NÜTrek Part 2

As we navigate Star Trek through the cosmos, there's no shying away from the franchise's struggles with maintaining its canon and meeting fan expectations. From the portrayal of Starfleet officers to the ongoing saga of Section 31, we candidly express mixed feelings about the new era of Star Trek. 

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
New Space, the sickest, illest space frontier.
These are the misbegottenvoyages of Not your Daddy's
Enterprise.
Its unending mission To explorestrange new worlds through
broken interpretations of thepast.

(00:22):
Through broken interpretationsof the past, to seek out new
lens, flares and stupid angelbeams, to boorishly go where its
betters have gone before.
Gentlemen, let's broaden ourminds.

Speaker 3 (00:42):
Are they in the proper approach pattern for
today?
Negative All the weapons NowCharge the lightning field one

(01:06):
of the dumbest dumbest ways youcould possibly do this, and not
even in one of those like well,it happened, I can deal with it,
but in a way that's like youmade this as a throwaway because
you didn't care about it andyou knew it sucked, but then it
retroactively ruins a bunch ofstuff.

Speaker 2 (01:27):
That's the worst possible scenario well, I don't
know if it ruined anything thatwasn't already ruined before
well, it didn't help.
Let's say no no, but was thereany help for that at that point?

Speaker 3 (01:41):
well, I'll kind of get to that because it really
reinforces some of the, I willadmit, probably controversial
takes that I have in our firstepisode.
But over the long term I'venever been wrong, so we'll get
to that.
Oh yeah, this is Dispatch Ajax,by the way, roger, roger, oh

(02:02):
yeah, this is Dispatch.

Speaker 2 (02:02):
Ajax, by the way, Roger Roger.

Speaker 3 (02:06):
Maybe it's more appropriate that you use shitty
Star Wars.

Speaker 2 (02:14):
Mesa Klingon.

Speaker 3 (02:18):
Well, you know what?
At least Discovery didn't do itthat badly With Klingons.
Take over the Terran Empire Doit Jar Jar Binks, maybe worse
than anything that either StarTrek or Star Wars has ever done.

Speaker 2 (02:34):
Ooh, the worst either franchise has ever done.

Speaker 3 (02:39):
I think it might be because it's super racist.
Yeah, it's cinematically andnarratively bad.

Speaker 2 (02:46):
Yeah, and it's worse than the Trade Federation
blockade guys who are also superracist.

Speaker 3 (02:53):
But they're not really characters and you don't
see them all the time, andthey're not portrayed as heroes,
in a way, in fact, I'm sure youknow this, but I mean, they're
essentially just making fun ofNewt Gingrich.
Did you not know that?

Speaker 2 (03:10):
No, no, I don't think so.

Speaker 3 (03:12):
So the Trade Federation guys are literally
George Lucas riffing on NewtGingrich.

Speaker 2 (03:19):
There's a deep cut, Some nerd out there is like oh,
it's this.

Speaker 3 (03:23):
But that's us.

Speaker 2 (03:24):
Okay, there are limits.
I think everyone should haveright.

Speaker 3 (03:29):
We take an academic and at least taste level
approach.

Speaker 2 (03:32):
I mean, is there shitty things that I like, of
course, yeah of course we all doknowing the name of's a trade
federation.
I think there's a definiteyellow scare element 100%
Orientalism.
Yes.

Speaker 3 (03:49):
So the main ambassador to the trade
federation's name is Newt Gunray.
Oh, Newt Gunray.

Speaker 2 (03:54):
Alright, you know, I take back what I said.
That's a good enough name thatit should be remembered and
thought of.
I was wrong.
You can point out.
I was wrong, newt Gunray.

Speaker 3 (04:06):
This wasn't subtle, this wasn't like oh, you could
read into this one way oranother.

Speaker 2 (04:10):
Now I want to know who's the second in command.

Speaker 3 (04:14):
Oh, he's supposed to be.
Trent Lott apparently Vice Roy.
And, by the way, newt isobviously Newt Gingrich Gunray,
an anagram for Reagan.
Oh man, trying real hard,aren't?

Speaker 1 (04:26):
Gunray, an anagram for Reagan.

Speaker 3 (04:27):
Oh man trying real hard, aren't you, george?
Where is Lawrence Kasdan?
Please bring him back theNemoidians that's it.
Yeah, that would be.
The equivalent is in Star Trekoh no, that's what they're
called.
They're the Nemoidians oh no,the Nemordians.

Speaker 2 (04:46):
Oh no, the Nemordian Royal Guard Rug Quornom.

Speaker 3 (04:52):
Do they have like a weird Mad Libs generator thing
that they do in Star?

Speaker 2 (04:56):
Wars.
A hundred percent, a hundredpercent.

Speaker 3 (04:58):
They have to right.

Speaker 2 (05:00):
I think they have 20-sided die but they have
letters on them and so they justroll it five or six times and
they have to make a word from it.

Speaker 3 (05:07):
There you go.

Speaker 2 (05:08):
Oh my God, I was trying to find out the name of
this other asshole and I went tothe Wikipedia and I'm fucking
drowning in Neimordian BS.

Speaker 3 (05:20):
Oh God, I honestly, and I don't know, I am curious
as to which is worse MemoryAlpha, which honestly I think is
pretty well curated, which isthe Star Trek fandom, wikipedia
or Wookieepedia?
I think Wookieepedia isprobably worse.

Speaker 2 (05:38):
I would say yes, but one there's so many more fantasy
elements.
Two there's so much stuffthat's kind of designed more for
kids.
Three there's so much more thathas been relegated to non-canon
, so it's all over the place.

Speaker 3 (05:58):
All of those combined elements are just making it
that much more of anunmanageable beast yeah, I think
the universes are equally aslarge, but I think the I think,
with star trek at least, andprobably because of the nature
of the structure of star trek,it's wikipedia sources, memory

(06:20):
alpha and memory, memory Alphabeing canon and Memory Beta
being tangential canon ornon-canon, as opposed to Star
Wars, which has Wikipedia, whichis just the equivalent of
driving down a highway with agun, shooting it out of your

(06:41):
window into the air.

Speaker 2 (06:43):
Huh, hey, here's a question for you what is
Palpatine's first name?

Speaker 3 (06:51):
Sylvester?
No, I have no idea.

Speaker 1 (06:54):
It's Sheev.

Speaker 2 (06:59):
Sheev Palpatine.
I don't know how I never knewthis until just now.

Speaker 3 (07:05):
I didn't know that either.
Sheev Palpatine.
I don't know how I never knewthis until just now.
I didn't know that either.

Speaker 2 (07:07):
Sheev Palpatine.

Speaker 3 (07:09):
It obviously only has to come from like a book or
Paul, did you hear about this?

Speaker 2 (07:13):
Did you hear about Sheev?

Speaker 3 (07:16):
Believe it or not?
No, I haven't.

Speaker 2 (07:19):
It's a weird and wild stuff.

Speaker 3 (07:21):
This Sheev Palpatine, God that's too old a reference
for us.
Weird and wild stuff, thisShe-Falc-Teen Hi-yo God, that's
too old a reference for us letalone people that listen to us.
Oh boy yeah.

Speaker 2 (07:36):
Oh, there's the Viceroy, and then there's the
Deuceroy.

Speaker 3 (07:38):
I don't think George Lucas came up with a lot of this
stuff out of whole cloth.

Speaker 2 (07:45):
This stuff that is technical.
At least the first image thatpops up is a weird horse dude
with an 80s Italian New Yorkerhaircut and a blue robe.

Speaker 3 (07:53):
That's probably canon , then right, how could it not
be?

Speaker 2 (08:00):
It is fantasy land, so who knows, we're talking
about Star Trek, new Trek, NewTrek with umlauts.
Rock on, I'm.

Speaker 3 (08:11):
Skip.

Speaker 2 (08:14):
What.
And you're Jake oh yeah, I'mDeuce Roy Jake.

Speaker 3 (08:18):
You're Deuce, roy.
I don't want us to have ahierarchy that defeats the
purpose of the show.

Speaker 1 (08:24):
You don't want a hierarchy in the Trade
Federation.

Speaker 3 (08:29):
The only reason that's not super racist is
because you're mimicking theracist thing that they did.
I'm.
Thankfully, one of those guyswas at least Brian Blessed,
blessed B.

Speaker 2 (08:42):
Wait, the Gungan was alive.

Speaker 3 (08:45):
The Gungans are named after Gungaadin, one of the
most racist movies ever made.

Speaker 2 (08:50):
It's like I wish they had the Mandingoans who were
like.

Speaker 3 (08:55):
Who had seduced Amidala?

Speaker 2 (09:02):
How are we going to get the queen?
Well, we have to get Spacesweet, sweet back to go uh
rescue her officially.

Speaker 3 (09:11):
The states of the podcast dispatch hx is not
necessarily saying that georgelucas is racist me such a saying
that uh my headphones popped up.
That was funny.
Anyway.
We last left off with thelaunch of star trek discovery in

(09:34):
2017.
Discovery was meant to be areturn to form for star trek.
The abrams movies were, butthey leaned away from Star Trek
traditions like multiculturalism, diplomacy, plausible
technobabble and procedure.
Discovery was initiallyconstructed by Brian Fuller, who

(09:56):
had written for TNG and Voyager, and who conceived of the
project as a prequel to theoriginal series.
Anyone who knew anything aboutthe production of Discovery, or
even just watched it, could tellit was fighting with itself and
its audience as more and moreshowrunners and producers became
involved.

(10:17):
In the end, more than 20producers would be credited on
Discovery.
Keep them coming.

Speaker 1 (10:25):
That is insanity Too many cooks, too many cooks.

Speaker 3 (10:36):
I almost wrote that into the script because I knew
that's exactly what you weregoing to say Well it still holds
up.
That's the appropriate thing tosay.
It's just funny, because I waslike.
I thought that was like.
I bet you, jake, didn't saythat.

Speaker 2 (10:48):
Hey, I've got this asshole figured out.
I know exactly what this pieceof shit's going to say.
Well, I would have said thesame thing, and I know you very
well, I think we should, as asidebar for someone who hasn't
seen Discovery.

Speaker 3 (11:02):
No, but I can.

Speaker 2 (11:03):
I think it's vital both to understanding what could
have been what definitelyturned out was, and then how it
leads into what we'll talk aboutat the end of the show.

Speaker 3 (11:13):
Absolutely an exploration of what is commonly
referred to as the lost era ofstar trek, which is the era
that's not well defined orsubtly hinted at before the

(11:34):
original series.
Well, so the it kind of depends.
So before star trek enterprisecame out, there was basically no
history in Star Trek canonbetween well, really leading up
to what we see in the originalseries.
It wasn't until later that theykind of retroactively created
history canon and it kind ofstarted with the original series

(11:59):
which you know talked aboutTrek's past, like the Romulan
War.
It wasn't until you get to TNGand second wave Star Trek, which
talked about Trek's past, likethe Romulan War.
It wasn't until you get to TNGand second wave Star Trek that
you get definitions of history,of the founding of the United
Federation of Planets orStarfleet.
I mean, you go back to earlyoriginal series.

(12:19):
It's real fast and loose.
The UFP is kind of undefined.
Early on they talk about UnitedEarth.
It was kind of a free for allbecause it was their first foray
into this.
There wasn't an establishedthing.
A lot of writers just did whatthey did.

Speaker 2 (12:37):
They just adapted science fiction stories into
Star Trek and so I mean, nobodyknew they were writing stories
that were supposed to last forthe next 50 years.

Speaker 3 (12:45):
Or create an entire universe of backstory that they
would have no idea for.
So it didn't really happenuntil later on.
So there are multiple points inTrek history that are
considered lost periods of time.

Speaker 2 (13:00):
Because what Enterprise is like 100 years
before Discovery and Discoveryis 10 years before 10-ish years
before the original series.

Speaker 3 (13:08):
yeah, Enterprise is more closely around 100 years
before Discovery.

Speaker 2 (13:14):
Yeah, it's like 2151 and 2255 in Earth years.

Speaker 3 (13:19):
Yes, in the Julian calendar in Earth years.

Speaker 2 (13:22):
Julian Bashir calendar the.

Speaker 3 (13:23):
Julian calendar in Earth years.
Julian Bashir calendar In theJulian Bashir calendar, the
secretly genetically enhancedJulian Bashir calendar.
So there are large periods ofTrek history that they're trying
to tell.
And you know, at the time whenEnterprise came out everyone
kind of hated the idea and itwas bad early on.
It eventually got good crazily,but it talked about a very

(13:44):
large swath of time that wasnever addressed, hinted at and
then retroactively used insecond wave star trek.
But fuller's idea of discoverywas that it was going to be set
in the 23rd century because,just like people our age sci-fi,
fantasy geeks of our era,that's where all the interesting
things happen.
But he wanted to create ananthology show that would start

(14:08):
there, before what we knowbetween Enterprise and the
original and then eventuallyending way far in the future
stuff we don't know which.
Conceptually I get.
If you want to make a pitch ofhow to change Star Trek, I
totally get what he's doingthere, Good or not, I mean I get
it.
So Discovery happens in aperiod of Star Trek where

(14:31):
there's not a lot of canonsettled.
Discovery takes place in aperiod right before the original
series so that it would seem atleast familiar to people who
grew up on the original series,least familiar to people who
grew up on the original series,but then address things that
would feel familiar to peoplewho grew up on tng or ds9 or

(14:51):
voyager or even the abrams track.

Speaker 2 (14:52):
stuff makes sense I would say the things that they
then trying to discover a newway to travel the galaxy.
I think those are like thereare three things in the first

(15:16):
season that the show is kind ofabout.

Speaker 3 (15:19):
Yes, you're correct.
Those are the three main things.
Sort of philosophically theywanted to tackle more inclusion
there was a lot of focus on LGBTvisibility and diversity, which
is at the heart of Trekphilosophy.
More representation, which iscompletely fair and really digs

(15:40):
down into the heart of what StarTrek is.
Unfortunately, that didn'treally pan out to what Discovery
was.
Now, discovery does do thosethings, and I'll talk about the
good things that Discovery does,because as much of a contrarian
as I am to New Trek I am alsonot, you know, some internet
troll who just hates everything.
There are good things that comefrom New Trek, just like we

(16:04):
talked about in Abrams' firstStar Trek movie.
So when we critique New Trek,it's more that, not that we're
pessimists or nihilists or inany way, shape or form
constantly being negative aboutit.
It's that it doesn't live up toits potential and that's the
disappointing part.

(16:24):
It's not as good as it could orshould be.
Fuller's idea was, like I said,an anthology show.
Each season was going to be setin a different time, starting
with a prequel and ending way inthe future.
I mean he really had a moderntake on it, like a True

(16:46):
Detective or Fargo type take onit.
He wanted each season to bedifferent.
The cast would be the onlything that was the same.
So Fuller originally hiredGretchen Jayberg and Aaron
Harberts to help him.
Unfortunately, like we talkedabout before, in October CBS
fired Fuller, replacing him withhis underlings.

(17:06):
By their own admission, theydidn't really get Fuller's
vision.
That's a shame.
So they dropped his moreallegorical and complex story
arcs.
And if that first season feelsweird and off, which it does,
it's because everyone's workingoff of weird rough drafts of

(17:27):
Fuller's vision which areincomplete and without the
guidance of the person whoenvisioned it.
So that's why you get weirdstuff like the giant tardigrade
or the Mycelian network, ingeneral, things like that.
Those elements which are Fullerideas are in the show.
Those elements which are fullerideas are in the show, but what
he was trying to say about themare not, because they didn't

(17:50):
get it and so it feels odd andit doesn't work.
It wasn't until like the last,I'd say, three or four episodes
of the first season where I waslike oh, okay, this actually
might be good.
Oh, the Mirror Universe okay,this actually might be good.
Oh, the Mirror Universe Cool,this is awesome.
So in between seasons one andtwo, cbs nearly cleaned house,

(18:13):
but not Berg and Harbert's.
They created a roadmap forseason two and were working on
one for season three.
However, just the first episodeof season two alone blew out
their budget, and after episodeone, cbs fired Berg and Harvards

(18:34):
.
They then replaced them withguess what?
Alex Kurtzman what?

Speaker 1 (18:39):
Who saw that coming?

Speaker 3 (18:41):
And then for season three, Kurtzman promoted
Michelle Paradise, which is anawesome name.

Speaker 2 (18:47):
She'll be up on stage here soon.

Speaker 3 (18:49):
Michelle Paradise coming on stage soon.

Speaker 1 (18:52):
The tan and lovely young lady from Miami.

Speaker 3 (18:58):
I don't want to disparage Michelle Paradise.
There will be other names thatwe're going to make the exact
same comment about later.
So she became co-showrunner.
A wide swath of Discovery'sproblems are really due to its
behind-the-scenes chaos Writersattempting to make sense of
groundwork that Fuller had madeor his underlings had made, and

(19:21):
then were fired and thenstarting over again.
So it was from the get go atwar with itself.
Discovery felt like a lot ofyes anding.
Making Michael Burnham, which Iappreciate the approach that
Fuller took to Michael Burnham.
When Fuller casted Seneca GreenMartin, they put out an open

(19:44):
casting call without race orgender or sex.
They were like we took a name,a unisex name that isn't a
common unisex name, and we'rejust going to cast the people we
like White, male, black woman,cisgender, queer, doesn't matter
Whomever which I think was afantastic approach to it.

(20:04):
But making Michael BurnhamSpock's adopted sister is absurd
.

Speaker 2 (20:11):
Which is something they highlight in the second
season right at the beginning,when they introduce their Spock
Ethan Peck.

Speaker 3 (20:18):
That's right Now.
This is a big deal in theKurtzman reign because before
introducing Ethan Peck as Spock,you only had Leonard Nimoy and
Zachary Kinto and it was unclearwhether they were ever going to
touch on recasting.
There were people, legitimatelyand for good reason, wondering

(20:40):
if Zachary Kinto was going to beRobin Ford.
But, like I said, at that timethere were confusing issues
still up in the air aboutwhether they could use actors
from that, and if they did,would that be weird, that kind
of thing.
So they bit the bullet.
They straight up recasted Spockwith Ethan Pack.

Speaker 2 (21:00):
When he is introduced in season two.
It may be one of those perfectnew Trek elements, Because like
this, ain't your daddy's sparkright?
Because he's like he's got abeard, he's emotional and he's
distant and like the he's.
What is it like?

(21:20):
Searching for space angels?

Speaker 3 (21:23):
yes, the beard thing is a an aesthetic precedent set
by dr mccoy in star trek, themotion picture.
When in that movie mccoy isreactivated, he's retired
initially and then isreactivated by kirk, sort of
against his will, and he's gotthis giant awesome beard.

(21:44):
So they were like we can dothat for spock to show that he's
not the normal spock we thinkof or whatever.
And trust me, these kinds ofprecedents are going to become
both understandable and yethugely problematic and some of
the biggest problems with theentirety of New Trek.
So Michael Burnham is theadopted sister of Spock, as we

(22:07):
find out.
The adopted sister of Spock, aswe find out.
This is not without precedentin Star Trek, stemming from Star
Trek V, the Final Frontier,which introduces Spock's
half-brother, cybok.

Speaker 2 (22:20):
He's the latest unlockable in Mortal Kombat,
yeah.

Speaker 3 (22:23):
DLC Spock.

Speaker 1 (22:26):
Cybok flawless victory.

Speaker 3 (22:29):
Harv Bennett and Leonard Nimoy tried very hard to
make that character make sense,and so they talk about how he
is a Vulcan who can mind meldbut embraces emotion, which they
do actually explore again inStar Trek Enterprise later on.
Not the character, but thatthere are offshoots of Vulcans
who reject logic, that are notRomulans.

(22:50):
But the problem is that in theoriginal series there is a
precedent set that Spock doesn'thave siblings.
When we're introduced to Sarek,his father in Journey to Babel
and in other episodes Spockdoesn't have siblings, the
caveat comes in because ofsemantics.
Cyborg exists because it wasnever explicitly said that he
didn't have a half brother hejust didn't want to talk about

(23:14):
it I don't want to talk hejust didn't have a brother and
so therefore, in discovery it'sokay because he has an adopted
sister, not a sister.
Additionally, discovery beganright at the beginning of a war
between the Federation and theKlingon Empire, which, by the
way, in the show Michael Burnhamcauses directly.

(23:36):
Star Trek danced away fromtalking the First Klingon War,

(23:59):
and it's one of those thingswhere you don't really need to
know how and when and thedetails.
You can do it if you're writingit well, it might work, but
this doesn't do that.
Then, on top of that, theKlingons don't look anything
like fucking Klingons.
They look like a completelydifferent species.
They're completely redesigned.
But once again, there is aprecedent for this as well.

(24:23):
The updating of the Klingonslook was eventually explained
whether you think it's clever orcheap in Star Trek Enterprise,
eventually explained whether youthink it's clever or cheap in
Star Trek Enterprise.
I think it's great how theyexplain that, because what we
think of Klingons, the way theylook, came about in Star Trek
the motion picture in theopening scene, actually with the
cranial ridges and all that.
Funny enough, the Klingoncaptain is played by Mark

(24:45):
Leonard, who plays Sarek.
They just wanted to update thelook of Klingons.
Totally makes sense, that'sfine as you go along.
There are questions that Trekpeople have because of long,
intractable things we can'treally go through right now.
There's a question as to whyKlingons look differently in the
original series as they do inTNG.
Enterprise goes out of theirway to explain that in a retcon

(25:08):
that crazily, in my opinionreally works.
So there is a precedent set forchanging and updating how
things I mean.
Even in tng they they gaveromulans cranial ridges in their
own way.
So you know they're going toupdate the way that aliens look
and what have you?
but, this was such a departurefrom that.
It was so radical and so weirdthat it didn't really resonate

(25:31):
with anybody, which actuallywill lead into something we're
going to talk about later, aboutwhether or not discovery is in
canon, then, the mostcontroversial and infamous
feature of star trek discoveryis the spore drive that the ship
uses to essentially hopinstantaneously from one point
to another in the universe.

(25:51):
Already, that is an insanething to equip a ship with.
If distance and speed andtravel are all factors that you
use within narratives, it'scrazy to think that they could
just instantly go from one placeto another, and I think that
right there really really reallyset them up for failure.

(26:12):
In this, discovery is able totap into an intradimensional
mycelial network, becausemycelial networks are something
that were discovered, no punintended, on Earth.
The largest organism in thehistory of Earth is an enormous
mycelial network, because theyhave all these conduits and

(26:34):
things that connect them,creating one large organism or
dependent organisms spanninghundreds of miles.
There's a good X-Files episodeabout that.
Actually, the guy thatdiscovered this was a guy named
Stamets, and in Discovery theyuse his full name as the name of
their engineer who creates theSpore or at least knows how to

(26:58):
use the Spore drive.
You're not even trying at thatpoint.
Not only is it a flawed concept, I mean you could do it a
one-off episode and I'd be like,oh, that's really, really
interesting, but they don't.
They start off as one of theirthree main things that Discovery
hits.

Speaker 2 (27:11):
There's also the fact that if you introduce this way
of traveling instantaneouslythroughout the entire universe?
Pre-original series.
You need to explain why this isnever used, ever again.
Yes, 100%, and they, I mean dothey do that in the story?

(27:31):
In a way, yes, it comes down toa question of ethics.

Speaker 3 (27:36):
Well, and they explain eventually that them
entering the mycelial network isdegrading and destroying.

Speaker 2 (27:41):
They do eventually say that that speaks to why they
don't use it, but you have tospeak to why the Dominion or the
Borg or Romulans don't use itover the next two to three
hundred years.
There's a lot of races thataren't going to care.
Do you think the Ferengi?

Speaker 3 (27:58):
are going to care.
I know, and Earth was one ofthe last intragalactic society,
one of the last species thatdeveloped warp technology.
I appreciate Discovery for thispoint.
The Klingons were in spacecenturies before the human race
was.
Romulans, vulcans.
They were all in space waybefore humans were, so they knew

(28:20):
all of it.
They didn't discover it or, ifthey did, didn't use it.

Speaker 2 (28:25):
Right, and I get that .
Maybe Discovery quote unquotediscovered this new thing, but
we're led to believe that nobodyfinds out about it ever again
throughout the history of StarTrek.

Speaker 3 (28:35):
And they go out of their way.
And this isn't the only examplein the show, but one of the
examples in the show where theydo this, they explain that
retroactively.

Speaker 2 (28:43):
Forget Star Trek, it's bad narrative, storytelling
narrative storytelling, and Imean, it's not that this is
unprecedented in the history ofStar Trek?
How many times do they easilytravel back in time or jump in
between universes?
If you can do these thingseasily, which they can when they
want to, when it's narrativelyconvenient, what's to stop it

(29:05):
from happening all the time?

Speaker 3 (29:08):
To your point.
This kind of thing has indeedbeen explored before Transwarp
Drive, for instance in themovies and then later in Voyager
In Star Trek 3,.
Transwarp Drive was supposed tobe the new thing that the
Excelsior was going to be theflagship.
The Excelsior was going to bethe new flagship of the
Federation and it was going tobe the ship that used Transwarp

(29:29):
Drive.
Scotty sabotaged it so itdidn't work and then they kind
of dropped it.
If you read some of the laternon-canon tech manuals and what
have you, they explain some ofthat stuff but seemingly
off-screen.
Transwarp was abandoned for notbeing ready for implementation
in Starfleet vessels, forimplementation in Starfleet

(29:50):
vessels.
Later it was explained that theregular warp scale that we know
was simply rescaled to accountfor tapping into Transwarp
speeds.
So for instance, warp 9 on theoriginal Enterprise, which was
like the highest it couldpossibly go, warp 8 in the
original series was consideredits max.
Warp 9 was like Back to theFuture 3, when they're pumping

(30:11):
all that crazy shit into thecoal engine of the train car to
get it up to 88 miles an hour.
So like Warp 9 on the originalEnterprise was more like Warp 6
or 7 on the Enterprise D.
This actually worked because ofthe fast and loose writing in
the original series, where theship did definitely surpass warp
9 to much higher numbers not alot, but a few occasions.

(30:34):
That is until transwarp wasreimagined by the borg.
Instead of the ship generatinglike a transwarp field or
whatever, that actually justbecame like a normal warp field
that you would see in the nextgeneration.
Actual transwarp was redefinedas a regular warp ship who could

(30:55):
follow along a permanentlyestablished transwarp tunnel.
It's like the differencebetween warp and Stargate.
But Voyager destroyed all thatstuff.
They literally destroyed theBorg.
Transwarp destroyed the Borgtransport.
That's how you could explainthat.
In Next Generation, q flung theEnterprise far across the galaxy
to the Delta Quadrant toencounter the Borg.

(31:16):
And then all of the sudden theBorg show up in, honestly, the
greatest arc of TNG Best of BothWorlds.
They just show up and kidnapPicard and turn him into Locutus
, even though they should behundreds of years away.
They just do that.
It's because they havetranswarp conduits that they
have developed that they'restarting to build.
Then later in another episodeof TNG, the Soliton wave

(31:41):
propulsion system was abandonedcompletely.
It was an idea where they wouldhave this space or whatever
they would shoot this wave ofradiation that whatever target
starship would ride on like asurfer and then achieve
exponential and infinitevelocity without using
traditional warp technology.
But in that episode theycompletely abandon it due to it

(32:03):
being extremely hazardous andnearly impossible to control.
Then they have the gravitoncatapult in Voyager, the quantum
slipstream drive.
Voyager alone did this like athousand times.
There are tons of differentversions of Propulsion that
aren't just traditional warpthat they address and then hand
wave I mean sometimes to itsbenefit.

(32:25):
Sometimes it's a really coolarc that really does well to
impact the narrativestorytelling of whatever show.
Like in TNG it was discoveredthat even good old regular warp
was wearing out the fabric ofspace time.
In that episode a standard wasset for a good chunk of time
where Federation ships weren'tallowed to go over warp five

(32:46):
unless given specific sign offby Starfleet command.
So after that happens in season, I want to say it's either five
or six through the rest of theseries.
That's interesting.
You've introduced something newthat has lasting impact, that
isn't just hand waved away.
Then you had Voyager, orVoyager flung into the Delta

(33:07):
Quadrant by, by the way, anotherweird propulsion system or
teleport system or what have you75,000 light years into the
Delta Quadrant and would takeroughly what a coincidence 75
years to get home.
They from the setup of thatseries.
That ship was said to have amaximum cruising speed of warp

(33:28):
9.75.
That's not even the dumbestpart.
Voyager just hand waved awaythe damage to the space-time
continuum by I don't know fixingit.
I guess I guess they made likea quantum catalytic converter or
whatever and they solved theproblem.
Even in the press releasesbefore the series I remember
reading and they were like oh,oh, yeah, well, we fixed that

(33:50):
problem.

Speaker 1 (33:53):
Well, I guess Warp's fine, now again Right?

Speaker 3 (33:55):
I guess.
And while they ditched thisintriguing idea, discovery
essentially wrote themselvesinto a corner by having to do
essentially the same thing withthe Spore Drive.
They couldn't keep using itbecause it was destroying the
network and yada, yada yada.
They had to explain that, notbecause the way that they used
the drive caused all sorts oflogical problems like we talked

(34:16):
about, but because it was awriting problem.
It was a concept problem.
Then they did it again by goinginto the future and finding
that there was very littledilithium left when they skipped
way into the future One ofthose things that they cherry
picked from Brian Fuller'sconcept and they find out that
the Federation has fallen apart.
Nobody can travel very far.

(34:38):
They're essentially at the samelevel.
We are now where it takesforever to get from one planet
to another because dilithium isway more rare than it used to be
.
And wait till you hear why thatis.
In that future, the spore driveseems invaluable.
You gotta use it then, right,they've already explained that
you can't use it.
So their backtracking made ituseless.
So they once again no punintended discovered an even

(35:02):
newer form of drive called thepathway drive that didn't use
dilithium and you couldseamlessly move from the pathway
drive to regular warp back andforth to lessen the use of
whatever dilithium is left.
It just seems like so much inDiscovery you're constantly not
only starting out, filling ingaps, but then, when you do bad

(35:24):
things or do dumb writing,retconning those or
retroactively explaining thosethings while filling in gaps.
It just feels like thisconfusing head-snapping mess.
Okay, let's get into thetechnical part of that and we
won't exclusively be technicalabout it.
But this is what happens withthe dilithium when they go into
the future.
Okay, in the year 3064, a shipembarked on a mission to

(35:47):
investigate a dilithium nursery.
What?

Speaker 2 (35:52):
So like Don't bother.

Speaker 3 (35:54):
Okay, fine, I'm going to use that in quotes the
Verubin Nebula.
During this mission, the shipcrashed on a planet called Theta
Zeta, a planet composed mostlyof dilithium.
It's somehow an M-class planet.
So the ship was kelpie, a racethat was introduced in discovery
, something that you would thinkyou would have heard about

(36:17):
already.
But whatever, if you want toretroactively introduce species,
I don't care.
So one of the kelpian crewmembers, dr isa, was pregnant.
Oh, you're gonna love this.
This is such a like a bad dc ormarvel plot.
Dr isa was pregnant and gavebirth to her son sukkal.
Sukkal's cells acclimatized inutero to the dilithium.

(36:39):
What, developing a existentialconnection to it.
What, yeah?
Knowing that she and hercrewmates were dying, isa
created an elaborate hollowprogram designed to educate and
nurture.
Nurture Sakal and mask thecrew's condition from him,
because they were apparentlydying of radiation poisoning
within the nebula.
Traumatized when he saw hismother die of radiation

(37:12):
poisoning, resulting in anemotional outburst that caused a
subspace shockwave thatdestabilized dilithium, causing
it to suddenly become inertthroughout the galaxy.
What and because?
Dilithium, of course, is usedas the catalyst for
matter-antimatter reactionutilization.
Any ship that used dilithiumsuddenly had inert dilithium and

(37:35):
antimatter blew up the ship.
So billions of people died,which included all of the
Klingon Empire, the Federation,not the Romulans, if you're
doing it right.

Speaker 1 (37:46):
And I'll get to that.

Speaker 3 (37:46):
And so in the future, when Discovery's there, they
find out that Federation isbasically like two planets.
You know, if you don't havefaster than light speed, good
luck, you're not gettinganywhere.
So Vulcans, who now areisolated from the rest of the
Federation, just like Andoriaand Tellar and all the other
founding members, they're allnow on their own.
That's when Vulcan and Romulansreunite, like Spock tried to do

(38:09):
, and they become a new species.
They tried working on adifferent form of propulsion
called SB-19, but it doesn'twork and they just drop it.
But this, on top of what wewere already talking about being
a huge problem for a thousandreasons, doesn't work because
Romulans don't use dilithium fortheir faster-than-light travel.

(38:30):
Romulans use something else, asset up in not just TNG, but in
going back to the originalseries.
They use an artificiallycreated quantum singularity
which doesn't require dilithium.
So why wouldn't the Romulansjust have taken over or gone on
a humanitarian quest to helpeveryone else out within the

(38:52):
Alphen Beta Quadrants?
Why did suddenly the Romulansforget what they use?
It'd also be really nice if youhad that red matter right about
now.
Right, if you use a quantumsingularity.
If one tiny droplet of redmatter creates an enormous
singularity, decalithium, bedamned.
If you already had all thatenormous quantity of red matter,

(39:13):
why couldn't you use abillionth of that tiny droplet
to power every faster than lightdrive in the galaxy?
And they never address that,they just go.
I guess I don't know thereasons why.
Obviously most of it is behindthe scenes stuff producers,
showrunners, yada yada yada.
Technical reasons be damned, Imean those are big, especially

(39:34):
for Trek fans, but I mean itnever works.
It speeds through huge eventstoo quickly while others get
really drawn out.
Characters are always super inpanic mode.
They do basic lip service tothe actual sci-fi elements.
One of the vital errors ofDiscovery was its deliberate and
intentional rejection ofepisodic storytelling, and not

(39:54):
in the way that DS9 did.
Discovery is clunky and awkwardlike Michael's arcs.
Even pedestrian ones feelforced or strained.
Star Trek is arguably aprocedural drama.
Formalism is how it works.
It's about solving mysteries,conflicts or disasters.
From infrastructure of ahierarchical workplace, the crew

(40:16):
each brings specialized skillsand actions that are
orchestrated by the maestros inthe chain of command.
The power dynamics negotiatethe inputs of different experts
in different departments, allworking together to solve
complex sci-fi dilemmas how acaptain or a commander treats or
defers to their crew is acommon and narrative theme
across the entire franchise, andwatching gifted, extraordinary

(40:39):
people do their jobs is a bigpart of the appeal of the
procedurals.
It's about the methodology ofpeople as limited and small as
we are, in the face of wonder ofthe unknown, achieving the
impossible and, hopefully, thejust.
That's what's fun aboutwatching it.

(41:00):
In its attempt to focus onaction, discovery would often
forego the classic cerebralapproach and leaned into
violence.
To solve problems, they justshoot first.
The melodrama is nearlytangible.
It basically leaks off thescreen, but resolutions are
rarely satisfying.
In the second season, discoveryteleports from here to there,

(41:20):
from hither to yon, toinvestigate a series of
mysterious signals left behindby a time traveler in the form
of an angel from human myth.
Oh god, that's where youintroduce spock, but in the
initial of an angel from humanmyth.
Oh God, that's where youintroduce Spock.
But in the initial premise ofthat season they're like there
are seven signals that we haveto investigate.
They don't get to them.
They get to like three.

(41:41):
They don't even bother to findall seven signals.
It's so frenetic and weirdlystilted back and forth that it
doesn't finish its own stories.
At the end of the second seasonthe showrunners invented a wise
conceit that explained away whythe Discovery spore drive and
also they use holographiccommunications instead of just

(42:02):
on screen.
It's something that wasintroduced.

Speaker 2 (42:05):
Deep Space Nine.

Speaker 3 (42:06):
Discovery has that all the time.
The Klingons use it all thetime.
What are you talking about?
When they finally introducePike in Discovery, they do a
whole thing where the Enterpriseshows up, which is honestly,
personally my favorite physicalinterpretation of the original
series Enterprise.
He's like I don't like thatshit.
It doesn't really seem to work.

(42:27):
Tear it all out, that's it.
And so humans don't discover itagain for another 150 years or
whatever what, what well?

Speaker 2 (42:38):
I mean, that's consistently a problem when
they're doing all of theseprequel series.
Where you're, you have all thistech that just doesn't fit.
You're adding all this stuffthat doesn't work in the
continuity that you've built.

Speaker 3 (42:51):
I agree and I've thought about different ways to
sort of like retcon why certainthings work like, why a
communicator is used in.
You know, we have cell phones,we have touchscreen cell phones.
Why is a communicator not have,like, a visual component?
Why is it the way it is?
And I always rationalized it bysaying like, well, this isn't a
cellular phone, this issubspace communication.
It's different and it doeschange and evolve as it goes.

(43:12):
Fine, Okay, I can suspend thatamount of disbelief, but when
you're introducing things thatwere already talked about as
being introduced in the futureand using them now doesn't make
any sense whatsoever.
Honestly, one of the reasonsthat Strange New Worlds
technically a spinoff ofDiscovery, which follows Captain

(43:34):
Pike in the years before theoriginal series Captain Pike, of
course, being the originalcaptain in the original unaired
pilot of Star Trek, the Cagethat show finally feels like
Star Trek.
Why?
Because they made episodicepisodes, because they have
bottle episodes, Because theyhave arcs that work.
They just straight up finallymade a real prequel to the

(43:56):
original series and it's good.
It's so good, it's such a goodshow it works, and it's because
of their complete rejection ofDiscovery that that's even
possible.
But as to one of our originalquestions, is Star Trek
discovery in canon?
Yeah, it is.
Can't have strange new worldswithout discovery, and the

(44:17):
arguments about whether or notit's in canon specifically come
from the last episode of thebest show that new trek has to
offer lower decks.
They are flying through ananomaly.
Hey, look at that, it's not alightning storm in space.
Lower Decks is, at its heart, acomedy and a satire of Star Trek

(44:38):
, but in a way that works.
It's like the opposite of theStar Wars Christmas special.
It's poking fun at it, it'smaking it lighthearted and
family-friendly, but in a waythat adheres to the rules, while
making fun of the rules of StarTrek canon.
And so in their last episodethey're flying through a

(44:59):
Heisenberg anomaly, which meansthat they're just like I don't
know.
Anything can happen.
And in it there is a momentwhere they are being pursued by
a Klingon ship and the Klingonsturn into the Discovery, which
is a signal to the audience indetractors' minds, that the

(45:19):
Discovery Klingons are not inour universe, they are not in
our continuity, they are in factseparate.
That is literally the onlyreason that people now think
discovery is not in canon okaythat is not the case.
I mean, I watched it and I waslike that'd be great because
that means it's not in canon.
I laughed at that.
I thought that would be thecase.

(45:40):
It's not.
If you really go back and youlook at the logic of how
everything works, discovery isin, and especially since New
Trek keeps on rolling.
With Kurtzman baby, StarfleetAcademy is coming out soon, set
in the 32nd or 33rd century,Literally a spinoff of Star Trek
Discovery, starring HollyHunter and Paul Giamatti

(46:02):
throwing hands up in the air.
No clue.
But if you remember, PaulGiamatti played Rhino in Amazing
Spider-Man 2, written by AlexKurtzman and Roberto Orsi.

Speaker 2 (46:12):
Well, if this lets him do good projects like
holdovers, which is fantastic,yeah, do the shitty sci-fi comic
book stuff so that you canfinance good movies, by all
means.

Speaker 3 (46:23):
Sure, it turns out.
Actually, paul Giamatti, also,coincidentally, huge Star Trek
fan, always wanted to be in StarTrek, like other famous people,
like Michael Jordan, forinstance, wanted to play a
Klingon.
It didn't work out.
He was supposed to be in anepisode of Voyager but that
contractually didn't work out.
James Worthy, former Laker,plays a Klingon in TNG.

(46:44):
You know there are plenty ofguys that are like oh, I love
Star Trek, I just want to be init and weirdly, most of them
want to play klingons.
So yes, discovery is in canonand there are more new trek
discovery spinoffs coming, butwe haven't talked about star
trek picard yet and we won't getinto a whole breakdown about it
, about the show in general,because we don't have the time.
And it's man, it's a bafflingweird show.

(47:07):
I'm confused as to why so manypeople hate Discovery and
complain about this, mostlycomplain about Discovery but
don't complain as much aboutPicard, which suffers from the
exact same problem.

Speaker 2 (47:21):
Do you want my initial gut reaction?

Speaker 3 (47:24):
Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (47:25):
Because they like TNG .
And this is TNG people withsome sprinkling of Voyager-ness
in there, and it's a new packageof their old tasty treat.

Speaker 3 (47:36):
Well, not if you watch the first two seasons of
Picard.

Speaker 2 (47:39):
I think you're.

Speaker 3 (47:42):
There's almost no TNG references in that show until
season three, they visit BreikerIndiana.
Yes, they do do things like that, but until season three, where
they bring them all back, theyget the band back together.
The first season of Picarddiverged from traditional Trek

(48:02):
storytelling.
This is probably the first showthat Kurtzman was on the ground
floor of creating, thatKurtzman was on the ground floor
of creating.
It diverged from traditionalTrek storytelling largely due to
the direct input of PatrickStewart.
He agreed to come back if hehad oversight of the narrative,
which, as it turns out, he's notgreat at, and this is a strange

(48:26):
parallel, but I've thoughtabout this for years.
He strangely followed theShatner arc where Jonathan
Frakes, who plays William Riker,became a very successful
director on his own outside ofStar Trek and Patrick Stewart
eventually became a director ofepisodes of TNG.
It seems like because andFrakes was the only one LeVar

(48:48):
Burton also started directingepisodes and other projects and
you go on to Voyager and you getseveral cast members that
become TV directors, and allthat following the Frank's path.
But it almost feels like whenShatner took on Star Trek 5,
when Patrick Stewart was likewell, I want to be a director
now and well, I'm gonna comeback and I'm gonna have my input
.
But we like Patrick Stewartbecause he's not a narcissistic

(49:10):
fuckface.
Later, showrunner TerryMetallus commented on this Quote
.
There's actually many, manydifferent versions of season two
.
I think you can kind of feelwhen you watch season two that
there's a lot of different ideashere.
We wrote nine episodes at onepoint and the network was like
no, we don't really understandthis, it's a little bit too

(49:30):
sci-fi.
It's a little bit too.
In star trek there wereromulans, there was a whole
thing, the idea that gynon's barwas presented as a normal bar
in los angeles, but if you knewthe right thing to do, you could
go into the back through atelephone booth and that was
rick's cafe and it was astopping point for different

(49:50):
species that were actually thereon earth with a do not
interfere thing happening.
So you had a lot more star trekhappening in the backdrop of it
.
Ultimately, the powers that beat the time were like this is
too much, but there were somereally cool ideas there that
were pretty cool, oh, nailed.
Therefore, season two was amess.
There were cool conceptssprinkled throughout, finally

(50:13):
explaining the Wesley Crusherthing, because that was
something that they completelydid not explain with his weird
cameo in Star Trek Nemesis.
One of the show's complaints wasthat it was too dark, to the
extent that episode four ofseason three was literally too
dark to see.
There were multiple times thatthe official streaming releases

(50:35):
of certain episodes had horribleissues with color correction.
Quoting Metellus, again onTwitter, quote we are trying to
fix this bizarre technical errorfor a second time.
If you can't wait, I encourageyou to watch it a second time
when it looks right later.
They physically couldn't getthe show to look right.
Picard woke up to an unfamiliarpresent where there is no

(50:58):
United Federation of Planets butinstead an evil colonial Terran
empire.
Does that sound familiar?

Speaker 2 (51:04):
And we didn't even get into that.
With Discovery, well, wetouched on it a little, but not
much.

Speaker 3 (51:08):
Don't get excited.
This isn't the Mirror Universe,but an alternate timeline where
everyone is just evil.
In it.
An increasingly senile cue thensends picard back in time to
show the importance of hisfamily line in shaping trek
history.
The series made dumb decisionslike running into gynon on Earth

(51:28):
in the 20th century where sheowned a bar at number 10 Forward
Street.

Speaker 2 (51:34):
Oh, I get it, that's cool.

Speaker 3 (51:37):
In the tradition you could make the same argument you
made last time, a validargument as devil's advocate for
the term Sawbones.
I get that the fact that Guinanruns 10 Forward aboard the USS
Enterprise-D but this is beyondthe pale In the tradition of
maritime ships.
Sometimes areas on ships havespecific familiar names and

(51:58):
sometimes their names are simplydescriptions of their location.
So like I don't know 6 aftwhatever On the Enterprise-D, it
was deck 10 forward of the ship.
That's why it was called 10forward.
And sure you can make the wholesame Sawbones argument.
Except audiences didn't seem tohave any problems with terms
like port or starboard, or theinfluence of former crewman of

(52:21):
the frigate USS WS Sims, ronaldMoore, or former Navy man Gene
Roddenberry, when DS9 used theterm promenade to refer to the
civilian and commercialthoroughfare aboard the station,
or when DS9's originalStarfleet ships were called
runabouts.
These are all naval terms.
Why do you have to reinvent thewheel again?
There was no reason to eveninclude that.

(52:44):
But in any event, let's talkabout Section 31.

Speaker 1 (52:49):
All right.

Speaker 3 (52:49):
So Star Trek, Section 31, and I did some research on
this that I think you're goingto love.

Speaker 1 (52:54):
Okay.

Speaker 3 (52:56):
Star Trek, section 31,.
The movie, the motion picturethe 2B original.
It might as well be, itactually might have been better.
Well, no, I watched fiveminutes of a movie called
Amityville in Space last night,which is a 2B original, and I've
definitely, sadly put thisabove that.

Speaker 2 (53:14):
I bet the plots are fairly as in-depth.

Speaker 3 (53:16):
It was directed by Olatunde Osunsanmi.

Speaker 1 (53:20):
Osunsanmi.

Speaker 2 (53:24):
That's a tough one, but I think I got it mostly
right.

Speaker 3 (53:27):
Yeah, and written by Craig Sweeney Not to be confused
with-.

Speaker 1 (53:31):
DB Fair.

Speaker 3 (53:32):
Oh sorry, Of Strange Luck.
That's funny.
I should have thought of thatFire in the Sky, which you find
terrifying, but also not to beconfused with Craig Sweeney, the
Australian rugby union player,or Craig Sweeney, the Welsh
child sex offender.

Speaker 1 (53:48):
All right.

Speaker 3 (53:48):
Just so that we're clear.
Sweeney, who apparentlyactively trains in Brazilian
jiu-jitsu.

Speaker 2 (53:58):
We will have nothing bad to say about Craig Sweeney.
Please leave us alone, do notchoke us out.

Speaker 3 (54:03):
I'm just saying this is a fact.

Speaker 2 (54:05):
Please do not give our addresses out so that he can
break our arms.

Speaker 3 (54:11):
And he also served as writer for shows like the 4400,
medium and Elementary, which isthe BS American version of
Stephen Moffat's Sherlock, andalso Star Trek Discovery, and he
also produced the film with hiscompany Action this Day
Exclamation mark For Paramount+.

(54:31):
This is not a theatricallyreleased movie.
This is a direct-to-streamingfilm.
It is the first television filmin all of Star Trek,
technically the 14th filmoverall, but it's part of Alex
Kerfman's expanded Star Trekuniverse.
The film is set in thefranchise's lost era between and

(54:52):
this is how it's defined in theofficial synopsis this doesn't
come from me Star Trek, the, theoriginal series films and the
next generation.
Huh, what that doesn't.
It follows Philippa Georgiou asshe works with Section 31, a
secret division of Starfleettasked with protecting the UFP.
Blah, blah, blah.
We talked about that.
She's reprising her role fromDiscovery, so development on a

(55:14):
spinoff series was confirmed inJanuary 2019, but production was
shut down by COVID-19.
A different Discovery spinoff,strange New Worlds, was then
prioritized, so full speed ahead.

Speaker 2 (55:27):
They made the right choice.

Speaker 3 (55:28):
COVID-19 did something great, so instead this
was developed into a throwawaystandalone film.
Picture it Terran Empire,mirror Universe, 23rd century.

Speaker 2 (55:40):
Do I have to?
Well, I did, because I watchedit.

Speaker 3 (55:43):
Unfortunately, yeah, a teenage, philippa Georgiou,
returns home from a deadlycontest to determine the next
emperor.

Speaker 2 (55:50):
Yay, game of Thrones, I mean, yeah, that makes no
sense.
Why would you do Hunger Gamesto decide who's going to rule
the empire?

Speaker 3 (55:59):
And even Hunger Games .
She's not the one in power.
I don't get this at all.
And on top of that, they keepcalling Earth Terra.
No, no, no.
In the Mirror Universe theycall it Earth.
It's Earth.
It's called the Terra in theEmpire because they're a united
human species.
They call them Earthers.
Later, as a derogator, shereveals to her family that she

(56:19):
has befriended a boy named San,and they defeated the other
young contestants together Toclaim the throne.
Georgiou cuts all ties to herprevious life by poisoning her
family.
Imperial officials then beamdown and they arrive with San,
who didn't kill his family.
Georgiou then scars andenslaves him as she ascends to

(56:40):
the throne.

Speaker 1 (56:41):
Mm-hmm, yeah, which makes sense, mm-hmm, yep.

Speaker 3 (56:45):
Then it fast-forwards to the early 24th century.

Speaker 2 (56:49):
Yes, Isn't like 2324?
I think 2324 is when they sayit happens, right, isn't that
when Section 31 occurs?
That would make no sense,though.
2324 is when they say ithappens right, isn't that when
Section 31 occurs?

Speaker 3 (56:59):
That would make no sense, though, because Georgiou
first comes over from the MirrorUniverse in like 2250-something
.

Speaker 2 (57:06):
Yeah, no, I don't know.
How is she?

Speaker 3 (57:08):
I'm sorry, even if that is the case, bullshit.
Because when it opens up intheir stupid I don't know, like
their casino house of ill repute, pretty revolution, cuba thing,
they have going on there, theguy, the attendant, her
concierge or whatever, is Charon, charon, the planet, the entire

(57:29):
species died in the originalseries, except for this guy.

Speaker 2 (57:33):
And apparently, because of the way he's painted,
he would be part of the royalty, but he escaped to be the
concierge of Space Vegas.

Speaker 3 (57:41):
Space Vegas an actual thing for Buck Rogers TV show.
This is what I was getting atwith the last episode.
You're just doing referencesfor references sake.
It doesn't even matter howaccurate they are, if they make
sense.

Speaker 2 (57:54):
Okay, Every single character that we see in this
movie strong quotes.
None of them make sense.
No, Not a one.
Not a one.

Speaker 3 (58:04):
No, they're garbage.

Speaker 2 (58:05):
Let's move along so we can get to all of these point
by point, before we shove thisthing up the rest of our hole.

Speaker 3 (58:12):
So the rest of the IMF crew?
I guess that we're putting it's.

Speaker 2 (58:16):
Mission in Suicide of the Galaxy.

Speaker 3 (58:20):
At least in Mission Impossible they always avoided
dirty work and they justfacilitated it.

Speaker 2 (58:25):
This one they just do it, yeah, except that they wave
their fingers and say, no, weshouldn't do it.
But they do.

Speaker 3 (58:31):
As a caveat to being like.
Well, I guess we're Star Trek,we have to include those
characters too.
It's not a Star Trek movie, itjust includes Star Trek
characters, which are, by theway, section 31 Agent Olak Sehar
Mel, who is a Delton, a raceoriginally introduced in Star
Trek.
The Motion Picture in the formof Lieutenant Ilea, played by

(58:51):
former Indian beauty pageantwinner, persis Kambada, who,
despite my mother's insistencethat she was briefly married to
William Shatner, was not so.
She was married to actor CliffTaylor.
Then, in 1989, rui Saldana, aformer-.

Speaker 2 (59:08):
You're going off on a tangent, my friend.

Speaker 3 (59:10):
No, I'm doing this very much on purpose.
All right, rui Saldana, aformer field hockey player who
represented Great Britain in the1972 Summer Olympics.
Their wedding ceremony tookplace at the Polk County
Courthouse in Des Moines, iowa.
What, why?
Where Saldana worked as aninsurance salesman for a branch
of New York Life.
What, interestingly, she wasromantically linked in the

(59:34):
interim there to publicistEdward Losey, ted Kennedy,
indian actors Adi Irani andSalman Khan.
Not at the same time, thoughthat would be spicy Maybe.
Then she supposedly had atleast a one night stand, no
judgment, with Rutger Hauer, andthen someone I wouldn't have
guessed in a bajillion yearsuntil I remembered what I had

(59:59):
learned about him.
Wild guess Anyone in the worldLeft field.

Speaker 1 (01:00:01):
Just tell me.

Speaker 3 (01:00:02):
War criminal and infamous poonhound Henry
Kissinger.
What A character named Quasi,played by very funny actor Sam
Richardson from I Think youShould Leave and Veep.

Speaker 1 (01:00:17):
Yes.

Speaker 3 (01:00:18):
Who is a shape-shifting Kamaloid, a
species first introduced in StarTrek VI and played by model and
David Bowie spouse Iman?

Speaker 2 (01:00:25):
Rattle through the rest of the characters real
quick, and then I want to hiteach of these for a reason.

Speaker 3 (01:00:29):
Then Zeph, user of a mechanical exoskeleton, rachel
Garrett, a no-nonsense Starfleetofficer in there to keep them
in line, and future captain, bythe way, of the uss enterprise c
, who eventually dies.
Funny enough, in an alternatetimeline, fuzz, a microscopic
nanokin by this is george lucas,who pilots a robotic suit that
looks like a vulcan, and theyintercept an arms dealer who

(01:00:52):
turns out to be from the mirroruniverse with the ultimate
weapon or whatever right.
So that's where we are allright.

Speaker 2 (01:00:57):
So our leader here is alok, who apparently was a
genetically modified like con.

Speaker 3 (01:01:05):
No, apparently he was a pow of the eugenics.
But then they.
But then retroactively modifiedright.

Speaker 2 (01:01:14):
They turned him into a super soldier for some reason.

Speaker 3 (01:01:16):
This woman, who is-?

Speaker 2 (01:01:17):
This woman that we don't know, which I'm guessing-.

Speaker 3 (01:01:19):
Who's not Khan, but one of the other warlords.

Speaker 2 (01:01:22):
Again, every bit of this is a setup for a series
that will never happen.

Speaker 3 (01:01:25):
Ever, ever happen, thankfully.

Speaker 2 (01:01:28):
Okay, I guess we'll just roll with it.
His character makes, I guess,the most sense of all of these.
I guess the most sense of allof these, I guess there's quasi
again Sam.
Richardson probably the mostenjoyable part of this movie
just because he's an enjoyablefunny actor.

Speaker 3 (01:01:43):
I would love to see a Star Trek show with him in it,
but not this.

Speaker 2 (01:01:46):
Again.
You said he's a camealoid.
You see him doing thingsworking for the Federation
pre-Next Generation.
A why are there not more ofthese around doing all types of
things?
Because this would be extremelyvaluable.
B not that long after this, inthe grand scheme of the timeline
, there's an entire war, theDominion War against changelings

(01:02:11):
shapeshifters similar to acamelloid, which are framed as I
don't know know, one of thescariest species in the in the
galaxy.
Unique, extremely unique.
Now I understand thatcamelloids are essentially kind
of a big batch of tubes like theinternet, yeah uh, who can take

(01:02:32):
any form.
But again, do you know anythingof where?
Why?
Nope, this is just like hey,this is a fun thing to put in
there.
So let's not think about thelarge ramifications of these
creatures in the totality ofspace or what they could do all
you know is that they havemichael jackson thriller eyes
yeah, they got green cat lookingeyes, the only thing that sets

(01:02:53):
them apart, but they don'talways have them right well,
they, well, they shapeshift.

Speaker 3 (01:02:57):
So no, I mean, they do, naturally, but but naturally
they're big thing-o tubes.

Speaker 2 (01:03:04):
They're a tubular organism.

Speaker 3 (01:03:06):
Yeah, that's not really very clearly defined or
explained.

Speaker 2 (01:03:11):
No, as opposed to the stupid miniature guys.
For the founders or theshapeshifters, the changelings,
whatever you'd like to call themin DS9, there aren't many of
them.
No, okay, they're rare.
It's a very rare thing.
I'm assuming camelloids arealso rare, but if you were a
camelloid, why are you?
Doing this?

(01:03:31):
Why are you doing this?
Why are you not doing biggerand better things, things.
Why are you not like grandscale espionage?
that doesn't make any sense itsuper doesn't, and it's very
annoying.
Zef, who is in love with hisbiomechanical cyborg suit which
is a very anti-star trek typeextremely anti-star trek type of
thing.

Speaker 3 (01:03:51):
He is the muscle of this team yeah, it's a cyberpunk
type of thing and alsoworthless character.

Speaker 2 (01:03:57):
He's a fucking dime store borg wannabe.

Speaker 3 (01:04:00):
He did it to himself because he thought it was cool.

Speaker 2 (01:04:05):
He's just a bro.
There must be a larger segmentof the populace throughout the
galaxy that has this kind ofthing, but we've never seen it
before.

Speaker 3 (01:04:15):
You would imagine, sure, okay, not everybody's in
the Federation and not everybodyadheres to Federation law and
things like that.
So, yeah, there'd be peoplewith like enhancements and, like
they do, mechanical arms orwhatever.
Sure, but there's nothing tothis character.

Speaker 2 (01:04:30):
No, besides the fact that he doesn't feel like a Star
Trek character, it doesn'treally work in the grander
scheme of Star Trek.
No, this Like a Star Trekcharacter.
It doesn't really work in thegrander scheme of Star Trek, no.

Speaker 3 (01:04:37):
This character just sucked.

Speaker 2 (01:04:38):
What does he do?
Makes quips.

Speaker 3 (01:04:40):
In fact, he dies like right off the bat, and then
they accuse him of being themole or whatever.
How is he the most advanced oneand then just dies.

Speaker 2 (01:04:50):
Okay, let's get to Fuzz.

Speaker 3 (01:04:53):
Oh God which?
This is the thing that Lucastried to do in his original
treatment for the sequels.
The wills that micro universeyou?

Speaker 2 (01:05:02):
remember all that?

Speaker 3 (01:05:03):
no, I don't remember that they reference it in rogue
one.
The sequels were going to takeplace in a tiny micro universe,
so stupid.
Now you have advanced android.
Yes, surrogates Like what isthis.

Speaker 2 (01:05:16):
There is something that is Okay.
It's much more advanced thandata as an android body.

Speaker 3 (01:05:23):
It doesn't have the brain, no.

Speaker 2 (01:05:25):
He's just a chasis.
I get it, but you can't tellthe difference from a biologic
entity in any way, shape or form.
I mean it bleeds.
So it is a biologic cyberneticorganism.

Speaker 3 (01:05:35):
Right which already what?

Speaker 2 (01:05:37):
Yeah, this isn't something that happens.
Obviously there's more of them.
We see another one at the endof the film.

Speaker 3 (01:05:43):
He has a really, really thick Irish accent.

Speaker 1 (01:05:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:05:46):
To the extent where, when he keeps saying Vulcan, I
thought he was saying Vulcanbecause I'm like is that
different?
Like what is that I?
I mean, he's obviously supposedto look vulcan and be vulcan,
but you're like what are yousaying?
And then when they introducedthe second one at the end he's
got the absolute worst americansouthern accent, like a kentucky

(01:06:09):
accent, for no reason becauseit's funny, because I'm a
different one.
As, as dumb as it is, it wouldhave been more clear and better
if he had just been wearing likea 10-gallon hat when he showed
up.

Speaker 2 (01:06:22):
Yeah, have the spurs on.
Have your ass with chaps, dothe whole thing.

Speaker 3 (01:06:27):
It made less sense that all of a sudden he's got
the worst American Southernaccent I've ever heard.

Speaker 2 (01:06:33):
I don't understand these beings.
I don't understand how theyfunction in.

Speaker 3 (01:06:38):
Star Trek.
It's a Gerard Butler level badaccent.
It's baffling.

Speaker 2 (01:06:42):
This just doesn't work.
Whoever thought this was a goodidea is just wrong.

Speaker 3 (01:06:47):
It feels like a fan fiction that should never have.
That somebody should have readand then just never thought
about ever again.
But they make a movie out of it.
What are you doing?
What is this?

Speaker 2 (01:06:57):
Well, they make a feature length pilot.
Or like cramming all theelements of a first season into
90 minutes.

Speaker 3 (01:07:06):
I'm sure that's how all of them retroactively
justify it that it's like well,we were going to have a whole
show, but we had to cram it inthere.
Well, it wasn't going to begood from the get go no, it
wasn't going to be good from theget-go no it wasn't going to be
good anyway, and maybe youcould have explained some of
these things through you know,20 episodes.
Yeah, like Discovery did.

Speaker 2 (01:07:26):
It's a non-starter when you don't have the time,
money or effort to do any ofthose things properly.

Speaker 3 (01:07:32):
Right.

Speaker 2 (01:07:33):
Then just don't do it .

Speaker 3 (01:07:34):
Don't do it.
Just don't do it when theycanceled the series.
Why didn't they take that time?
Because it was like literallyfive years between when they
announced the series and whenthis movie came out.
Why didn't you take that timeto look at this and go that's
probably not very good.
Was it a contractual obligationwith Michelle Yeoh?
Was it because Michelle Yeohwon Oscars recently?

(01:07:56):
I mean, which I get.
You want to make sure you haveMichelle Yeoh on your roster.
You want to give Star Treklegitimacy in that sense?
Sure, I get that, Put her insomething else.
Man, Don't do this, Even ifit's like well, I wanted to keep
Sam Richardson too.
Sure, I get that, Put him insomething else.

Speaker 2 (01:08:11):
But it's also like you have this character and I
guess this is supposed to be.
I mean, if you listen to themtalk about it, it's like oh,
this is a vehicle for redemption.
No, this fucking isn't.
The whole story is a genocidalmadwoman who then gets stuck in
this universe, is bored being abillionaire ne'er-do-well,
decides to team up with thisragtag band of starfleet

(01:08:34):
outsiders.

Speaker 3 (01:08:35):
After 80 plus years.
Yeah, yeah.
What?
And she doesn't age.

Speaker 2 (01:08:42):
Okay, if you want to explain that she has
modifications or whatever, youcan technobabble your way
through that, I don't reallycare.
But they don't, they don'tWhatever.
I'm totally going to hand waveall of that Because I mean, in
the first place, it's hard tofigure out where all of this
stuff happens in relation toeach other in the first place.
Yeah, without getting onlineand like well, when did this

(01:09:04):
happen?
What's the timeline here?
I would have no idea, so youjust roll with it.
Who cares?
But she had created this superweapon.
A oh God, do we need anotherone of those?
B it's this box thatessentially just wipes out
planet by planet.
The idea was, I guess, that ifthings ever went bad, she was

(01:09:25):
just going to eradicate all life.

Speaker 3 (01:09:28):
Good call.

Speaker 2 (01:09:28):
For what reason it's not even a deterrent.

Speaker 3 (01:09:32):
If that character had this technology, developed this
technology, had the ability touse it, why wouldn't she have
just used it to conquer moreworlds?
It's presented in that San, herbest friend throughout the
Hunger Games that she subjugates, helps, I guess, spearhead the
project, or at least is thego-between between the
scientists that develop it andthen give it to her.
He fakes his death, saying thatlike this is so bad that even

(01:09:56):
the people that developed thiskilled themselves.
And now I'm gonna kill myselfbecause this is such a bad
weapon, which you wrote thatbetter.
You could make a reallyinteresting commentary on
oppenheimer and the atomicweapon, whatever what sci-fi is
designed to do.
But they don't.

Speaker 2 (01:10:14):
And so he kills himself and then he gives her
this weapon and then she's likewell, now I don't want it
because you died yeah, whilehe's planning his secret mission
to then go to where she is andwipe out all life there, that
takes again we're gonnaguesstimate 90 years to do
almost a century.
It's not like she's doinganything with these people, why

(01:10:36):
activate?

Speaker 1 (01:10:38):
I don't.

Speaker 3 (01:10:40):
What is the point?
One thing that we are missing.
So she thought she destroyed itAlready.
That was done.
We addressed that, but itwasn't actually destroyed, it
was squirreled away.
That part makes kind of sense,where people are like, well,
maybe I can use this as leveragelater, and some enterprising
dude no pun intended stole it,managed to somehow figure out

(01:11:00):
how to get to the, the primeuniverse, and then a hole in
space, obviously yeah, lightningstorm and then try and, I guess
, sell it, but it's the mostpowerful thing in the universe
and he's just like selling it torandom people and doesn't have
any yeah, in space vegas he'slike I'm just gonna sell it to
some guy in space vegas not theromulans, not, not the Klingons,
not whomever he traveled from.

Speaker 2 (01:11:19):
a whole nother universe to then just go to
space Vegas and find someone inthe wanted ads who was like
looking for a deadly weapon.

Speaker 3 (01:11:27):
He found it in the penny saver and was like I'm
going to sell it to this assholeon Craigslist.
And then San somehow finds out.

Speaker 2 (01:11:34):
Has he been tracking it?
Because if he could have beentracking it, why didn't he just
take it before this?

Speaker 3 (01:11:39):
Why did it take a century to do so?

Speaker 2 (01:11:41):
What was the point of all of that?
And then, what is the point ofhim having that weapon?
Because they say that he'sgoing to bring the Terran Empire
into this universe.
Well, what's the point of theweapon then?

Speaker 3 (01:11:53):
Other than getting the team together, what is the
point of the MacGuffin the?

Speaker 2 (01:11:57):
weapon, then, other than getting the team, together.

Speaker 3 (01:11:58):
What is the point of the mcguffin?
There's none.
Just like the arms dealer dudefrom the mirror universe says oh
, eventually they were going tofigure out how to get into our
universe.
And it's weird that when theygo to it, at the end they go to
the place where that happens andapparently it just happens all
the time.
You just go in and out, yeah,it's just a hole.
Even though it took 80 years orwhatever for him to figure that
out, he literally says,eventually he's going to figure

(01:12:18):
it out and like, okay, that'ssome serious hand waving there,
by the way.
And then so yeah, then he'sgoing to come in and they're
going to invade our universe.
That right there interesting.

Speaker 2 (01:12:28):
If you have to stop a secret invasion from another
universe.

Speaker 3 (01:12:32):
Yes, that's fascinating, that would be
interesting.
This doesn't even care aboutthat.
Yes, that's fascinating, thatwould be interesting.
This doesn't even care aboutthat.
No, it's almost an afterthought, even though it is technically
the plot, not the MacGuffin, notthe reason they're all getting
together.

Speaker 2 (01:12:44):
This movie isn't about her realizing what she did
wrong and how she murderedbillions of people and maybe she
shouldn't do that or trying tomake up with San, the guy that
she thought killed herself andthat she had a relationship with
I don't know 150 years ago9,000 years ago.

Speaker 3 (01:13:01):
It really doesn't matter at that point.
It doesn't matter no.

Speaker 2 (01:13:03):
She has found this weapon that is hers and I guess
she doesn't want used, butreally she just wants it for
herself to keep.

Speaker 3 (01:13:11):
The whole thing was that even what they say in the
press, when they went on thefucking Today, when Michelle
Yeoh went on the Today Show andwhen Alice Kurtzman talked about
this publicly, like all theirpress stuff, was like oh yeah,
it's a show about redemption,it's about you know, realizing
what you've done wrong.
In the movie they say it like aton of times.
That's how they recruit her tobe the overarching story for

(01:13:34):
george.
Oh, but it turns out that shefelt so badly about this weapon
that she created that shedestroyed it, or had it
destroyed quote-unquote becauseif her best friend in the world
who she scarred and subjugated,by the way, yeah killed himself,
then she was more obsessed withhaving it, not using it, having
it, and that what she regrets,not the fact that she was a

(01:13:58):
murderous authoritarian, butthat she didn't get to keep this
thing which she now has.

Speaker 2 (01:14:03):
They don't send it through.

Speaker 3 (01:14:05):
They don't send it back to the mirror universe.

Speaker 2 (01:14:07):
They sew up the hole, all right.
The rest of the movie plays out.
They're trying to find out whohas this mega weapon space box
doohickey.
It's a madcap adventure.

Speaker 3 (01:14:16):
But there's a traitor in it, it's fine.
Whatever that part is, whateveryeah.

Speaker 2 (01:14:21):
It's a 2B original Whatever.
And then they have a chase,multiple chases, and then a
garbage scout catches up withthis super ship and uses magic
lassos to trap it so that itcan't get to the hole in space.

Speaker 3 (01:14:38):
I barely remember that it's so bad that way.

Speaker 2 (01:14:41):
It's funny because I was just thinking as I was
saying all this.
That man, I hope he rememberswhat happened in the last 30
minutes, because it was a slogto get through and I just kind
of drifted off.
Yeah, me too.
Because there's nothing to holdon to.
There's not a single character.
There's not a single character.
There's not a single dramaticaction, there's not a single
action piece, there's nodirection, there's no writing,

(01:15:04):
anything to keep me involved inthis mistake of a movie.

Speaker 3 (01:15:09):
It's not even that long, it's like an hour and a
half.
The third act is a wasteland.
The third act is a wasteland.

Speaker 2 (01:15:17):
It felt very much like we don't know how to get
from point A to point B, topoint C, to the end.
I don't know, let's just skipit.
Let's just skip it, let's justdo it.
Let's not explain anything,let's not build any dramatic
tension, let's not get intocharacters, let's just throw it
out there.
We'll figure it out in post.

Speaker 3 (01:15:39):
If the people in the Mirror Universe are
fundamentally evil or they justlive in an evil situation.
If you want to figure out whichis which, that's something.
At least that's a plot.
Now, ds9 already addressed alot of that stuff.
But if you want to make it acommentary about that, fine,
that you can be redeemed in thisuniverse in a different
circumstance or what have you.
But they don't even do that.

(01:16:01):
They pretend they do.
It's almost like they weredesperately looking for that
when they talk about this moviepublicly, but it doesn't really
happen.

Speaker 2 (01:16:10):
No, I think there was an outline for a series that
that was the goal that thiswould be a redemption arc for
Philip Georgiou and that shewould come.
Goal that this would be aredemption arc for Philip
Georgiou and that she would comeout on the other side a
different person, benefactors tosociety, utilizing all her
skills and abilities andknow-how to really put the
Federation, taking a stepforward for the galaxy.

(01:16:31):
But that's not what this movieis and that's not what this
movie is about and that's notwhat this movie does.

Speaker 3 (01:16:35):
No, and even if even if you take this ostensibly, you
would imagine, is theconsolidation of that series
right, that series doesn'textrapolate out to that either
you would still, at the end ofthat series, be where you're in,
discovery why that didn't makeany sense.
Why did we stay here this wholetime?
This doesn't really make sense.
Let's say, you filled in a lotof these gaps with actual

(01:16:58):
character building and pathosand stuff like that.
Even at the end, that doesn'tequal to what they're saying
it's supposed to be.

Speaker 2 (01:17:06):
No, what are you going to say?
This is a film that we didn'treally intend to make.
That was supposed to be, youknow many, many hours longer as
a series.
We didn't really know what todo with these characters, and so
we put a lot of action setpieces that we didn't really
know how to shoot and we justkind of tried to jazz up in post
and we just kind of ramshackleda weak pilot into a film and

(01:17:28):
put it out.
We hope you guys like it.
What's it about Stopping spaceweapon with friendship?

Speaker 3 (01:17:39):
Not even that.
They kill each other constantlyand none of them trust each
other.
There's no like redemption forthat either.

Speaker 2 (01:17:46):
Well, by the end, the Starfleet officer isn't there
just to stop them from killingpeople.
She's a loose cannon too.
She's just like them.

Speaker 3 (01:17:55):
Oh, she's a Kirk-like or Pike-like or.

Speaker 2 (01:17:58):
Right, because you can't have just an actual
straight-laced captain.

Speaker 3 (01:18:02):
Like in Star Trek Generation, yeah, where Cameron
was the captain of theEnterprise.

Speaker 1 (01:18:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:18:09):
You can have just a guy who's good at what he does
be the captain.
That's fine.
You don't have to all be JimKirk.
Robert, april wasn't Jim Kirk,picard's not Jim Kirk.

Speaker 2 (01:18:17):
That's interesting.
What's the least rule-breakingcaptain?

Speaker 3 (01:18:21):
Well, I would say Jellicoe, the guy that took over
the-.

Speaker 2 (01:18:24):
Is that a?

Speaker 3 (01:18:24):
cat.
He was in fact in the cat'suniverse.
Cockroaches are huge.
You can unzip your own skin.

Speaker 2 (01:18:32):
What they want to be is Jellicoe, who's a space cat
captain.
That's what you're trying toget to at the end.

Speaker 3 (01:18:37):
The mischievous Skimbleshanks is there.

Speaker 2 (01:18:40):
He's a Romulan.

Speaker 3 (01:18:41):
Well, technically, Idris Elba is the villain in
Star Trek Beyond.

Speaker 2 (01:18:46):
What was he in Beyond ?

Speaker 3 (01:18:48):
He was the main villain, I know but what race
was he?

Speaker 2 (01:18:51):
Oh, he was human, he was just human.

Speaker 3 (01:18:54):
Okay, human, he was mutated by this macguffin they
had at the beginning that theydon't really quite explain very
well.
Even though as many complaintsabout that movie as I have which
technically is in this newdirect thing but we haven't
talked about because notdirected by abrams and not
written by kurtzman and orsi,written instead by simon pegg I
would take that movie over mostof this other shit in a

(01:19:15):
heartbeat.

Speaker 1 (01:19:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:19:17):
It's just better.
They get the characters moreand Simon Pegg seems to have put
a lot of work intounderstanding it and he's the
Star Wars guy.
I don't hate Star Trek Beyond.
I think it's way better thanInto Darkness by far, and it's a
decent follow-up to the firstone.

Speaker 2 (01:19:31):
Right, and I think, if you're just looking by rotten
tomatoes, as it were, it's aslugfest between Section 31 and
Star Trek V, the Final Frontier,which is the worst film of all
Star Trek.

Speaker 3 (01:19:43):
That's almost exactly what I said before, except I
would also throw Into Darknessin there If I had to, let's say,
go from bottom up, worstSection 31,.
And then it's a toss up betweenInto Darkness and Star Trek V.
Into Darkness is just a mess.
It's a toss-up between intodarkness and star trek 5.
Into darkness is just a mess.
It's a fucking mess.
And this feels like that, butworse, but made for tv, what we

(01:20:04):
used to call made for tv nowjust made for streaming made for
streaming instead to beoriginal is what we call those
now.
Yeah, in summation, yes,technically, discovery is in
canon.
Canon, however, is now acomplete shit show, but it
doesn't mean it can't beredeemed.
In fact, recently, and onlybased on comments by alex

(01:20:25):
kurtzman himself, when askedrecently about another star trek
movie, he said that's not up tome.
So apparently that experimenthas sort of run its course.

Speaker 2 (01:20:37):
You mean just the same way that Nu Metal ran its
course?

Speaker 3 (01:20:40):
Yeah, and it's a shame because even in the New
Trek era there were some greatwriters they brought up.
Michael Chabon was a writer inPicard.
There were good things, therewere good elements, there were
really interesting things I dolike and things that I think if
the writing or the overallconcept had been better, would
have been an awesome follow upto second wave Star Trek.

(01:21:00):
But it's a bit of a mess.
The reason that it keeps goingin its current form, because in
old, traditional networktelevision this would have been
gone.
There would have been none ofthis.
But according to Paramount andCBS, the Star Trek franchise in
general since the inception ofstreaming has brought $2.6
billion in in revenue.

Speaker 2 (01:21:22):
How are they?

Speaker 3 (01:21:24):
I don't know.
I don't know.
It's just like Netflix theydon't know.
I mean, you would imagine itwould just have to be
subscriptions, but that doesn'tmake any sense.
There's no logic to that.

Speaker 2 (01:21:32):
No, and you can't quantify.

Speaker 3 (01:21:44):
Oh, these people came in because maybe they came in
to watch football or soccer orsurvivor, or they specifically
said, just star trek.
That's hard to define becausealso later on, when discovery
was on, they would eventuallystart showing those episodes on
network tv as well, whichincluded ad revenue from
traditional network stuffNielsen ratings, things like
that.
So I would be more willing tolisten to CBS Paramount's
breakdown of that than I wouldany numbers Netflix ever throws

(01:22:05):
out.
I still don't know how accuratethat is or what metrics they're
using, but either way, beforeNew Trek it used to be that Star
Trek movies happened becausethe official position of
Paramount was Star Trek moviesnever lose money, even if
they're niche, even if theydon't have a wide audience.
They have small budgets or evenmedium to larger sized budgets,

(01:22:27):
and they will always make thatmoney back.
So they're still going to makethem and they're still going to
do it.
So I don't know, new Trek isn'tgoing to kill Trek.
It's despite itself succeedingand we're going to get more of
it.

Speaker 2 (01:22:39):
It's a crapshoot, like going into a space hole.

Speaker 3 (01:22:42):
Or space Vegas With spacecrafts.
But to answer everyone'squestions yes, discovery isn't
canon.
Section 31 sucks.
That's all you need to know.

Speaker 1 (01:22:51):
Woof yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:22:54):
And scene.

Speaker 2 (01:22:55):
Oh God, well, we did see it and you guys heard it.
Don't tell me, you didn't hearit, I was there.

Speaker 3 (01:23:03):
Finally.
I saw it happen.
We saw that happen.
Don't tell us it didn't happen.

Speaker 2 (01:23:09):
Well, if you guys would like us to tell you that
it didn't happen another time,please like share, subscribe,
which we will.
That's what our next episodewill be about, I'm sure, if you
wouldn't mind, like sharing,subscribe.
Like I just said, do rate usFive space anomalies the
electrical space holes of thepodcast universe.

Speaker 3 (01:23:27):
Captain, there's a plot hole ahead.

Speaker 2 (01:23:30):
We're going to run right through it On whatever
podcast app you're interested in, ideally on whatever podcast
app you trust, ideally ApplePodcast.
Hey, take a look at us onYouTube.
If that's a way you'd like tolisten to pods, we are on there.
It's an easy way to get to us.
And, you know, let otherTrekker, trekheads, new Metal
gods, whoever might beinterested in hearing about this

(01:23:50):
, send it their way.
And hey, just thanks forhanging out with us for a bit as
we chat some Trek, along withall the other nerdy, geeky,
weird topics we might chat aboutnext time.
Just happy to have you alongfor the ride.

Speaker 3 (01:24:04):
We didn't even talk about the cameo at the end of
Section 31.
No, and we're not going tobecause she's lost it.

Speaker 2 (01:24:12):
It doesn't matter Go back to the Yo Play commercials.

Speaker 1 (01:24:14):
My lady, we're glad you had your award.

Speaker 2 (01:24:17):
You killed Michael, that's it.

Speaker 3 (01:24:19):
No thanks, done with it.
No thanks.
The perfect end to a perfectmovie is what that was, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:24:24):
Well, Skip, and Till we come to a perfect ending.

Speaker 1 (01:24:27):
What should they do?

Speaker 3 (01:24:28):
And if we have to watch Sex and the 31st again
soon, until then they shouldprobably clean up after
themselves to some sort of areasonable degree.
Make sure they tip their KJs,their bartenders, their
podcasters, their bar staff.
Make sure they have support oftheir local comic shops and
retailers.
And from Dispatch Ajax we wouldlike to say Godspeed, fair
wizards.

(01:24:48):
That's all you need to know.

Speaker 2 (01:24:49):
That's all you needed to know.

Speaker 3 (01:24:52):
Please go away.