September 17, 2025 • 56 mins
Dominic Keating and Connor Trinneer watch Star Trek: Enterprise's "Fusion", joined by Enterprise writer Phyllis Strong.
Each week, we explore and celebrate the lives that the Star Trek universe has forever changed. From former and future cast and crew members to celebrities, scientists, and astronauts whose personal and professional journeys have been affected by the franchise, we sit down and dive deep with a new friend, laughing and learning from their stories. Sit back, grab a drink, and join our hosts, Dominic Keating and Connor Trinneer, as we get geeky in The D-Con Chamber.
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Each week, we explore and celebrate the lives that the Star Trek universe has forever changed. From former and future cast and crew members to celebrities, scientists, and astronauts whose personal and professional journeys have been affected by the franchise, we sit down and dive deep with a new friend, laughing and learning from their stories. Sit back, grab a drink, and join our hosts, Dominic Keating and Connor Trinneer, as we get geeky in The D-Con Chamber.
Let's get social!
📘 Facebook: The D-Con Chamber
📸 Instagram: @thedconchamber
🐦 Twitter: @thedconchamber
⏰ TikTok: @thedconchamber
🌐 Website: https://thedconchamber.com
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-d-con-chamber--6181422/support.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Dear Trekky's and Trekkers, our tribute to episode sixteen, Shuttle
Pod one. We'll debut later this season with a very
special episode, so please stay tuned for now, please enjoy
episode seventeen, Fusion with our dear friend, Miss Phyllis Strong.
(00:24):
The show has been gunned with.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Car It's the.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Conch ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, Trekky's and Trekkers.
Welcome back to another episode of the Decon Chamber. I'm
your co host Dominic Keating, joined as always with my
fellow co host, my bestie, mister Connor Schaneer. Welcome. We're
(00:53):
very very excited this week to be talking about the
episode Fusion, and in that capacity we have Miss Phyllis
Strong with us here in the room in the Decon
Chamber to talk about writing it with her writing partner,
mister Mike Sussman at the time. Phyllis Welcome aboard, my dear,
thanks very much, going on.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
Oh thank you. It's a pleasure to be here with
you guys.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
I'd love to see you after all these years. We
bumped into each other at the Voyager film documentary, which
was nice to see you at and I know that's
getting tinkered with and then it's going to get released
and I think he's found about a buyer already, So.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
It's great because I want to get a copy of it.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
So you'd worked with Rick Berman and Brannon before on Boyager,
hadn't you?
Speaker 3 (01:41):
Yes? I had just the last year Mike and I
came on. The short of it was they were looking
for a woman writer because that was back in the
days when they didn't have any and I had worked
with Mike on a previous show and he was a
(02:01):
He had nearly gotten onto Voyager, and there was a
script that he had done that that hadn't worked, and
so it didn't make sense that he wasn't on it,
and I talked to him about putting our names in
together and actually starting what it was a bit of
a shotgun marriage, but worked out very well. We partnered
(02:22):
for this all right, and we worked with brand. We
did an audition script which became Body and Soul, a
very popular one on Voyager, and we ended up writing
three more scripts, uh for those for Voyager, and then
(02:44):
we were I think the first people asked to come
along onto VOI onto Enterprise.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
Is that right? Did you ever have aspirations to write
alone and Mike too or did you always?
Speaker 3 (02:57):
Yeah, we did, and we had before. So uh. It
was an interesting partnership in that we had to get
to know each other and get to know each other's styles,
and what we did was write different scenes and then
send them to the other and have them rewritten. There
are people who when they're partners, they stand in a
(03:19):
room together and just kind of blurt out the dialogue
and one person's at the computer. But we were more
of what's very done very often, which is kind of
a That's.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
How Connor and I worked. Actually, I just blurt out
his lines, that's him, and then he'd say them and.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
Oh, perfect, Well I knew I knew he was. You
were his muse, Phillis.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
You came from law, didn't you?
Speaker 3 (03:50):
Before I came from business. I came from investment banking
and then business in the studios. So I was working
for twentieth Century Fox, helping them raise money and buy
other companies and things like that, and then I they
had an experimental TV movie company that I went to
(04:12):
help run and that turned out to fail, and I
had as it was for very specific reasons that had
to do with Fox and Barry Diller and how he
liked everybody to compete, and we were supposed to be
supplying lots of TV movies and Fox Broadcasting was like,
(04:34):
we don't want to just take your movies. And it
was all predicated on the fact that we would have
a lot of output, so we could get people to
work for less because they'd be working steadily.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
And that didn't need a movie business.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
Yeah, ah, the movie business. So I was left with
a severance. I could have gone back into the company
on business, but i'd really especially with this TV movie company,
had seen the whole development production side, and I really
wanted to write, as I always had. I just didn't
have any way in when I was first trying to
(05:11):
get into this business.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
So honestly, I mean because it is. It's a very
tricky one to It's like directing. I mean, it's a
very tricky not to crack, isn't it.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
Yeah, it is, especially, and I had met some agents
during my time at Fox, and I had UH one
and I wrote a spec Deep Space nine that got
a lot of attention. And one of the reasons I
love science fiction and doing that anyway, but one of
the reasons in those days you would write. Star Trek
(05:41):
was that they would take unrepresented scripts.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
I was kind in the in the yeah, it was.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
Very much known, and I got to go into pitch,
didn't sell anything. I was young and stupid a lot
you too, and I didn't keep trying to pitch because
I was so sort of disappointed. But other people like
(06:08):
Mike went and pitched and he sold stuff, and I
was able to write some more specs, get representation and
get on a syndicated show that was an adventure pirate
kind of thing, and Mike worked on that and that
(06:29):
was how we met. And that was both our or
was at least was my introduction to or the WGA.
And then so we knew each other. We had worked together.
I did some other freelance stuff and then this Star
Trek opportunity came up. So what was.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
It like being, you know, one were the only woman,
and I.
Speaker 3 (06:54):
Was the only woman on Voyager our first year when
Fusion came out, we had some other women, but it
was very much a boys club and we were all.
I was used to it from investment banking, which was
purely a boys club. So you kind of act like
(07:16):
one of the guys. And when they're saying disgusting stuff
for things that sort of turn your stomach. You're just like, yes, sure,
I can do it better.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
Yeah I got one of those.
Speaker 3 (07:27):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Pass the whiskey and the cigars. Yeah, right,
those were the days, Yeah, the days.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
So this episode, it's a very interesting episode.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
It is.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
It's a very interesting Star Trek episode. And for a
few reasons. You know, it's the first one where we
really get to sort of get a sense of Joelene
and and to Paul sat Zone and I thought that
was worth worthy of note and uh, and then to
meet this other sub sect of the hippie vulcans.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
As it were, with all the feelings, all.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
With all of the feelings that they could express and.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Control without without getting into too deep into the into
the trenches. And initially I think I read that it
was called equilibrium, but there have been several other scripts
of that title. For yeah, and.
Speaker 3 (08:22):
Fusion was they were basically trying to look for some
sort of mind meld uh synonym or something that would
kind of display that but didn't necessarily display the twist
on that because people knew about the mind melds from
Spark in the original series and from Tuvakan, and they
(08:45):
hadn't really seen it this way.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
So we come across this, you know, this group of
wandering what do they call themselves? Your ratasatuur? Right exactly.
This is note. This is the first time we'd I
think that starch I had ever been inside a Vulcan
ship the workings. I read that somewhere.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
Yes, I think I think that was true. Certainly one
of the civilian chips. You gave up a great deal
to wander the galaxy in a.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
Transport, right, because this was a sort of not a
car guy ship, but something it was.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
It was a kind of an exploration.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
It was.
Speaker 3 (09:24):
It was like the uh, you know campers of of of.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
The v they were.
Speaker 3 (09:34):
They were all out in the r V.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
Do The.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
Very first note that I took on this was when
Robert Pine we can all say Robert, father of Chris Pine,
the Kirk. The first note that I took was in
the teaser when he sits down at dinner with the
captain and Paul and what's that character's.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
Name, Taras something Glais.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
Yeah, at any rate, you he says something before he
even asks to try the chicken. He smiles our chefs
had a lot of experience lately preparing vulcan dishes, right,
And I thought, wait a minute, that's you know, it's
a it's a it's a cue to what the episode
will be about. But nonetheless I thought, wait a minute,
(10:24):
why is that vulcan smiling? And it was a great
little for those who know, a great introduction into well,
this isn't normal, all right.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
Exactly, And and that was sort of the point even
when they were when Archer was talking to him on screen, Uh,
there was this calm, this sense that he was not
you're he didn't talk like a Vulcan.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
My name is Tabin, captain of the vauclass. It's very
good to meet you. Right. But they were initially just
ask for help. They needed some assistance with the what
was it.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
Their engineer, their their you know, coils and things usually
exactly one of our ways to get tripped into the story,
as always.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
And then we go into the Iraqt and Nebula.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
Yes, yeah, is it what you imagine? Some pictures don't
do it justice.
Speaker 3 (11:27):
And there was that cute bit this was Mike about uh,
the astronomy book that Archer had had as a kid.
This was Mike's idea. Uh so, thank you the little
Admiral Johnny Archer, all right, from the library of Admiral
Johnny Archer, showing that from a very young.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
Age he was we had that aspiration or that and
he had a dream of doing that apparently, if I'm
right in saying Scotty from the original series mentions an
Admiral Archer read that, oh something like a memory Arthur
or somewhere.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
I'm being witch study the original.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
Skyny Scotty Simon peg Scotty.
Speaker 3 (12:18):
Oh, Simon peg study.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
I tested it on Admiral Ata's praise Migle.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
Well, I know that dark what happened to it?
Speaker 1 (12:24):
I'll tell you when it reappears. Yes, in the Nebula
and they were getting to know these uh these guitar
vatarkatur vulcans. I love the casting of CoV. He was great,
and understand he was not anywhere close to being the
first choice. The initial initial guy fell ill, and then
(12:45):
they offered it to someone else who was filming something else,
and that clashed and they got John Harrington Bland was
his name, wasn't He was terrific, though I thought.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
I'd like that Commander.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
They call me trip. Yeah, very grounded, you know.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
And he did a terrific job. He really I thought,
sort of the best emotional Vulcan with the best emotional story.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
Yeah, agreed. It was very very grounded, very believable, very vulnerable,
and yet just authentic. And yeah, I really liked his before.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
And it's interesting too, you know, in the first act
of the show, to Paul thinks they're dangerous.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
Others have tried to reintegrate their emotions. They all fail.
What they're doing is dangerous.
Speaker 3 (13:42):
Oh well, she sees them as people who have turned
their back on you know, teachings and you know Surak
and having his small statue there when they were really
turning against what he had to say.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
It's curious that people who reject Serok's teachings would display
his likeness.
Speaker 3 (14:10):
And it also alluded somewhat to an original series episode
where Spock and McCoy I think, are sent back to
a time that's five thousand years in the past, and
Spock starts to revert to that primal nature because it
(14:31):
was a time at which falcons were.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
Quite wait violent, fugnacious. Yeah exactly. Yeah, you listen to me.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
You pointed here falcon.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
I don't like that. I don't think I ever did.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
And now I'm sure you could see that to Paul
comes from a world that and a culture that would
have spoken of that as the dark times that they overcame, right.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
I love that scene also in the first act of
this where they're in the mess hall and she's got
mint tea and he says that you you don't have
Vulcan tea?
Speaker 1 (15:12):
What's that.
Speaker 3 (15:15):
Mint tea?
Speaker 2 (15:16):
And she's like, yeah, but I like to try some things.
And then she's I even try camomeal and he says that, oh,
you've got a sense of humor. Well maybe, and do you.
Speaker 3 (15:26):
Have a sense of humor a concept that most Vulcans
can't seem to grasp the most we could give her at.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
Yeah, but it's really interesting.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
It was really I mean, in a very short scene.
It gives a diamondism to this relationship about, you know,
this Vulcan group who've sort of gone off into the woods,
as it were, versus to Paul, who is very strict
and very annomode of very vulcan and presents herself that way,
(15:57):
and we get as an audience a really interesting point.
Then she's decided, you know, I'm going to try Minty and.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
She she does. She's assimilating somewhat.
Speaker 3 (16:10):
Yeah, she is. It's been a couple of months now,
I think she says seven months on. Yeah, and then
she spent two years.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
In uh the High Command on.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
But and in some ways that may have made perhaps
made her even more aware of how she had to
keep a distance from human emotion or really control it.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
Because it starts with mint tea, It starts with Minty.
Speaker 3 (16:43):
It's every slope.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
Worst decisions exactly.
Speaker 3 (16:49):
See where she ends up later on with virillium D
and and stuff.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
I like he's great, u Enrique, And yes, I mean
I have to say it was a lovely dualistic, uh
you know performance he gave.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
And I will say though that that was one thing.
One thing about him is sort of like that that
actor's note of you want to fight them, you want
to f them, you want to marry.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
Them, you want to marry them.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
Yeah, and he was definitely in the I want to
f them thing right completely. But that's you know. The
thing about that's interesting to me is that if you
go for it, and I believe that's what you're doing,
I don't care right, I don't care at all. Go ahead,
that's you know that I can just I can be like, oh, well,
(17:41):
he's because he came across initially, and he does end
up being creepy, but he came across a little creepy,
but he will.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
Yeah, like like you've been smoking the you know, the
vulcan ganja exactly the dead concept.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
But he was also the guy who, I while he
was a little creepy, was had enough sex appeal.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
Yeah, I sure did. He had an alluring sex appeal
without a doubt.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
And also that it seems as though, you know, he
he could have been one of those I don't know
what you like, those those you know, quasi religious.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
Yes, you know that he was like come to me.
Speaker 3 (18:26):
Oh yeah, he could have been the cult leader kind
of kind of thing. But he was definitely he so
believed in what he was doing, and that was I
think the honest part, the authentic part that got through
and was getting through this Paul as well. Yeah, but
this was a wonderful way of showing her not quite
(18:47):
torn feelings, but interest in not necessarily being completely vulcan,
even though she's not aware of it consciously.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
We needed to see that yeah, from from to Paul,
and this was a very very interesting way to do that.
Speaker 3 (19:05):
It was it was a little I will say that
being the only woman really involved in this episode, the
assault part was really hard to write.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
Yeah, it felt me too, wish.
Speaker 3 (19:23):
I was kind of years before that, of course, but
I kind of felt like this is bigger than just
how we're dealing with it. And I remember having some
trouble calibrating the scene.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
Because it comes back. I mean, I the the the
damage done in this forced meld, as it were, it
comes back to haunt in later episodes that I wasn't
particularly aware of. Even though I've watched this show. She's
still all sort of dealing with the the after effect. Yeah,
(20:06):
you know, trauma, the trauma.
Speaker 3 (20:08):
Yeah, and that's what the I wouldn't say the original story.
The story was done by Rick and Brannon, and we
did the teleplayoff of that, so they did the the
beats of the story and the outline and we brought
it to life. But there wasn't really I can't remember,
(20:34):
and I don't think this is true, but it could
have been true that they didn't have her in sick
Bay at the end as a kind of uh, right.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
That she wasn't a victim.
Speaker 3 (20:46):
Yeah, that she wasn't as much of a victim when
we started, and it became very clear because this was
also re vulcan purists out there. Mind melds are not.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
They're not common.
Speaker 3 (21:03):
Well, they're not common, and they're not while they're invasive,
they're not sexual, right, And we were really doing a
sexual assault version of the mind meld. I thought was, what.
Speaker 1 (21:22):
Did you think about the fact when he when he
when he persuades her not to meditate that first evening,
consider it an experiment, and then she has this rather erotic.
Speaker 3 (21:33):
Include completely erotic dream.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
Do you like the taste? Who's I mean, who whose
idea was that to to bring that straight front and forward?
Speaker 2 (21:44):
Uh?
Speaker 3 (21:45):
That was it was both of it. I mean, that
was definitely I had something to do with that. I
usually had something to do with the sexy scenes. I
was like, I we needed some of that.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
But you got the boys in the blue neckers half
the times, you know.
Speaker 3 (22:07):
I mean?
Speaker 2 (22:07):
And also you know when we when we get to
that dream, it literally seems to become a different show.
It's like a film noir. And and and this comes
to a question that I have so when you're given
(22:29):
story as a writer, are you given everything per act
or are you given the the gist of what the
idea is and then you you create that.
Speaker 3 (22:41):
As the writer, Well, you're given the gist of it
sometimes and you work out the story with uh, like
like you're given the gist of it and some of
the beats. In other words, we're going to be and
we're going to have some way of tolor us into
Paul connecting in the mess hall. But whether it's tea
(23:07):
or how it's mint tea or where what they're saying
to each other, that all comes from me.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
Yeah, some nice stuff with the tea, Yeah necessarily, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:19):
Said so much with like you know, not a lot
of lines and and you know, and also with the
scenes with with Trip and.
Speaker 3 (23:25):
And yeah, oh those were great.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
It was so interesting to me to see this episode
UH as an opportunity for one the audience and to
the characters to get a chance to ask questions that
would never otherwise be answered.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
Yes, yes, and Trip was the was the was the
perfect sort of foil for call yes.
Speaker 3 (23:54):
Actually about the once every seven years.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
We were just discussing Bulcan meeting rituals, Bulcan males, are
driven to mat once every seven years when.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
We're at the dining table and we're like, what seven
years frightening?
Speaker 1 (24:13):
Exactly the rest of the time crosswords, Yes.
Speaker 3 (24:19):
We have sex, like okay. But the other thing that
I thought was really nice is I really love trips
your story about regret? Yes, I think I think my No, actually,
I think I wrote that because I used your your
(24:43):
The Girl who Got Away was named after my two
best friends from college.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
Panama City, Florida. Girl I had a crush on, Melissa Isles.
Speaker 3 (24:54):
Oh, something called Melissa Isles was Melissa and Annerie Lyles
were my two best friends.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
Not funny how those names come out. Yeah, I love that.
I loved the line. Maybe he wrote it. I think
it's Trip's line a brush with regret.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
Probably don't know this, but regret is one of the
strongest emotions.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
I'm a feeling you haven't had a brush with it yet. Yeah, yeah,
it's It's a beautifully beautiful line.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
You know, it's interesting. I was just saying this before
we started. This was the time where I, as the actor,
began to feel settled, if that's the right word, into
who he was. You know, he wasn't snarky. He'd been
snarky for the first half of the season and right,
(25:46):
and he had developed into someone who could manage conversations
like this, And in watching that it did it did
highlight for me that this was when, this this was trip,
this was he was for the rest of the series,
(26:07):
all right.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
It gave him an emotional maturity that perhaps was not
present as as as outlined in this in episode this episode.
Speaker 3 (26:19):
Remember we were looking for the characters too fro and
this was early and uh, they were a little more
sketchy at the beginning. Certainly to Paul was very sketched
out but not filled in, uh, in the two part
(26:43):
pilot and things like that. So it was actually from
the writer's side, it was so wonderful watching you bloom
and also take a bit of a custodial uh care
of your character so that we could write off of that.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
And I think, you know, one of the things that
you were always when you had an episode that was
written by you and Mike or you, you were there, And
I think that's such an advantage to see what's going
on on set, to glean something for what you're going
to do in the writer's room or on your own writing.
Speaker 3 (27:26):
Yeah, very much.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
Yeah, and you know, I'm so thankful for that. You
were one of the only ones who would come to
see what's going on with your story.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
Was it encouraged or discouraged?
Speaker 3 (27:42):
It was a bit discourage actually, But I, like I said,
young and stupid, I kind of needed it to be
able to write. I used to also go down to
the sets sometimes and just be able to feel the
bridge so I could figure out where or how people
(28:07):
were going. There was something to me very I needed
much more sort of tactle. But it was discouraged only
because we were so busy and yet and also because
in truth Rick and Brannan were of a philosophy that
(28:30):
very tight control comes from the top, so.
Speaker 1 (28:35):
I knew that. Yeah. I always quote Liz his Rick's wife,
when she took me aside at the first rap party
and she said, well, you know, Rick Dominic, there's no
control like total control.
Speaker 3 (28:51):
And that was actually it. And I wasn't young and stupid.
I wasn't as quite a where of what the repercussions
could be of something like that.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
Why do you say that You've said a young and
stupid What does that mean to you? Now?
Speaker 1 (29:08):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (29:08):
What it means to me now is that I would
uh overstep some bounds. I would Also I didn't speak
up as much as I would in the future about
(29:31):
what direction we were going in or what we were
doing with some of the female characters and things like that.
But also I when I was on set, there were
times when I, you know, uh got in the way
and and uh we'd get talked to and I was
(29:53):
so I felt so terrible and it was just so
uh uh immature.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
Yeah, they had they had a very shorthanded way of
doing that, just putting you in your place. Yeah. I
witnessed it more than once. And you know, yeah, I
remember figuring out pretty early on keep your mouth shut down.
You're working for the man, you know.
Speaker 3 (30:24):
And that's when I say young and stupid. It was
like I kind of thought I was used to a
little bit from investment banking. When you when you were
in that much of a male environment, Uh, you're kind
of going like I can take it, and you sort
of push back a lot at it. So I kind
(30:47):
of felt like I was in the same bit of
a it's a bit of a frat boy environment, it's
a bit of a Masters of the Universe environment. Yeah,
And I also, as a young woman, I was used
to kind of getting away with pushing back because I
was cute, right.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
I wonder, sorry, I tell you guyhead man.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
I was just I wonder. You know, there was a
time when they didn't know what sort of relationship was
going to happen with Paul, and in the very beginning
of our show, it seemed as though it was going
to be to Archer. Yes, there's a little scene with
Trip and Archer where he says, if I.
Speaker 1 (31:33):
Didn't know better, I'd say you were a little jealous.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
If I didn't know better, I think you would be jealous.
I saw that was that was that planned? Was that
a part? Was that planting a seed? For what was that?
Speaker 1 (31:47):
Was?
Speaker 2 (31:47):
That?
Speaker 3 (31:48):
Was planning a seed? I'd say I'd say more could
have come of that, but I think Scott was pretty opposed.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
Yeah, because there was there's an episode just before this
Isn't That where they're captured together and they're tied up
together and they have this tussle to try and get untied, right,
they end up on top of each other on the
side of you. It's like, you know, it looked like
wrestling sex and hello exactly so and get the sense
(32:19):
that they were setting that up somehow and that this
was a refrain.
Speaker 3 (32:23):
I think a little of it came from me. I
just happened to like the the more flirtatious, playful side
of some of our scenes or could be. So that
was just kind of fun. But I always thought that
(32:44):
there could be something, that there was a There were
strong feelings between Archer and to Paul, but they ended
up being more familial, more father daughter, brother sister, that
kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (33:02):
But its strictly speaking, you know she I mean, yes,
I mean even even in the early two thousands, the
age gap between them was a little striking to be,
you know.
Speaker 3 (33:14):
Right right exactly know, But I think it wouldn't have
it wouldn't It would have been an interesting way to go.
It would have opened up a lot of story.
Speaker 2 (33:26):
And there was thought in the room that that how
are we going to find the connections? Bet who was
it going to be?
Speaker 3 (33:34):
Right? Well, how are we going to find the connections
between people? And how are we going to then be
able to dramatize the implications and the aftermath or whatever
else it is.
Speaker 1 (33:48):
You might have painted yourself into a very small corner
quite quickly. If you had had to Paul and the
captain you.
Speaker 3 (33:53):
Know, oh yeah, well it wouldn't have come in the
first season. It would have been something that was sort
of evolving emotionally, if you will, as emotionally as you
can with the vulcan over several episodes.
Speaker 2 (34:11):
It was very very easy to put Trip through a ringer.
Speaker 3 (34:14):
Ye, yes, yeah, that was.
Speaker 1 (34:23):
Who cares? He only cares about catfish anyway, So I'll
go to your wedding.
Speaker 3 (34:32):
Exactly.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
No.
Speaker 3 (34:33):
We Uh. Trip was definitely and especially as you said,
when he started to turn and you started to settle
into him as as more of a kind of the
good guy, sensitive guy of the conscience, Yeah, the conscience
(34:54):
of the crew. And he then he also became a
character who could uh embody some of the sort of
sci fi issue uh sort of things. Uh. What was
the one where they created a clone of you? I
(35:15):
mean that was incredibly powerful.
Speaker 1 (35:18):
It was that Jena.
Speaker 3 (35:22):
The militant exactly, and that was the idea of you know,
what is the value of a human life? And and
it just made sense for Trip to wrestle with that.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
Uh, you know, I want to touch on the mind
meld scene is the most Uh, emotional, powerful mind meld
scene that I've ever seen between two people. You know,
she's emotional, he's emotional. And what were you going for?
Speaker 1 (36:06):
Do you remember?
Speaker 3 (36:08):
Well, one of the things is to tell you what
I thought.
Speaker 2 (36:10):
I thought he was trying to reel her in.
Speaker 1 (36:14):
He said, you were invigorated. What else? I don't know?
Speaker 3 (36:19):
Yes, you do, You're just not used to describing your emotions. Yeah.
I think he was trying to get her emotions to
the surface as as to break through, which, as we
sort of saw from the rest of the episode, was
something that could potentially harm her.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
Was that just to get to come across to their
side in their way of thinking? Or was it? Did
it have more nefarious intentions that he wanted her as
a lover and a partner?
Speaker 3 (36:57):
I think I think it wasn't wait and Afair. I
think he was attracted to her, and and when you're
attracted to somebody, you want them to sort.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
Of uh with the with the theology right.
Speaker 3 (37:14):
Basically you know, uh not be I don't think he
was looking for a disciple. I think he was looking
for a partner.
Speaker 1 (37:23):
Uh. Do you that he would take her away and
she'd go on the with them?
Speaker 3 (37:28):
Well, they were three guys anyway, and I also think
that he was uh looking to get her to he
needed I think all three of them, but he was
the main character who needed validation that what they were
doing was right, that they could handle it, that it
(37:52):
was all fine. And I think Uh Paul was a
little bit of a challenge. She was a beautiful woman,
she was uh had gave off.
Speaker 1 (38:06):
Female for Vulcans don't.
Speaker 3 (38:10):
Yes, and and she gave off little hints that she
might be open to it. That's that's actually what was
sort of most disturbing about the assault and the mind
meld scene was that she wants you know, she started
off wanting it, and it was a big she had
to say no for it to be common assault. But
(38:34):
you could see the the mixed feelings and pay that
really well right.
Speaker 2 (38:42):
It opens up a question that why didn't the Vulcan
high command stop this, oh, stop them, stop them what
they were doing.
Speaker 3 (38:54):
I think they probably, well, one thing, maybe because CoV
was the side kind of a big ministry guy, and
they probably thought that as long as these people were
not interacting with anybody else on the planet, they were
sort of exiled. Maybe even that the other thing too
(39:19):
was as a society. If you were you've got your
religion and someone is questioning it, you basically you're not Yeah,
you kill them or you or you get rid of them.
(39:40):
But I but Vulcans are not that obviously not that violent.
But they're also I think they just like they repress
and push their emotions down, just like they pushed down
any talk of the pondfar and the mating rituals and
the and the fight to the death and all that
(40:02):
kind of stuff. They pushed this down to.
Speaker 1 (40:07):
Yeah, they're obviously quite I mean, you know when the
when the temper surfaces. You see in Talaris, he's a
tough dude and he throws that captain right across that
desk like nothing.
Speaker 3 (40:27):
I know, I know, And that's and that's what Balcans.
Speaker 1 (40:30):
Are, you know, afraid of.
Speaker 3 (40:33):
Yeah, they can lose it like that. And that's also
why they're so quiet about their mating rituals because they
also bring out up Bryan. Yeah, exactly exactly raw.
Speaker 1 (40:48):
Apparently Vince Diedrich was gonna double Scott in that in
his ready room, but it was too small a space
and Scott actually did that stunt. Wow yep. Yeah, god man.
I remember we've said this before, but he turned fifty
on our show, and I remember thinking, it's not that's all.
Speaker 3 (41:13):
Yes, out of the mountain.
Speaker 1 (41:15):
No, I'd give my back teeth if I had any left.
Speaker 3 (41:21):
But I also remember something it wasn't in this episode.
But like from the beginning, Scott had said that he
didn't want it to be a Star Trek where everybody
gets sort of punched and kicked and thrown around and
nobody ever bleeds, ebody ever shows bruises or anything else.
Speaker 1 (41:43):
So we have plenty of bruises. I mean, yeah, we did.
We did good bruises. That Steve, that fight I had
with Steve KAlP Oh, yeah, we're both held up in
front of the headmaster.
Speaker 2 (41:56):
The last thing I need is to hear the two
of my senior officers had been admitted a sick.
Speaker 1 (42:01):
Baby because they suddenly regressed to the level of five
year olds cutting those blooded eyes. And I was standing
there like school children.
Speaker 2 (42:09):
Yeah, I remember, you know, at least for my character,
I probably twice in the entirety of our series said
anything to the office about my character. You know, for
you in your experience while you were there, how how
(42:30):
often was Scott involved in these sorts of conversations.
Speaker 3 (42:36):
He wasn't involved with them with me, so I would
only hear about them as an aside from if they
came up to affect the scripts we were doing, or
maybe in a side when we were in the room
with Brannon any So, I don't know how often it is,
(42:57):
but I do know that when we were doing Strange
New World, which was our uh second after the two
part pilots, so it was episode four, we ran into
like our first uh uh dilemma slash disaster when in
(43:22):
the story we were going to have a crewman die
because of being down on the.
Speaker 2 (43:31):
Surface with the with the spores, and.
Speaker 3 (43:34):
Yeah, exactly, and uh and then we, you know, we
bring him back. We're able to bring him back up
to the ship. And in the original script which Mike
and I wrote, there was no further mention of him.
And I remember getting called into Brandon's office and he
was in a panic because we were shooting and he
(43:58):
had gotten word from Scott at he couldn't just the captain,
couldn't just forget about his first casualty, couldn't couldn't just
not address it in any way. So we were sitting there.
People were throwing out, we can do a walk and
talk here, we can do a little you know, clip
(44:18):
of a funeral there or something like that. We can
have Scott Archer talked to whoever's still on I think
to paul.
Speaker 1 (44:29):
A lonely Rose in the messole.
Speaker 3 (44:31):
Right, There were all these stories and then I just
raised my hand and said, what if he didn't have
to die? And they were like what I said, Well,
what if you actually got him up there and you
had a treatment for him. But the problem is we
can't transport it down to the surface, so it does
no good to our characters there, so their jeopardy stays
(44:54):
the same.
Speaker 1 (44:55):
But we.
Speaker 3 (44:57):
But we can avoid all of this, uh.
Speaker 1 (45:02):
So the storm, Because then that's why the storm lasted
a lot longer, didn't it. And nothing they couldn't They
couldn't transport them out, They couldn't do anything, so they
were stuck dealing with their situation, right I remember, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (45:15):
You know, I found myself going, like Jesus Christ, what
are salmon pages?
Speaker 3 (45:23):
And that was part of it. And that was our
first I learned two weeks ago. Oh that remember, so
early in our process. That was like, really the first
one that was not written.
Speaker 1 (45:43):
Like that, Yeah, exactly, you know.
Speaker 2 (45:46):
And to have someone who's the you know, the number
one on your call sheet and the leader of the
whole thing have the I don't know where you found
it raising the kids at their age that they were
be able to, you know, determined say have conversations with
you all and and and say well, we can't do that.
(46:07):
There was never a moment in that first year where
I was doing anything but feeling underwater about trying to
learn my own goddamn lines.
Speaker 3 (46:16):
Absolutely well, in the same way we were feeling underwater
about how to how to write these scripts. And I
remember I remember on Strange New Worlds we wrote a
draft and Brandon came up and it was just covered, yeah,
covered in notes, and we were just yeah, you know,
(46:40):
and then had to There were definitely all nighters at
times and things like that where we were putting Humpty
Dumpty back together again.
Speaker 1 (46:52):
I mean, it's a I mean I've said this before,
it's a feat unrivaled, uh, you know, a variation of
the for seventeen years or thereabouts, and they're still doing it.
I mean, obviously with a different crew now writing the stuff.
Speaker 3 (47:08):
And Yeah, absolutely, And yeah, I just started watching Strange
New Worlds.
Speaker 1 (47:16):
We're gonna have a look at it. I heard it
starts with a huge battle.
Speaker 3 (47:20):
On the Yes, it's a continuation of a huge battle
that they Cliffhangered off on the first on the previous season. Yeah,
and then they do an interesting one. I find one
of the things that they do a lot on the
new series is that they do a lot of callbacks
(47:42):
to the original Next Gen to us things like that.
Speaker 1 (47:52):
It sort of ties it all together quite sweetly.
Speaker 3 (47:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (47:57):
It's big swings too. I mean, you know, to use
the lower Decks crew and bring them on as live
action characters. The musical episode, I mean, you know, this
is a big swing.
Speaker 2 (48:11):
Musical episode is one of the best things ever done.
Speaker 1 (48:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (48:16):
Absolutely, back to this episode, it was I think one
of the best caps of any episode we ever had.
When Archer comes in and she and Paul asks him
do you dream and how are your dreams? Says you
know sometimes the dream and color?
Speaker 1 (48:37):
Is it enjoyable most nights?
Speaker 2 (48:41):
And the last thing that she says, I envi you?
Is I envy envy you?
Speaker 3 (48:51):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (48:52):
And again beautiful, Yeah it is. It's a it's a
fit it's a very nice button on the whole episode.
Speaker 2 (49:00):
That's there's so much about her character.
Speaker 1 (49:03):
Yes, and and emotionality in general, and you know whatever
whatever this this odd aspect of having that dimensional thought is.
Speaker 3 (49:15):
Yeah, yeah, definitely. It also once again puts her on
a very long path towards h assimilating more with humans
and questioning her her logical rational completely not emotional.
Speaker 1 (49:37):
Yeah. Maybe. So the point where you know we're a
relationship with the engineer two years later or something is not.
It doesn't come out of left field. Yeah, no, it's not.
Speaker 3 (49:47):
When you when you rewatch all of these you can
see the little hints in there, and some of them
are some of them got expanded because we accident and
we put them in at the beginning.
Speaker 1 (50:03):
This money was was was praised for sort of tying
up some what seemed to be loose ends when he
came on as the showrunner in season four. Yeah, that
were left hanging there. And I mean, I mean, I'm
in by no means a star Trek officionado. I've become
a little more knowledgeable in the years since we've been
(50:27):
doing these shows. But but yeah, I mean I wasn't
aware that there was you know there was rumblings in
the in the stratosphere about some of the stuff that
was left hanging loose on the star Trek tree of ours.
Speaker 3 (50:43):
One of the things that I think Rick and Brandon
created was this idea of meditating two.
Speaker 1 (50:54):
Practice to maintain their equilibrium.
Speaker 3 (50:57):
Exactly that that was not in any other.
Speaker 2 (51:00):
To control their dreams.
Speaker 3 (51:01):
Right, yep, that was not in any other.
Speaker 2 (51:04):
She had this wacky dream that you know, we all
have them that you wake up the next day and
you're like, holy smokes, I'm a freak.
Speaker 1 (51:12):
Yep. I worked this morning, and thank god. In the dream,
someone had broken into the house and stolen all my
cash and my watches. And I thought it was real.
And I woke up and went.
Speaker 3 (51:26):
Yeah, oh, it's a terrible feeling.
Speaker 1 (51:28):
I nearly went to the drawers the watch.
Speaker 2 (51:32):
It's interesting, like, for instance, I asked all of you
this question, like, I rarely remember my dreams.
Speaker 1 (51:40):
I do now, I mean I didn't. I've dreamed quite
a lot lately in the last two or three years.
It's an actual almost every night, and.
Speaker 2 (51:49):
You can think of how to remember your dreams.
Speaker 1 (51:51):
Yeah, they will vanish.
Speaker 3 (51:54):
Like that they did vanish. I do remember them. And
I also have the same kind of feeling that dom
it about being in either being chased or being in
some emotional state and waking up with that state and
not necessarily knowing what caused it.
Speaker 1 (52:10):
But mine, I'm never happy. I gotta tell you that, Yeah,
this is.
Speaker 3 (52:19):
We're all working out something.
Speaker 1 (52:25):
I can't get a squipegging around oh.
Speaker 3 (52:27):
Oh God, or that college paper. I keep going back
to the I haven't done the reading for this history
class that I am not going to graduate if I
don't do. And I literally wake up and I'm like,
I graduated more years ago than I care to ad been.
Speaker 2 (52:45):
No, there's there's two different thoughts on this. The Eastern
thought is if you don't remember your dreams, you have
a settled mind. The Western thought of this is if
you don't remember your dreams, you're hiding or cloaking something
and that you're not you know, evaluating them or dealing
with them. And I prefer to go with the Eastern thought.
Speaker 1 (53:11):
You're you're good.
Speaker 3 (53:13):
Yeah, I think my mind is a little more unsettled.
But I also say that sometimes the creativity comes overnight.
So there's sometimes when I'm actually, you know, caught on things,
and this happens a lot with writers. You're absolutely caught
on uh uh. You're blocked on a problem of trying
how to fix something, how to make it better, how
(53:34):
to meet the note. And you go do something that's
non intellectual, whether it's for some it's gardening or you know,
fixing up your house or doing whatever it is. And
sometimes it's just taking a night on it, sleeping on it,
(53:54):
and you can sort of wake up and go, that
was silly, right, I got.
Speaker 2 (54:01):
But it's a progression of something. It's a progression of
what's going on in your brain. And then you in
your conscious life versus your unconscious life. You know, you
you are working together and sometimes that works, and sometimes
it also makes you think that, like I said, Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1 (54:18):
I'm weird.
Speaker 3 (54:21):
Anybody writers, particularly, they're weird. They're frauds there, never going
to work again. Uh you know that's.
Speaker 2 (54:32):
Yeah, kill us artists. We're all, yeah the thieves.
Speaker 1 (54:41):
Yeah, yeah, we are, we are, we are we I
mean literally, I mean you see you see someone's performance
from thirty years ago, I'll pinch that pull, I'll put
that in somewhere. Yeah, I mean, you know. Alan Bennett
is famous the English writer I mean he just used
to sit on the bus and listen to two old
women talk and need to make a play out of it,
(55:01):
and oh.
Speaker 3 (55:02):
My god, I got to get out more.
Speaker 1 (55:04):
Yeah. Well, it's been lovely chatting with you, darling. It's
been wonderful for one of the next episodes when we
when we come to it.
Speaker 3 (55:14):
Absolutely, I it's a pleasure. And you guys are doing
you're hitting this one out of the park. This is
so popular.
Speaker 4 (55:24):
Thank you, thank you, unless you for coming on and
talking about and as Dom said, let's let's do it
again when when you're back up in the line.
Speaker 3 (55:35):
Great sounds perfect, all right, guys, great because see all
of you and I will see you another time. Stat
Dear Trekky's and Trekkers, our tribute to episode sixteen, Shuttle
Pod one. We'll debut later this season with a very
special episode, so please stay tuned for now, please enjoy
episode seventeen, Fusion with our dear friend, Miss Phyllis Strong.
(00:24):
The show has been gunned with.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Car It's the.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Conch ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, Trekky's and Trekkers.
Welcome back to another episode of the Decon Chamber. I'm
your co host Dominic Keating, joined as always with my
fellow co host, my bestie, mister Connor Schaneer. Welcome. We're
(00:53):
very very excited this week to be talking about the
episode Fusion, and in that capacity we have Miss Phyllis
Strong with us here in the room in the Decon
Chamber to talk about writing it with her writing partner,
mister Mike Sussman at the time. Phyllis Welcome aboard, my dear,
thanks very much, going on.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
Oh thank you. It's a pleasure to be here with
you guys.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
I'd love to see you after all these years. We
bumped into each other at the Voyager film documentary, which
was nice to see you at and I know that's
getting tinkered with and then it's going to get released
and I think he's found about a buyer already, So.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
It's great because I want to get a copy of it.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
So you'd worked with Rick Berman and Brannon before on Boyager,
hadn't you?
Speaker 3 (01:41):
Yes? I had just the last year Mike and I
came on. The short of it was they were looking
for a woman writer because that was back in the
days when they didn't have any and I had worked
with Mike on a previous show and he was a
(02:01):
He had nearly gotten onto Voyager, and there was a
script that he had done that that hadn't worked, and
so it didn't make sense that he wasn't on it,
and I talked to him about putting our names in
together and actually starting what it was a bit of
a shotgun marriage, but worked out very well. We partnered
(02:22):
for this all right, and we worked with brand. We
did an audition script which became Body and Soul, a
very popular one on Voyager, and we ended up writing
three more scripts, uh for those for Voyager, and then
(02:44):
we were I think the first people asked to come
along onto VOI onto Enterprise.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
Is that right? Did you ever have aspirations to write
alone and Mike too or did you always?
Speaker 3 (02:57):
Yeah, we did, and we had before. So uh. It
was an interesting partnership in that we had to get
to know each other and get to know each other's styles,
and what we did was write different scenes and then
send them to the other and have them rewritten. There
are people who when they're partners, they stand in a
(03:19):
room together and just kind of blurt out the dialogue
and one person's at the computer. But we were more
of what's very done very often, which is kind of
a That's.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
How Connor and I worked. Actually, I just blurt out
his lines, that's him, and then he'd say them and.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
Oh, perfect, Well I knew I knew he was. You
were his muse, Phillis.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
You came from law, didn't you?
Speaker 3 (03:50):
Before I came from business. I came from investment banking
and then business in the studios. So I was working
for twentieth Century Fox, helping them raise money and buy
other companies and things like that, and then I they
had an experimental TV movie company that I went to
(04:12):
help run and that turned out to fail, and I
had as it was for very specific reasons that had
to do with Fox and Barry Diller and how he
liked everybody to compete, and we were supposed to be
supplying lots of TV movies and Fox Broadcasting was like,
(04:34):
we don't want to just take your movies. And it
was all predicated on the fact that we would have
a lot of output, so we could get people to
work for less because they'd be working steadily.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
And that didn't need a movie business.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
Yeah, ah, the movie business. So I was left with
a severance. I could have gone back into the company
on business, but i'd really especially with this TV movie company,
had seen the whole development production side, and I really
wanted to write, as I always had. I just didn't
have any way in when I was first trying to
(05:11):
get into this business.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
So honestly, I mean because it is. It's a very
tricky one to It's like directing. I mean, it's a
very tricky not to crack, isn't it.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
Yeah, it is, especially, and I had met some agents
during my time at Fox, and I had UH one
and I wrote a spec Deep Space nine that got
a lot of attention. And one of the reasons I
love science fiction and doing that anyway, but one of
the reasons in those days you would write. Star Trek
(05:41):
was that they would take unrepresented scripts.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
I was kind in the in the yeah, it was.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
Very much known, and I got to go into pitch,
didn't sell anything. I was young and stupid a lot
you too, and I didn't keep trying to pitch because
I was so sort of disappointed. But other people like
(06:08):
Mike went and pitched and he sold stuff, and I
was able to write some more specs, get representation and
get on a syndicated show that was an adventure pirate
kind of thing, and Mike worked on that and that
(06:29):
was how we met. And that was both our or
was at least was my introduction to or the WGA.
And then so we knew each other. We had worked together.
I did some other freelance stuff and then this Star
Trek opportunity came up. So what was.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
It like being, you know, one were the only woman,
and I.
Speaker 3 (06:54):
Was the only woman on Voyager our first year when
Fusion came out, we had some other women, but it
was very much a boys club and we were all.
I was used to it from investment banking, which was
purely a boys club. So you kind of act like
(07:16):
one of the guys. And when they're saying disgusting stuff
for things that sort of turn your stomach. You're just like, yes, sure,
I can do it better.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
Yeah I got one of those.
Speaker 3 (07:27):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Pass the whiskey and the cigars. Yeah, right,
those were the days, Yeah, the days.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
So this episode, it's a very interesting episode.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
It is.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
It's a very interesting Star Trek episode. And for a
few reasons. You know, it's the first one where we
really get to sort of get a sense of Joelene
and and to Paul sat Zone and I thought that
was worth worthy of note and uh, and then to
meet this other sub sect of the hippie vulcans.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
As it were, with all the feelings, all.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
With all of the feelings that they could express and.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Control without without getting into too deep into the into
the trenches. And initially I think I read that it
was called equilibrium, but there have been several other scripts
of that title. For yeah, and.
Speaker 3 (08:22):
Fusion was they were basically trying to look for some
sort of mind meld uh synonym or something that would
kind of display that but didn't necessarily display the twist
on that because people knew about the mind melds from
Spark in the original series and from Tuvakan, and they
(08:45):
hadn't really seen it this way.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
So we come across this, you know, this group of
wandering what do they call themselves? Your ratasatuur? Right exactly.
This is note. This is the first time we'd I
think that starch I had ever been inside a Vulcan
ship the workings. I read that somewhere.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
Yes, I think I think that was true. Certainly one
of the civilian chips. You gave up a great deal
to wander the galaxy in a.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
Transport, right, because this was a sort of not a
car guy ship, but something it was.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
It was a kind of an exploration.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
It was.
Speaker 3 (09:24):
It was like the uh, you know campers of of of.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
The v they were.
Speaker 3 (09:34):
They were all out in the r V.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
Do The.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
Very first note that I took on this was when
Robert Pine we can all say Robert, father of Chris Pine,
the Kirk. The first note that I took was in
the teaser when he sits down at dinner with the
captain and Paul and what's that character's.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
Name, Taras something Glais.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
Yeah, at any rate, you he says something before he
even asks to try the chicken. He smiles our chefs
had a lot of experience lately preparing vulcan dishes, right,
And I thought, wait a minute, that's you know, it's
a it's a it's a cue to what the episode
will be about. But nonetheless I thought, wait a minute,
(10:24):
why is that vulcan smiling? And it was a great
little for those who know, a great introduction into well,
this isn't normal, all right.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
Exactly, And and that was sort of the point even
when they were when Archer was talking to him on screen, Uh,
there was this calm, this sense that he was not
you're he didn't talk like a Vulcan.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
My name is Tabin, captain of the vauclass. It's very
good to meet you. Right. But they were initially just
ask for help. They needed some assistance with the what
was it.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
Their engineer, their their you know, coils and things usually
exactly one of our ways to get tripped into the story,
as always.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
And then we go into the Iraqt and Nebula.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
Yes, yeah, is it what you imagine? Some pictures don't
do it justice.
Speaker 3 (11:27):
And there was that cute bit this was Mike about uh,
the astronomy book that Archer had had as a kid.
This was Mike's idea. Uh so, thank you the little
Admiral Johnny Archer, all right, from the library of Admiral
Johnny Archer, showing that from a very young.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
Age he was we had that aspiration or that and
he had a dream of doing that apparently, if I'm
right in saying Scotty from the original series mentions an
Admiral Archer read that, oh something like a memory Arthur
or somewhere.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
I'm being witch study the original.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
Skyny Scotty Simon peg Scotty.
Speaker 3 (12:18):
Oh, Simon peg study.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
I tested it on Admiral Ata's praise Migle.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
Well, I know that dark what happened to it?
Speaker 1 (12:24):
I'll tell you when it reappears. Yes, in the Nebula
and they were getting to know these uh these guitar
vatarkatur vulcans. I love the casting of CoV. He was great,
and understand he was not anywhere close to being the
first choice. The initial initial guy fell ill, and then
(12:45):
they offered it to someone else who was filming something else,
and that clashed and they got John Harrington Bland was
his name, wasn't He was terrific, though I thought.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
I'd like that Commander.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
They call me trip. Yeah, very grounded, you know.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
And he did a terrific job. He really I thought,
sort of the best emotional Vulcan with the best emotional story.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
Yeah, agreed. It was very very grounded, very believable, very vulnerable,
and yet just authentic. And yeah, I really liked his before.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
And it's interesting too, you know, in the first act
of the show, to Paul thinks they're dangerous.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
Others have tried to reintegrate their emotions. They all fail.
What they're doing is dangerous.
Speaker 3 (13:42):
Oh well, she sees them as people who have turned
their back on you know, teachings and you know Surak
and having his small statue there when they were really
turning against what he had to say.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
It's curious that people who reject Serok's teachings would display
his likeness.
Speaker 3 (14:10):
And it also alluded somewhat to an original series episode
where Spock and McCoy I think, are sent back to
a time that's five thousand years in the past, and
Spock starts to revert to that primal nature because it
(14:31):
was a time at which falcons were.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
Quite wait violent, fugnacious. Yeah exactly. Yeah, you listen to me.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
You pointed here falcon.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
I don't like that. I don't think I ever did.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
And now I'm sure you could see that to Paul
comes from a world that and a culture that would
have spoken of that as the dark times that they overcame, right.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
I love that scene also in the first act of
this where they're in the mess hall and she's got
mint tea and he says that you you don't have
Vulcan tea?
Speaker 1 (15:12):
What's that.
Speaker 3 (15:15):
Mint tea?
Speaker 2 (15:16):
And she's like, yeah, but I like to try some things.
And then she's I even try camomeal and he says that, oh,
you've got a sense of humor. Well maybe, and do you.
Speaker 3 (15:26):
Have a sense of humor a concept that most Vulcans
can't seem to grasp the most we could give her at.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
Yeah, but it's really interesting.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
It was really I mean, in a very short scene.
It gives a diamondism to this relationship about, you know,
this Vulcan group who've sort of gone off into the woods,
as it were, versus to Paul, who is very strict
and very annomode of very vulcan and presents herself that way,
(15:57):
and we get as an audience a really interesting point.
Then she's decided, you know, I'm going to try Minty and.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
She she does. She's assimilating somewhat.
Speaker 3 (16:10):
Yeah, she is. It's been a couple of months now,
I think she says seven months on. Yeah, and then
she spent two years.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
In uh the High Command on.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
But and in some ways that may have made perhaps
made her even more aware of how she had to
keep a distance from human emotion or really control it.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
Because it starts with mint tea, It starts with Minty.
Speaker 3 (16:43):
It's every slope.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
Worst decisions exactly.
Speaker 3 (16:49):
See where she ends up later on with virillium D
and and stuff.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
I like he's great, u Enrique, And yes, I mean
I have to say it was a lovely dualistic, uh
you know performance he gave.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
And I will say though that that was one thing.
One thing about him is sort of like that that
actor's note of you want to fight them, you want
to f them, you want to marry.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
Them, you want to marry them.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
Yeah, and he was definitely in the I want to
f them thing right completely. But that's you know. The
thing about that's interesting to me is that if you
go for it, and I believe that's what you're doing,
I don't care right, I don't care at all. Go ahead,
that's you know that I can just I can be like, oh, well,
(17:41):
he's because he came across initially, and he does end
up being creepy, but he came across a little creepy,
but he will.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
Yeah, like like you've been smoking the you know, the
vulcan ganja exactly the dead concept.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
But he was also the guy who, I while he
was a little creepy, was had enough sex appeal.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
Yeah, I sure did. He had an alluring sex appeal
without a doubt.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
And also that it seems as though, you know, he
he could have been one of those I don't know
what you like, those those you know, quasi religious.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
Yes, you know that he was like come to me.
Speaker 3 (18:26):
Oh yeah, he could have been the cult leader kind
of kind of thing. But he was definitely he so
believed in what he was doing, and that was I
think the honest part, the authentic part that got through
and was getting through this Paul as well. Yeah, but
this was a wonderful way of showing her not quite
(18:47):
torn feelings, but interest in not necessarily being completely vulcan,
even though she's not aware of it consciously.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
We needed to see that yeah, from from to Paul,
and this was a very very interesting way to do that.
Speaker 3 (19:05):
It was it was a little I will say that
being the only woman really involved in this episode, the
assault part was really hard to write.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
Yeah, it felt me too, wish.
Speaker 3 (19:23):
I was kind of years before that, of course, but
I kind of felt like this is bigger than just
how we're dealing with it. And I remember having some
trouble calibrating the scene.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
Because it comes back. I mean, I the the the
damage done in this forced meld, as it were, it
comes back to haunt in later episodes that I wasn't
particularly aware of. Even though I've watched this show. She's
still all sort of dealing with the the after effect. Yeah,
(20:06):
you know, trauma, the trauma.
Speaker 3 (20:08):
Yeah, and that's what the I wouldn't say the original story.
The story was done by Rick and Brannon, and we
did the teleplayoff of that, so they did the the
beats of the story and the outline and we brought
it to life. But there wasn't really I can't remember,
(20:34):
and I don't think this is true, but it could
have been true that they didn't have her in sick
Bay at the end as a kind of uh, right.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
That she wasn't a victim.
Speaker 3 (20:46):
Yeah, that she wasn't as much of a victim when
we started, and it became very clear because this was
also re vulcan purists out there. Mind melds are not.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
They're not common.
Speaker 3 (21:03):
Well, they're not common, and they're not while they're invasive,
they're not sexual, right, And we were really doing a
sexual assault version of the mind meld. I thought was, what.
Speaker 1 (21:22):
Did you think about the fact when he when he
when he persuades her not to meditate that first evening,
consider it an experiment, and then she has this rather erotic.
Speaker 3 (21:33):
Include completely erotic dream.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
Do you like the taste? Who's I mean, who whose
idea was that to to bring that straight front and forward?
Speaker 2 (21:44):
Uh?
Speaker 3 (21:45):
That was it was both of it. I mean, that
was definitely I had something to do with that. I
usually had something to do with the sexy scenes. I
was like, I we needed some of that.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
But you got the boys in the blue neckers half
the times, you know.
Speaker 3 (22:07):
I mean?
Speaker 2 (22:07):
And also you know when we when we get to
that dream, it literally seems to become a different show.
It's like a film noir. And and and this comes
to a question that I have so when you're given
(22:29):
story as a writer, are you given everything per act
or are you given the the gist of what the
idea is and then you you create that.
Speaker 3 (22:41):
As the writer, Well, you're given the gist of it
sometimes and you work out the story with uh, like
like you're given the gist of it and some of
the beats. In other words, we're going to be and
we're going to have some way of tolor us into
Paul connecting in the mess hall. But whether it's tea
(23:07):
or how it's mint tea or where what they're saying
to each other, that all comes from me.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
Yeah, some nice stuff with the tea, Yeah necessarily, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:19):
Said so much with like you know, not a lot
of lines and and you know, and also with the
scenes with with Trip and.
Speaker 3 (23:25):
And yeah, oh those were great.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
It was so interesting to me to see this episode
UH as an opportunity for one the audience and to
the characters to get a chance to ask questions that
would never otherwise be answered.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
Yes, yes, and Trip was the was the was the
perfect sort of foil for call yes.
Speaker 3 (23:54):
Actually about the once every seven years.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
We were just discussing Bulcan meeting rituals, Bulcan males, are
driven to mat once every seven years when.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
We're at the dining table and we're like, what seven
years frightening?
Speaker 1 (24:13):
Exactly the rest of the time crosswords, Yes.
Speaker 3 (24:19):
We have sex, like okay. But the other thing that
I thought was really nice is I really love trips
your story about regret? Yes, I think I think my No, actually,
I think I wrote that because I used your your
(24:43):
The Girl who Got Away was named after my two
best friends from college.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
Panama City, Florida. Girl I had a crush on, Melissa Isles.
Speaker 3 (24:54):
Oh, something called Melissa Isles was Melissa and Annerie Lyles
were my two best friends.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
Not funny how those names come out. Yeah, I love that.
I loved the line. Maybe he wrote it. I think
it's Trip's line a brush with regret.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
Probably don't know this, but regret is one of the
strongest emotions.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
I'm a feeling you haven't had a brush with it yet. Yeah, yeah,
it's It's a beautifully beautiful line.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
You know, it's interesting. I was just saying this before
we started. This was the time where I, as the actor,
began to feel settled, if that's the right word, into
who he was. You know, he wasn't snarky. He'd been
snarky for the first half of the season and right,
(25:46):
and he had developed into someone who could manage conversations
like this, And in watching that it did it did
highlight for me that this was when, this this was trip,
this was he was for the rest of the series,
(26:07):
all right.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
It gave him an emotional maturity that perhaps was not
present as as as outlined in this in episode this episode.
Speaker 3 (26:19):
Remember we were looking for the characters too fro and
this was early and uh, they were a little more
sketchy at the beginning. Certainly to Paul was very sketched
out but not filled in, uh, in the two part
(26:43):
pilot and things like that. So it was actually from
the writer's side, it was so wonderful watching you bloom
and also take a bit of a custodial uh care
of your character so that we could write off of that.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
And I think, you know, one of the things that
you were always when you had an episode that was
written by you and Mike or you, you were there, And
I think that's such an advantage to see what's going
on on set, to glean something for what you're going
to do in the writer's room or on your own writing.
Speaker 3 (27:26):
Yeah, very much.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
Yeah, and you know, I'm so thankful for that. You
were one of the only ones who would come to
see what's going on with your story.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
Was it encouraged or discouraged?
Speaker 3 (27:42):
It was a bit discourage actually, But I, like I said,
young and stupid, I kind of needed it to be
able to write. I used to also go down to
the sets sometimes and just be able to feel the
bridge so I could figure out where or how people
(28:07):
were going. There was something to me very I needed
much more sort of tactle. But it was discouraged only
because we were so busy and yet and also because
in truth Rick and Brannan were of a philosophy that
(28:30):
very tight control comes from the top, so.
Speaker 1 (28:35):
I knew that. Yeah. I always quote Liz his Rick's wife,
when she took me aside at the first rap party
and she said, well, you know, Rick Dominic, there's no
control like total control.
Speaker 3 (28:51):
And that was actually it. And I wasn't young and stupid.
I wasn't as quite a where of what the repercussions
could be of something like that.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
Why do you say that You've said a young and
stupid What does that mean to you? Now?
Speaker 1 (29:08):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (29:08):
What it means to me now is that I would
uh overstep some bounds. I would Also I didn't speak
up as much as I would in the future about
(29:31):
what direction we were going in or what we were
doing with some of the female characters and things like that.
But also I when I was on set, there were
times when I, you know, uh got in the way
and and uh we'd get talked to and I was
(29:53):
so I felt so terrible and it was just so
uh uh immature.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
Yeah, they had they had a very shorthanded way of
doing that, just putting you in your place. Yeah. I
witnessed it more than once. And you know, yeah, I
remember figuring out pretty early on keep your mouth shut down.
You're working for the man, you know.
Speaker 3 (30:24):
And that's when I say young and stupid. It was
like I kind of thought I was used to a
little bit from investment banking. When you when you were
in that much of a male environment, Uh, you're kind
of going like I can take it, and you sort
of push back a lot at it. So I kind
(30:47):
of felt like I was in the same bit of
a it's a bit of a frat boy environment, it's
a bit of a Masters of the Universe environment. Yeah,
And I also, as a young woman, I was used
to kind of getting away with pushing back because I
was cute, right.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
I wonder, sorry, I tell you guyhead man.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
I was just I wonder. You know, there was a
time when they didn't know what sort of relationship was
going to happen with Paul, and in the very beginning
of our show, it seemed as though it was going
to be to Archer. Yes, there's a little scene with
Trip and Archer where he says, if I.
Speaker 1 (31:33):
Didn't know better, I'd say you were a little jealous.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
If I didn't know better, I think you would be jealous.
I saw that was that was that planned? Was that
a part? Was that planting a seed? For what was that?
Speaker 1 (31:47):
Was?
Speaker 2 (31:47):
That?
Speaker 3 (31:48):
Was planning a seed? I'd say I'd say more could
have come of that, but I think Scott was pretty opposed.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
Yeah, because there was there's an episode just before this
Isn't That where they're captured together and they're tied up
together and they have this tussle to try and get untied, right,
they end up on top of each other on the
side of you. It's like, you know, it looked like
wrestling sex and hello exactly so and get the sense
(32:19):
that they were setting that up somehow and that this
was a refrain.
Speaker 3 (32:23):
I think a little of it came from me. I
just happened to like the the more flirtatious, playful side
of some of our scenes or could be. So that
was just kind of fun. But I always thought that
(32:44):
there could be something, that there was a There were
strong feelings between Archer and to Paul, but they ended
up being more familial, more father daughter, brother sister, that
kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (33:02):
But its strictly speaking, you know she I mean, yes,
I mean even even in the early two thousands, the
age gap between them was a little striking to be,
you know.
Speaker 3 (33:14):
Right right exactly know, But I think it wouldn't have
it wouldn't It would have been an interesting way to go.
It would have opened up a lot of story.
Speaker 2 (33:26):
And there was thought in the room that that how
are we going to find the connections? Bet who was
it going to be?
Speaker 3 (33:34):
Right? Well, how are we going to find the connections
between people? And how are we going to then be
able to dramatize the implications and the aftermath or whatever
else it is.
Speaker 1 (33:48):
You might have painted yourself into a very small corner
quite quickly. If you had had to Paul and the
captain you.
Speaker 3 (33:53):
Know, oh yeah, well it wouldn't have come in the
first season. It would have been something that was sort
of evolving emotionally, if you will, as emotionally as you
can with the vulcan over several episodes.
Speaker 2 (34:11):
It was very very easy to put Trip through a ringer.
Speaker 3 (34:14):
Ye, yes, yeah, that was.
Speaker 1 (34:23):
Who cares? He only cares about catfish anyway, So I'll
go to your wedding.
Speaker 3 (34:32):
Exactly.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
No.
Speaker 3 (34:33):
We Uh. Trip was definitely and especially as you said,
when he started to turn and you started to settle
into him as as more of a kind of the
good guy, sensitive guy of the conscience, Yeah, the conscience
(34:54):
of the crew. And he then he also became a
character who could uh embody some of the sort of
sci fi issue uh sort of things. Uh. What was
the one where they created a clone of you? I
(35:15):
mean that was incredibly powerful.
Speaker 1 (35:18):
It was that Jena.
Speaker 3 (35:22):
The militant exactly, and that was the idea of you know,
what is the value of a human life? And and
it just made sense for Trip to wrestle with that.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
Uh, you know, I want to touch on the mind
meld scene is the most Uh, emotional, powerful mind meld
scene that I've ever seen between two people. You know,
she's emotional, he's emotional. And what were you going for?
Speaker 1 (36:06):
Do you remember?
Speaker 3 (36:08):
Well, one of the things is to tell you what
I thought.
Speaker 2 (36:10):
I thought he was trying to reel her in.
Speaker 1 (36:14):
He said, you were invigorated. What else? I don't know?
Speaker 3 (36:19):
Yes, you do, You're just not used to describing your emotions. Yeah.
I think he was trying to get her emotions to
the surface as as to break through, which, as we
sort of saw from the rest of the episode, was
something that could potentially harm her.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
Was that just to get to come across to their
side in their way of thinking? Or was it? Did
it have more nefarious intentions that he wanted her as
a lover and a partner?
Speaker 3 (36:57):
I think I think it wasn't wait and Afair. I
think he was attracted to her, and and when you're
attracted to somebody, you want them to sort.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
Of uh with the with the theology right.
Speaker 3 (37:14):
Basically you know, uh not be I don't think he
was looking for a disciple. I think he was looking
for a partner.
Speaker 1 (37:23):
Uh. Do you that he would take her away and
she'd go on the with them?
Speaker 3 (37:28):
Well, they were three guys anyway, and I also think
that he was uh looking to get her to he
needed I think all three of them, but he was
the main character who needed validation that what they were
doing was right, that they could handle it, that it
(37:52):
was all fine. And I think Uh Paul was a
little bit of a challenge. She was a beautiful woman,
she was uh had gave off.
Speaker 1 (38:06):
Female for Vulcans don't.
Speaker 3 (38:10):
Yes, and and she gave off little hints that she
might be open to it. That's that's actually what was
sort of most disturbing about the assault and the mind
meld scene was that she wants you know, she started
off wanting it, and it was a big she had
to say no for it to be common assault. But
(38:34):
you could see the the mixed feelings and pay that
really well right.
Speaker 2 (38:42):
It opens up a question that why didn't the Vulcan
high command stop this, oh, stop them, stop them what
they were doing.
Speaker 3 (38:54):
I think they probably, well, one thing, maybe because CoV
was the side kind of a big ministry guy, and
they probably thought that as long as these people were
not interacting with anybody else on the planet, they were
sort of exiled. Maybe even that the other thing too
(39:19):
was as a society. If you were you've got your
religion and someone is questioning it, you basically you're not Yeah,
you kill them or you or you get rid of them.
(39:40):
But I but Vulcans are not that obviously not that violent.
But they're also I think they just like they repress
and push their emotions down, just like they pushed down
any talk of the pondfar and the mating rituals and
the and the fight to the death and all that
(40:02):
kind of stuff. They pushed this down to.
Speaker 1 (40:07):
Yeah, they're obviously quite I mean, you know when the
when the temper surfaces. You see in Talaris, he's a
tough dude and he throws that captain right across that
desk like nothing.
Speaker 3 (40:27):
I know, I know, And that's and that's what Balcans.
Speaker 1 (40:30):
Are, you know, afraid of.
Speaker 3 (40:33):
Yeah, they can lose it like that. And that's also
why they're so quiet about their mating rituals because they
also bring out up Bryan. Yeah, exactly exactly raw.
Speaker 1 (40:48):
Apparently Vince Diedrich was gonna double Scott in that in
his ready room, but it was too small a space
and Scott actually did that stunt. Wow yep. Yeah, god man.
I remember we've said this before, but he turned fifty
on our show, and I remember thinking, it's not that's all.
Speaker 3 (41:13):
Yes, out of the mountain.
Speaker 1 (41:15):
No, I'd give my back teeth if I had any left.
Speaker 3 (41:21):
But I also remember something it wasn't in this episode.
But like from the beginning, Scott had said that he
didn't want it to be a Star Trek where everybody
gets sort of punched and kicked and thrown around and
nobody ever bleeds, ebody ever shows bruises or anything else.
Speaker 1 (41:43):
So we have plenty of bruises. I mean, yeah, we did.
We did good bruises. That Steve, that fight I had
with Steve KAlP Oh, yeah, we're both held up in
front of the headmaster.
Speaker 2 (41:56):
The last thing I need is to hear the two
of my senior officers had been admitted a sick.
Speaker 1 (42:01):
Baby because they suddenly regressed to the level of five
year olds cutting those blooded eyes. And I was standing
there like school children.
Speaker 2 (42:09):
Yeah, I remember, you know, at least for my character,
I probably twice in the entirety of our series said
anything to the office about my character. You know, for
you in your experience while you were there, how how
(42:30):
often was Scott involved in these sorts of conversations.
Speaker 3 (42:36):
He wasn't involved with them with me, so I would
only hear about them as an aside from if they
came up to affect the scripts we were doing, or
maybe in a side when we were in the room
with Brannon any So, I don't know how often it is,
(42:57):
but I do know that when we were doing Strange
New World, which was our uh second after the two
part pilots, so it was episode four, we ran into
like our first uh uh dilemma slash disaster when in
(43:22):
the story we were going to have a crewman die
because of being down on the.
Speaker 2 (43:31):
Surface with the with the spores, and.
Speaker 3 (43:34):
Yeah, exactly, and uh and then we, you know, we
bring him back. We're able to bring him back up
to the ship. And in the original script which Mike
and I wrote, there was no further mention of him.
And I remember getting called into Brandon's office and he
was in a panic because we were shooting and he
(43:58):
had gotten word from Scott at he couldn't just the captain,
couldn't just forget about his first casualty, couldn't couldn't just
not address it in any way. So we were sitting there.
People were throwing out, we can do a walk and
talk here, we can do a little you know, clip
(44:18):
of a funeral there or something like that. We can
have Scott Archer talked to whoever's still on I think
to paul.
Speaker 1 (44:29):
A lonely Rose in the messole.
Speaker 3 (44:31):
Right, There were all these stories and then I just
raised my hand and said, what if he didn't have
to die? And they were like what I said, Well,
what if you actually got him up there and you
had a treatment for him. But the problem is we
can't transport it down to the surface, so it does
no good to our characters there, so their jeopardy stays
(44:54):
the same.
Speaker 1 (44:55):
But we.
Speaker 3 (44:57):
But we can avoid all of this, uh.
Speaker 1 (45:02):
So the storm, Because then that's why the storm lasted
a lot longer, didn't it. And nothing they couldn't They
couldn't transport them out, They couldn't do anything, so they
were stuck dealing with their situation, right I remember, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (45:15):
You know, I found myself going, like Jesus Christ, what
are salmon pages?
Speaker 3 (45:23):
And that was part of it. And that was our
first I learned two weeks ago. Oh that remember, so
early in our process. That was like, really the first
one that was not written.
Speaker 1 (45:43):
Like that, Yeah, exactly, you know.
Speaker 2 (45:46):
And to have someone who's the you know, the number
one on your call sheet and the leader of the
whole thing have the I don't know where you found
it raising the kids at their age that they were
be able to, you know, determined say have conversations with
you all and and and say well, we can't do that.
(46:07):
There was never a moment in that first year where
I was doing anything but feeling underwater about trying to
learn my own goddamn lines.
Speaker 3 (46:16):
Absolutely well, in the same way we were feeling underwater
about how to how to write these scripts. And I
remember I remember on Strange New Worlds we wrote a
draft and Brandon came up and it was just covered, yeah,
covered in notes, and we were just yeah, you know,
(46:40):
and then had to There were definitely all nighters at
times and things like that where we were putting Humpty
Dumpty back together again.
Speaker 1 (46:52):
I mean, it's a I mean I've said this before,
it's a feat unrivaled, uh, you know, a variation of
the for seventeen years or thereabouts, and they're still doing it.
I mean, obviously with a different crew now writing the stuff.
Speaker 3 (47:08):
And Yeah, absolutely, And yeah, I just started watching Strange
New Worlds.
Speaker 1 (47:16):
We're gonna have a look at it. I heard it
starts with a huge battle.
Speaker 3 (47:20):
On the Yes, it's a continuation of a huge battle
that they Cliffhangered off on the first on the previous season. Yeah,
and then they do an interesting one. I find one
of the things that they do a lot on the
new series is that they do a lot of callbacks
(47:42):
to the original Next Gen to us things like that.
Speaker 1 (47:52):
It sort of ties it all together quite sweetly.
Speaker 3 (47:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (47:57):
It's big swings too. I mean, you know, to use
the lower Decks crew and bring them on as live
action characters. The musical episode, I mean, you know, this
is a big swing.
Speaker 2 (48:11):
Musical episode is one of the best things ever done.
Speaker 1 (48:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (48:16):
Absolutely, back to this episode, it was I think one
of the best caps of any episode we ever had.
When Archer comes in and she and Paul asks him
do you dream and how are your dreams? Says you
know sometimes the dream and color?
Speaker 1 (48:37):
Is it enjoyable most nights?
Speaker 2 (48:41):
And the last thing that she says, I envi you?
Is I envy envy you?
Speaker 3 (48:51):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (48:52):
And again beautiful, Yeah it is. It's a it's a
fit it's a very nice button on the whole episode.
Speaker 2 (49:00):
That's there's so much about her character.
Speaker 1 (49:03):
Yes, and and emotionality in general, and you know whatever
whatever this this odd aspect of having that dimensional thought is.
Speaker 3 (49:15):
Yeah, yeah, definitely. It also once again puts her on
a very long path towards h assimilating more with humans
and questioning her her logical rational completely not emotional.
Speaker 1 (49:37):
Yeah. Maybe. So the point where you know we're a
relationship with the engineer two years later or something is not.
It doesn't come out of left field. Yeah, no, it's not.
Speaker 3 (49:47):
When you when you rewatch all of these you can
see the little hints in there, and some of them
are some of them got expanded because we accident and
we put them in at the beginning.
Speaker 1 (50:03):
This money was was was praised for sort of tying
up some what seemed to be loose ends when he
came on as the showrunner in season four. Yeah, that
were left hanging there. And I mean, I mean, I'm
in by no means a star Trek officionado. I've become
a little more knowledgeable in the years since we've been
(50:27):
doing these shows. But but yeah, I mean I wasn't
aware that there was you know there was rumblings in
the in the stratosphere about some of the stuff that
was left hanging loose on the star Trek tree of ours.
Speaker 3 (50:43):
One of the things that I think Rick and Brandon
created was this idea of meditating two.
Speaker 1 (50:54):
Practice to maintain their equilibrium.
Speaker 3 (50:57):
Exactly that that was not in any other.
Speaker 2 (51:00):
To control their dreams.
Speaker 3 (51:01):
Right, yep, that was not in any other.
Speaker 2 (51:04):
She had this wacky dream that you know, we all
have them that you wake up the next day and
you're like, holy smokes, I'm a freak.
Speaker 1 (51:12):
Yep. I worked this morning, and thank god. In the dream,
someone had broken into the house and stolen all my
cash and my watches. And I thought it was real.
And I woke up and went.
Speaker 3 (51:26):
Yeah, oh, it's a terrible feeling.
Speaker 1 (51:28):
I nearly went to the drawers the watch.
Speaker 2 (51:32):
It's interesting, like, for instance, I asked all of you
this question, like, I rarely remember my dreams.
Speaker 1 (51:40):
I do now, I mean I didn't. I've dreamed quite
a lot lately in the last two or three years.
It's an actual almost every night, and.
Speaker 2 (51:49):
You can think of how to remember your dreams.
Speaker 1 (51:51):
Yeah, they will vanish.
Speaker 3 (51:54):
Like that they did vanish. I do remember them. And
I also have the same kind of feeling that dom
it about being in either being chased or being in
some emotional state and waking up with that state and
not necessarily knowing what caused it.
Speaker 1 (52:10):
But mine, I'm never happy. I gotta tell you that, Yeah,
this is.
Speaker 3 (52:19):
We're all working out something.
Speaker 1 (52:25):
I can't get a squipegging around oh.
Speaker 3 (52:27):
Oh God, or that college paper. I keep going back
to the I haven't done the reading for this history
class that I am not going to graduate if I
don't do. And I literally wake up and I'm like,
I graduated more years ago than I care to ad been.
Speaker 2 (52:45):
No, there's there's two different thoughts on this. The Eastern
thought is if you don't remember your dreams, you have
a settled mind. The Western thought of this is if
you don't remember your dreams, you're hiding or cloaking something
and that you're not you know, evaluating them or dealing
with them. And I prefer to go with the Eastern thought.
Speaker 1 (53:11):
You're you're good.
Speaker 3 (53:13):
Yeah, I think my mind is a little more unsettled.
But I also say that sometimes the creativity comes overnight.
So there's sometimes when I'm actually, you know, caught on things,
and this happens a lot with writers. You're absolutely caught
on uh uh. You're blocked on a problem of trying
how to fix something, how to make it better, how
(53:34):
to meet the note. And you go do something that's
non intellectual, whether it's for some it's gardening or you know,
fixing up your house or doing whatever it is. And
sometimes it's just taking a night on it, sleeping on it,
(53:54):
and you can sort of wake up and go, that
was silly, right, I got.
Speaker 2 (54:01):
But it's a progression of something. It's a progression of
what's going on in your brain. And then you in
your conscious life versus your unconscious life. You know, you
you are working together and sometimes that works, and sometimes
it also makes you think that, like I said, Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1 (54:18):
I'm weird.
Speaker 3 (54:21):
Anybody writers, particularly, they're weird. They're frauds there, never going
to work again. Uh you know that's.
Speaker 2 (54:32):
Yeah, kill us artists. We're all, yeah the thieves.
Speaker 1 (54:41):
Yeah, yeah, we are, we are, we are we I
mean literally, I mean you see you see someone's performance
from thirty years ago, I'll pinch that pull, I'll put
that in somewhere. Yeah, I mean, you know. Alan Bennett
is famous the English writer I mean he just used
to sit on the bus and listen to two old
women talk and need to make a play out of it,
(55:01):
and oh.
Speaker 3 (55:02):
My god, I got to get out more.
Speaker 1 (55:04):
Yeah. Well, it's been lovely chatting with you, darling. It's
been wonderful for one of the next episodes when we
when we come to it.
Speaker 3 (55:14):
Absolutely, I it's a pleasure. And you guys are doing
you're hitting this one out of the park. This is
so popular.
Speaker 4 (55:24):
Thank you, thank you, unless you for coming on and
talking about and as Dom said, let's let's do it
again when when you're back up in the line.
Speaker 3 (55:35):
Great sounds perfect, all right, guys, great because see all
of you and I will see you another time. Stat
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