Hey, Joe. Hi.
So last week, I expressed some concern that watching Darmok might
be a bit of a problem because we both thought it was really great
the way that we did with PowerPlay, but then watching PowerPlay
demonstrated to us that it wasn't really very good at all.
And we were worried that we would spoil just a classic episode
that we really liked by actually watching it again.
Is that what happened?
No, not at all.
In fact, I've been through this procedure many times for our
untitled Star Trek project where I've said, oh my god, that
episode is amazing.
I mean, for my reaction to before and after.
I was like, oh, that is the Voyager episode of all time.
And then we spent an hour and a half bitching about the thing.
Oh, yeah.
No, this was incredibly good.
Like, seriously, properly the best episode we have covered since
the Doomsday machine good.
Yeah, yeah.
I may even raided above the Doomsday Machine.
I think it is one of the best Star Trek episodes ever.
And I think this time.
I think this time watching it, I liked it much more than I ever
have before.
I thought it was even stronger than I did on previous viewings.
And I have watched this one over and over again because it is
really superb.
I've probably written this off as thought of worthy in the past.
But now I'm a mature man with, you know, much more thoughtful
ideas on life.
I just thought this was so considered, so intelligent.
Um, and uh, would you indulge me because this had a fair gestation
period, this episode.
It went for a couple of hands.
And of course, you know who ended up with the assignment, don't
you?
As a Germanoski?
of masks fame and, you know, every the Thor, every weird episode
of Star Trek you could possibly think of.
Reliable pair of hands.
So by all accounts, a pillar was very enamoured with the
concepts.
Like Rick Berman hated it.
He's like, no, there's no Borgs in there.
Oh, nothing.
Yeah, yeah, no sexy women.
What's going on?
And the original idea was, uh, it says here that Philip LeBesnik's
story involved members of an away team, who in turn, each meet a
mysterious alien boy drawing in the dirt, the boy greeted each of
the team with a single word Darmok.
And regardless of the response, the crew member was catapulted
into the orbit of a strange cocoon.
Okay, that sounds very Joe Manosky.
But at the end, Picard realises that Darmark meant play sits down
and tries to understand the dialogue of the child.
So that was kind of the basic premise of, you know, 2 races coming
together and they can't communicate.
And it went through, they kind of waited, they sat on the premise
for ages.
Michael Piller saw dances with wolves, and he was completely blown
away with the scene with Kevin Costner's character and the native
American warrior sitting around the campfire.
And he's like, no, no, we can really do this.
And then Manosky was sent away basically and said, right, just
write the hell out of this.
And this is what he came up with.
And once all the dust had settled and this had gone out, them and
then said, I was wrong, this is one of the best episodes of Star
Trek we've ever done.
Yeah.
Yeah, well, I think it is.
And I think I think for me there's 2 reasons for that.
One is that it is absolutely about what Star Trek should be about
which is about seeking out new life and new civilisations, you
know, literally finding a completely different culture and seeking
to work out what commonalties we have with them and getting to
know them in a peaceful way.
And so what Picard does here is exactly what Star Trek is about.
It's central to what Star Trek is.
And I can think of 2 examples of that in recent Star Trek, which
was the 2nd episode of Strange New Worlds, where, although it was
on the...
Yeah, like trying to understand what those sounds meant and how to
communicate with whatever was going on inside that comet.
And then also at the end of Discovery season 4 where they have to
try and learn how to communicate with the 10 C, who are weirdly
strangely different from us in a completely new way.
Do you remember what that episode was called?
The 2nd discovery.
I'm not discovering 2nd street.
Okay, because I just thought with that episode, it was just so
perfect.
The way they married, the concept of communicating with this thing
the beauty of the episode and the amount of character were that
was going on in it.
Like it just sung on every level.
I think I was like, I can't believe this is the 2nd episode of
this show.
Well, really, they've done all their learning through discovery
and all the other shows that they put out to that point.
But this episode as well.
Like, I know you're going to say there isn't much character work
in this, that there's a lot of procedure and not a lot of
character.
I think Picard's characterised, especially well in this.
Well, when I say there's no character, there's no scenes that seem
to be primarily about telling us what sort of people we have here
well, because we know them.
This is series 5.
Exactly.
We know them.
And so what we just see is them being good at their jobs in a way
that we expect them to be and them expressing viewpoints that we
expect them to express.
And we'll talk more about that going on because I think that's
actually particularly interesting.
But I just wanted to say the 2nd thing about the episode that I
think makes it great.
And that is that it's an episode about the importance of
storytelling as a way of communicating with one another.
And the example that Beverly gives that is like the children of
Tamar is Shakespeare.
And by the end of the episode, Picard is reading the Homeric hymns
which aren't actually by Homer, but which are about the Greek gods
and the Greek gods are an important shared part of our culture.
We get the epic of Gilgamesh.
We have the Old Testament.
You know, the myths in the Old Testament, all of these stories
that are part of our culture and that help us to understand
ourselves.
And then just seeing that made the major feature of an alien
culture and the way that Picard reaches out to that alien culture
because it turns out we do the same thing.
I think it's magnificently good.
Do you know, uh, in devising the, was it Tamarian, Tamarian?
Yeah, Tamarian, I think.
Tamarian language.
Manosky was inspired.
This is our memory alpha, right?
inspired by 3 sources.
Can you guess who they were?
No.
Oh, okay.
Well, you could be choosing from the entire body of human
history.
Is the Iliad?
You've got the work of psychologist James Hillman. who emphasised
all his metaphor.
The quote, every word is a poem from translator and poet.
John...
I want to say Chiardi, Ciardi, and the dense historical metaphors
present in Chinese poetry and philosophical works such as the I
Ching.
Yeah, you see, for me though, I think that when they refer to
what's going on in Tamerian culture, they actually struggle to
find the right words because I don't think these are metaphors, are
they?
They are literary illusions.
This is a culture that communicates entirely through, you know, the
through talking about heroes and events in its shared mythology.
And I think about, you know, the Greeks, the way that the ancient
Greeks used the Iliad and the Odyssey, that they had all read it.
They wrote stories around based on characters from those epics and
they referred to those epics all the time.
I'm reading, I'm reading a poem with my senior Latin class that
refers to an elder called Eucalagon, and he's only ever mentioned
in a Nid book 2, and he's the Trojan leader who lives next door
whose house burns down, and you can just throw Eucalagon into a
Roman poem, and the Roman reader will know, oh, that's the guy
whose house burnt down.
This must be about how our next door neighbor's house burns down.
And it's exactly that sort of thing, that we all have a culture
that's full of these sort of weird, rich illusions.
Have you had a friend who is learning English and comes from
somewhere completely different and understands the words we say
but has no idea about all the references that we lace our
conversations with. frequently.
Yeah, honestly.
I've slept with every foreigner that's come into England and we've
gone from this every single time, you know?
Don't worry.
Everyone understands the motion of a bloke job, though.
Don't worry.
Honestly, Nathan, you're so smart.
You make me feel so horny.
Seriously Christ.
Keep talking.
But even Dr. Bev has a brilliant line in this where they're
talking about metaphor and then she chips in and says, yeah, but
if you don't understand the context of the characters that they're
talking about, then none of it means anything.
And actually, it led me to going on online because I was like, I
wonder if there's any cultures out there that do talk primarily in
metaphor.
And as you can imagine, there is not.
But there's a lot of sort of interesting discussion online about
the use of metaphor and what it says about cultures.
It's definitely something worth just type that into Google and
have a look.
There's a lot of really interesting. essays out there.
Do you know what?
We discussed this thing in a lot of death.
We should probably start watching it at some point.
We should probably start watching it.
Okay, so I will count us in. 543, two, one, and we're off.
Off we go.
Captain Slog, Stargate, Something.
Yeah, it's on the website.
It's this incredible thing where this is the shot that around
about half of Star Trek episodes start with this particular
optical, which was presumably shot during...
So here's Picard's new frock, which was his idea and will appear
in season 5 and six.
I don't think he wears it in season seven.
I have a feeling that he leaves it on the holodeck in ship in a
bottle, which means that everything that happens after ship in a
bottle is actually still on the holodeck.
How do you know?
I mean, that's the far beyond the stars, Twitz, isn't it?
you know, it's sort of a bit more velvety than everybody else is
you know?
Yeah, so it's swayed, I think.
It's a cut above.
Yeah, the yolks.
Yeah, the yolks on the shoulders are sort of horribly rubbery or
plasticky or something and they go away.
It just becomes that suede thing.
And he's got bell bottoms and stuff.
It's very kind of original track.
It's quite nice.
Do you imagine Wolf looks back on this hippie period with his hair
here and just cringes?
what was I thinking?
Why didn't I have a haircut?
No, he's got a bob.
No, it's before he tied it back.
Wait, I need to tell you this, because Reich has a line there
where he goes, ah, the children of Tarma, I figured there was just
a myth, you know, and he's been doing this in series one.
Back when Aldea appeared in when the bow wakes.
He's like, 0 my God, out there.
I thought it was just a myth that they do like doing this, don't
they, at the beginning of an episode.
So the very last line of that scene where Picard says, I believe
that we are going to be able to communicate with them because what
communication takes is patience and imagination.
And then we cut immediately to them finding the Tamarians
completely incomprehensible.
Everyone's looking at each other.
You can't look so concerned.
He's nodding slowly.
But it does turn out that they do have imagination and patience
and they do find a way of communicating.
So, you know, there's a moment in which where there's a moment
where it looks like he's just being too kind of cocky, you know
where, from the 24th century, we know how to communicate with
aliens will be fine, and then he's completely baffled.
Oh, that is a great joke, isn't it?
Yeah.
And do you know what, for one, Troy's line is really important
because she says, look, I sense no hostility from them.
And that's kind of an important thing to establish in the only
sort of drama that's here, until the monster comes along, is the
fact that they can't communicate.
It's not that they're threatening them.
It's just they can't, they don't understand each other.
No, and it's not just that they don't understand their words, but
they've got no idea of what's going on.
They don't know what they're doing all these things for.
So when they transport Picard, when they transport, um, Dathon
down to the planet, we don't know why and we perceive it as a
threat and that becomes the tension of the episode, I think.
Oh, Winfield performance, right?
He puts so much worth into this dialogue.
Like it really means some.
No, no.
But I want to say, because you remember, we had the cratassons
last week, and we've had some pretty quirky aliens on untitled
Star, the Beaumar and people like that, you know. who are nowhere
near as convincing and they're talking normal English.
But I actually think that the actors know what this dialogue
means.
And so when they say it, they look, I mean, this dialogue doesn't
work in any sense.
Do you know what I mean?
Like it doesn't work.
This is not a realistic portrayal of how anyone could possibly
communicate.
It is a science fiction-y thing and we've decided it's a, you know
race that communicates in literary illusions all the time, but
that doesn't really work as a language.
You never wrote those stories about, you know, the people that
were cut off from society, you know, not sort of kept in secluded
areas.
Yeah, but they all have away from sort of culture and society and
how we talk.
Well, if you only spoke to them in metaphor.
Well, then they would just talk in metaphor, wouldn't they?
No, no, no, no, because language is generated by the human brain.
It's not purely cultural.
It is something that we create.
Yeah, no one invents it.
So people develop languages and even if people are...
Are you saying that regard, if you weren't even taught a language
you would grow up.
No, you, if you're young and you're not exposed to language, then
you can never properly acquire it.
But groups of people from different cultures who all get thrown
into a melting pot together like happened all the time with
colonialism, like, um, you know, in plantations and stuff where
people from different language groups all come together.
They're kids, like they end up developing a pigeon language and
then a Creole and they've you learned to speak.
I'll say in these days.
I don't understand a word they're saying.
They've got their own language.
Oh, I see.
Yeah, they always have a sound... like a fusty old man, have I?
Just that number.
It happens to every generation, though.
Kids learn to speak to each other and not necessarily just to
speak to older people.
You know, when he's holding those 2 knives up in the air like that
right?
Now, there's nothing really about his body language is suggesting
that he wants to fight Picard, right?
And that was the one thing in the 1st half.
I was like, come on.
He's clearly not trying to fight with you But then I think, you
know, I've seen this before, so I know how it goes down.
Yeah, I was wondering that too, because the one criticism that I
would have is that they are a bit slow on the uptake and I don't
know whether that's because I've known how this episode works out
for 30 years or something.
I think that is the slow burn nature of this means when he does
when they do start to communicate in a broad sort of way, is so
satisfying.
And the way the 2 actors play, the way Paul Winfield plays the
moment where Picard repeats Darwak and Jalad at Attenagre. oh, he's
got it, you know, like, thank God.
He's so good really is great.
He's so cute.
Like...
Yeah, he's so cute.
He's so likeable. and we can't really understand him I mean, that's
incredible.
So it's all through body language.
Yeah, yeah.
And he just says a real charm to him.
I mean, despite the pound of latex on his head, he's really
charming and quite likeable, I think.
I will say you might mock the fact that we've been using these
model shots ever since encounter at PowerPoint.
They are great model shoals.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
They're just very repetitive.
That's right.
Deja vu, you know?
Well, I think this looks good too.
And I like how the Tamarian ship is much bigger and much more
powerful than the enterprise.
Actually, you know what?
They have every right to be a little bit perturbed because the
last time Picard was beamed off the bridge was when he went to the
Borg ship and they turned him into Lacutus.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
So I think it's playing with Star Trek a little bit as well
because this seems to me to be a bit like the setup for Arena.
Oh, very much.
The 2 people down on the canyon.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
And so the idea there is that they have to defeat one another
right?
And so here, that's kind of what, I mean, so the conflict in this
episode really comes from Riker and Wharf want to be more
belligerent.
And that is convinced, isn't he?
He's convinced this is a duel.
Yeah, yeah.
And like Worf exists, as I said before, to be wrong.
He's usually wrong about these things, particularly in Star Trek
the Next Generation.
He spent, what, 11 seasons, being roughly wrong.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But, but, and Riker is definitely trying not to start anything.
You know, he wants to rescue Picard and he goes to some lengths to
try and do that, but he doesn't want to be an aggressor.
He doesn't want to get them.
It's not like Janeway.
Do you know what I mean?
Janeway's in the Delta Quadrant and she just wants to blow the
sheet out of various aliens and good for her.
He is still trying to do the right thing and trying to resolve
this peacefully.
And in fact, the way they time it.
Brilliant Picard out just as that monster's attacking the other
character.
I'm like, no, that is genius.
Right, that is basically the problem.
Yeah, he's the one who's responsible.
And I think that says something about us as well.
You know, that Star Trek is about the instinct to build bridges
and, um, you know, link hands across cultures and explore the
world in a peaceful way, but human beings aren't entirely like
that.
And we're also, you know, scared of things that we don't
understand and, you know, we can be pushed and so on.
Like, like, um, close the channel, Mr. Worf and Worf says gladly
as if now we're irritated by the fact that we can't understand
these people.
I was like, you know what?
That's a sensible move, because I can't get through to it.
Actually, no.
If you can't communicate with somebody, then just cutting off that
channel of communication, actually, it might be seen as an
aggressive move.
Yeah.
Yeah, well, screw you.
We can't talk to you.
So now we're on, I think we're on vacation.
No, we know.
So when it's dark, we're not, it's a studio.
You know what?
It's quite effective.
They turn the lies right down.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, they could never achieve this.
They would never have been able to afford shooting at night
outdoors like that in Star Trek and it does work pretty well.
I think, yeah, this takes a while, doesn't it?
A minute ago, when he threw the knife at Picard and then Picard
threw the knife back at him, throws a bag to say, I won't fight
with you.
And then there's a look of utter sort of disappointment on the
Tamarian's face.
That would be the point where I'm like, okay, he was giving me a
gift.
And he's going. he's going his arms wide.
Well, come on.
Come on.
But again, you know, like, we know how this works.
And, yeah, I'm wondering if like a kid would get it more, you
know?
Yeah, it's impossible to know now.
Yeah.
And he, yeah, because we, does it mean give or take?
That means I'm giving a gift.
I'm giving, you know.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
And so he's kind of using the proper names and stuff, which is
what data theorised all those things were, I don't know what Kadir
beneath Momoter means.
What was when the wolves fail?
Is that when you made a mistake?
So when something fails, he says Sharka when the walls fell, and
all that makes me think of is when the Iliad is, it's not in the
Iliad, but when in Aeneid book 2, Troy gets overrun, you know, Troy
the Trojan War, the story that's told in the Iliad, and in its
sort of fan fiction sequel, the Aenead, is a city with enormous
walls that withstands a siege for, you know, 10 years and then
finally is trick into, you know, letting enemy uh, letting enemy
soldiers in and the city burns and the walls fall.
And that's, you know, the, we do get the epic of Gilgamesh, but
the Iliad and the Odyssey are some of the oldest works in Western
literature, and they were absolutely foundational for centuries
afterwards, and even, you know, well into our time, they're still
hugely important.
And so having it, having, you know, that reference to a walled
city falling, I think tells us a little bit about what the
Tamarians are doing.
You imagine that was what Joy Manosky was getting out then, with
that one line?
Well, no, but I look, I think I also think of Jericho, the walls
of Jericho falling.
Is that Book of Joshua?
I don't know.
I guess so. about Joshua.
And again, you know, part of our just shared mythology, at least
this is Western mythology, which is all I know very much about.
So a big walled city falling really speaks to just that whole
mytho historical thing that all these references come from.
Oh, straight to the Berlin wall, do you know?
Well, mind you, then you can put your own reading on this, can't
you?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, in fact, one of the things that this episode does, which I
think is great.
At the end, we have Picard and Dathon at Ella Drill.
Yeah.
And so Star Trek becomes part of that.
Mython historical ref.
And of course, you know, like we have a Star Trek podcast.
We're constantly talking shit about Star Trek all the time.
And so heaps of our shared cultural references.
What's a Star Trek style?
This is a perfect time for me to drop this because someone at my
work came at me the other day and you went, I went looking for
your podcast, you know.
I found the one about Star Trek.
I was like, oh, okay, how did you find it?
He goes, I didn't understand a fucking word you were talking
about.
There you go.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's it.
Because no shared historical reference.
Oh, when you froze, can you say shark and when the walls fell?
Yeah.
No, I said, Nathan, when the techno babble fell.
Oh, there's technobabble in this episode that I think is really
good, by the way. we'll get there Finally, he's realising.
Giving him a gift.
He's taking the fire.
Oh, look at Paul Winfield.
He so happy that he's got it.
Yeah, Jesus Christ.
I thought I was going to have to come at you with the fire, you
know?
Yeah, he's adorable.
So I didn't actually know this, but someone at work told me that
he's in Star Trek 2, which I think I knew, but he's one of the
people who gets a yearwig in his ear, him and check off.
Very pretty, he is too.
I must say.
Yeah, yeah.
He's a pretty young man.
Can I just say so, because it's something you'd normally say.
This is the 1st appearance of the type 6 shuttlecraft in Darmox.
You know?
I'm not sure how it differs from the type five, but you know.
Okay, this is Ensign Gates, by the way, Drew.
I talked to there.
Look, he's really angry.
What does he put his foot up on the seat like that?
That's right, a maneuver. because he's pointing his dick at Data's
left shoulder just to let him know who's in charge.
It's kind of like, so terrible.
My dick's right here.
I'm in charge, right?
Here's my cog.
Yeah, yeah, that's it. right in your face.
But Ensign Gates is over here.
He doesn't do that to Anson Gates because that would be that would
be sexual harassment.
The story game on E, you know, between wharf and its ensign onto
shuttlecraft.
Well, she's not speaking to him.
He's clearly said something inappropriate. during launch and she's
just decided she's fucking blanking him.
We got 5 minutes to kill.
What do you reckon?
I mean, I don't think Ensign Gates gets paid to say any lines here
either.
I will say, though, it's the 1st appearance of Ensign Robin
Leffler in this episode.
Yeah.
It goes on to be Wesley Crusher's Squeeze in the wonderful episode
the game. which I watched this week. and that also lived up to my
memory of it.
Yeah, I mean, that's wonderful for different reasons.
And that's a very ridiculous show.
Yeah, yeah.
That's the thing this show's doing really well by season five. you
know like each week has a different tone and each week is really
properly solid, I think.
Remember I told you that Nurse Okawa has a sequence where she
looks like she's having an orgasm and a turbo lift.
I thought maybe I was exaggerating that.
I was not.
No, she's got the glow.
I remember it.
She sort of breathing heavily and talking to the kids.
Sorry, I shouldn't be talking about orgasms during darm ox, should
I?
So that's the other thing too, which I think is just magnificently
good, is that you've got this big incomprehensible spaceship.
Like he says good shooting to this image of the spaceship.
He can't communicate with it.
It's there.
It's completely incomprehensible.
We don't know what it's doing here.
Jimmy Troy then.
She's going, she said it's wrong.
You're assuming that this is some kind of conflict. wrong.
Man, the women are written brilliantly in this.
I think Deanna's actually really excellent.
And she's the one who works it out.
Dr Beverly has her moments as well.
Yeah, and it's the men look that are being aggressive.
Can't get it working.
But it rather does point out that it's a shame that they aren't
written this well, like throughout the run.
No, and this one is unusual in that there's nothing that's purely
character driven, that this is as procedural as Star Trek gets.
And that's something that I miss.
I think that the others have such heavy premises and are in a
sense not just about a spaceship boldly going where no one has
gone before.
They're about something else.
And here you just have the people doing their jobs well.
And I think there's a real pleasure in that.
I think I've said that before.
I would like to sharply controls this to a night in Stick Bay that
we just watched last week.
Where I asked you the question, you know, did Archer go to
diplomatic school at Starfleet Academy or whatever it's called?
No, it's not Starfleet.
Yeah, you'd make that point though.
There is only one ship in that show.
Well, the diplomacy that Picard expresses in Dalmark is leagues
ahead of, you know, Archer took his dog down to piss on the lawn
for God's sake, and then blame them for it.
Well, I think that that is also, you know, I think Roddenbury
chooses a brash young man in Kirk in the 60s, and then when he's a
bit older, he chooses an older, more thoughtful person and lets
Riker do all of the sort of brash young man things, even though
he's sort of... could be tempestuous and he could be aggressive
but he was a diplomat.
Yeah, yeah. and he wasn't dumb.
He wasn't dumb, but you know, like Picard's main thing is how
thoughtful he is, I think.
Whereas Archer, sorry.
I'm not going to go on, bang on about it too much.
But like the patience that Picard shows in this episode, you know
just in trying to understand him.
So I like this scene.
So this scene is just them working out what the recording means.
So there's a conversation between Dathon and his 1st officer and
you know, they they rightly work out that, you know, something is
being suggested and then rejected and, you know, the River Tamar
in winter comes to mean, be quiet, be still.
The river freezes in winter, presumably and doesn't move anymore.
And so we use that to mean silence or stillness.
And so, you know, he's shut up.
He offers a suggestion and Dathon rejects it.
So they kind of know what's happening pragmatically in this
conversation, but they just don't know what the conversation's
about.
And then we get this cross-referencing the database.
And here's a Darmok is a frozen dessert on the test.
That is very funny.
He's not being played for laughs, like no one reacts to it.
It's adorable.
I do love how they sort of walk away from the language because
they're never going to understand the, because they don't
understand the concept.
So they're talking about the emotional beats between them.
They're picking apart the exchange with what they can recognise
the body language, the emotions, you know, the familiarity.
It, isn't it?
Well, Ada says that he's met 1754 different alien races since
joining Starfleet or none of them mentioned the word Dharmok.
None of them said Dharmok.
Trust Troy to be the one to, you know, get excited about dessert.
She's like, I'm going to try one of those.
No, it is good.
It is great.
And you're right. you know what?
It would be all the worse if they if you threw in the 90s trek
banter.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
No, they're just getting on with their work.
There's nothing about this that's just purely about the
characters.
They're just doing their job.
It seems really smart.
Yes.
Well, like, and so, and I like how Deanna is the one that notices
the, is it, uh, Chantil 3, Shakti 3?
didn't quite see it.
Chantel.
Chantel 3.
Yeah.
And and so Darmok and Tanagra are both in the same story.
And so now they're working out what's going on, just as Picard is
doing it downstairs, which is how these things always work, I
think.
Okay, so this is where we're nearly at the point where the monster
comes in, right?
And you and I have had a few things to say about the design.
So what they've decided to do on this, they go full on predator
don't they?
You've got the outline of the monster.
It's a bit unknowable, isn't it?
I quite like that.
I do too.
I mean, think about the Dauphin in series two.
Do you remember that where it was like woman who turned?
Like the various...
Yeah, and she turns into this enormous thing with red eyes and
fangs. really funny.
They look so shit.
Like they look, they would be embarrassing, you know, at a theme
park.
They're really, really bad.
When Fleetwood Mac turned up as a giant fish.
Yes.
The giant fish?
Exactly.
And so and so what they wisely do is they have a monster and the
monster kind of has horned head and stuff like that.
It looks like a mythological monster, like a monster from Earth's
mythology, which is fair enough.
But it's all in like this special effects silhouette.
Yes.
Yeah, she's really never seen that much of it.
There's, I think there's one shot that looks really ridiculously
funny.
Well, it's still 90s track, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But on the whole, I think it looks magnificent.
I think it's a really good shot.
But maybe they knew.
Maybe they thought, okay, this is a good episode, right?
Let's not just throw in some shitty...
You know, that's right.
Let's do something a bit different.
She's so cute that Robin Lefler, isn't she?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
And so, so, again, the techno babble here, I think the idea is
that you've got to credibly give the impression that these people
know what they're doing.
And when they're doing something technical, so they just have to
sound super confident, we know the situation that he's going to do
some magic tech thing to try and get through the transporter
scattering field.
And so it doesn't matter what he says.
All that matters is that it sounds like technical terminology that
we can't understand because we're from the 20th century or the
21st century.
And I think it's good.
It's not solving the problem.
It's not like saying, you know, the biobed and the chronoson
fields and stuff, it's not solving or creating the problem.
It's just saying, we're doing this thing and you know what it is
but this is how we talk about it and that's fine.
I don't know, like, an episode which is about, you know, cultural
language.
Or in an episode of Star Trek.
If you didn't have a bunch of techno babbling in it, I be like
well, there's some things I'm missing.
Yeah.
There's that wonderful moment where the Tamarians are speaking all
in very concrete terms about rivers and hills and arms and, you
know, like all of that sort of thing, just speaking really
concretely about things.
And Picard is up on the ship's bridge going, you know, do you
think that this would be an agreeable arrangement and stuff?
Like he gives his big speech with all of these abstract nouns in
it and it just shows how completely different they are.
There's a real concreteness and a real poetry to the Tamarian
language and there's just this sort of bizarre, you know, lead
and...
I'm sorry, you just, we just missed the moment there where Picard
finally starts talking in the Tamarian language for a 2nd and um
the Tamarian captain just goes, oh, yes, yeah.
It's such a great moment.
He must be thinking about that boy.
Oh, it's stupid fucking idiot.
For God's sake.
He's thinking, he can be taught, you know.
Yeah, there's a chance here.
Ah, yes.
So Uzami, Uzani, his army at Lashmir. which sounds like a town in
India, doesn't it?
But so maybe we, it's like the Mahabarata, which is another great
epic, like this massive epic, which has battles and things in it
as well.
I think Manosky's got a thing about language, you know, because
obviously he wrote masks, which is another episode which does lean
into sort of an unknowable culture that they're trying to unpick.
But he also wrote Nemesis for series 4 of Voyager, where
Chakotay's on a planet with his army, and they all talk in this
sort of form of metaphor or simile.
Um, and Chakotah's trying to figure out who they're fighting and
what the situation is just through, you know, the way that they're
expressing themselves.
I think it's it is something he's really interested in.
This is his best stabbing.
Ah, so Kath, his eyes uncovered.
He's so excited.
At this point. we've sort of figured out.
You know, what are you saying each time?
So we're going, okay, you're saying, finally, he fucking realised
this, finally. what that means.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That was a great shot there.
Yeah, yeah, I think it looks really good.
We can't be beamed away No, it's just beating the shit out of
you.
I was screaming at my TV.
No, shouldn't have back.
Send him back.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And this is all fear in, you know, like we can't trust the
Tamarians because we can't understand them.
And so we can't just let them do whatever they like to the
captain.
We really have to do something to rescue.
I think this is beautifully directed by the way.
There's stuff happening in the foreground while Picard is
disappearing in the background.
Like this where Dathon falls to the ground in front of Picard as
he's being transported up.
Like Dathon falls into shot.
And I think there's some, I don't know who does this.
Is it Rick Colby?
I can't remember.
I think it's solidly done.
I can't remember now.
It is great.
And you know what?
The shot there is Riker from Below with Wharf behind him.
These 2 idiotic men, but are getting everything wrong.
But I, like, I actually think that they're, like, we never blame
them and the point is never made to write.
You know, that's right.
But I think they do represent, you know, another human impulse, but
we don't, you know.
Yeah, that, you know, where the where the monster rises up into
shot in front of Picard.
I think all of that on location stuff is really good, and I think
the monster benefits, because it is a bit stupid from being just
very well directed.
Poor, poor, poor days on.
When the monster was attacking him.
It was just going and going.
It just kept hearing them.
So for once, I actually believe someone's in a bit of trouble, you
know, in these action sequences in 90s trek.
Oh, you know, it's usually Ned Quint falling down some stairs with
some electricity going around it or something like that, you
know.
Oh, this is the scene where they talk about Romeo and Juliet and
the context of the language.
I just thought this was terrific dialogue.
Because initially I was like, why is Dr. Bevan here?
Obviously, she's a bit she's a bit of a romantic, isn't she?
So she's going to bring in her Shakespearean illusions.
Yeah.
So I think she's there for contractual reasons.
Isn't she like basically everyone has to be in every episode and
so she has to appear.
But she could have just turned up and said, oh, I'm getting
readings that Captain Picard is, you know, in danger and needs
medical attention or something.
Instead, they actually make a part of the discussion.
Yeah.
And I think we forget how superb Lavar is as well.
The way that he delivers that technobabble, like it just never
seems crappy.
Like he, he means it.
He understands it.
There's, he really sells it properly.
I don't think they ever get the chief engineer wrong, you know.
Scotty, Geordie, O'Brien, Torres.
And it's got to be someone that can deliver that fucking Jet
Reno.
Trino trip.
Yeah, it's got to be someone who can deliver that dreadful
Technobabble exposition. but convincingly.
Like it means something.
You know, they're the ones that get all of the insert technobabble
here lines.
Yeah, yeah.
But I think that I think LeVar is a really, really, like he's just
terribly good at it.
He just seems, it was it was ridiculous not having a chief
engineer in series one.
It's beautiful.
Like he's a beautiful man, but I also think he's extraordinarily
good at what he does on this show.
He's good until they give him a romance, and they make that
suggestion that LeVar Burton couldn't pull a chick.
I mean, come on.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Oh, they take away his eyes.
I still can't believe they took away his, he has got the most
beautiful eyes in television.
Yeah.
It's a crime.
You know.
Yeah.
But he still manages to act without being able to use them.
She said Julia up on the balcony without any context.
The image has no meaning.
Yeah.
Gosh.
You know what, right?
when we were watching PowerPlay and things like this.
I mean, there was just none of this in that, was there?
It was just people...
No.
There was a lot of tech about more in that, but there wasn't there
wasn't any smiles.
So we're at an ampas here, aren't we?
Like we can't understand the Tamarians because we don't know their
mythology.
And so we have a universal translator that translates their
language, but we can't translate their thought because their
language is just full of these literary references.
Would we understand their mythology?
Probably not, no.
Well, but it does seem to be hunters and islands and beasts. broad
strokes that we understand, yes.
Yeah.
I want to ask you about the design of the Tamarians.
Okay, sorry to bring it down to this level.
But I really feel like we're giving these bizarre pufferfish
aliens with blowholes a pass because they're in an episode that's
incredibly written.
It's really good.
Well, they do live fucking stupid.
I'm sorry.
Well, they've got big giant nostrils. quite know what's going on
there.
They've got blow holes in the side of the raids.
But enough of their face is, like, they don't have lots of
nostrils, you know, like we've certainly seen considerably worse
than that.
And, you know, these aren't much worse than the Klingons.
They look a bit like the Mocklin, actually.
They do.
Yeah, so it's not that terrible, I think.
I'll just say something though, right?
I was so bewitched by the performers.
That's the 1st time I've noticed how massive the nostrils are.
Yeah, yeah.
But this, I think, is absolutely the central scene, isn't this the
most important scene of the episode?
So this is the one where Picard sits down.
No, no, but even before that, with his patience and his
imagination, he's sitting down and trying to learn what the story
is.
And he does learn it, doesn't he?
Like he learns that the 2 men, Darmok and Gelard, you know, come
to the island separately.
They encounter the beast at Tanagra, and then they leave together
and so he's able to understand the outlines of the story.
It's so wonderful.
That line.
Paul, who is, yeah, the character is injured at this point.
And he's still full of good humour, you know?
He's wonderful.
He really sells it and he is doing bullshit alien language, but he
knows what it means.
He's clearly delivering it in a way that indicates the actor knows
it.
Again, because I have driven this point home in the past. you know
and you've said Star Trek should be all about spectacle and all
that. and I do get that.
I get there.
This has boiled down to 2 people around a campfire.
It's an extraordinary scene.
You could throw beautiful imagery at this and a 1000000 starships
and all that, and it wouldn't be as good as it is here, you know?
But I think that also what Star Trek does is this, and this is
central to Star Trek is exploring right here.
That's exactly it.
Yeah. exploring the galaxy and meeting new people and learning
from them and finding out about them.
And one of the things that I love about this too, is that they
don't know how it turned out at the end.
And so they kind of go, they're not new enemies, but we don't
know.
And it does look like they have the potential to be our friends.
Sure, it is. up in Kersman track at some point, the Tamarias.
Yeah, there's a Tamarian security officer on board the side.
There we go.
Now we know it works out then, don't we?
There's an episode, he's called Kashon. and it's Kayshon, his eyes
open, I think, is the name of the episode.
Does he talk like this all the way through?
No, because he's been learning how to speak, like a federation
person as well, but he does sometimes.
Imagine they could have like this very tense action sequence and
then he will say some bizarre metaphor. what does he mean?
Yeah, yeah.
No, they have occasionally and they've done jokey ones.
There are additional ones too.
And it relies on the fact that we've seen Tarmok and Darmok and we
know what these things mean.
I think if you're a fan of trait, you've seen Dahmok.
Yeah, of course.
This is one of the biggies.
But, you know, as well, like we've we've been occasionally um been
critical of Patrick Stewart.
Yeah, yeah.
But like, but he's brilliant.
This is his strength here.
He's a storyteller, isn't he?
So when he gets to tell the story of Gilgamesh in a minute, he
just gets into it in such an expressive way.
I was like, I'm watching an episode of this.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
Well, this is this is him working it out.
He's actually worked it out, not just how to communicate with him
but what this strange incomprehensible behaviour has been about.
You and me here at Eladrell.
But there is a difference between this which is leaning into
Patrick Stewart's sort of theatrical strengths.
And there's an episode that starts where they're playing out a
Shakespearean seeing Data and Picard.
I think it's Henry the 5th or something like that.
They, you know, they, they do a whole 10th and it's so, it's so
indulgent and it really has, yeah, yeah. nothing to do with the
episode at all.
No, it does because it's Henry.
It's Henry, in disguise, speaking to his men who are about to go
into battle.
I can't remember, but I do remember Picard quoting from that scene
again when he's in a similar situation.
Oh, God, it still feels incredibly indulgent.
I don't think it's all out.
And it's a bit boring.
This is brilliant.
Whereas this is, yeah, this is, this is what he does, isn't it?
This is what Patrick Stewart does. stands on stage and delivers.
But the thing is, and the thing that is incredible, and it seems
if memory alpha is, if memory alpha is to be believed that it's an
accident, but they tell the story of Gilgamesh and Nkidu.
And Enkidu dies in the battle with the Bull of Heaven or whatever
it is.
And that's when we hear about that.
And when we hear what Gilgamesh says on Enkidu's death, that's
when Dathon dies.
And so Picard is saying that about Dathon.
And I just found this scene so moving because again, it's about 2
people who come together, you know, 2 different people who come
together, they fight.
They learn to, you know, they end up as brothers and they fight
this monster together, one of them ties.
Look at look at Dathon's reaction when he says, Gilgamesh and
Enkidu at Uruk, and he understands it, and he's smiling like, this
isn't a bad death for him because he's taught Picard to understand
the sort of stories that are the basis of his whole way of
thinking about the world.
It's I just found this incredibly good.
Smiling.
I'm saying, Gilgamesh.
It's beautiful, isn't it?
It's so beautiful Yeah.
This, look. so David's dying and and Picard is talking about
Ankidu dying as well.
Wept bitter tears.
Yeah.
Oh, and he's still, he's still talking, he's still telling him as
he's talking. was my companion.
Yeah.
Oh, and and the thing is...
Yeah, I know.
I know.
Because we're the same as them.
We're the same as the Tamarians, you know.
And Dathon gives his life for the sake of reaching out to new
people, for the sake of getting to know, uh, you know, to make
contact with us because again, that's why they're like us.
And I just think it's extraordinary that, you know, like I know
that you're a big fan of the kind of gritty, cynical aspects of
Star Trek.
But this is what I want.
This is the sort of thing that I want.
There's no reason you can't have both.
No, that's true.
But this is this is what I want Star Trek to be.
And Star Trek is less about this than sometimes we think it is.
Well, I think Star Trek is more often, you know, like you say, you
know, risable space problems.
Yeah, yeah, that's fine, you know.
But you know what?
Props for them. you know, to give in the audience some credit to
actually, you know, go through.
This is quite a slow paced episode and it's quite a smart episode
and, you know, you do need a bit of patience to watch it.
And so I give them some credit for putting this out.
Because this isn't what they normally do, really.
Well, but no, I mean, Star Trek the Next Generation moves at a
pretty stately pace by modern television standards.
But we do get a tour where they just have to throw in an action
sequence just because, you know, it's been too slow for 10
minutes.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I don't think that's a bad instinct.
Well, I think this is using that sort of snail's pace in a smart
way.
I mean, we had a fight scene and we, we, having, look, we're
firing on the Tamarians now.
You know, Michael Piller says that this episode has everything
philosophy, dealing with language and what it does for us, great
acting performances, a monster, and a space.
Look at these, look at that.
The monster, which just sort of like lifts its arms up and then
runs out of shot when Picard disappears and goes to grab him and
that's the one shot of the monster that I think looks so stupid.
I just love it so much Curse is spoiled again.
Yes, that's exactly it.
That's what he's saying in Ellentrell monster language.
Which I can understand as well.
I think you do have to be quite a confident show to put out
something like this as well.
You know, and I think next year at this point, it is riding high
and...
Yeah.
Well, it just does this very well.
I mean, I think it strives to do this.
There's episodes quite early on that are talky or that are
exploring some philosophical thing.
You know, think about measure of a man in series 2, which is by no
means a good season, but has ambitions to say something about the
human condition or whatever.
I mean, I think every single episode of the series one is trying.
It's like...
This is the aspirations.
But they've just, they've basically gone to a point where they've
honed their craft.
Yeah, so we're really cross and then Picard says, shut up.
And that's the other thing too.
Like, the River Taymark in winter is be quiet.
And we can understand this conversation now, can't we?
Yes, we can.
We couldn't understand the 1st conversation, but now we can. clever
isn't it?
It's good. isn't it?
So, Kath, his eyes open.
That's what Dathon said.
I think we understand every character throughout this, we
understand the journey.
And that's why we now understand the language.
It's so clever.
Yeah, it's good, isn't it?
And then this this ritual that they perform.
And it's not the 1st ritual as well because there's ritual
involved here.
So this ritual when they hear about Dathon's death.
And you remember the ritual that Dathon was performing where he
put those things to his forehead and then put them in a circle
around his campsite or his bed?
Carl doesn't at the end, doesn't he?
Yeah, it's never explained or commented on, but it is another
thing as well.
You know, they have myth and ritual.
And these are very basic things about what it is to be human and
that's what this episode's investigating.
And so putting the rituals in there and not commenting on them is
good.
And I love this as well.
You keep it.
I think I've said this to you before.
These aliens in Star Trek.
Some of them seem tailor made for the episode that they're in and
they don't exist beyond it.
Others feel as if they have a whole life outside of the episode
that they're in.
And like you say, little details like that, the religion, the
mythology, it all helps.
It all builds up and I just adore this final shot, Picard at the
window.
Yeah.
Is it is it a thing where because they're incomprehensible to
everyone else it's super important to them to reach out?
They go to these lengths because people can't understand them?
Like, I don't know, just in case somebody else does and there's
conflict.
No, no, no, I just mean that because the Tamarians are
incomprehensible and they're incomprehensible to the sort of
people that you can just use in it, there's Homeric hymns.
I wondered why it was the Homeric hymns.
I think I'm quite a challenge, you know.
He likes, he just likes people to know that he can read classical
Greek, not classical Greek, ancient Greek.
You know, it's a flex.
Well, he'd be like, oh, you're probably one on a classic. hold
with you that book learning.
Hear some water polo. watch that Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, so this, I think this final scene where Picard.
Where Picard says, they've gone to these incredible lengths.
The door is open to communicate and connect with us.
And that's what we do in Starfleet.
And yes, I just think that takeaway is so good.
Very different. from series one.
Series one, it felt very sort of empirical where they were going
around civilising people and saying, right, we're going to leave
them now. a bunch of drug dealers.
Goodbye, you know.
Now we're reaching out.
Now we're communicating.
Now we're trying to understand.
Oh, that shot of Picard at the window.
It's great.
And the music's great here as well. in that sort of Native
American wind instrument.
So the music, is it Chataway?
Shadowway does a lot of that.
So I think the music, the astonishing musical queue, is the one
that underlies Picard telling the story of Gilgamesh, and the
music becomes...
It's beautiful, but it just sounds ancient.
Like, it really sells, like, I don't know if it's in one of those
sort of ancient modes or something, but it really sells that this
is an ancient story being told from, you know, 1000s of years
ago.
It works really well.
And the music is so rarely interesting.
I mean, I'm perhaps not as critical of the music of 90s trek as
you are.
But if you're never going to find sort of excitement and drama in
the music, then perhaps where they're trying to do something
cultural like that in a slower moment, that's going to have more
of an impact on you.
Look, I think there are real moments in the music, but generally
it's not very interesting, but I thought that that music was
really good.
And I do remember at the time when Jay Chataway's name started to
appear in the credits that I knew what sort of music he produced
and I really liked it.
And I do have on my shelf here the best of both worlds, CD
soundtrack by Ron Jones.
Well, I, um, I said to you, didn't I, that I went and watched
because this was a classic that lived up to its reputation.
So I went on then to watch a couple of other classics in inverted
commas.
The visitor from DS9 and Layton image, which I think is a classic
from Voyager, just to see if they lived up to, you know, I thought
oh, come on, I'm on a roll now after a night and sick play an
endgame.
One, they absolutely did.
They were both excellent.
The visitor has a J Chataway score and it is. beautiful.
Like absolutely beautiful.
So I think perhaps he was a lot better at doing the slower moving
sort of character episodes than, you know, space battles.
So for me, I just think this is so essentially Star Trek, it's so
Star Trek just boiled down to Star Trek.
There's no character stuff.
There's no backstory, there's no big intergalactic conflict.
It is just this very, very small scale.
And there's a kind of proper philosophical thing.
It has something worthwhile to say about human beings and it is
about communication and connection and things.
And I think that that's what Star Trek's about when it's at its
best, for this thought, this was maybe the best episode that we've
actually done so far.
I probably would rate yesterday's enterprise is better than this.
But I thought, but I think it's, it's doing a lot more.
Like there's a there's a lot more happening.
Uh, sort of yeah, in content.
But yeah, I think you're right.
And I often think that Star Trek is at its best when it simplifies
things and puts 2 people in the room. 2 fucking good actors in a
room and gives them interesting things to say, which is surprising
really because of how much I love, you know?
It's not. in all the space.
But no, they could do it too with things like duet and walls and
things like that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Progress.
But in terms of the next generation.
I mean, this is top tier trek. absolutely phenomenal.
All right, we've reached the end of the episode, so it's time to
work out what we're doing next, and it's my turn to go to untitled
Star Trek project.com slash randomiser and press the button.
So Joe, ask me what we're doing.
Nathan, what are we doing?
We are doing Kurtzman track.
Oh, yeah.
So, I had a feeling we might be going in this direction. all Yeah
it's been a while.
All of it.
We're just going to sit down and watch it from Discovery episode
one all the way through to the most recent lower decks with peanut
hamper in it.
Oh, actually, there might be one hour.
Oh, I hope we get the one where Lower Decks goes to DS9.
Off you go.
All right.
Yes.
Okay.
Now, as usual, we have terrible difficulty working out what an
episode is from its title.
Yeah, we may...
Only that you won't know that. because Nathan's very good at
editing.
Yeah.
Well, because they only have on the screen titles if they're
prodigy and lower decks, only the animated ones at on-screen
title.
So, yeah.
All right, here goes.
Oh, this is good.
This is Star Trek Discovery, season four, episode five.
It's called the Examples, and it is an absolutely classic Star
Trek moral dilemma.
It's like, oh, yes.
Yeah, it's a really solid. it's virtually a standalone episode.
And it is, I think Discovery season 4 is its best season, and I've
already said heaps and heaps of times that I think Discovery
season 4 ends in a magnificent way, which is partly inspired by
Darmark, I think.
But this is, it's absolutely as Star Trek as possible.
Like it could be an original Star Trek episode, but it's all done
with, you know, the production sensibilities of Kurtzman. things.
It's called the examples.
Okay, is it our moral dilemma of, you know, tubixes?
No, no.
So it's a, no, they come across a society that organises itself in
a particular way that they find problematic and they have to
rescue people who are under some kind of an environmental threat
but the people don't want to take certain people with them and
those people are the examples.
It's really very Star Treky.
Oh, this sounds amazingly good.
This sounds like the sort of episodes where you and me are going
to have 2 different readings on it and we're going to argue our
points of view.
That sounds terrific.
Yeah, well, you know what?
I often find the moral dilemma episodes of trek to be the more
interesting ones, you know.
Yeah, it's the absolutely classic thing where you set up a society
to make a point, you know, like critical care or, or my favourite
one is children of time, where it's like, if we go back, 7000
people will be dead, like, you know.
Yeah, yeah.
No, so this isn't putting them in a moral dilemma.
This is the one where you come across a society that has a
particular structure and you use that society to comment on our
morality and stuff like that.
So, yeah, it's a sort of fairly classic Star Trek thing, I think.
Well, and you know what?
We did series 4, didn't we?
The episode where they were trying to get through to the
computer.
It was the mid-season break episode, wasn't it?
Yeah, that was really good.
So, yeah, yeah.
Bring it on.
Okay, let's do that.
Awesome.
You've been listening to entitled Star Trek Project with Joe Ford
and Nathan Bottomley, where online at untitled Star Trek Project
com, where you can find links to our Twitter, Facebook, and
YouTube channel.
Our podcast artwork is by Kayla Ciceran, and the theme was
composed by Cameron Lamb.
This episode was recorded on the 14th of October 2022 and released
on the 21st of October.
We'll see you next time for Star Trek Discovery, the examples.
Hey, Joe. Hi.
I'm gonna do that again, 'cause that was really kind of low key
and then you came in with, like, a mess.
You have been low key for a couple of weeks of your age, you
know?
I actually noticed that.
Yeah, yeah, let's let's try it.
You used to be some zip in there.
Hey, Joe. I don't think I ever quite reached those levels. but
somewhere between what I just did and what you did.
Nobody podcast quite as enthusiastically as me, you know.
All right, here goes.
Hey, Joe. Hi.
So last week, we expressed the fear.
Yeah.
So last week we expressed some apprehension about Darmok, insofar
as we, oh, fucking hell.
Why am I saying insofar as?
I don't know, because you're now shaked. because you've watched
this episode.
That's right.
So last week, I expressed some concern.