Hey, Joe. Hi.
So I've got a question for you.
Oh, yeah, we're heading to this week's episode.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And it's about Kurtzman Trek.
Mm-hmm.
Because we are taking another deep dive into modern trek now.
Why is Lower Decks the best iteration of Kurtzman Trek?
You know, I actually think it is possible that it seriously is.
I think clearly discovery is the kind of flagship show, and it's
the one they're spending the most money on and that is the one
that's most like a Star Trek show, but it kind of flailed about
for a bit and had all those production problems and it's only
really kind of settled down to be sort of consistent.
And I loved it all the way through, but it would not be unfair to
say that it took a while to work out what it was going to do.
Whereas lower decks, I think, came out of the gate, all guns
blazing after they'd had some experience producing Star Trek.
And I think it's really consistent.
I think it's properly good Star Trek.
And I think that it just adores all the various versions of Star
Trek that have happened throughout the year.
So it's hard not to really like it a great deal.
Well, if I think about all the other Kurtzman shows, like Picard
obviously, for an episode or two. had a massive love letter to TNG
when it brought Riker and Troy into the show and data.
And, um, Discovery had the whole of season two, which was a huge
love letter to the original series with Spark and Pike and number
one.
Um, and oh my god, we sure am I forgetting here.
I feel like there's a Kirkman show, I'm forgetting.
No, then it's just lower decks, isn't it?
That's it.
But the thing that lower decks can do because it's set in that 90s
trek universe is it can just overload.
It's with like tons of Easter eggs and treats for the fans, so
many references.
And it doesn't just confine itself to 90s track, either.
You know, it does, there is lots of fanfare to the original series
as well.
Even Enterprise.
They even, you know, venerate enterprise on the odd occasion.
God bless them.
I think it still works as a Star Trek show even if you don't
really know Star Trek all that well.
And it doesn't rely exclusively on just kind of callbacks to
previous episodes.
I think it's funny in its own right.
Oh, and each episode is like a plot in its own right, there's
genuine character development.
So it does work on that level.
But let's be honest, if you're a Trek fan, you're going to get the
most out of this.
Yeah, 0 yeah, absolutely.
I think that's definitely right.
I mean, let's compare it, say, to the Orville, which both of us
watched, and I think both of us quite liked it, is that?
I thought it took like half a season to find its groove.
Like there was a couple of very, very early episodes where the
comedy, they were kind of feeling their way into science fiction
comedy.
But I thought the 2nd season was amazing.
And when they realised they could do genuinely like dramatic
episodes, that two-parter.
What's the Android character's name?
Isaac?
And they basically did like a take on the best of both whales.
But with this enormous budget. you know, and gags as well.
Ah, it was just amazing TV.
Yeah.
And I mean, that's a love letter to 90s Star Trek too, isn't it?
But I think this is better than that.
And I think it's funnier, and I think it's sure of what it wants
to do.
And I kind of miss the fact, you know, the thing about the Orville
is it's very Star Trek like, but it's not Star Trek, and it
doesn't take place in that world.
And however much it might owe to 90s trek, it's not Star Trek.
Well, you know what lower decks can do, that no other Star Trek
show can do, it has an unlimited budget.
Like, it's animated.
No, but so it can be as weird as they want it to be.
You know, it can be as visually stunning.
Some of the set pieces.
I know they're animated, but they look amazing.
They can do like 100s of ball cubes coming out of nowhere and
having a master space battle because, you know, that don't cost
any more than just, you know, drawing the bridge. right.
That's right.
And I think I think the set pieces in this are often visually
arresting.
Yeah.
You know, there is another thing that I sneakily like about it
which is that I think it probably annoys a lot of Star Trek fans.
And the reason it does is that it's canon, whatever that means.
And so these things are really happening in the same world as the
Adventures of Kirk and Picard and Janeway and all of that.
But they're ridiculous.
Not anything, though.
It annoys them because it isn't the best of the best.
And like the episode that we're about to go into.
Like the big twist in this episode, spoiler, before we even get
there, is this ship is chosen for all these tests because they're
a bit shit.
Yeah, yeah, I don't think they're going to fail.
I mean, we talked about that last week when we did take me out to
the hollow suite.
What was fun about that is in a franchise that is overwhelmingly
about how competent the characters are, or at least depends
strongly on how competent the characters are.
Seeing them fail at something like the baseball game is actually
really fun and refreshing.
And, you know, having these guys who aren't dumb or hopeless or
anything like that.
Like our 4 main characters in lower decks are all kind of super
loveable and good at their jobs.
They're just not in charge and it is kind of nice.
I love how they make so many mistakes, but they always come good
and it's always, it always, always due to their competence that
they, that they are very good at what they do.
But also as well, like you said in discovery that one of the best
things about discovery was it wasn't about the bridge crew.
Um, and that is true, but all the characters in discovery, they're
kind of like important to the ship, you know, they, they, and then
eventually now they've all got important roles.
Now Burnham is the captain in Discovery.
Yeah, yeah.
But when it started, it wasn't that, though, was it?
You know, there was Ensign Tilly, there was Michael who had no
rank at all.
There was the guy who ran the mushroom farm, you know, like it
wasn't the normal bridge crew, so it wasn't a normal Star Trek
show and it's gradually turned itself into a Star Trek show.
But the premise of this is deliberately.
This is about the lower decks crew.
It's deliberately not about the important people.
And what's the most interesting thing you could possibly do is do
90s trek, but show behind the scenes. of the grunts of what they
get out to.
And like one of the funniest jokes in this.
And I'll mention it now because I probably won't be able to have
time during the episode because there's so many gags in this
episode.
One of the funniest jokes I found in this was when the bridge crew
having to do tests as the lower decks crew.
Yeah.
And they're in the middle of a battle simulation.
They like, right, you need to go to the cargo bay and you need to
stack up these hexagonal pods and that's all you've got to do.
And they were like, and one guy goes, why the fuck did they design
them this way?
Because every time the ship rocks, they all fall over again.
And I'm just like, 0 my god, that's so funny.
You know.
So good.
Because every time you were in TNG, every time you went to the
cargo bank, there was those things all stacked up.
Yep, yep.
Did one fall on wolfs back at one point?
We'll come to that because that is an episode that gets explicitly
referenced in this show.
The joy of this.
It's not just, it's irreverent.
It is that it is a fresh take on something we already know really
well.
Yeah.
And I would have thought this impossible until I saw this, and I
wasn't convinced at all this was going to work when I went into
it.
It's doing the rick and Morty thing of having, you know, like a
100 gags a minute and just one idea after another.
They just, it's like someone's got a machine gun of conceptions
and they're just firing at you, and each episode, it just, I think
they're packed for 20 minutes, they're packed, and one lower decks
episode at 20 minutes long, has more ideas, I'd say, potentially
than a season.
That 1st season of Enterprise, you know?
Or at least a handful of episodes. what was that one we watched
Strange New Worlds.
There was nothing in that at all.
Every one of these episodes is packed.
Yeah.
And manages to do, I think, a proper Star Trek plot with some kind
of character beat as well.
In a way that 90s Star Trek or next gen at least doesn't always
manage.
Like NextGen is very frequently just about our space problem and
how we solve the space problem.
And sometimes we get a character arc.
But because this is a sort of 25 minute cartoon, and that's part
of the genre, and we have a good set of characters even after only
what we've had 20 episodes, like very well drawn characters with
interesting relationships with each other and so on.
I think it, I think it's working really well.
Even more surprising now.
I promise we'll go into the episode in a minute.
I said we've pad out the beginning here because the episode is
only 20 minutes long.
But this isn't panic.
This is intelligent discussion.
That's right.
Um, is that genuine character development is possible. within this
comedic show, and I remember at the end of series one, there was a
I think it was the penultimate episode where, oh my word, Mariner
and her mother, the captain, were battling it out, and it was an
extended form of therapy that took place as a, like a fight
between the 2 of them, and it was vicious and nasty, and speaking
of somebody who had a very combative relationship with his mother
I could absolutely see myself in Mariner and the struggles that
she was going through and and they reached this like fabulously
touching resolution.
This is a comedy.
This is a Star Trek comedy and this is genuinely moving.
I think that that relationship, that primary relationship between
Mariner and Freeman is so good, and it continues to develop, and
it doesn't tend to sort of retread itself.
It doesn't tend to go over familiar ground.
Like there is a kind of standard way that Mariner annoys Freeman
and vice versa, but they have a very clear affection for one
another, which I think is really lovely and, you know, for
instance, in this particular episode, I think is a source of a lot
of its warmth, I think.
Well, okay, well, I mean, I think we have, because I know people
out there that have watched a lot of trek that I haven't given
this.
The liar day. you know, I haven't given this a shot. and I'm
hoping, just with this one episode alone, that they may be take a
little dive into lower decks after hearing the one.
I mean, you talk about plots.
There's about 18 plots in this one, isn't it?
All recycled from old Star Trek episodes.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, we'll definitely get to that.
All right, so I'm going to count us in. shall I do that?
I'm ready.
I've got my finger hovering over the play button.
I just want to say one last thing before we go in.
Yeah.
I could have sworn I saw boy in this butthole in this, you know.
I've seen that picture doing the rounds on Twitter, you know, of
his legs up in the air.
It's so bad.
We'll point it out when it comes, it's terrifying in all kinds of
ways.
Oh, terrifying.
Is that what you found?
Well, yeah, kind of.
All right.
I'm going to count us in.
Five, four, three, two, one, and we're off.
Oh, I've got a little Amazon original thing happening first.
Me too.
Okay.
Oh, that um, that 90s aesthetic.
It's just immediately obvious, isn't it?
with the Cerritos.
Yeah, yeah, but the, you know, this thing looks like the Botany
Bay from the Neutral Zone in series one of Star Trek, the Next
Generation.
And this gag, this 1st gag about the time loop.
I'm getting a distress call from Bakersfield.
And it's the same distress call.
It's so cheesy.
Like it's...
But that literally lets you lets you know what you're in for.
And there we go.
This is the premise of the show, isn't it?
Oh, they won't leave us behind.
Six hours later.
They come back.
So good.
So yeah, these are our main 4 characters of Tandy, Rutherford
Mariner, and Boemla.
And I think all of them are really, really terrific.
And the relationship between Tandy and Rutherford, I think, is
particularly sweet.
All right, opening credits.
I am going to tell you that not only does this start with a riff
on the original Star Trek theme, you know, like the those notes at
the very beginning of the original Star Trek theme, but it also
references Star Trek the animated series.
And I'm going to tell you later how I know that.
Look at this.
This is deliberately taking the piss out of Voyager, because
Voyager goes over an ice planet, but it certainly doesn't crash in
the cell, into the planet, as it goes.
Yeah, yeah.
And this one, they've redone these credits and they've redone the
Cerritos model for series two.
So these credits have the pack led ships in it, and they're the
big bad that's revealed at the end of series one.
Isn't it marvellous, though, the fact that they could have like
you know, they can do anything dynamic that they want, and yet
they're still doing the ship going very gracefully over camera.
This is supposed to be 90s straight.
Oh, my God, that alien sucking on the missiles.
And the way he looks out of the audience. hilarious.
Yeah, he looks at the camera. it's wonderful What's going on
here?
And the music again is also incredibly 90s trick.
We need to talk about that music, you know, particular moment.
And the fact, I was going to say, the fact that I didn't get why
this was called I excretus.
Obviously, until the gag hits at the end.
Yeah, it was such a funny joke.
Oh, dear.
So, um, I have the impression that Dr. Tana is actually from a
race that's been in Star Trek elsewhere, the cat people.
But I can't remember, I should really have looked that up
beforehand.
But what we have here is the premises being explained.
So we have someone coming along to test them by running them
through simulations.
And this person is a Pandronian, we're just hearing that now.
Trifected.
So the head, the body and the legs.
All work.
So I have to say that I watched an episode of the animated series
called BEM.
I thought it was BM for Bundo Monster.
It's actually time.
And that introduces the Pandronians and there is just one
Pandronian character called Bem that is like her.
And so he splits himself into bits.
When we saw her, when we saw her legs, there were little arms
coming out of the legs and in this episode, Bem sneaks up to Kirk
and Spock and replaces their phases and tricorders with dummies.
No, their faces and communicators with dummies.
It's we will talk more about it later, but...
Did you see the name of some of those simulations then?
What was called, what was called Cause and Effect?
They're using actual episode time.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
But there's other ones like there's like carbon-based life forms
and stuff like that, but there's all references to like they're
just...
So great.
Oh, no, that was called Caretaker.
Evolution, chain of command, hero worship.
Oh my God.
I mean, talking about on the nose.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
But I think this, and I do have a question about this after the
episode.
I think I'll wait till after the episode, but this does lead into
something that this show does an awful lot and that is the, you
know, riffing on cliches, trek cliches and making making jokes out
of them.
So essentially on TNG, DS9, Voyager and Enterprise.
They treat a lot of these premises very seriously.
Lower decks comes along and just rips the shit out of him.
Yeah.
So we're in the mirror universe now for Mariner's 1st thing.
And they're all going, they're all going, oh, I'm so horny.
I want talk to somebody.
This is great.
This is this is so good.
Oh, you could lose a whole day to that cycle.
I'm horny.
I want to torture someone and then when I torture someone, I get
horny.
And like it's just making fun of how every, you know, like they're
evil and sort of highly sexualised in the merry universe.
It' wonderful.
It's so funny as well, the way that she's caught out.
It's like, she's using the wrong hand.
Yeah, so simple.
But it's the wrong hand because it's the mirror universe, right?
And she's the reflection of her.
What he says here, right, about, oh, have you got to kill the
captain or find a way to get a promotion?
That's literally what Hoshi says in the Enterprise mirror episode
you know.
Well, I mean, that's the premise in the very 1st one in Star Trek
in Mirror, Mirror, where it's like dead man's boots.
Like you have to knife someone and kill them in order to get a
promotion.
So this is our 1st failed mission.
But I like the fact the 2nd she goes into the Mirror University
relation, she just goes, oh, I've just got to be a bit evil
right?
She'll be fine.
Oh, my God.
Okay, so this is this is basically the episode of DS9, Sons of
Mogue, where Worf's brother wants to be killed and he has to go
out with a knife.
But there's an episode of Star Trek, the Next Generation from
series five, I want to say, called ethics, literally called ethics
where Warp's back is broken when a big thing falls on him for no
reason in one of those big stacked containers, plastic containers
in cargo bay falls, I don't even breaks his spine.
And it's all about...
He says he broke his back picking up a peanut.
I don't know what that's a reference to.
And then these people who run in wearing the stupid red surgeon's
uniform.
That's what they're wearing in that episode, isn't it?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But they're also wearing it.
You know, like Pulaski is wearing one when she operates on
Picard's heart in whatever that dreadful episode is.
I mean, do you remember that FX and you've got Dr. Bev being all
pious and...
Yeah, with the woman who wants to try out a new technology on
Wolf.
Yeah, but also, like Riker says no, he's not going to do it.
You know, like, and so that's...
Whereas in DS9, of course, Wolf literally just picks up the knife
and stabs him.
And this inspector of the gun now.
Inspector of the gun.
And look at all, like you can see the, the, um, timber props
holding up the fronts of the buildings because it is just on the
Paramount lot, like they're not actual hole buildings and stuff.
Oh, the choke later on, because I would probably forget where she
goes on about us.
Just 2.5 years of lessons, Mariner, and you fell off the horse
really.
Well, the horse is just stamping us.
She goes, I would never get stabbed by a horse and she goes, no, no
that wasn't that wasn't one of the corrupted ones.
That was you.
Oh, and he's, Rutherford is so adorable.
So this is Eugene Cordero, who played Pillboy in The Good Place
and who played...
Yeah, yeah, and who plays Josh's boss in crazy ex-girlfriend.
I had no idea.
And like, I just think he's absolutely adorable.
And this, you know, he's absolutely ready and willing to sacrifice
his life in this thing.
And of course, the ship blows up, even though he's such a good guy
really good about all of these different missions. is we think we
kind of know the cliches.
And I was kind of nodding along with them, Dan.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
This is what happens in the episode and actually that's not the
way out and that's not how you pass.
So it's subverting the cliche, it's quite a lot.
Okay, I need to talk about this.
I need to talk about the sequence on the ball queue.
But this is a riff on either best of both worlds.
I think it's better both worlds.
Yeah, I've got later design elements. from later on.
Like that, the, uh, plasma things and stuff, I don't know.
And the ball.
Spheres are from Voyager.
They didn't come along.
But the babies are from the season 2 TNG episodes.
Yeah, Q. But, no, I said, I wanted to talk about this about the
music here.
Because what they do is explicitly reference the music from best
of both worlds in a really playful way and the attention to detail
in that because I sat up and was like, that's the music from best
of both worlds.
I've got the soundtrack to that.
And I think I think if you are going to do this, if you are going
to do a love letter to 90s trek as a TV show, then you need to get
the details right.
And they're absolutely doing that.
And then we go through the simulation again, over and over again
faster and faster, and each time through the music is faster as
well.
So it's making fun of the music.
And and just also just making fun of what Star Trek, you know, what
Star Trek is.
So he escapes, he gets 74%.
Now he's saving babies and drones and stuff like that.
The expectation was to get 100%, though, was that he had to teach
the ball queen empathy.
Oh, and Peter at chess.
It's so great.
Now, here we are in the naked now, naked time simulation.
This is just blissful.
Look, there's men snogging and having sex.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
There's some jet naked looking fantastic. an interracial male
couple.
Yeah, yeah, an Andorian and a trail. where you start and where I
begin.
And it's ransom.
Oh my god.
So, uh, Tahana and Shaq's fucking.
Is that what we to understand?
Because they do get in bed together later.
When the cat literally puts her claws into his native body.
Such a funny visual gag.
Oh my god.
It is so good.
Now they're having they're having a meal in the captain's quarters
and it just reminds me of the giant meal in Saru's quarters.
In, in, uh, in, uh, forget me not from a few weeks ago, because
there's even like a big tray of like crab claws and stuff, which
just make it look like alien food.
I love the fact as well that like she's like, 0 my god, this is
pesto.
Like, what sort of food are they getting in the lower deck?
Yeah, they can't get pesto.
But she likes it because she's green.
I think it might be a slightly racist joke I think.
Okay, do you think?
Maybe, maybe.
This is great.
And then in a second, obviously, yeah.
So we we jump to the senior officers. doing the lower deck
simulations.
And the joke is initially, you know, they think they're winging
it.
But actually, when the shit hits the fan, they're really rubbish
at doing the media tasks.
No, here they are, you know, bragging about how easy you have it
as a lower decker and wondering why they ever kind of never
decided.
Oh, here we go, shacks.
Yeah, but look, excuse me.
My cat absolutely sleeps on my arse like that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
But I mean, that's a rich vein of jokes, isn't it?
You know, how cat-like taana is with her scratching poles and...
Okay, that's something that lowered... you do.
You can have a character that's a cat and it's not embarrassing
makeup or anything like that.
Yeah, yeah.
Oh, God, here they are. those hexagonal things.
That's it.
But the things that they're missing out on.
So here this is Klingon attack, and there's a Klingon attack
happening in the corridor that when the door opens, and then later
on the door opens and clearly the Star Trek, the next generation
episode, Cupid is going on.
Like, look, here he is with the sort of Robin Hood hats and stuff
like that.
It's just so absurd.
Do you think, like, do you mean, do you think, uh, Star Trek fans
don't have much of a sense of humour?
I think that's why some people rejected this a little bit.
Well, no, but I think it's a way of watching Star Trek where the
memory alpha way of watching Star Trek where it's a series of
historical events that take place in the future.
And if the events are ridiculous.
And let's face it, this is not the only Star Trek series to be
ridiculous.
Well, I mean, they all touch on the ridiculous.
We watch baseball the other week, you know?
Yeah, yeah.
In the middle of a war.
Yeah, that's right.
But, but, you know, like a lot of the ridiculousness comes from
the characters noticing what happens to people in Star Trek, you
know.
I mean, I don't think there is a show, another show as meta as
this, about his own franchise.
I can't think of one.
No, but, you know, if you worked on the Enterprise, you know, you'd
be taken over, but oh, here we go.
We were imagining Shaq's naked.
It's like a nice bubble bar, I'll tell you.
Yeah, yeah, Shax is a bit of a daddy.
I, you know, anyway.
It's a thing, you know.
Don't judge me.
Yeah, but, you know, life on a starship would be absurd.
You'd be taken over by a godlike entity one week. you know, the
next week.
We're all playing Robin Hood, you know, the next week.
We're at war with the Klingons or whatever. like it's chilli.
It literally like points out to me.
Oh my god, we spent like 7 seasons of Voyager going through these
absurd plots.
But take it all very seriously.
Yeah, yeah.
Like, how are we ever forwarded to thinking any of this, you know
Janeway turning into a couple of lizards.
Yes, that's right.
Now, one thing which I think is a serious error.
So the USS Cerritos bar has the Cerritos sort of, um, emblem logo
thing, but it has a stick with 2 olives in it stuck out of it and
you should never ever have a martini with an even number of
olives.
That's an atrocity.
It's just a rule.
Okay. one or three.
That upsets me every time.
Oh, there's an Andorian.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's Jen.
That's Jennifer.
But I think as well, this show populates its episodes with as many
aliens from across the Star Trek franchise.
Well, there's a Tamarian.
The Tamarian security officer is in the background of that shot.
Yeah, they're like the pack-leds feature quite a bit, don't they?
Yeah, yeah, they're the big band at the moment.
We find out that their their home planet is called PackLed Planet
in a later episode.
It's like the Ogron planet in Doctor Who.
That's right It's just that's the best we can do.
That's imaginative their planet names are.
Now, in the in the Star Trek, the animated series thing with the
Pandronian, in it, the Pandronian was experimenting on Spock and
Kirk as well, or kind of testing them out.
And so clearly, this horrible Pandronian has the job of doing that
and that's where they got the idea from.
But the body separation thing, her outfit, the fact that she's got
a dog's nose, like they're all taken from this.
It's not a terrible episode, but it's not great.
And it is, it's Star Trek for children, I think, in a way that
this isn't at all.
I mean, this is sex jokes and can be really quite violent at times
as well.
I'm slightly disappointed.
They swear.
Black hole in space is not the only black hole we've seen in this
episode, is it?
Yeah, well, this is coming up.
But I do like I do like the joke here that, you know, I took me a
long time to find a ship that's incompetent.
So we knew that you would all fail the tests, you know?
But it's also too, that Freeman and Mariner know how an episode of
a cartoon or an episode of Lower Decks works.
And so they come in and say, we've worked it out.
The tests aren't real.
It was all just designed to get us to empathise with each other so
that we work together better as a crew.
And you can imagine a Star Trek episode like that as well.
Um, but they're wrong.
She's...
And also, but just also the...
The odds are against us here.
Like we found, we're at this percentage, we're, you know, we're
going to, and then it's like to rise up above that.
That's very Star Trek, isn't it?
And then tend to win anyway.
And I love the fact that he has to, he has to fail, doesn't he?
Or he has to not succeed in order for them to have time.
So.
He's just got 100% in the drill.
He's finally done it. about to shut it off.
He ends up with 8% at the end.
And it's Boimler, who's absolutely ambitious.
He's desperate to, you know, please the commanding officers. you
know, he absolutely wants to do the right thing all the time.
And so to have him, you know, get a similar...
I can't give you anything more original trait, you know, than a
floating head like that.
Yeah, well, I mean, the, in fact, the Pandronian in the animated
series could detach its arms.
It gets referred to as a colony organism.
So they're like separate entities or something that are all joined
together into a body.
And again, this is great.
So they know, basically, what they've got to do is scare.
The Pandronian, don't they?
And to basically, you know, um, making sure they succeed at the
tests.
And they go through another whole reef of Star Trek cliches.
The crystalline entity and all of that.
No, it's a whole series of crystalline entities.
It's unconsuming a rogue planet.
It's too crystalline and he's getting frisky.
It's like, oh, we're going to head towards this black hole and
there's all this time madness going on around it.
I'm just like, oh, you are Taylor pissed too much now, I'll tell
you.
That's it.
I mean, there's 800 episodes at this point that they can just make
fun of and they absolutely do.
And some films, speaking of which, here's Alice Craig.
Yeah, she's actually surprisingly. her voice.
But that's what I mean about attention to detail.
Anyone could have voiced that and done a good impression.
Well, even Voyager didn't have Alice Krieg, the 1st time the Bork
Queen appeared, they had someone else.
Do you know what?
They even went to the length of having a character and having
Jeffrey Coombs play him.
Because, you know, the Jeffrey Coombs has played a 100 characters
in Star Trek.
So he plays a character.
He has been in this.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
But again, like, like, you know, the crystal entity in TNG was a
you know, a ropey old CGI, and it wasn't terrible, but it wasn't
great.
They can make it visually, really interesting in this.
Look at the hat.
That looks astonishing.
Yeah, looks amazing.
Well, you know, like they're able to do sort of textures and
reflections and all sorts of things.
So it's visually superb, I think.
Nathan, do you know why Lower Decks is my favourite Catsman
track?
Why that?
Because it's just so fun. so enjoyable to watch.
It's the anti-Picard, which is so bloody miserable.
Yeah, yeah, they're killing a champ and killing.
Yeah, all these other characters and stuff.
I watched this on it. a bit like Jodie Whitaker's dogs.
I watch this and it's like watching a ray of sunshine.
I just love it.
Like, you know, sometimes it's to be entertained is enough.
You know?
But I think I think it's also clever and satisfying as well.
Like, I think, you know, this is this is fun and entertaining
but...
Lloyd, Rick and Morty.
You can absolutely, you can go in and you can, you know, marvel at
the massive high concepts they're playing about with and, you know
the fun.
But ultimately, I find it very entertaining to watch.
And I, I don't know.
I think that's an underrated virtue in television.
No, I think it's super important.
And also, I think that there's a, like, it's still got that Star
Trek spirit, like there's still a kind of warmth and optimism and
you know, it's still positive, despite, you know, the violence and
all of that.
The older I've got, the more sort of daft I want TV experience.
Life is so bloody serious.
So I want to have a bit of fun with my telly.
I mean, the alien is so ridiculous.
We are going to go.
There we go.
They're going into the path of black hole.
But hang on a minute.
There isn't time.
Oh, yeah, no, there is, look.
No, no.
No, that's just that's just gravity things.
We'll find out that Mariner was lying about the time quakes.
She admits to just it being normal black hole.
They know the cliches themselves.
Yeah. yeah.
Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely.
So the alien. like the separating alien, um, we are going to do
the animated series at some and it'll be interesting to see what
we think of it, but it does just seem like sort of Star Trek for
children.
And they do have an alien on the bridge as well, which they could
never.
So, I'd be interesting to see that because I don't think that's
altogether a terrible premise, you know, not true children.
No.
Oh no, he's been turned.
Look, he's, he's, so the, so the joke is, is that he is basically
loquitous a Borg now.
But because he's so crap.
Well, yeah.
He's called I Excr...
Excr...
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
But the joke is a riff on Iborg, isn't it?
The episode eyeball.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
And maybe like I, Claudius and other titles like that.
Well, I, Iborg is probably a roof on eye, Claudius too.
Can I ask you a question?
Do you think someone's written out like a book with all the jokes
of this and all the in references?
I bet someone ask.
And they're updating it every year and flogging it again.
There he got 78%.
Bless him.
I've got 7 alpha when you know 8%.
Memory alpha has a lot of links to other things that get reference
so it does mention, it does sort of reference things.
But this, like, I think this is nice.
So they have learned something about each other.
So it has worked, the way that Mariner and Freeman thought it was
working. you know, inadvertently done that.
Well, they basically, the lower decks people basically say, oh
maybe it is quite hard being a bridge officer.
The bridge officers say, well, maybe they aren't quite as shit as
we thought they were.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, and that thing, because it is a sort of running theme that
they don't get told stuff.
They get left out of the loop and things happen to the bridge crew
that they're never privy that they're never privy to.
But you know what, as well?
You remember we ended, take me out to the holosuite on that
agonising, everyone laughing their heads off.
We just got that again here.
Yeah, except that it does end with an actual joke, which is, you
know, Shaq says, oh, there's one thing the Borg left you as that
hearty appetite.
And then you hear him after we go to the credits, you hear Boimler
go, they took everything I have, which...
He's a line from family, I think, or possibly 1st contact.
I didn't wait around for that, so I didn't feel it.
Was it after all these credits?
No, no, no, no, no, no.
Just since we fade to black.
I just thought it was a terrible joke and I was like, no, no, no.
We play with it as well.
But if there's any show, if there's any Star Trek show that could
get away with ending on a crap joke and a laugh, it's this. you
could say, well, it's being very meta doing that.
No, but they actually are not a proper joke.
It's really great.
Okay, I've got a question for you coming out of this.
And that is, is about, because this episode is the most, I think
lower Dexian lower decks episode, as in, it is literally playing
out scenes from 90s strict and lots of them.
And that is kind of like, this shows back, you know?
Yeah.
Is that exhaustible?
Like, how far can you go with that?
You know, at what point do you say, all right, well, we've kind of
done this, taking the piss out of 90 straight for a long time.
At what point do you was like, okay, this is getting a bit tired
now?
How'd you keep that fresh?
Well, I think the way they keep it fresh is by having worthwhile
things of their own and so they have started to do that.
So series 2 ends on a cliffhanger.
We had the development at the end of series one with the
introduction of a new big bad.
This is like, let me get all memory alpha on you.
This is set after nemesis.
And so as far as 24th century trek goes.
This is the 1st I'm shaking my head at you right now.
Canonising lower decks.
So this is the furthest that we've gone in the 24th century, and
so they can change things.
Oh, I didn't realise this was set after all of next year.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
So it's set off the nemesis.
So it set after Deep Space 9 ends as well.
So, look, that's the greatest gift this could ever give us, is
that Nemesis wasn't the end of 90s trek.
That's right That's right.
And so and so now we have the future.
And, well, you know, I guess we've got Picard, but this charts
this in a very sort of Star Treky way, in that we have a new big
bad.
There's some political complications and stuff.
But also as well, the characters are strong in themselves.
They're not really just riffs on anything.
They're strong characters with defined relationships with each
other.
The comedy comes from the way they interact with one another, and
so does the warmth.
It's not all just the joke of recognising a Star Trek reference.
The humour only, it's like the Buffy effect, isn't it?
Like, I remember with Buffy, I instantly love those characters
because they were funny and they were losers.
And this show has got both those things.
They're both losers and they're funny.
You know, they're the lower decks people and they're hilarious.
But you can weaponize that if you want to.
And now, like, look at the Simpsons where it's killed off
characters and it's impacted.
Like, they could do that here, I think.
And it would...
I mean, I know you probably wouldn't want them to.
No.
I mean, they killed off shacks at the end of series one.
He died saving Rutherford, the Bajoran security officer, but he's
obviously bad.
Why is he back?
I thought he'd left.
No, so he's killed at the end of series one and then we do have an
episode of series 2 where we discover that he's come back to life
and we don't know how and Rutherford's consumed with curiosity
about how he came back.
And there's one speech where I think Mariner burns through about 5
or 6 different possible ways he could have come back in just one
speech, which are always that other characters have come back in
Star Trek episodes.
And it turns out he's not allowed to know.
And so we never find out. essentially, it's just a thing that
happens to major characters in Star Trek.
They just get fired onto a Genesis planet and then they're back
with us for the next film.
I think with that episode there, it's smartly written.
It's very funny.
Jesus, the naked time section.
I mean it's hilarious.
It's very nostalgic.
You know, it has huge love for 90s trek and it says something
about the characters and takes, it gives them all a bit of
development.
Like, that's just good telly.
Yeah, it's very warm too.
Like, I think that's very affectionate towards the characters.
It's not mean spirited.
You mentioned Rick and Morty, which, you know, has perfect.
I think it is kind of...
I haven't, yeah.
I'm watching through the Big Bang at the moment and a Big Bang
Theory and I do, I like it a lot and I do like what, it is a bit
nasty at times and a bit.
Yeah, unpleasant.
There's none of that here.
You can literally just, you can, you can relax into this and just
have fun with it.
It can be very violent in the way that Rick and Morty can be very
violent, but it's not nasty in the way that Rick and Morty is.
And part of the pleasure, I think, of freaking Morty is the
transgressive pleasure of enjoying something that's a bit nasty
you know, it's a feature, not a bug.
I think I'm gonna go for the last line here.
Okay?
Okay.
Can Star Trek have a successful comedy series?
Yes, it can.
Okay, it's time for us to go to Untitled Star Trek Project.com
slash Randomiser and pick our next episode.
Joe, which series are we choosing from for next week?
Well, I don't think I'm experiencing enough pain at the moment, so
I have this somewhat quirky desire to watch another Voyager
episode.
Oh my god.
But I do have a reason for that.
Okay.
Well, because I think generally speaking, Voyager V is one way or
the other, right?
And we hit upon an episode.
The 1st one where it was Khan of Middling, you know?
It was it was worthy and it was a lot of fun.
It had lots to say.
But it was also mired in terrible cliches.
Whereas I think Voyager can actually be super fun when it's really
shit.
And when it's really fantastic.
Yeah.
And it can do both of those things.
With alarming frequency, yeah.
All right.
So it's just Voyager then.
Just Voyager.
Yes.
All right.
Okay.
I want you to press the button.
I'm doing it right now.
Oh, Jesus Christ. the episode after the last one we did.
Oh, show me what's that?
It's called prophecy and it's unbelievably shit.
But I feel like series 7 again.
Maybe we shouldn't do that again.
Yeah, let's not. we re-roll.
Early Voyager's got Cesca in it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And they still give lines to Chakotay back then.
It's obscenious now, I'm saying.
Okay.
I'm pressing again.
Another series 7 episode.
Oh, this can't be true.
Natural law.
It's a Chakose episode.
The tail end of series 7 where he's romancing 7 of 9. is
abominable.
Yep, no, gross.
Okay.
Oh, yeah, okay.
This is a goodie.
This is a good idea.
And it is fun as well.
It's season three, episode four, and it's called The Swarm.
Do you remember anything about the sword?
Yes, I think I do.
I think I do.
Dual plots.
So it's got a swarm that attacks Voyager.
So there's some like quite nice set pieces in it, but it's got a
2nd plot where the doctor is suffering from amnesia.
Oh, which means Robert Picardo is a big part of this episode.
All right, I'm sold.
You had played Robert Picardo.
There we go.
Brilliant.
But also as well, it like, I've seen to recall the 2 plots that
have nothing to do with each other whatsoever or the resolutions.
And so it's also Voyager sort of floundering a little bit as
well.
But it is quite fun.
And it gives us a lot to talk about because it's that point where
they jettisoned all of the Archie stuff that they were doing in
series one and 2 and just said, right, we're just going to have
some fun.
Okay, all right.
All right, I'm up for that for sure.
You've been listening to Untitled Star Trek Project with Joe Ford
and Nathan Bottomley.
You can find us online at untitledstar trekproject.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 6th of December 2021 and released
on the 24th of December.
We'll see you next time for Voyages, the Swarm.