual things that are happening. Some of it are just, I find eye-roll ly bad, but. Well, let's talk about some of the things. Yeah, let's talk about some of the things, and in my mind there's really, we could split the show into two. There is first encounter on the planet. Then there's, we're now in the ship, and it's a pretty audacious divergence because it feels very set up on the planet. Like, oh, this is the playground that we're gonna watch these characters bounce off of each other in. And then suddenly it changes, and the entire context of the show turns into a nightmare for Captain Kirk of the entire crew is turned into these cuboid shapes that are very clearly styrofoam props, but like ultimately the fragility of them is the point. And from that perspective, I think the episode also does a really good job of examining Kirk's relationship to the crew and his sense of responsibility. We've talked in the past about, there are times where he comes across across as Cavalier. I think that they avoided that in this one, and again, I think it's because of who the writers are in this one. Yeah, they really kind of like lean into like he's gonna carry this guilt. So you see the initial setup and then you see the journey. Are you like me, Matt? And there's more, it feels like there's more fresh meat in the setup. Than there is in the journey, or did you see them as being largely like they're kind of both on the same footing? No, I thought this, like, if I was gonna break the episode up, it would be like the first half I thought was better than the second half. I think the setup of what is happening was a, oh crap, like this is a bad situation. And like the way that the, the murder happens where he turns two crewman into those yeah. Gigantic D&D dice. Yeah. And then crushes one, I thought, wow. That's, that's brutal. That's really brutal. It is brutal. Yeah. And then, and and showing the captain's reaction. I thought it did, it, it raised the emotional stakes in a very sophisticated, I thought very well done way, especially for the time. Yeah. I thought like it was, you know, watching it as a 2025 person, it's like kind of kitschy, but at the time it was like. Pretty well done. Yeah. The thing where it started to fall apart for me was as soon as I started getting into the we're gonna out emotion them, it was like, Ugh, yeah, really? This is how you're gonna get outta this situation. It was like that's where it started to fall apart and get weaker. But I will, there is something I wanna thread that I do think it's worth pulling on a little bit for thinking about like at the time in the sixties, that era, you've got the war going on. You have the Middle East is in turmoil, which is true every decade of our lives. Yeah. It's been in turmoil, but it, it seems to me that there's an element of that in this because the Kelvans are only doing what they're doing because it's almost like a generational, it's generational baggage that they're carrying with them. Yeah. Literally. Yeah. And I thought that was an inter, I thought that was an interesting tease in the exploration of, this is what I love about sci-fi is that you can deal with heady topics without going at it so blatantly. Yeah. But for me, as maybe it's me 2025, me looking at this in a current situation we're in, it feels very prescient. The wars we're seeing in the Middle East and what we're doing right now, it's, there's no good reason for it. It's like there is a way out of this. But people are so entrenched in their beliefs and the generational baggage that they have that they can't get beyond it. And you will forever be making the same mistake over and over again until you can get past that. And I think that was kind of a message of the Kelvans. It's like they journeyed 300 years. We're invaders. It's like, well, that yeah. May be true back in your home galaxy, but you, you're 300 years removed from them. You weren't even born there. Yeah. Like you were, you were born on a ship halfway between there and here. It's like you technically aren't even a Kelvan at that point. You're something different. Yeah. And yet you're gonna hold onto those historical beliefs. I thought that aspect of the show was really cool. Yeah. Part of the setup. And then halfway through, it's just kind of like. Toss it out the window. Let's just deal with we're gonna out emotion these guys. Yeah. Isn't that I thought was a little kind of like the let down for me. There's no, yeah, I think that there was no other path in the 1968 though for the show to like solve that problem. I think that that's the, that's the formula we're seeing on display in the program is that you set up these, in some cases you set up a kind of silly escape room sort of set up, oh, it's a planet full of gangsters. How will you ever, and then the next week it's very heady, thick sci-fi, you know, the kind of existential, what does it mean to be the savior of your people by invading another galaxy when you won't be, you weren't there at the launch and you won't be there at the return. What are you doing? And the episode even plays out with the idea, as you pointed out, you'll get back there. Who will you be to those people on that planet when you return and say, we found a planet you can invade, and they tease out the idea that the relationship that comes out of this, in fact, isn't one that's overtly contentious. There is, according to my research, there's a reference to Kelvans. I believe it's Deep Space Nine Wharf refers to having injured himself in a fight against a Kelvan. So that's it. Like it's not, they don't become the big bad, they don't become the new Klingons and some of the subtlety here around all of that because it's 1968 Star Trek, of course it gets put to the side and it's just like, I know what I'll do. We'll throw each other as stunt doubles around a room really awkwardly. But you also do get some iconic moments. I don't include Kirk making out with, uh, a young love interest to expose her to emotions like. We've seen that in episodes before, handled better, I think, in what little girls are made of when he makes out with the Android Andrea, to the point where it so confuses her that she is, walking around looking for people to kiss because she thinks that's helpful. Mm-hmm. And that to me was a more interesting dynamic of like, what does it mean to be human? What does it mean to be a connection? Have an emotional connection to a person as opposed to this where it's like, please apologize to me again. Like, okay, like you got the titillation aspect and maybe the. The dad who's reading the newspaper while the kid watches this at eight o'clock is gonna put down the newspaper for two seconds and like ogle the screen. Yeah. But to me, the more interesting moments are, I like that McCoy is effectively drugging, drugging one of them to just make him irritable. Like, that's the entire point of what he is doing. He is like, yeah, he's gonna be like, he's, he's, he describes it in a way that makes it sound like, okay, are you giving this guy meth? He's like, he's gonna be climbing the walls. Yeah. This is like, so you're feeding him Adderall, what are you doing? Um, but the big one, the big takeaway is Scotty. Yeah. Scotty getting drunk with Fortier, who is playing Tamar, who as I mentioned before, played a different Scotty. The, what is it? It's green, has been a reference that has been used in other Star Trek. It became a kind of touch point for the show as far as like pulling humor out of a moment. You get to see Scotty at his drunken best and if. For a character who has only a handful of episodes where he gets to push, like who is he as a person? He's given an opportunity that a lot of the other second group, Sulu, Chekhov, Uhura, they didn't get the same opportunities to play in this way. Yeah, he really knows how to make hay out of these small moments and the drinking sequence is, not only is it comical to me, but I think it's comically produced. There's the moment where he takes the bottle and throws it over his shoulder and you hear it. You hear it smash you later on, see, the bottle is unbroken. It's sitting on the floor. Obviously they just added a sound effect. But even that just feels like this is all just meant to be fun and funny. And the fact that he gets the device and then sinks to the floor, can I, and it ends up all he's done is incapacitated a guy. He didn't actually help get them what they needed. I like that. Yes. The, the comic relief of his storyline. I loved, I loved it. So what I'm about to say is a nitpick, but it's like. Let's make humor out of an alcoholic because he is pulling, he's doing that whole, the whole alcoholic thing of like stashing bottles in places where people won't find them. He's like pulling his like little knights helmet thing and like pulling stuff out. It was very funny and I really enjoyed it, but there was a part of me that was kind of like ting with sadness of like. Scotty, I think you've got a drinking problem. So you're saying that it's green is more of a cry for help than it is comedic relief? Yes, but I love his, I loved his scenes. He stole the scenes. I also really did enjoy Bones' little scenes, Scotty's scenes, Spock's scenes. It's like they did a really good job. Again, hats off to DC Fontana for doing this, but like. The characters are there, like the, it doesn't feel like an afterthought. It feels like even in those small scenes, they carry a lot of weight. They do a lot of character building. They're the characters we love and these are why we love these characters. We, we watched it in this episode, so I thought it was really well done. Couple of moments of big tension in the episode include the Enterprise going through the barrier at the edge of the galaxy. Oh yeah. This is something that has been done in Star Trek before It will be done again. Um. The idea of the energy barrier at the edge of the galaxy is of course, I mean, it's just nonsense. It there is an edge. Yes, it's, but it's a bleeding edge. It's stupid and it's not gonna be some sort of magical, gigantic barrier. And as somebody in one of the comments on, uh, a forum as I was doing some research for this, pointed out, couldn't they just fly along the Z axis? Yes, three dimensions, big line. Somebody points out, somebody points out. Like they make the reference in Wrath of Khan, of like, he seems to be like most people from the 21st century trapped in two dimensional thinking. And yet this show is very obviously just a riff on the Navy. So it's all about like, here comes the barrier, hold on. Like, uh, captain, can we just fly over it? Just like, just like go, like just up. Could go under it. Just z axis. Just, just anyway, just saying, just, you know, just pointed it out. Not trying to tell you how to do your job, but radical thought. Let's, let's not go through the barrier. Uh, so you go through the barrier, but you also have the. The explosive device attached to the anti-matter injectors, which something unique came out of that for me, of Spock and Scotty pretty much on their own, saying like I, I think we just gotta design something to blow up the ship. That seems like the only thing we can do. Mm-hmm. And going about doing it and letting the captain know after the fact, just like, okay, by the way, like, no, we couldn't do what we went there to do, but good news, we rigged up an explosive. Yeah. And the tension that comes out of Kirk telling Scotty like, standby, don't push that button as they're heading toward the barrier. Yeah, it's a particular kind of tension because they managed to make the tension about the relationship between the characters as opposed to an outward threat. It's really Scotty looking at the captain going like, what are you delaying on? Like, yes, he's got that look in his face. He is like, this is it. We should be doing this. This is what we're supposed to do in this moment. And I found that really particularly interesting. The depth that came out of that simple moment. What did you think about that scene? Well, I, I loved it, but I think there was a missed opportunity with this, and I kept, I, I hate doing this, but I'm gonna do it anyway. Comparing to Next Generation, what would Picard have done in this situation when they have, it's, it's, for me, what I find, what I'm getting at is, it was a great scene, but there's again, a really interesting thread they could have pulled for an interesting story and dynamic that could have gone beyond just that scene. So the fact that they were the only way out of this is to blow them out, we have to kill them. We have to stop this. We can, there are, there are a warring species, and it kind of goes back to what I said before of the generational hatred that kind of comes out of this. If they blow them up and the other and the Kelvan discover that they were blown up, it's gonna feed into itself of them going, okay, now we have to destroy the Federation when we come out there. Yeah. So it's like it's gonna feed, create a feedback loop. They never explored that. They never discussed that. And that could have been, again, leaning into it a little bit more. They could have done something like that. And I was thinking in next generation with Picard, like if you were talking about season four, five, and six of next generation, yeah. They would've dealt with that. There could have been the disagreement between Riker and Picard of how that same exact scene would've extended beyond that. And it would've happened with the, the conversation that, uh, Kirk had. Okay. So when he was having the conversation with Rojan and Rojan said, you know, I knew you could have blown, you were, you had your plot to blown up, blow up the ship, it wouldn't have worked. But I knew you could have done that, and thanks for not even trying. Like, he kind of like acknowledged it. In that moment, there could have been a conversation where Kirk said. I think there's a way out of this where that's not necessary, which is why I didn't do it. Yeah. Like he could have like thrown the gauntlet down of pieces the way right there in that conversation and it would've continued that thread in a, in a nicer way, but it was just kinda like snipped off and barely talked about or woven in, in a, in a good way. So for me, lots of potential, even from that one scene that they kind of like left on the table. I don't disagree with you, but I will, and I don't have an answer to this. I will say, I wonder how much of that is a demonstration of the point of this podcast. In the, in the 1960s the idea, Oh yeah, of self examination in that way was not something like we just literally talked about the headlines in the 1968 escalation to Vietnam. There's foreign diplomacy is definitely riding along with a white hat, black hat mentality. Yes. And Kirk, in that moment, the show may be exemplifying that from the perspective of the federation doesn't have to learn a lesson the other people do and but that doesn't discount what I just said though. It's like is more evolved. It's, and understand and understands this. It's, that's what I'm saying, it's still 19 68. There may have been a lack of context in that way, that in the 1980s, that context is starting to feed into a more nuanced performance, which then comes out as, yeah, Picard would've said like, I chose not to because I didn't wanna inflict upon you a thing that you would then hold against me, which I do really like. You're like, the parallels you pulled out there I think are really, really interesting. And I think it's indicative of the arrows that these two things came up in because mm-hmm. Like if this episode was to be made today in Strange New Worlds, they absolutely, they would start with that. They would start with, like, the episode would start with Pike has an opportunity to do something, does not do it. And then the entire episode is the examination of like, why didn't we do it? You know, why didn't we blow up that enemy vessel? That kind of thing. So it's all very go back again to this feels very much like, yeah, we've seen this before, but as far as like threads that it pulls, it feels like it's pulling deeply. Just the fact that you were like, how would Next Gen have handled this? And then I'm like, well, how would Strange New Worlds handle this is indicative of how deep in the DNA of Star Trek these ideas are. And I think that that's really yes. Like, and, and both of us, I think are in the same terrain of Yeah, it's, it's kind of a workman episode. It, it hits all the marks, it does all the stuff you expect an episode to do, but it's not like super fantastic. But as far as like being Star Trek, this felt very Star Trek to me. It felt like it was hitting, it's very watchable, like it's very watchable. And I, one subtlety I really liked, and I wanted to point this out, is did you notice the makeup on Rojan as the episode carried on? No. Earlier on, he is literally gray. He is painted gray, so he is human, but he's not human. By the end of the episode, the gray is gone and he is, huh? Like when he's just like, get away from her. She's supposed to be mine. And they have the fist fight in the cafeteria, which is a ridiculous fist fight. I hated the fist fight, uh, by the time they get to that scene, he looks human, he looks flesh, flesh, toned. And I thought that that was a like little subtleties like that. I think this episode demonstrates a lot of thought into like, how are we portraying these things? How do we depict their lack of humanity, their growing humanity? In just a visual way. With other people it's, it's like the, the woman is like, kiss me. The guy who's biting his nails off because of the medication that McCoy is giving him. He's like clearly like, oh, I'm sick of you people, and he's storming off, and then you got the guy getting drunk. The one guy who doesn't exhibit all of that simply changes color, and I thought it was a really subtle way of doing that. So viewers, listeners, what did you think about this one? Do you agree with Matt and I that this one has a lot of what makes Trek feel like Trek while being kind of a, yeah, I've been there, done that, but it's all good because. It's resonating so well with the Trek of it, or did you find something else about this episode that makes you think that it's one of the best or one of the worst? Jump into the comments and let us know. As always, your comments, your likes, your subscribes, sharing with your friends. Those are fantastic ways to support us. We appreciate all of that, and if you wanna support us more directly, you can go to Trek in Time Show, click the Become a Supporter Button. It allows you to throw some coins at our heads. We appreciate the welts. And then we get down to the heavy, heavy business of talking about painting actors gray next time and that once again, this is for wrong answers only in the comments Return to Tomorrow. What do you think that one's about? I know what it is about and I gotta admit I'm looking forward to it. Until then, we'll talk to you next time.