Sean: Welcome everybody to SB Face where we talk about how to play sb. Wait no. Welcome, everybody. Trek in Time where we talk about Star Trek in Time. In this episode, we're gonna be talking about a piece of the action. That's right. We're talking about the original series, originally broadcast on January 12th, 1968, episode number 49 in shooting order, 46th in broadcast order of the 17th of the second. Sean: Season. Welcome everybody to Trek in Time where we're watching every episode of Star Trek in chronological star date order. We're also looking at how the world was at the time of Aboriginal broadcast, which means we're talking about January of 1968, as well as whether a FIS bin is a game worthy of learning the rules. Sean: And who are we? I'm Sean Farrell. I'm a writer. I read some sci-fi. I read some stuff for kids. And with me as always is my brother Matt. He's the guru and inquisitor behind. [00:01:00] Undecided with Matt Ferrell, which takes a look at emerging tech and its impact in our lives. And Matt, how are you today? Matt: I'm doing well. Matt: I, I will say we skipped a week 'cause I was traveling. You were traveling and I'm lagging behind, but I just watched another episode of Andor Sean, I'm getting so close to the end of the season. This show is one of the best TV shows ever made. It's Star Wars, not Star Wars. Doesn't matter. It is such a good show. Matt: It is incredible. I am halfway through the show, second season, but you, yeah. Yeah. You and I need to talk about it on our out of time. Sean: Yes. Podcast, which is the spinoff show. From this, for anybody who isn't aware, we have for direct supporters, we have a sup, a spinoff show, which is out of time we talk about other things other than just Trek. Sean: And so yeah, let's do an episode of that soon so that we can talk about and or before we [00:02:00] get into our discussion about this newest episode, a piece of the action. We always like to visit the mailbag and see what you've had to say about our previous episode. So we're dipping back two weeks. Matt, what did you find for us this time? Matt: So there were a couple of conversations around you and I had talked about, 'cause I've brought it up numerous times, the inconsistency of the original series. Yes. And how some episodes are just like, wow. Lowest common denominator. Women that are barely wearing clothes and they look like they're Mylar balloons, all that kind of stuff. Matt: I got some people commenting on that. Mark Loveless wrote in saying, I think Matt hit it on the head. If you're a shapely female wearing a Mylar balloon, the more lowbrow audience you will tend to attract. This was the sixties and showing skin anywhere, television, movies in public was the latest hippie influence trend. Matt: No wonder it impacted ratings. I mean, come on. Those short skirt female crew member uniforms aren't exactly ideal [00:03:00] for what is basically a military crew person to wear. Yeah. That said, my God, this episode, which was immunity syndrome, was really good in my book. I forgot how good it was from a pure sci-fi standpoint. Matt: Yeah. Which, yes, a hundred percent. And then Barbara Rugger wrote on the same basic topic, I. The top rated shows at the time were sitcoms and variety shows. It's not surprising that most of the head of the headiness was lost. I do wonder how much of the brilliance was on purpose, how much was by mistake, and how much is only brilliance in hindsight. Matt: I thought that was fantastic because I think some of the brilliance is in hindsight like. Sean: Yeah, Matt: just, yeah, Sean: a hundred percent. I think we're gonna dip into that idea as we talk about this episode in particular. 'cause there's some details about the making of this episode that I think really shine a light on that very concept. Sean: So thank you Baba Ruger. That's a great comment. Yeah. Matt: We also had, we talked about how Lieutenant Kyle was [00:04:00] strangely changing roles and different uniforms and stuff like that. Combining his hair differently. Yes. Way outs. 1, 2, 3 wrote, okay, spitballing deep into left field. What if Lieutenant Kyle got a battlefield promotion and did not go through the academy? Matt: Perhaps he's doing his department rotation like Uhura did in season one of strange new worlds, and I hadn't thought about that. What if he is doing a department rotation? Sean: Right? Could Matt: explain it away. Yeah. There's no way. There's no way they thought about that in the 1960s. No, absolutely not. Sean: Absolutely not. Matt: Yeah. And then as far as wrong answers, only, I'm mixing things up. Mark Loveless did have a really good one. Thank you, mark. But AJ Chan also a good one. So here's AJ Chan's instead of a piece of the action, it's a pizza, the action. Kirk Spock, McCoy and Ensign Red shirt beamed down to a planet with a hospitable people [00:05:00] who bring them to a feast of the best Italian food the crew has ever had. Matt: Spock doesn't know how to eat pasta, so gets marinara sauce on his uniform. McCoy makes fun of him, but then he gets sauce on his uniform too. Kirk was fine because his shirt was off. The beautiful woman who's there tour guide insists that her people are not from Earth despite the similarities to Earth's Italy. Matt: After Spock and bones beam back up to the ship to clean their clothes, Kirk and Red shirt are given a tour of the Grand Pizza Oven, which is amazing. Then they're given the official pizza, which is so delicious. That red shirt tries to steal the recipe from the Grand Pizza oven, but is struck dead by a bolt of lightning. Matt: Kirk tried to apologize, but the Godlike entity in the Grand Pizza oven will only accept a new pizza, a new recipe as payback Spock bone. Scotty SLU and Yura scrambled to identify a suitable recipe that Kirk can make on the planet and they eventually settle on a Swahili dish that Yura knows by heart. Matt: Kirk succeeds in [00:06:00] making the recipe and dines with the people of the planet. Once again, Spock and bones are allowed to beam back down and then when it's time to go, Kirk tried to put his shirt back on, but now it doesn't fit. He says. That must have been, and that must have shrunk due to the radiation from the planet's rings. Matt: Spock raises an eyebrow. Fascinating. Sean: Excellent work. Excellent work, aj. That's terrific. Thank you for that. Well, that noise you hear in the background and those lights flashing, that's not a pizza oven. Nope, it's the weed alert. It's time for Matt to tackle the Wikipedia description. Good luck, Matt. Matt: The enterprise visits a planet with a violent culture based on America's 1920s prohibition era. Matt: After receiving a 100 year late report from an old Starship, Kirk, bones and Spock decide to beam down to the low Asian Loation lotion. Ian Ian Uhhuh. Okay. To the Ian [00:07:00] planet. It looks like an L to the Ian planet to learn about their way of life and are surprised that the entire society is based on 1920s era. Matt: Chicago mob book mob culture. Realizing that the enterprise must help rectify the situation. Kirk decides to collect all the bosses in one place and form a syndicate, but runs into trouble with the two biggest bosses, Bella and Krakow. Kirk captures Bella and transports K Crackow to the enterprise before tricking the rest of the bosses into gathering together using Starfleet command as the oversight body. Matt: Kirk forms the syndicate to be headed by Bala and Kra as his lieutenant shouldn't be as lieutenants. Kirk hopes that they can teach a new style of living to these people under the surveillance of the federation. This is a weird, that's not completely it Sean: accurate. No, they, that's fairly accurate. He does say he does it. Sean: Kirk says, I don't wanna be the head of the syndicate. He does say, Bella should be, and Krakow would be his lieutenant. So that's accurate and [00:08:00] yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. But the surveillance of the federation aspect is a little loosey goosey. It's not fully presented in the episode in a way that makes a lot of sense. Matt: That that's why I paused. Yeah. I was like, like surveillance of the Fed. What? What? No. Sean: In fact, they hint at, well, we'll be back in a hundred years. Almost like, well, it took you a hundred years to get to this state, so we'll be back in a hundred years and see how you're doing Then, which would of course be within the next generation era. Sean: So. Hmm, I'll get around to that. Directed by James Komack, story by David Harmon, teleplay by David Harmon and Gene l Kon. Interestingly enough story by Teleplay by none of it refers to Gene Roddenberry. President Capone was a note that Roddenberry made on the front page of the Star Trek story Bible at the very beginning of putting it [00:09:00] together. Sean: So this idea started with Roddenberry and is a very early idea of Roddenberry. So the idea of a planet run by mobsters was planted then, and then it went through multiple rewrites with multiple writers until finally this was the, the final draft. Gene L Kon picked up on the tone shift in the trouble with Tribbles, and figured we need more lighthearted episodes like that. Sean: So this is a byproduct of both an older idea by Roddenberry and Gene Kon saying we need to lean more heavily into comedic family friendly, fair, as opposed to like last week's episode, immunity syndrome, which this episode is actually broadcast next to. So the unevenness that you were talking about is on full display here. Sean: We went from. What is [00:10:00] effectively a very hard sci-fi concept into this, and we'll get into this a little bit more. Originally broadcast on January 12th, 1968. Guest appearances include Anthony Caruso as Bella Ox Mix, Vic Tabak as jojo K Crackow, and people may remember Vic Teaks major role in television was the 1970s on the show, Alice. Sean: He played the chef Lee Delano is Kalo, John Herman as Tepo. Apparently they wanted to name everybody after a Mark's brother, Sheldon Collins. As tough kid in what is arguably for me, the only great scene of the show, the Tough Kid is played by Sheldon Collins who would go on met to become a dentist. So. Sean: Eventually he gives up his attempts to become a successful child actor. He was in a couple of things here [00:11:00] and there, and he was in a couple of movies, but. He eventually retires from acting and went to school and became a dentist. Diane Thorn as First Girl, Sharon Hillier as Second Girl Buddy Gar Gary, and as Hood and back to the Marx Brothers again. Sean: Steven Marlow as Zao at the time of broadcast. Jerry Glory 12th, 1968. Good news for Sean. Everybody celebrate with me. Sean didn't have to change much of the notes. That's right. The number one song. Still. Hello. Goodbye by the Beatles. Matt, take it away. Great as always. And the number one movie. Yes, you guessed it, Matt. Sean: The Valley of the Dolls. People were still lining up to see people get addicted to barbiturates and on television. We've looked at a number of different shows trying to compare various programs that were being broadcast. Against the Nielsen ratings of Star Trek, which was [00:12:00] getting at about 11.5 in its second season. Sean: But this week I wanted to visit something different, and by different, I meant weird. And by weird I mean a show that I have never heard of. I wish I had. I'm talking about way out. It's a 1961 American Horror Fantasy and Science Fiction television anthology series in the vein of Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits, hosted by Raw by writer Rawl Dahl. Sean: What. Yes, I've never heard of this. The macabre black and white 25 minute shows were introduced by doll, his face projected in a disconcerting hall of mirrors effect. Dryly delivering a brief introductory monologue expounding on such unusual subjects as undertakers or frogs, or murdering a romantic rival with ground tigers. Sean: Whiskers, the show notes that I could find. Dahl originally agreed to only do a handful [00:13:00] of episodes at the beginning, and he was gonna be paid $450 per introduction Matt: by today's money. That's like, okay, that's not that much work. Sean: Yes, something accounts, it's not that much money. By today's standards, neither is this. Sean: The reason he was willing to do it at all is because he needed to raise money to take care of medical bills for his son. So can you imagine doing four or five introductions at four 50 a pop in order to pay for medical bills by today's dollars, the medical bills would be much greater. Oh, yeah. The payment for being on the television show would be much greater. Sean: Like the, the numbers just boggled my mind. But after doing a few of them, he got into it and then he was like, I'll do more of these. I'll just be, I'll just continue to be the host. So he became the regular host of the show. The very first episode was a television production of one of his short stories that had [00:14:00] been in a collection that he had published. Sean: But after that, they were just shows that written by other people. So it was similar to the Twilight Zone. Or the outer limits. This is a program I did not know about. I have never seen. If anybody has any experience with this show, jump to the comments. Let us know what you think about it, because I'm very, very curious about a show hosted by Raw Dahl, one of my favorite writers. Matt: Yeah, Sean: just sounds like really alternate world. Details and in the news on this day, January 12th, 1968, well, we're seeing a bunch of headlines continuing to harken back to Vietnam, ongoing stuff around investigations in New York City regarding corruption in the city. And most telling though, as far as the more things change, the more they stay the same. Sean: A couple of articles [00:15:00] about Israel having seized areas of old Jerusalem and the ongoing strife there in the Middle East. Things don't change. Definitely not. Kind of a haunting moment for us as we record this. Yes, these tensions continue to this day. So Matt, I think last week I started off the conversation. Sean: But I'd like to jump in and continue the trend of me starting the conversation just to say the uneven nature of these programs Matt: mm-hmm. Sean: Makes for difficulty in watching when you see what they can do when they lean on hard sci-fi. And then you see, and this goes back to Bob Rouge's comment, the brilliance being in hindsight, I don't think at the time original broadcast, they knew where to lean. Sean: I think that they [00:16:00] had inconsistency in the ratings. It's, if you look at the ratings numbers, it's very hard to judge. I. What the audience was positively responding to. There are some hard Sci-fi episodes that don't do great. There are some that do moderately well. There are some comedic episodes that don't do great. Sean: There are some that do moderately well. I feel like this show in its second season having lost the backing of Lucille Ball because Desi Lu Studios had been purchased at this point. They were operating at half the budget they had in their first season. They had been moved to Friday nights, which is the death slot for anything that's for a more mature audience because on Friday nights, the more mature audience goes out. Sean: So they are leaning heavily into, we gotta be family friendly, we gotta be funny, we gotta be for, for the whole family that's at home, not for the. Younger audience, the youthful adult audience that might be into more heart sci-fi stuff, so they're trying a lot of different stuff. [00:17:00] You end up with an uneven quality with an episode like this that is sandwiched between gangsters of t triskelion and immunity syndrome. Sean: Just imagine your viewing experience, S of T, tri light sci-fi. Leaning into some sex appeal of the Mylar balloon wearing woman Kirk, making out with her changes her entire. Worldview and combat sequences that look both overly long and under choreographed so that it's this kind of like, there's no real sense of danger in them. Sean: It's comes across very much like Panama. Like you watch an episode like a mock time, and I feel like in a mock time it really does look like Spock is going to kill Kirk. Yep. And you watched [00:18:00] Gamesters of Troian and you feel like, okay, these guys had an afternoon to practice this. You follow that with this episode, which is a confusing episode for me, and I'll get to why in a moment. Sean: And then the following week you get immunity syndrome, hard sci-fi, finding an amoeba in space. From a viewer perspective, I feel like. It would've been a very challenging time to say, I like this show. When you're seeing that level of inconsistency, how did you, I'll I'll say all of that and then now I'll push it to you and ask you about this episode in particular. Sean: Where did you land on it? What did you think about this one? Matt: The best way to put Sean is you used the word confused. That was me watching this episode. 'cause there were moments where I was like, eh, it's kind of charming. Or That's kind of funny. But [00:19:00] overall I was like, wow, this is horrible. This is so bad. Matt: And when you said it was an original idea written by like President Capone by Roddenberry, and they went through many revisions, my first thought, Sean, is they should have gone through like a dozen more because this was not the one to execute on. And then my other thought that came to me as I was watching it, of course, this is 2025, Matt, reflecting on this. Matt: There are episodes just like this all over the next generation. Yeah. And they work so well. And one of the reasons they work is the stupidity of the plot set up is almost always they're on the holodeck. Yeah. And something's gone wrong. Yeah. And here we're on a planet that for some ungod no re reason, just a stupid book. Matt: Made them all go, you know what, we're gonna mimic [00:20:00] mob bosses. And they explain it away by going, these people are highly impressionable. And that was supposed to be the thing that makes you go, yeah, I buy this. It was so stupid. People walking around with guns everywhere. And this is family friendly of people getting gunned down on streets. Matt: It's like, this is not family friendly. This is not. It, the, the, it's so confused. This episode is so confused that as a viewer, I'm like, I don't know if I should be liking this or not. I don't know if this is good or not. This is just, it's all over the map. So for me, Sean, this was another one of those episodes that gets me angry, that makes me go to basically say, I think Gene Roddenberry is a little bit of a hack, and it's like watching the first couple seasons of Next Generation. Matt: For me, it reinforces me, my opinion of he's a bit of a hack. He doesn't know how to do good television and he doesn't know how to lead a team, a creative team, to create a consistent [00:21:00] delivery of a show every single week. Granted, this is 2025, Matt reflecting on a show from the sixties, so I gotta cut at some slack 'cause at the time, yada, yada, yada. Matt: But at the same time, I think we hold Roddenberry up on a pedestal. He was the guy who created Star Trek. He deserves the accolades for that. Yes, but he didn't make it What we fell in love with, he didn't. It was the people around him that made Star Trek great. Yeah. And so, I don't know, I keep going back to that we had Sean: from weeks ago about DC Fontana being responsible for what vocals are correct. Sean: I feel like we're, I think we're charging through these episodes and. Rediscovering that on a weekly basis of, of the, the rodden barness of it is similar to the George Lucas of it. I think that there's a similarity there in that. Hats off to Roddenberry for creating [00:22:00] Star Trek. Hats off to George Lucas for creating Star Wars, but there are lots of places where you can see that Roddenberry's hands don't leave good marks. Sean: And the same goes for Lucas, that sometimes you get saved by. The actors that were cast, or the editing choices that were made, or any number of other things around the production that allows people to hold onto a thing that they truly love. And I think that's on display here. I talked about the unevenness of the show and the ratings that were, some episodes that you think were classics because. Sean: We recall them so fondly not doing well, and vice versa. Trouble with triples. Got an 8.8 in the Nielsen's, gangsters of T. Triskelion. Got a 10.9. Yeah, a piece of the action. Got a 9.9 and immunity syndrome. Got a 9.4. So of all of those, the trouble with triples, the one that Gene [00:23:00] Kon was just like, oh, we gotta do more like that isn't the best rated of the bunch. Sean: Yeah. That reads to me like they were making these shows and making guesses about how they would do without having the evidence, they weren't filming a piece of the action. After broadcast of the Trouble with Tribbles, they were broadcast three weeks apart. So this is a case of they were making assumptions of like, oh, this tone is probably gonna be good. Sean: This is probably what the viewers are like, but they're all over the place. But that's my problem. Ion is the highest rated of the three I mentioned. Matt: But that's, that's the, that's the problem though. Yeah. It's like Roddenberry. He's the showrunner, he's the creator. He's the one that should be creating the vision. Matt: Yeah. And keeping everybody on track. And the fact that you had Kon doing his own thing and this rudder kind of doing their own thing, were getting this like knee jerk Yeah. Back and forth and quality and tone [00:24:00] and whipping us all over the place. And you're splitting your audience. Yeah. So there's gonna be people that like the coon approach and there's gonna be other people that like this other approach and it's like the fact that they, he was not reigning things in and keeping things on a more consistent track. Matt: To me is where Roddenberry just completely falls short in in running the show. Sean: For me. For me, the things that stand out about this episode, like you already mentioned, the setup is like if only this had been, oh, we accidentally got trapped in the holodeck. Yep. You could have all sorts of very interesting like, oh, then you get the captain, like the idea that Picard would be like, I gotta become the mob boss. Sean: I gotta rally all these gangs, but I gotta do it without costing anybody's lives. Because if it turns into a shooting war and one of us who's trapped in here ends up getting killed, then the blood is on my hands. So you end up with, you know, you can have the fun of like, you got your mob boss, you got your mob mall, you got like [00:25:00] all of the heavies and the thugs and all of that stuff, and you could play around with it. Sean: And they do that. They have, what's the character that Picard? Plays the private eye. Yeah. They do that kind of story time and again with him. But here we have the leap of logic of there's an entire planet that will quickly base itself around any random item that is put in front of them, and yet at the same time, they're described as highly intelligent, but they're also stagnant. Sean: Mm-hmm. They have had a hundred years to get to the 1920s. Level technology, but they want new heaters that can do more well, if they were able to go from nothing to having mob style 1920s Chicago, why would their progress have halted there? They clearly have aspirations to new technology and have the ability to make stuff, wouldn't they have on their own started pushing themselves [00:26:00] toward greater and greater technological heights? Sean: Why is it this parroting of. A set that is used in an any number of TV shows, just so that you can say, well, it's a cost saving measure clearly. So here we have the cost saving measure of every costume, every set, every Tommy gun. All of that is stuff that would've been on the lot, no expense. So, all right. Sean: So you're gonna say like, we're gonna do this. You're doing it once. You're doing it, the. Production is really well done. Mm-hmm. And that for me, becomes a part of the weirdness of this episode. I'm watching it and I'm like, I don't like this. But it is very well done. It is well acted. I feel like this is another example of Shatner saying like, finally I get to stretch some comedic muscles. Sean: The scene. Yeah. The [00:27:00] FIS scene is great. Yes. Like he's making up a game to confuse the guy and it is legitimately funny and like, oh, good for you. You got a splt. Like, yeah. All of that stuff is funny. The scene that stands out for me is the one with the tough kid who's just like, you wanna get in there? I want a percentage. Sean: And then goes up and is doing his whole, I'm gonna attack these mob guys, and their response is, oh, ain't he cute? And then, oh, daddy, daddy, daddy. Yeah. And I'm like, this is funny. This is charming. This is like, son, what did they do to you? Like running up there and then getting their way into the hideout? Sean: I'm like, it's well rendered, but what? It's like a beautiful painting of an ugly scene. Yes. It doesn't feel like this was where you put that effort. This is, this is what you did it on S of truss. Felt like nobody bought in. I remember that in our [00:28:00] conversation when we talked about that episode. We were like, this feels like nobody gave a crap. Sean: This one, it feels like they gave a crap. And I'm like, why? Like, why this one? Is it just for the opportunities of humor? I, and I feel like that may be it. I feel like maybe the actors feel like it's like they're having fun. This for them was a little more fun to do. Yeah. And I'm like. I'm glad they had fun, but the results for me are a well made bad episode and just not, Matt: I would call it charming. Matt: There's like the aspects of this episode that are super charming and you just hit on a bunch of them. Like, that kid was funny, like as he's about to go do it, they're like, what? What are you gonna do? And he goes, oh, you'll know. And he goes up there. So I was like, it's funny, it's charming. The whole card scene is great. Matt: Uh, Spock. It's like nerve pinching people at a rate we've never seen. Yeah. And then somebody even comments on it during the episode and I was like, that's fantastic. It's like he's done it three times and the third time they're like, make a [00:29:00] comment about it. And I was like, that's, that's like chef's kiss. Matt: That's really funny. And, and bones screwing up again. It's just like. There's a lot of stuff that happens in this that's charming. It's fun to see these characters that know each other so well and reacting with each other, but at the same time, like you just said, it's an ugly scene that we're watching them paint well and it's like, I don't, I don't want this. Matt: Yeah. Stop. Sean: A couple of notes about the show, according to the production report for. The Star Trek Enterprise episode, the Communicator. You remember that episode, Matt? That's one where a communicator gets left behind by Reed. Yes. And they have to go about going and get it back inspired by this. This idea like McCoy is like, oh, I think I left to behind. Sean: Like the idea that, okay, in that situation you don't fly away. Yeah, and this episode, strangely is the only episode of Star Trek from the original [00:30:00] series to end in a freeze frame, which adds to the sit calmness. Yes. Because it ends with like, like what are we watching? Like, okay, the, the, the conceit of, oh, this group of people will take anything, put in front of them and build their entire culture around it. Sean: One of the big conceits of this episode that I found myself just laughing at again and again every time I thought about it, was why would that book have gone into space in the first place? Matt: Exactly. Sean: Why would they have taken that down? The horizon was the ship that came here and it's, it left behind this book and it's like it left behind you. Sean: That book, Matt: like that's, that's my problem with this entire episode. I love the way you described it as, it's an ugly panic. It's an ugly scene. It's like there is zero logic, none to anything that has to do with the setup of the show, but the things that happen with those awful logic. [00:31:00] Plot points are good. Matt: So it's like, okay, you got these two stupid connections that make no fricking sense, but what they do to connect them, it's like, Hey, that's funny. Yeah. That's charming. It's clever, but it's, that's what I am. I, I was so confused watching the episode of like, do I like this or hate this? Sean: And Matt: then of course at the end it's like, I know I hated this. Matt: This was, this is not the show I Sean: wanted. It feels like it's very much 1960s sitcom logic. Yes. Like, oh, my boss is coming over for dinner and my wife is a witch. Like it's that or threes company. It's that. It's like any threes company episode. Yeah. The threes company like you overhear through the door of somebody trying to hang a. Sean: A shower rod and somebody saying like, you gotta get it longer. And the other person's saying, but you gotta get yourself lower. You're too low. And the person on the other side is staring at the camera going and like this falls into the same zone as that. And yeah, there are two more [00:32:00] details that I wanted to share that are the only things that I could think would actually rectify. Sean: This episode for me, this episode, which actually gets rated highly in fan polls, it has been voted both amongst the worst episodes and amongst the best episodes. So apparently, depending on who you ask and when response is very different. But there are two details that I thought were fascinating. One is in 2020, deadline Hollywood and Indie Wire. Sean: Mentioned that Quentin Tarantino was making a pitch to make a Star Trek film citing this episode as the inspiration for what he wanted to do, and he would've made it as a prequel to the original series. So what does that mean? I have no idea, but I just love [00:33:00] the detail of that. Just imagine a Quentin Tarantino, star Trek fell. Matt: All I'm seeing is based on this Reservoir Dogs combined with Star Trek. Yeah. Is all I'm seeing in my head. Sean: Yeah. Captain of the enterprise standing there saying it's my way or the highway. Sean: The other detail before it was decided that the Deep Space nine episode, where they went back in time and visited the trouble with Tribbles before they did that, this episode was considered as a jumping off point for revisiting the original series, and it would've, they toyed with the idea of the Deep Space nine crew visiting this planet and discovering that McCoy's having left a device behind. Sean: Meant that they had imitated all of Starfleet culture, and I love this. The idea was left that you could [00:34:00] have had an episode that was talking about the Treche phenomenon. Oh my God. Imagine visiting a planet that is based itself around the original series, and you show up and their response is, yeah, we do this because we love it. Sean: Yeah, and we know it better than you. You could have had then the episode revolving around Starfleet offices being told they don't understand Starfleet by the fans of Starfleet. That's very meta. Very meta. Could have been very funny. However, I do love the deep space nine triples episode. I appreciate that they went the direction they did, but this falls. Sean: Firmly in the category for me of, yeah, the fandom episode that could have been, mm-hmm. Would've been a lot of fun and would've been really fixing the [00:35:00] problem of the existence of an episode that I find so poorly conceived. Like, yeah, it would've for me. This episode stands out as one that. I remember watching it as a kid, and as a kid I enjoyed it. Sean: But yeah. Is it, is it good storytelling? It's well done, but is it a good story? I don't know. So we're landing in pretty firm, thumbs down territory it seems, but viewers, listeners, what do you think? Do you agree with this or did you watch this and think you just enjoy everybody having a good time and you like the madness of it and you like the. Sean: Fiz been adventure and you like that the guy got a splt, let us know. There's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with it. There's nothing, and that's the thing, like as I'm watching it, I kept thinking, I recognize it's well made. And then I read the data on the episode where it was pointed out like there have been [00:36:00] polls where this gets polled as one of the top episodes. Sean: This gets polled strangely in a very specific way as one of the top three episodes for Spock. I could see that, and I'm like, okay, like how specific a poll was that best Spock episode? The Man is in almost every episode. So how do you define what is a Spock centered episode versus a non Spock focused episode? Sean: That's true. Yeah. And I'm like, okay. So as far as like Spock performance, people think that this is a great opportunity. So you end up with, I mean, the humor of it. Obvious. It's well written, it's well acted. It's weird shenanigans. Yep. Are we just getting old? Is that what's Matt: happening? Kurt driving a car. Matt: Sean Kurt's driving a car. Phlox Kurt driving a, driving a car. It's very funny Sean: and no matter how many times they go back to a 20th century style environment, they never figure out [00:37:00] to look when crossing the street. Nope, because in this episode, when they cross the street and the car honks at them and they barely make it across, the first thing that went through my head was Double Dumb Ass On You, which is the line from Star Trek four when they try to cross the street. Sean: Somebody yell, get outta the road, dumb ass. And Kirk's response is double dumb ass on you. And I'm like, they never figure out these motor vehicles, which I love the idea that people in the future are not gonna know what ground transportation is. Like you're walking around San Francisco in the 24th century. Sean: There's no ground transportation at all. Is it all transporters and flying machines? There's not any like little car that like hovers above the ground, like none of that exists. I find myself just like, what are they saying Matt: about the future? I want, I want somebody to take that sound effect you just did and make a [00:38:00] dance song outta it. Matt: Okay? Sean: Yes, please, if you do that, provide a link in the comments and don't forget. Jump into the comments. Let us know what you thought about this episode. Let us know what you, if you think we just missed the boat. Yeah. Let us know if this is one of your favorites and why, and let us know if you disliked it. Sean: We'd love to hear all opinions on this one. None of 'em are wrong, but some of 'em are just like. Okay. Don't forget, liking, subscribing, sharing with your friends. Those are great ways to support the podcast. They're free, they're easy. And if you wanna support us directly, you can go to Trek in Time Show, click the join button there. Sean: Not only does it allow you to support us directly to make this show, but we will also sign you up for our spinoff program out of time that we mentioned earlier in the episode where we talk about things that don't fit within the confines of this program. Sometimes it's [00:39:00] other TV shows, movies, comics, whatever is crossing our paths at that moment. Sean: We hope you'll be interested in checking it out when you are jumping into the comments. Don't forget wrong answers only. What do you think the next episode will be about? The episode by any other name that is not me using a phrase to introduce the name of the episode. That is the name of the episode. Sean: What is bie any other name about? Let us know. Wrong answers only. And thank you once again everybody, for taking the time to watch or listen and we'll talk to you next time.