The Beige and The Bold

Derek and I made a good episode here.

This has been The Beige and The Bold.

Remember Rand.

It's the last solo session before this all wraps up. I fell I've said that before, but I really mean it this time.

Is the Enterprise itself enough of a character to warrant a whole episode? Was this that episode? (It wasn't)

The Beige and The Bold is hosted on Anchor and is available on most podcasting platforms. New episodes are usually posted on Sunday nights at 9:00 PM CST.

It's another Solo Session. Worf is worried about Alexander's future, but luckily a Klingon consigliere named K'mtar is there to help. Also there's something about a plot to murder Worf by, *reads smudged writing on hand* the Dumas Brisket?

I didn't have fond memories of this one, but it's surprisingly solid, even if later Treks--*ahem*--destroy everything it builds towards.

Is that such a big deal though? Do these stories matter less if we regularly throw their character growth the represent in the trash? Aren't the lessons we learn true enough, or do they only matter when they come from a series which follows through with those ideals?

The Beige and The Bold is hosted on Anchor and is available on most  podcasting platforms. New episodes are usually posted on Sunday nights  at 9:00 PM CST.

Journey's End has been a long time in coming. It feels like the beginning of the end of the series and it's also an episode I recorded with this guest host almost two years ago. 

That said, there are a few things I'd like to get off of my chest:

I hope you like two white guys talking about Native American culture for 45 minutes. It was neck and neck whether we could be marginally more enlightened than Star Trek and I think we pulled ahead just a little bit.

The Beige and The Bold is hosted on Anchor and is available on most podcasting platforms. New episodes are usually posted on Sunday nights at 9:00 PM CST.

I'm here with Randolph this week and we're just tryin' to get it done.

It's a heavy talk about suicide. Do series trivialize sensitive topics like suicide when they talk about them? Is it worth the risk of being disrespectful to talk about it? 

The Beige and The Bold is hosted on Anchor and is available on most podcasting platforms. New episodes are usually posted on Sunday nights at 9:00 PM CST.

Unedited, slightly incoherent, and mostly redundant, The Beige and The Bold Solo Sessions are episodes where I run through a show with just you, the listener, as my companion. In "Sub Rosa," things get messy.

Sub Rosa has gotten infamous in later years as the one where Dr. Crusher fucks the ghost. I've heard it said that if Riker had fucked the ghost we wouldn't give that episode nearly as much guff. I disagree. Riker gets a lot of guff for his love interests and if he'd fucked a ghost, he'd get flack for it. It would be the ur-Riker episode.

Also, I did a little count recently and there are 10 ghost episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation. That's a lot of ghosts. A lot.

The Beige and The Bold is hosted on Anchor and is available on most podcasting platforms. New episodes are usually posted on Sunday nights at 9:00 PM CST.

Hey it's me and Matt lookin' at one of Star Trek: The Next Generation's last classic episodes: "Lower Decks." We're gonna watch it together on Netflix and then talk about it some.

Given that Star Trek: Lower Decks is based on this episode, it's surprisingly heavy. The series has a lot of humor with only touches of drama and pathos, but it does have those as well. It's true to its roots and it's the best Star Trek I've watched since Deep Space Nine.

Less seriously, Taurik did get that Ensign killed because he couldn't count to four.

The Beige and The Bold is hosted on Anchor and is available on most podcasting platforms. New episodes are posted on Sunday nights at 9:00 PM CST.

Unedited, slightly incoherent, and mostly redundant, The Beige and The Bold Solo Sessions are episodes where I run through a show with just you, the listener, as my companion. In "Homeward," I basically miss everything Dr. Crusher was saying because she addresses a lot of my concerns, but--

--what about DOMESTICATION?! Do you know how long it took for us to make wheat, corn, and other plants edible?! The Boraalans aren't starting over from their modest, medieval beginnings; they're going back to hunting and gathering. I'd be shocked if their culture survived that. If Lower Decks (the series) could casually kill off Spock 2, I'm rooting for them to revisit New Boraal and just find bodies.

The word I was thinking of was "referendum." Seems like something that The Federation could put together over a long weekend. I'd much rather see the story where Picard has to debate the fate of these guys with his own agenda against someone else, rather than just have him shrug his way through least-bad options.

The Beige and The Bold is hosted on Anchor and is available on most podcasting platforms. New episodes are usually posted on Sunday nights at 9:00 PM CST.

I'm watching TNG's 7th season alongside you, the viewer and Grymm from Descents part one and two. We're talking about Worf. In time.

It's a collection of roads not traveled, which is a pretty good look when, dead Geordis aside, most are pretty badass. Worf ranks up if people die I guess. It feels like Starfleet wouldn't function quite so much like a Klingon ship, but I guess it does. As is, it makes Worf look a little undervalued. Like, if he was given the opportunity he'd excel. 

But hey, Lieutenant Commander Worf leaving security and re-entering the command track is just something that Star Trek may never be able to handle.

I mixed up two episodes when talking about Deep Space Nine: "Distant Voices" and "Whispers." The episode I was thinking of is just called "Whispers."

So Worf and Troi: Hot or not?

The Beige and The Bold is hosted on Anchor and is available on most podcasting platforms. New episodes are posted on Sunday nights at 9:00 PM CST.

I'm watching Season 7's "Inheritance" alongside you, the viewer. No co-host this week, just me talking about moms. Specifically, Data's mom, who appears out of nowhere after decades and wants to start a relationship with Data.

In retrospect, it gets weird. I'm going to blame it on Star Trek: Picard, but it gets weird.

Am I wrong though? Is Dr. Tainer's desire to reach out to Data after years when she chose to pointlessly abandon him on Omicron Theta okay? Is Data's response to all of this a fair equivalent to a sympathetic, human reaction? I am deep in the weeds on this one.

The Beige and The Bold is hosted on Anchor and is available on most podcasting platforms. New episodes are posted on Sunday nights at 9:00 PM CST.

Dark Page is a heavy and surreal episode which is a hard thing to make fun of, but me and Smokey try. 

I hope you guys like How I Met Your Mother*. 

It's great how this episode deals with language and trauma. As best as a 45-minute episodic TV drama can. It utilizes Majel Barret effectively and Marina Sirtis gets some decent work. I'm not sure why this episode isn't remembered better. It's got an IMDB score of 6.4, which puts it in the bottom middle of Season 7. I don't see how it's neck-and-neck with "Force of Nature," which we'll get to.

I'm going to be mixing some of these episodes up. When it was just me and Derek I could keep a schedule (I couldn't, but you get my point). Now that I'm trying to get episodes with guests recorded before TNG goes off Netflix, which is schedule to happen "TBD but soon," I'm taking what I can, when I can. I wouldn't 100% bet on "Attached" being the episode for next week.

*Obviously, not the finale.

The Beige and The Bold is hosted on Anchor and is available on most podcasting platforms. New episodes are usually posted on Sunday nights at 9:00 PM CST. If you have Netflix and would like to be a guest host for an episode in season seven, let me know on twitter @VanVelding or via Discord: https://discord.gg/Nw7Vf4Pkpn

Unedited, slightly incoherent, and mostly redundant, The Beige and The Bold Solo Sessions are episodes where I run through a show all on my own.

Man, "Phantasms" has got it all; lazy pseudoscience, disdain for people who aren't the main cast, and a gaping hole where a big idea should be. It's a yawner that's only slightly redeemed by its strong and bizarre visuals. 

I cover The Original Series' saurian brandy and its contribution to the field of psychology, the fish-eye lens that dates from the same era, and the horrors of being assimilated into The Admiral Collective. What else is there to talk about here?

That "whole hog" thing wasn't a weight-based joke; it's what happens when you gotta keep talking for 45 minutes without anyone else letting you do thinky-times. Same with that Patty Hearst reference; her status as a "volunteer" is not something you wanna hang your rhetorical hat on.

The Beige and The Bold is hosted on Anchor and is available on most podcasting platforms. New episodes are usually posted on Sunday nights at 9:00 PM CST. If you have Netflix and would like to be a guest host for an episode in season seven, let me know on twitter @VanVelding or via Discord: https://discord.gg/Nw7Vf4Pkpn

Unedited, slightly incoherent, and mostly redundant, The Beige and The Bold Solo Sessions are episodes where I run through a show all on my own.

I'm sorry, but I just don't know Ben Vereen and Madge Sinclair. This isn't a boast; it's a--conspicuous--hole in my pop culture knowledge. Like, my dad and I sit around and talk about actors in movies. I'm introducing him to Giancarlo Esposito. I don't know them that well. Ben Vereen is still acting and Madge Sinclair was in The Lion King and Look Who's Coming to Dinner. Not small roles.

I always feel like Geordi is being handled with kid gloves and doesn't come across with any real personality because of it. All "Interface" tells us is that he didn't spring fully-formed from Zeus' forehead. But knowing which two humans f--had sex to make him doesn't actually develop Geordi as a character. We don't really learn anything about him.

The Beige and The Bold is hosted on Anchor and is available on most podcasting platforms. New episodes are usually posted on Sunday nights at 9:00 PM CST. If you have Netflix and would like to be a guest host for an episode in season seven, let me know on twitter @VanVelding or via Discord: https://discord.gg/Nw7Vf4Pkpn

While we're waiting for the Deep Space Nine series, Nine Deeps of Space, to catch up, I'm sharing a series of reviews for Enterprise One. Enterprise One is a Star Trek series I worked on with Dr. Izixs. We hash out the stories, then I give reviews of them.

It breaks a bit and there are some plotholes, but it's a satisfying conclusion. I wish I could write why slowly enough that other people could read and get them, but let's try: 

It's good because it has S T A K E S and C O N S E Q U E N C E S. The universe isn't going to blow up and our characters don't let the "ends well" declare the rest of their actions "all well." We give up things to get other things and our characters change a bit, usually for the better, as result of all of it. Even Kira who maintains she did nothing wrong she lost, but doesn't recant the principles which made her fight. 

Regular episodes of The Beige and The Bold will return with "Descent,  Pt II" in three weeks' time, when Nine Deeps of Space has finished its   second season.

While  we're waiting for the Deep Space Nine series, Nine Deeps of Space, to catch up, I'm sharing a series of reviews for Enterprise One. Enterprise One is a Star Trek series I worked on with Dr. Izixs. We hash out the stories, then I give reviews of them.

It's possible I have an ax to grind about people who have an axe to grind over the use of the word "discover"? I've got one. 

Last week was definitely the last of the good times before shit gets serious in the finale, but I like modern-day television's tendency to deliver big two parter season finales that give closure instead of awkward cliffhangers. Enterprise One is no exception.

...no, I haven't seen the finale of Loki. Was that important?

Regular episodes of The Beige and The Bold will return with "Descent,  Pt II" in two weeks' time, when Nine Deeps of Space has finished its second season.

While we're waiting for the Deep Space Nine series, Nine Deeps of Space, to catch up, I'm sharing a series of reviews for Enterprise One.  Enterprise One is a Star Trek series I worked on with Dr. Izixs. We hash  out the stories, then I give reviews of them.

It's basically safe for work, but the technology of being safe for work while being not safe for work has come a looong way. Given that half the people who've seen my genitals in the past four years worked for the TSA, I feel it naturally dovetails with the message of security theater.

"Not bad" is the best I can give it, due to its loose focus and broad set of characters. 

Regular episodes of The Beige and The Bold will return with "Descent, Pt II" in three weeks' time, when Nine Deeps of Space has finished its  second season.

While we're waiting for the Deep Space Nine series, Nine Deeps of Space, to catch up, I'm sharing a series of reviews for Enterprise One.  Enterprise One is a Star Trek series I worked on with Dr. Izixs. We hash out the stories, then I give reviews of them.

Wow.

I didn't watch a lot of Voyager, but this is a gangbusters Janeway and Tuvok episode and Kirk and Worf episode and even an Odo episode little bit and it manages all of that by having the arcs of each of those characters intersect the arc of the others. 

It's a Section 31 episode I don't hate. That's the highest praise I can confer on an episode of Star Trek.

Regular episodes of The Beige and The Bold will return with "Descent, Pt II" in three weeks' time, when Nine Deeps of Space has finished its second season.

While  we're waiting for the Deep Space Nine series, Nine Deeps of Space, to catch up, I'm sharing a series of reviews for Enterprise One.  Enterprise One is a Star Trek series I worked on with Dr. Izixs. We hash out the stories, then I give reviews of them.

This one is about Kes and the Temporal Cold War and it's just good teevee.

Regular episodes of The Beige and The Bold will return with "Descent,   Pt II" in four weeks' time, when Nine Deeps of Space has finished its second season.

While we're waiting for the Deep Space Nine series, Nine Deeps of Space, to catch up, I'm sharing a series of reviews for Enterprise One. Enterprise One is a Star Trek series I worked on with Dr. Izixs. We hash out the stories, then I give reviews of them.

It's another Prime Directive episode, but if you promise not to tell anyone, it's also about privilege and systemic problems. It's an Uhura-heavy episode--finally--and it's also B'Elanna Torres-heavy episode. I mean, Picard is in there too, and it undercuts Star Trek's tendency to put him in a pedestal. And it does that without making Picard look like an idiot.

I mean, you could take Picard off of a pedestal while making him look like a decrepit idiot, but I don't see why you could do that when you could understand flaws in his character that make him a reasonable person who is just wrong sometimes.

Who would be so stupid though?

Regular episodes of The Beige and The Bold will return with "Descent,  Pt II" in seven weeks' time, when Nine Deeps of Space has finished its second season.

While we're waiting for the Deep Space Nine series, Nine Deeps of Space, to catch up, I'm sharing a series of reviews for Enterprise One. Enterprise  One is a Star Trek series I worked on with Dr. Izixs. We hash out the stories, then I give reviews of them.

Woof. I guess if you're going to make a Star Trek fanfiction series, you've got to make a bad episode, and TToTEaLdL is one of those. When I'm making TBnTB, I can usually see what an episode was trying to do, but I'm at a loss here. I mean, I know this episode was trying to do an Arthurian Myth episode, but the goal of anything else in this 45 minutes of Star Trek mashed into King Arthur's Court like two action figures rammed together is a mystery to me. 

Regarding the execution of Spirk: Not gay enough.

Regular episodes of The Beige and The Bold will return with "Descent, Pt II" in eight weeks' time, when Nine Deeps of Space has finished its second season.

While we're waiting for the Deep Space Nine series, Nine Deeps of Space, to catch up, I'm sharing a series of reviews for Enterprise One. Enterprise  One is a Star Trek series I worked on with Dr. Izixs. We hash out the stories, then I give reviews of them.

It's about institutional incompetence and a culture based on doing one thing, and that thing isn't making peoples' lives better. It's obvious and not too deep and there's furrows in the story that separate things. It FEELS like an episode I guess, and that's a bit disappointing for a Kira-heavy episode that also features the trio of Geordi, Data, and Wesley. 

Regular episodes of The Beige and The Bold will return with "Descent, Pt II" in eight weeks' time, when Nine Deeps of Space has finished its second season.

While we're waiting for the Deep Space Nine series, Nine Deeps of Space, to catch up, I'm sharing a series of reviews for Enterprise One. Enterprise One is a Star Trek series I worked on with Dr. Izixs. We hash out the stories, then I give reviews of them.

Pure Ambition is the Doctor Bashir storyline worked backwards. The dramatic revelation about his genetic history is well-established except for some dialog and then we let his character speak out for that. Using one individual minority's character as a model for that entire morality is dicey, but that's kind of the point of the story. 

Sure, Starbase 47 was fun, but I feel like Pure Ambition is the first episode that's really good. But it features Tom friggin' Paris, so even odds there's something wrong with me.

Regular episodes of The Beige and The Bold will return with "Descent,   Pt II" in ten weeks' time, when Nine Deeps of Space has finished its   second season.

While we're waiting for the Deep Space Nine series, Nine Deeps of Space, to catch up, I'm sharing a series of reviews for Enterprise One. Enterprise  One is a Star Trek series I worked on with Dr. Izixs. We hash out the stories, then I give reviews of them.

Starbase 47 is the home port story I've been wanting to make for a long time. Most of the time, home port is Earth or Deep Space Nine and those huge, fuckoff starbases need to be for something. So we get that and a big establishing sequence that answers questions about everyone's families and give some gratuitous nods to canon.

It's also our first Kirk episode and he gets to jam on a mystery with Odo that involves Tellaries and Federation civilians. Admiral Ross is still an idiot. It's a great time.

Regular episodes of The Beige and The Bold will return with "Descent,  Pt II" in ten weeks' time, when Nine Deeps of Space has finished its  second season.

While we're waiting for the Deep Space Nine series, Nine Deeps of  Space, to catch up, I'm sharing a series of reviews for Enterprise One. Enterprise One is a Star Trek series I worked on with Dr. Izixs. We hash out the stories, then I give reviews of them.

We Unwinding is about Nog, because it's his introduction to the series. What happens when you land a young Ferengi Starfleet officer on a pre-contact planet for a year? The question is: "How do you undo what happens when you land a young Ferengi Starfleet officer on a pre-contact planet for a year?"

Regular episodes of The Beige and The Bold will return with "Descent, Pt II" in ten weeks' time, when Nine Deeps of Space has finished its second season.

While we're waiting for the Deep Space Nine series, Nine Deeps of Space, to catch up, I'm sharing a series of reviews for Enterprise One. Enterprise One is a Star Trek series I worked on with Dr. Izixs. We hash out the stories, then I give reviews of them.

Ending Yesterday is a pilot and it plays with the possibilities at hand before serving up our status quo. Everyone from The Original Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager is alive and serving on Kirk's Enterprise. We try out a few configurations through our plot device de jour and then learn the immutable lesson that, wherever you go, there you are.

Regular episodes of The Beige and The Bold will return with "Descent, Pt II" in eleven weeks' time, when Nine Deeps of Space has finished its second season.

I'm back with Grym and we're going over the Season 6 cliffhanger, "Descent, Pt I." I guess that's not really a spoiler if the name is "Part I." And if the last three season finales were also cliffhangers. What are we going to do; go back to clip shows to close out the season?

Anyway, we see Star Trek doing something really interesting with the Borg; allowing them to change and grow, becoming a new threat and a vehicle to explore human questions. Well, we haven't gotten to all that yet. We're just intrigued by the new thing we're doing with the Borg.

THIS shovel? It's, uh, certainly not here to put this interesting thing we're doing with the Borg into a shallow grave in a few years as this franchise commits to shortpacking everything to more easily sell it as individually-priced slivers of nostalgia. That's not even a Picard burn; it's a First Contact burn.

The Beige and The Bold is hosted on Anchor and is available on most podcasting platforms. New episodes are usually posted on Sunday nights at 9:00 PM CST.

More than any other episode, this one makes me think about the title of this series. Second Chances is bold in that they keep Riker around and don't write him off as some kind of alien of the week. It's pretty beige in that they thought about shaking up the status quo without really changing their cast but didn't for what are essentially commercial reasons.

So Will Riker goes on a shelf simply because people want him around, but don't particularly care if anything--y'know--GOOD is done with him. The man lives in a glass case watching any additional character development passing him by.

In the beginning of Season 4, I pitched the idea of "Captain Riker, Ambassador Picard," imagining how season four would look if after Picard's assimilation by the Borg, Riker became the captain and Picard became an ambassador at large on the Enterprise. 

In that same spirit, I'm going to pitch "Chief of Operations Thomas Riker" for some of the episodes we have coming up. How will future episodes change if Thomas Riker takes over as Chief of Operations and Data becomes First Officer of the Enterprise? Will anything change? Will we have additional storylines to think of? We'll see.

The Beige and The Bold is hosted on Anchor and is available on most podcasting platforms. New episodes are usually posted on Sunday nights at 9:00 PM CST.

It's a pretty cool Doctor Crusher story that effectively packs a lot into it. Remember how rushed "The Chase" was? I feel like "Suspicions" moves at a similar pace but uses a framing device to make it actually work.

It's too bad we never see the scientists again, but who knows? Maybe this technology will be useful again some day.

I want to thank this week's and last week's guest Jack, who was a lot of fun to work with. The Beige and The Bold is hosted on Anchor and is available on most  podcasting platforms. New episodes are usually posted on Sunday nights  at 9:00 PM CST.

It's all corrections for this one. That's boring, so imagine reading this in Robert Stack's Unsolved Mysteries voice.

The Beige and The Bold is hosted on Anchor and is available on most podcasting platforms. New episodes are usually posted on Sunday nights at 9:00 PM CST.

For a pretty sedate episode, we've got a lot going on here. Folks kid a lot about TNG being more about administrative issues instead of high-stakes space action, and Lessons is definitely that. It focuses on one character, Picard, and it's bizarre we don't even get a character arc. It's packed with stuff, but stuff that doesn't seem to take us anywhere in the end.

It might be the worst good episode of the series. Is that why no one talks about this episode ever?

My guest this week is Anna, who was a joy to record with.

The Beige and The Bold is hosted on Anchor and is available on most podcasting platforms. New episodes are usually posted on Sunday nights at 9:00 PM CST.

Unedited, slightly incoherent, and mostly redundant, The Beige and The Bold Solo Sessions are episodes where I run through a show all on my own.

The Chase is one of those episodes we all just collectively forget. Not because its epicly bad, but because it's epicly mediocre. I'm already forgetting it. It's an episode that defies being written to media. Witnessing Star Trek improv every time this episode gets queued would be more memorable than actually watching it again.

You might recognize the tragically mis-used Norman Lloyd as Doctor Daniel Auschlander from St. Elsewhere, which is a solid danged series. He does good work with Galen, what there is of Galen anyway. The dude is 106 as of posting. Not Galen. Galen is dead.

Questions of canon have been on my mind lately. Do we ignore this episode because it's directly contradicted by later Star Trek? I mean, we-go-back-to-the-origins-of-life-on-Earth-and-do-not-see-Salome-Jens contradicted. It gets hard canceled. In THIS VERY SERIES. Do we ignore the episode or just bad (relevant) parts of it?

The Beige and The Bold is hosted on Anchor and is available on most podcasting platforms. New episodes are usually posted on Sunday nights  at 9:00 PM CST.

Worf meets Klingon Jesus, who's changed a lot since he fought Kirk and Abraham Lincoln on the rock guy planet. The episode is better than I remembered and I'm glad I could watch it with Grym, who is a fan of the Klingons. 

"Rightful Heir" is a cool combination of science, religion, and Klingon politics. Does Trek even handle religion this well again until Deep Space Nine?

My guest this week is Grym, who doesn't have a project he's working on, but who loves Wyrd Games' Malifaux. 

The Beige and The Bold is hosted on Anchor and is available on most podcasting platforms. New episodes are usually posted on Sunday nights at 9:00 PM CST.

There's not much to say Derek is leaving. He's going to record "All Good Things" with me, but it won't go up until the end of the series.

Until then we've got guests and solo session. Get me at https://twitter.com/VanVelding if you'd like to be a guest.

What happens when the only solution for peace is having sex with an enemy prisoner of war when she knows the only hope of survival is reciprocating your crappy, emotionally-stunted advances? The fact that I can point to two women this applies to in this situation is a little ewww.

I'm being a little unfair. Birthright is actually one of season six's many underrated gems. One thing I like about late-season TNG is that it swings for the fences. It misses more than it hits, but those hits are pretty good and the misses impress you with their candle ghosts. I mean, "confidence."

The Beige and The Bold is hosted on Anchor and is available on most podcasting platforms. New episodes are posted on Sunday nights at 9:00 PM CST.

Derek is actually pretty right about the trend in TNG two-parters, which is kind of embarrassing and kind of makin' me proud. Granted, I only have so many, "pride in my son" moments left as Derek's 'Trek cred comes to rival my own.

Would Jaglom Shrek is the only Yridian we've met and he'd still be the worst if we met a Yridian corpse in a decaying orbit around a gas giant comprised primarily of farts. What I'm saying is that the Shrek children's book was written in 1990, so he wasn't even the best Shrek in popular media.

Is Data's story good or not? I say 'no' because it undermines Data's growth. It is well-structured and works with the themes of this episode though.

The Beige and The Bold is hosted on Anchor and is available on most podcasting platforms. New episodes are posted on Sunday nights at 9:00 PM CST.

I know it's a classic, but can we agree that this TNG run has revealed a few hidden gems and a bit too much fool's gold? Look, is old Picard too impulsive or not impulsive enough? Is he altering his character or just a few actions that young Picard is going to retroactively justify? Given that Picard straight up chooses to DIE rather than not be a Starfleet Captain, what's up with later episodes pretending that he might have become an archaeologist? 

I feel like if our lesson is clear then that's fine, but I don't see any message here about coming terms with your past action that isn't just a status quo bias. "You're comfortable in the world your flaws made, so isn't it better to live in this world built on your sin because it's easier?" It sounds insane!

I think Derek nails it; learn from your past, but don't regret or idealize it.

Most importantly: Did he or did he not crack a yo-mama joke to a Nausican?

The Beige and The Bold is hosted on Anchor and is available on most  podcasting platforms. New episodes are posted on Sunday nights  at 9:00 PM CST.

It's a good Troi episode, listeners. The premise is insane, but who gives a crap because it serves a good story. And honestly, anyone who can't get over that has decided not to get over it.

Like a lot of TNG's best episodes, there isn't much more to add. 

It does lack a 'moral core' because it's all driven by Troi's desire to survive, but if we were to add a moral choice to it, what would that look like?

The Beige and The Bold is hosted on Anchor and is available on most podcasting platforms. New episodes usually go live on Sunday nights at 10:00 PM CST.

Chain of Command, Pt II is one of the best episodes of the series. We get payoff on our construction of Jellico and the Cardassians in that we see the almost self-destructive need for control that runs through both.

And I'm done with my defense of Jellico. Obviously, the narrative is against him, but I don't think that's reason enough to scuttle him. I'm a "death of the author" guy. A story can make a character that's a laudable person even while it's trying to undermine them morally. "Paradise Lost" is the example that's easiest to call up. 

But Jellico brings nothing to the table. If you're a person who is pleased by the exercise of power on behalf of your ingroup, you might admire his hard line on the Cardassians, but Picard is just as capable of doing that and he didn't put all of his skill points into "raging as--jerkhole."

Am I too down on US culture here? Can I flog my own culture over Guantanamo Bay, then flog them slightly harder because they didn't listen to Star Trek? Except, instead of flogging, it's whipping the brickwork of the wall around their estate with a wet noodle. 

More clearly: is Star Trek any good if it makes people excited over starship aesthetics, camp plots, and the finer points of the history of the Star Trek Universe instead of making them outraged over their country's immoral behavior?

The Beige and The Bold is hosted on Anchor and is available on most podcasting platforms. New episodes usually go live on Sunday nights at 10:00 PM CST.

Like many of my opinions on Star Trek: The Next Generation, my opinion of Captain Jellico, specifically, has come full circle. I wish there was some nuance in his character, but he's just gratuitously aggro. No conflict with the Cardassians was so imminent that he couldn't just let Riker finish a sentence. Granted, our leads burrow into their roles as planets orbiting Captain Picard instead of breaking out as their own independent characters, so both of our bike tires are flat this time.

It turns out the nerd fraternity is Lambda Lambda Lambda, which was actually a fraternity for black students that within the fictional "Revenge of the Nerds" universe allowed the nerds to use it.

Really, the harping I do about Star Trek losing its ideological way reaches its climax here. I know other people (and me. Actually, most me) gripe a lot about Star Trek: Picard, but STP is really a natural extension of the changes in Star Trek most clearly seen in "Chain of Command." I mean, is there any context in which "Starfleet does covert ops and does them badly" doesn't leave us pretty far from the space where we started? And are there any merits to that deeper space?

The Beige and The Bold is hosted on Anchor and is available on most podcasting platforms. New episodes usually go live on Sunday nights at 10:00 PM CST.

I was pleasantly surprised by this episode. I don't think I'd seen it since it originally aired. There are flaws in it, especially how they test for sentience, but I don't remember the story being this compelling. There are so few instances of Riker having good leadership moments in later seasons that this one where he knuckles down ends up being one of the better ones?

Should the exocomps have come back? What if they're sentient, but non-sapient? With neither a drive to reproduce nor aspirational intelligence? Is it moral to create beings strictly for labor, even if it's labor they enjoy? What happens when the particle fountain is completed? Do you ship them across known space for another project despite the fact that it's less efficient than creating new exocomps locally and painlessly switching the old ones off? 

How mentally undeveloped do your synthetic slaves have to be before it's moral to create and use them for your own ends? It's a deep question that's worth asking if your Star Trek series is almost entirely premised on it.

The Beige and The Bold is hosted on Anchor and is available on most  podcasting platforms. New episodes usually go live on Sunday nights at  10:00 PM CST.

It continues the proud tradition of TNG episodes using the holodeck and an improbable technical issue to fully commit themselves to genre episodes.

I mean, maybe not "proud."

It's got a ton great ideas: Data being a bunch of different dudes, Worf spending quality time with Alexander, Troi being cool and into Westerns. It just doesn't really get there with the plot and the Trek-ness of it.

I mean, if we're not going to let Troi light some dudes up, then let Worf replace all the guns with bat'leths, y'know?

The Beige and The Bold is hosted on Anchor and is available on most podcasting platforms. New episodes usually go live on Sunday nights at 10:00 PM CST.

We're back on track and it's just Derek and me all the way through the halfway point of the season and the start of the Deep Space Nine series.

We talk about Amanda Rogers' bland taste in men, the yikes factor of turning Doctor Crusher into a dog, and what is the deal with the Q even? It's an episode that's all over the place and the last thing we care about the fate of some character we just met and will never see again.

Sorry, I guess that's a spoiler for Voyager when Amanda Rogers and all of the questions she raises are ignored. Honestly, that's to Voyager's credit because it did all of this better.

"Voyager did all of this better" is a red flag in terms of episode quality, but welcome to season six! *Evil madman laughter*

The Beige and The Bold is hosted on Anchor and is available on most podcasting platforms. New episodes usually go live on Sunday nights at 10:00 PM CST.

The Road to Deep Space Nine continues as I struggle through the bewildering house which Unsolved Mysteries made. I am legitimately struggling to understand how this episode came out before both "Fire in the Sky" and "The X-Files." Nimoy hosted "In Search of..." in 1977, so that's not a proximate cause.

Am I too mean here? About stories where there's always *some* way to win? Obviously, you can't have a series where ALL of our heroes' actions are doomed to fail, but certainly, there's something to be said for acknowledging when bold action just won't work. When resistance is--oh wait.

The Beige and The Bold is hosted on Anchor and is available on most podcasting platforms. New episodes go live on Sunday nights at 10:00 PM CST.

It's important in crossovers that we make sure that the characters from different worlds don't automatically know each other are protagonists. I think a lot of fans would accept that, but it wouldn't be earned. What is cool is throwing characters together in a situation that's so dire that folks are willing to throw in with anyone who isn't trying to kill them right now.

I am interested in seeing the Picard throughline replaced with a Worf throughline. Worf being, I dunno, a nerd for weapons systems of this era, as these are the guys who the Klingons considered formidable foes. And Scotty's all, "you couldn't tell that by talking to them" and Worf gives that smirk he gives sometimes. That'd be great, right?

Any older character could really fill those roles though. Maybe the issue is that Geordi isn't defined by being an engineer or an aspiring officer so Scotty can't interact satisfyingly interact with him on those levels. Again, we get an (ostensible) Geordi episode that doesn't tell us about Geordi. Could we have had Scotty have a different A-plot with another, non-Picard, non-Data character?

The Beige and The Bold is hosted on Anchor and is available on most podcasting platforms. New episodes go live on Sunday nights at 10:00 PM CST.

*Uploads podcast on The Road to DS9*

*Runs back to the episode on Netflix and kicks it with each line*

HOW!

IS HE!

A MAN!

OF!

THE PEOPLE!?

The Beige and The Bold is hosted on Anchor and is available on most podcasting platforms. New episodes go live on Sunday nights at 10:00 PM CST.

The Road to DS9 continues and I think it's one of those roads where it gets longer every time you take a step on it.

There's this yin and yang to The Beige and The Bold. A balance. A comme ci, and a comme ça, if you get what I'm saying. What I'm saying is...enjoy this solo episode.

Also, when I say "crazy" here, I mean it in a way that we accept Barclay has a host of problems but we still accept him. The problem in his first appearance wasn't really his problems, but everyone else on the ship being unable to work around them. And now, despite everything I say about "Realm of Fear," Barclay isn't any less anxious, really; the crew of the Enterprise--and I hope the viewer at home--has learned to accept that about him.

But I say a lot of stuff in here, so maybe forget me?

The Beige and The Bold is hosted on Anchor and is available on most podcasting platforms. New episodes go live on Sunday nights at 10:00 PM CST.

There's so much stuff this episode wants to do that I feel we aren't spending the time to do it well. 

We do have fun though. It's an enjoyable episode, even if it loses focus on our central theme of...wait, what's our central theme again?

The Beige and The Bold is hosted on Anchor and is available on most podcasting platforms. New episodes go live on Sunday nights at 10:00 PM CST.

There's no better benchmark of TNG's slide from "not so cerebral, but still serious" show to "situation drama" show than the season five closer, "Time's Arrow." 

It's a fun show, but it's clearly lost so many, er, ferrets that it's stopped altogether looking for its lost ferrets. Where's Riker coming from? Where's the 'only Data can do this'-to-'now we can do this' thread of logic? Where's the cultural traction?

Also, props to Derek for asking about holocommunicators before Star Trek figured out it could do holocommunicators. They were right about those bones though; the bones we have from more than 500 years ago were specially preserved, which makes sense because we'd have a lot of bones otherwise.

The Beige and The Bold is hosted on Anchor and is available on most podcasting platforms. New episodes (usually) go live on Sunday nights at 10:00 PM  CST. I've been having some computer problems lately and I apologize for the inconvenience.

The Road to Deep Space Nine continues as I try to understand how Derek picked "The Next Phase" over "The Inner Light." I don't know why this episode works and I feel like it's down to an ineffable combination of pacing and acting. 

Is it weird that this episode and Deep Space Nine's "Far Beyond the Stars" are considered among the best episodes of Star Trek DESPITE not being episodes which really function like Star Trek episodes?

The Beige and The Bold is hosted on Anchor and is available on most podcasting platforms. New episodes go live on Sunday nights at 10:00 PM CST.

This episode's path to glory was creating a good drama to distract us from the bad science or to make the science good, and therefore compelling and worth thinking about. All it really did was show that when you try hard for the Picard episodes and punt your Geordi/Ro episodes, the Geordi/Ro episodes will suck for completely non-mysterious reasons. 

Also, with the mind-swapping episodes and the reverse aging episode (it's coming) and the hyper-aging episodes and the shrinking episode (it's coming) are there any broad, sci-fi ideas that Star Trek hasn't done that need to be unraveled as we do? I feel like there's gotta be a few.

The Beige and The Bold is hosted on Anchor and is available on most podcasting platforms. New episodes go live on Sunday nights at 10:00 PM CST.

It's a classic, apparently.  It's weird how neither I nor Derek expected to see Hugh again. The...inertia of the series is pretty well-developed by this point.

The less-obvious lesson you could draw from this episode is one about Doctor Crusher. Is it better for her to cooperate with an unethical, although perhaps justified, operation because she has the opportunity to soften that operation? Or is it preferable that she preserve her own moral cleanliness and walk away?

I'm 100% sure what the correct thing to do in real life is. As a rule, at least. But damn, I'm trying to ask questions here, y'know?

Because that "ShOuLd PiCaRD hAvE uSeD tHe CyBeRwEaPoN?" question is a non-starter.

The Beige and The Bold is hosted on Anchor and is available on most podcasting platforms. New episodes go live on Sunday nights at 10:00 PM CST.

This is the first episode of The Road to Deep Space Nine, where Derek and I pick up the pace and skip a few episodes of Derek's choice. You don't skip them; you get a solo adventure.

I don't know how I mixed up "Peggy Sue Got Married," a 1986 Back-to-the-Future-by-way-of-Somewhere-in-Time drama with "Drop Dead Fred," a 1991 black comedy about an imaginary friend and psychological healing.

I feel like Imaginary Friend is just a few degrees off from making sense, but nothing can redeem an episode where an obvious Troi speech is punted to Picard...for some reason. It's the misogyny, right? Can we agree on that?

The Beige and The Bold is hosted on Anchor and is available on most podcasting platforms. New episodes go live on Sunday nights at 10:00 PM CST.

I feel like doing an episode which accepted so many messed-up assumptions could have worked in service to so many other great ideas. Whats up with the male social push to engage the the performances which allow us the chance to engage in intercourse...but a woman? That's a great angle for an episode of Star Trek. What about the examination of traditional, Western ritual monogamy through marriage as viewed through a lens of a bona fide people-pleaser who DOESN'T have a convenient monogamy lock-down timer installed in her uterus? Not great, but still a concept worth examining.

I was so looking forward to sharing this classic episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation with Derek, but the I watched it. I would apologize for Star Trek: Picard ruining my enjoyment of TNG, but your apologies should come from the STP production staff. I think it is the best option for us to just cut through this to get to Deep Space Nine.

After all, it's not like watching a classic series like DS9 could disappoint.

Surely. Right?

The Beige and The Bold is hosted on Anchor and is available on most podcasting platforms. New episodes go live on Sunday nights at 10:00 PM CST.

This could--nay SHOULD--be a straight-up dramatic episode, but instead we get metal parasites and two stories mated as smoothly as the gears in my truck's busted transmission.

I know I talk a lot of trash about the novels, but surely in the novels Lwaxana and Alexander had a bit more of a relationship with each other. Granted, if they did Deep Space Nine would have been different.

Also, props to Derek for calling out two or three episodes. Does the Thomas Riker episode count? Did I miss any?

The Beige and The Bold is hosted on Anchor and is available on most podcasting platforms. New episodes go live on Sunday nights at 10:00 PM CST.

It's a pretty good Wesley episode. I get how if you already like Wesley, this may feel like a betrayal, but I also see how it could get people who haven't liked Wesley on-side.

For whatever that's worth. I never realized Wesley was in two episodes in season five, zero in season six, and then another two in season seven. Not a bad average.

Does it matter what Picard did? I mean, after watching Star Trek: Picard, I'm not sure if anything Picard has ever done has mattered. But is the noodle incident that Boothby helped him with important? Ostensibly, it could have caused his expulsion from the academy. Wesley got a dude killed, covered it up, and still wasn't expelled. The more I think about it, the more I want to know what happened because there's things I'm willing to forgive and things I'm not and it sounds like whatever Picard did was borderline.

The Beige and The Bold is hosted on Anchor and is available on most podcasting platforms. New episodes go live on Sunday nights at 10:00 PM CST. Whenever I don't have to move to Louisiana, anyway.

It's an ironic title for an episode in which many things which happen don't cause anything because everyone is stuck in a time loop. Everything causes the destruction of the Enterprise until it causes it not to be destroyed.

It's one of those solid episodes that shows TNG in its stride; characters we know, cool sci-fi concept, and a fun mystery. It's hard to say anything about an episode that's generally good.

Well, it's hard to say anything except, "YOU HAD TIME TO DO BOTH!"

The Beige and The Bold is hosted on Anchor and is available on most  podcasting platforms. New episodes go live on Sunday nights at 10:00 PM  CST. Mostly.

It's a heavy one that's got no time for a b-plot. Derek and I cover a LOT of "The Outcast"'s messages. Trans allegories, homosexual allegories, definitions of gender, societal callousness, social control, bullying...we didn't get deep on any one thing, but if there's something we didn't touch on, please let us know.

The Beige and The Bold is hosted on Anchor and is available on most podcasting platforms. New episodes go live on Sunday nights at 10:00 PM CST. Mostly.

Worf and Crusher can carry an episode and while I think this episode generally gets stuck in the front of the middle of the pack when people think back on TNG, that's a shame. They've got good throughlines and McFadden and Dorn nail it. I'm glad that the series takes a look back at this episode in "Parallels."

This is where I usually ask a question, but I can't think of too many that don't directly lead into workshopping policy on assisted suicide. How were your holidays? This is our first episode produced wholly in 2020 and I think it's pretty good.

Also, I wanted to remind you all that I will be doing Picard when it comes out on Thursday and for non-Patreons, it will be going up as a bonus episode on the following Thursday. Stay tuned!

The Beige and The Bold is hosted on Anchor and is available on most podcasting platforms. New episodes go live on Sunday nights at 10:00 PM CST.

It's a big action scene episode with no idea in it, but it's clever and tense and I had no idea what was going to happen next. Not every episode of Star Trek should be like this, but I'm glad we get these sometimes.

I just love that Marina Sirtis and Brent Spiner get to do stuff like this that's so different than their regular characters. It's a shame that "Captain Schumar" has so much more character and presence than Troi does; it drives home how little Sirtis gets to work with.

If Star Trek is going to be a series that's about action and big ideas and science, isn't ok cool if every so often it leans extra hard into one or two of those ideas and forgets one or two of them?

The Beige and The Bold is hosted on Anchor and is available on most podcasting platforms. New episodes go live on Sunday nights at 10:00 PM CST.

Everything is kind of familiar in this one. Don't know why.

MacDuff seems sketchy.

The Beige and The Bold is hosted on Anchor and is available on most podcasting platforms. New episodes go live on Sunday nights at 10:00 PM CST

In memory of Aron Eisenberg and René Auberjonois, I'm watching an episode of Deep Space Nine as a one-off. It's a landmark episode and probably too good to watch on a lark, but it's clearly worth it.

I'm watching this episode with my friend Dr. Izixs. He's a fellow Star Trek veteran and was kind enough to help me out with this.

I'll say it, even though the character of Spock was a landmark, I sincerely believe that Odo was Star Trek's best outsider character. I don't think he ever completes his arc the way Spock does, but the depth afforded by The Dominion War and his relationship with Kira over seven years gives us a lot more depth with it.

The Beige and The Bold is hosted on Anchor and is available on most podcasting platforms. New episodes go live on Sunday nights at 10:00 PM CST. You can find "Watchers of Tomorrow," Dr. Izixs' podcast at: http://www.watchersoftomorrow.com/

Do they ever get it right? Someone else who has watched the whole series; do they ever get it right by Geordi? I'm thinking and I can't come up with even one episode in this series where they do it. Maybe season three's "The Enemy"?

Anyway, "The Masterpiece Society" is a fun little episode, even if it lacks some action and the romance doesn't work and the science is shaky. This season has so many good episodes that being lackluster is damning in comparison.

The Beige and The Bold is hosted on Anchor and is available on most podcasting platforms. New episodes go live on Sunday nights at 10:00 PM CST.

As a warning, this episode is about sexual assault and we discuss sexual assault.

This episode is like a version of Star Trek created by xenophobes, bigots, and nativists, using sexual assault as a way to vilify The Other. From the fear and hesitance of the crew to the fact that the answer was accusing the alien newcomers to how Worf gets to beat up a guy and Picard is too sensitive to actually take reasonable actions against the Ullians.

Forget your doubts about The Animated Series and Season 2's "Unnatural Selection," any Star Trek episode set in the Bizarro Universe--"Violations," "The Alternative Factor"--shouldn't be canon.

The Beige and The Bold is hosted on Anchor and is available on most podcasting platforms. New episodes go live on Sunday nights at 10:00 PM CST.

It's another workhorse episode with a lot heart and some good ideas that doesn't really get its due. 

Anyway, I know the novels probably do more with him, but Timothy Vico probably gets thrown on the pile of forgotten kids with Barash and Jeremy Aster. Is that better than the fates of Lal and Ian Troi? Is it better storytelling? I've been watching The Good Place lately and it's a show that keeps a lot of unimportant details and times unexplored. There's a lot of room for fanfiction in there is what I'm saying and maybe these kid-piles have a similar potential for letting the audiences write their own ends--or continuing adventures--for these kids.

The Beige and The Bold is hosted on Anchor and is available on most podcasting platforms. New episodes go live on Sunday nights at 10:00 PM  CST.

We picked a heck of a week to make jokes about war crimes.

In that we allow our cast to be flawed, we have to make them into 20th Century people, which includes a set of 20th Century social assumptions. Could we have this series without flawed characters? Could our main cast just be a Greek chorus to frame the adventures of other, flawed people from other planets?

The Beige and The Bold is hosted on Anchor and is available on most podcasting platforms. New episodes go live on Sunday nights at 10:00 PM CST.

As a capstone for The Original Series and its crew--

RAND IS BACK! This is her biggest role post-TOS and it's good to see her again.

Also, a movie happens.

The Beige and The Bold is hosted on Anchor and is available on most podcasting platforms. New episodes go live on Sunday nights at 10:00 PM CST.

Derek and I talk about redstone missiles, predestination paradoxes, and global warming a bit (It's real! We caused it! It's bad!). We get to see a Picard speech that doesn't get enough acclaim, either because the story almost immediately undercuts it or because it just doesn't work.

Between the hair and the coat and the pocket-sized spaceship that can travel in time, the Rick Sanchez parallels jumped out at me on this one and I can't put them to bed. So I put out into the universe: "Berlinghoff and Wesley," written by Dan Harmon and Wil Wheaton.

But seriously, how smart is "Rasmussen"? Is he faking it all or has he done some research?

The Beige and The Bold is hosted on Anchor and is available on most podcasting platforms. New episodes go live on Sunday nights at 10:00 PM CST.

I know it's "Grammaton Cleric," but I can' t just stop an episode to make pedantic corrections about 2002 cult films. There are TV shows from 1991 that require our full attention.

What *does* happen here doesn't happen to any great effect and even Leonard Nimoy can' t save it from just being "meh."

But Data did the Vulcan thing. That's cool.

Hypothetically.

The Beige and The Bold is hosted on Anchor and is available on most podcasting platforms. New episodes go live on Sunday nights at 10:00 PM CST.

Honestly, I'd feel more comfortable sending kids to Romulus. Spy kids.

For an episode with Spock, there's not a lot of Spock. And speaking of Star Trek episodes without a lot of Star Trek, I also feel like we haven't gotten a strong idea or moral principle lately. Derek and I are just crackin' jokes instead of engaging in some elevated discourse because...we're just not seeing any. Is that fair for the first stretch of Season 5 or are we just getting complacent? I'm sorry if we are; we're stretching for the meatier content.

I refuse to apologize for my Brooks and Dunn references.

The  Beige and The Bold is hosted on Anchor and is available on most  podcasting platforms. New episodes go live on Sunday nights at 10:00 PM CST.

The big irony of this episode is how quick people are to chalk this one up as another story where Wesley saves the ship but it's actually another episode where the writers press the "Data" button and the goal is to summon the android who can do anything so he can solve everything. 

Saying this is another episode where Wesley saves the ship is like saying any silver-age Superman story is one where Jimmy saves the day because he has the supersonic watch.

Anyway, is this episode prescient about World of Warcraft just because its writers were poking at a Nintendo like it was the danged Monolith? The episode about technology giving us stimulation without any benefit--or worse, harm--seems incredibly broad and yet it's very specifically applicable to the world we live in 30 years later. The applicability of its lesson requires us to perceive these things as dangers before its message about their dangers are applicable so I still feel like it's irrelevant. Am I overthinking this tepid, tepid story?

The Beige and The Bold is hosted on Anchor and is available on most podcasting platforms. New episodes go live on Sunday nights at 10:00 PM CST.

Riker: Can save Earth.

Riker's legs: Can save the Enterprise.

Does it work though? Does Troi's throughline work? Are her stakes real?

The Beige and The Bold is hosted on Anchor and is available on most podcasting platforms. New episodes go live on Sunday nights at 10:00 PM CST.

*Turns number under the sign that says "Days since android racism" to 0*

We reintroduce the Crystalline Entity, then shatter it quite expertly this week.

I'm amazed that Picard's stupid jacket didn't immediately torpedo this sensitive diplomatic mission. But I'm glad we got Ro out of all of this.

And Deep Space Nine.

I didn't realize how the Iran/Iraq War and the Soviet/Afghan war ran almost contemporaneously for almost the entirety of the 80's. Lockerbie was in '88 and I was way off with the Beirut barracks bombing happening in '83, almost eight years before this episode. 

Still though, what could this series could have done with its main characters to make them more interesting, even if they were a bit more flawed? And I don't mean flawed as in 'poorly written.' I mean flawed in a way that made them more nuanced characters. Give Doctor Crusher a hat?

I don't know why Picard has this stupid jacket because it's stupid. 

The Tamarians are pretty cool guys and it's implied that they're comparable in technological ability to The Federation. Are the Children of Tama another large, star-spanning polity which influences and is influenced by its neighbors? My personal model of Star Trek has been that these types of heterogeneous entities are the only type which can achieve a certain level of stellar progress before they collapse. 

It was off-camera, but does our chanting for Riker to put Picard into danger because it supports the value Picard puts on peace resemble the principle I often put forward that Picard putting the Enterprise in danger is acceptable because he does so for the moral principles his crew--civilian and Starfleet alike--believe in?

The Beige and The Bold is hosted on Anchor and is available on most  podcasting platforms. New episodes go live on Sunday nights at 10:00 PM  CST.

We're getting right back into it. Nonsense Data storylines. Tasha Yar baby mama drama. Worf being a huge nerd. The gang is all here, except for Doctor Pulaski.

We often talk about how this show transcends its limitations and it does not do that here. I'd say that this was as good a galaxy-spanning political drama could get within the confines of Star Trek: The Next Generation except for the fact that they burned four scenes on a Data story instead of doing anything with Worf.

Man, if only Star Trek could do galaxy-spanning politics centered on Worf that would make him a pivotal player who--*clink*

The Beige and The Bold is hosted on Anchor and is available on most podcasting platforms. New episodes go live on Sunday nights at 10:00 PM CST.

We’ve come so far, and got so far, but in the end…it was really, really far. I don’t have a head for lyrics.  

We look forward, I talk a bit about ruts versus grooves and Derek speculates on Season Five.  We’re considering a number of changes for when we get back from the hiatus. I’m going to be studying the production stuff more thoroughly than I have been. I’ll be digging a bit deeper on guest stars, and I’ll try to come up with a few more format-disrupting ideas to mix things up.  

I think we’ve got a small, but dedicated fan base. Are there any ideas you all have? I’m wide open for pitches. Contact me here, on my twitter @VanVelding, or on any other platform you can find me.

Unedited, slightly incoherent, and mostly redundant, The Beige and The Bold Solo Sessions are episodes where I run through a show without Derek. 

To break tradition somewhat I’m going to be watching the much-touted episode of Black Mirror, “USS Callister.”  I watched “Bandersnatch” before and was a bit disappointed. I’ll be honest: Black Mirror has been nothing if not consistent for me. Are these episodes really the best the series has to offer? I keep hearing good things, but I’m not interested in a pointless, techno-scare circle-jerk.

I feel strongly that “Shut up, Toral” should replace “Shut up, Wesley” as one of TNG’s bedrock memes. I get that he’s a victim in all of these power games to some extent and that he has mentors who refuse to help him understand his situation because they’re using him as a means unto an end.  

But shut up, Toral.  

I’ll try to make fewer “Game of Thrones” jokes in part two, I swear, but while “Redemption” is an oft-overlooked episode, it laid down so much that Deep Space Nine did structurally and canonically.  

It’s more than just a prototype for another series, it’s a clever way to tie in several (relatively) long-running plot threads into a conflict that has stakes for our characters and the larger world.  

For those of you who don’t know the story about Denise Crosby’s reappearance: clone, doppleganger, or long lost twin? Place your bets!

I wanted to go deeper on impostor syndrome in relationships, but we covered it well enough. What I can’t get over is the B-plot here.  

I’m sorry, “the bull**** plot here.” On the one hand, I’m angry the space/time bubbles aren’t explained better, on the other I’d be furious if they wasted time on doing that. It’s no “garbage scow that’s immune to physics,” but it’s a terrible plotline.  

It’s gotta be top ten worst, right?

“The Mind’s Eye” is a pretty straightforward episode. There’s not a big idea and or real character moment. Things happen in it, but they’re good things that drive a clear, well-developed plot.  

It turns out that triangulation is really complicated. To the point that there’s also a thing called trilateration, which I don’t have time to read the wiki on. I haven’t really read up on them, but I’m willing to believe any number of data points Lieutenant Commander Data needs to find a signal source .

I feel like we skipped over how Geordi’s visor is a negative here. I think it’s fair game that the differences of the crew are sometimes drawbacks. Troi losing her telepathy in “The Loss” and Data being controlled in “Brothers” are both instances that spring to mind.  

Derek’s episode pitch for a story where the senior staff is constantly implicated but not investigated for crimes is a lot like TOS’ “The Enemy Within.”

We’re back after a little break with a classic episode.  

There’s a lot to unpack with this one, and even if the lesson seems lost on some of the production staff, we try to stay focused on the most culturally relevant takeaway.  

Also, it was Tiresias. He was apparently a dick to some mating snakes and Hera made him a woman as punishment.  

I’ve made my fair share of "Trill are different" jokes, but is it a big deal that the Trill, like the Cardassians, vary a bit from their original introduction? Even Spock added/changed details the Vulcan people as we learned more about him.

We lost the tape.  

We’ve got so many twists and turns in the reasoning behind this one. Ironically, this was recorded at the height of the fervor over the Mueller Investigation and so there’s a lot to uncover in terms of “what makes an investigation legitimate”? We could have gotten deeper into it, but like most of TNG’s good episodes, there’s a lot to discuss.  

I guess, to get a bit political, it is weird how much the warnings about villains appearing to be good people has turned policies intended for the common good are turned into some kind of clandestine, slippery slope conspiracy. Are any of the moral lessons of Star Trek actually useful if they have to have the words, “but be reasonable” appended to them?

This one got me thinking about Star Trek and fanfiction. I don’t judge Star Trek fanfiction, mainly because I make improvisational Star Trek fanfiction every week with my friend Derek under the presumption it will amuse other people. Also because Star Trek’s ability to inspire people is part of its strength.  And yet…

I feel like there’s a transition from when a show is true to its premise and fights hard to establish its characters to when it feels established enough to take itself less seriously.  TNG goes from “Symbiosis” to “Qpid.” Deep Space Nine goes from “If Wishes Were Horses” to “Badda Bing Badda Bang.” Buffy: the Vampire Slayer eventually makes that musical episode.  

Even shows that are comedic or tongue in cheek seem to do it. Scrubs went from having a very serious core with humor around it to the sitcom it celebrated not being in “My Life in Four Colors.” Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, already tongue-in-cheek, eventually threw up its hands and recast its entire cast as its own production staff in “Yes, Virginia, There Is a Hercules” and “For Those of You Just Joining Us…”  

Maybe I’m cherry-picking. Law and Order is on its billionth, tonally-even season. Firefly seemed to consistently have fun with itself. There are definitely anime series which start light, but buckle down–the one with Vash the Stampede comes to mind.  

Who knows? Maybe I’m just finding patterns in the static.

It’s another Barclay episode. It’s great to see the range of Dwight Schultz, even if our leads get warped a bit to make it work. Is it necessary for shows to have bad guys and good guys? Is it necessary just for episodic shows like The Next Generation?

Honestly, “Identity Crisis” is so solid it’s hard to talk about. In retrospect, we spend a lot of time nitpicking here, but at least we didn’t talk about using Troi more.  

The thing about “Identity Crisis” is that it’s an episode which has some of the series’ most intriguing unanswered questions. I don’t mean that in terms of not explaining motivations which stretch our understanding of how the universe works (“Why did they do that?”), but instead it asks us to build on the universe with the implications of its story (“What kind of life form would reproduce like this?”).  

Speculation from the hip is that a once-sentient species wanted to hide themselves. It’s frustrating that The Next Generation almost completely abandons the incredibly common phenomenon of advanced, destroyed civilizations. You see hints of that in “Future Imperfect” and “The Last Outpost,” with Barash being the last of his people and the T’kon Empire being destroyed, but it’s still very rare.  

There’s another one of my Pax Americana rants in there, I’m sure, but the idea that these people made themselves into invisible monsters to preserve their peoples’…??? in the face of…??? tickles all of my cool story senses

There are so many thing this episode does almost right. I mean, I love it. It’s the kind of ensemble show Star Trek: the Next Generation can be and that is when it’s at its best.  

Maybe it’s just me, but as I get older I see a more paternalistic/authoritarian ideology behind the love of Picard. He’s the sort of morally pure authority figure that justifies his position as the Enterprise’s “ultimate decider.” Even his open leadership style is an example of him allowing others to speak.  

I see the obvious advantages of having a single person making executive decisions in crises. I also get having someone decide what is and isn’t a fruitful avenue of solving a problem before it’s a crisis. It’s only when an episode feels so right because it gets out from under that that I feel something’s amiss with the status quo.  

Am I on to something here? Is there a quieter message at play about the link between moral purity and power in Captain Picard? And to a lesser extent, Data?

Sometimes, a story–whether it’s a movie, a book, or an episode of television–is so bad you don’t know where to start. Sometimes it so so bad that you can start at the start and ride it all the way through to the end.  

If that wasn’t clear, “Galaxy’s Child” is one of those stories. When the episode literally says the lesson, but then rewards a character for refusing to learn that lesson, your Aesop is broken.  

I can’t think of an episode of The Next Generation where the illustrated lesson is more at odds with the actual words people are saying. Sure, some episodes contradict later episodes–“Journey’s End” and Insurrection pitting obedience versus principal, “Sarek” and “All Good Things” confronting aging versus respect, and “The Price” versus literally any episode where Riker is a petulant child because Troi is getting some.  

Guernica is the Spanish town where Francisco Franco bombed civilians with German help in 1937, just prior to WWII. Picasso famously painted a mural of it.

What I’m trying to say is that we appreciate Lanel’s initiative and drive. They are virtues, and they’re rare ones. Just not virtues in a biblical sense, I guess.  

We gloss over a lot of this episode and that’s probably because it’s such a solid, meat-and-potatoes episode. It covers the balance of conservative and progressive thought, mass hysteria, and the problems that we as a people face with the possibility of encountering extraterrestrial intelligence.  

Also, I don’t mean to dismiss all unexplained phenomenon out of hand. I remember something about lights over Mexico City in 2017 that were apparently rare rocks with negatively-charged oxygen pairs breaking down to release electricity that could create plasma.  

I mean, I generally understand those physics, but I’m 75% sure Tommy Lee Jones used that line in one of the Men In Black movies. Regardless, I’m sure that the same way straight people miss LGBT news because they aren’t reading it, there’s got to be a lot of mysterious news I miss because I don’t read it. Please feel free to enlighten me.

It’s a solid episode and we’re being mean. It’s not “about” anything in the Star Trek sense. 

We don’t have a debate about whether Data’s loyalty to Picard is based on its own merits or obedience to the chain of command.  We don’t discuss the ramifications of keeping the existence of a dangerous planet hidden, of how Starfleet can’t keep this secret, or of how Ensign Jeffers on Deck 21 won’t consent to have his memories wiped and will hide a note in a bulkhead.  

I believe Derek was talking about Elrond, who probably has a stronger brand than Gowron (RIP). Also, my comment about getting “them off of their tractors” is a reference to Futurama’s jab at Hollywood’s underestimation of Middle America, not a jab at Middle America.  

But is this the limit of Patrick Stewart’s acting or is this just excellent bad-acting?

No surprise this one was a reworked Phase II story, which I’m surprised that I–having read the Phase II scripts–didn’t catch. It makes a lot of sense when you view this through the lens of The Original Series. Or maybe just through the lens of TOS’ lowered expectations.  

Making legal quibbles might be criticizing deck chair colors on a sinking ship, but that’s my specialty. They call “jury trials” “jury trials,” but they call “judge trials” just “trials" or "bench trials." That’s my only point–THEY HAD A JAG OFFICER IN SEASON TWO!  

This episode isn’t bad, it’s just goofy nonsense that’s not really goofy enough. It’s a good concept too–this is basically the plot of Watchmen a thousand years on, with sleight-of-hand instead of a giant, exploding, telepathic squid.  

Of all the takes, “Devil’s Due” is the least cynical, but they’re based on a reality of our own actions. Does global warming reflect poorly on humanity, or just our most powerful members?  

Reminding you that if you’re listening to a Star Trek podcast you are–statistically–one of those members.  

Also, Constantin Stanislavsky was a real actor, Stella Adler was a real lady, and Garnav is made up, so exactly what we thought.  

Link to the opening credits of “Dawn of the Dead”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdddUJWIj_M  

And link to Mitchell and Webb’s “Remain Indoors”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WsuaYh_hkg&list=PL3Dx8Yxab-uFpPdulB4g2rw5bpJIFlcPU  

It's a good 'un. I don't really know what else we could say?

It’s a Chief O’Brien episode about passion and reason and pain and understanding. It cuts to the quick because the pain from Bob Gunton as Captain Maxwell is very grounded. It’s a weighty episode and it works.  

While TNG has flirted with continuity before, “The Wounded” feels like a moment where it really begins to spread the black wings of “Last time, on Star Trek,” and commits the franchise to creating The TNG Era of Star Trek. Or am I being dramatic?  

Also, I was 100% wrong about the ending of X-Men sharing a line with this one. Close, but no cigar. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWDDVuxFboI  

This week’s guest host is John, the host of Trek Profiles Podcast. You can find him on Twitter as @TrekProfiles. Trek Profiles can be found on its website, https://trekprofiles.com/.  

The alternate episode with Derek goes up next week.

Derek and I finally do Data's Day. It's a heck of an episode that has so much of what it is that people love about TNG.

It’s finally “Data Has Feelings but The Writers Won’t Acknowledge It: The Episode.” 

 “Data’s Day” is such a good slice of life episode. There’s the phenomenon where some folks who grew up with The Next Generation credit it for being a family to them when their upbringings didn’t give them a family. No episode shows that as well as this one.  

I gripe about continuity, then turn around and demand better characterization. I think “Data’s Day” beautifully exemplifies how those two things, when they’re done well, go together. The touches that include things like Worf shopping for a wedding gift before he starts work in the morning show us good things about Worf’s character and about how the Enterprise works.  

We learn the Enterprise’s shift rotations and I know it’s only here to support the literal day-in-the-life perspective of this story, but I like it. Does it really matter though? Does this minutiae make TNG better or is it just an indulgent scene for nerds, providing content which neither tells a story nor enriches the viewer, but exists just to provide visceral satisfaction?  

This week’s guest host is Shauna, from the Bunny Trails Podcast. You can find her on Twitter as @BunnyTrailsPod and on the podcast’s Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/bunnytrailspod. You can find the Bunny Trails Podcast on many platforms, including iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/bunny-trails/id1371929032?mt=2  

The alternate episode with Derek will go up next week.

We’re finally out of the war and Star Trek: Discovery has set a completely different tone with Science Officer Douchenozzle, Engineer Barzan Lady, and Captain Cool Dad.  

Derek and I both were hoping for a season with a little more focus than the last, but it looks like Captain Cool Dad was right, “if you don’t get your expectations up, you can’t be disappointed.” On the other hand, we give the complete absence of first-Klingon-in-Starfleet Voq nineteen Klingon chromosomes out of twenty three.  

Are we asking too much of this show? I feel like I’m being very fair. Is Derek now a real Star Trek fan now that he’s saying new Star Trek Thing isn’t Star Trek? I’m so proud!  

Season 2, Episode 1 of Star Trek: Discovery is  no longer on YouTube. It was here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rvMqRrtmkY  Don’t read the comments.

We forgot to do this one a few weeks ago, but we’re up to speed now.  Derek and I talk about the trinity of wasted potential in this episode, say a few words about its merits, remind everyone that Guinan has a Schlorblax in psychology, and pitch the greatest episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation since Season 8.  

We’ve talked before about the fine line between remembering that Geordi is disabled and basing his character on it. Is wanting him to play a larger part of that episode leaning on that second half? I didn’t feel that way during the episode, but on reflection I’m having second thoughts.  

Next week: CBS put the first episode of Star Trek: Discovery’s second season, “Brother,” up on YouTube for free, so we’re calling an audible and doing that one. We’ll get to “Devil’s Due” in time. “Brother” is the first episode of Discovery for both of us, so wish us luck.

I know a lot of these episodes are just delivery mechanisms for Patrick Stewart to give a speech, but we need to aim a little higher than “Final Mission.” We deserved–  

Wil Wheaton deserved more than a flimsy B-plot separating him from the Enterprise while he went through the motions of an A-plot until Patrick Stewart could act a goodbye at him.  

And then, after decades of Star Trek trying to use real physics, they ignore Newton’s First Law to make one story happen and use magical bullshit for the other one.  

I get angrier about this episode the more I think about it. What makes me consistently, clearly, irrationally angry is that this episode introduces Boothby, a character that other nerds obsess over to the point that I’m ready to burn shit down.  

Scale of one to ten, how infuriating is “Final Mission”?

In talking with Derek, he says that nothing happens in this episode. Given the multi-tiered nature of this story and its fiction-within-fiction, is it fair to mention that there’s a third layer where none of Star Trek actually happens?  

If Borash came up again, would this story be more relevant? 

I have a healthy disdain for continuity, but I think he’s right. Even when the literal events don’t happen, Star Trek usually shows us an idea, or a character, or a moral paradigm that are real.  The ideas are real, as Benny Russell might point out. In that “Future Imperfect” doesn’t have those ideas or paradigms, and in that it barely has any characterization of Riker or Borash, there’s nothing relevant about this except for a few dramatic turns and a fun look at possible futures for our crew.

Man, Riker’s head is kind of terrifying. Or maybe I should say that the way the writers picture us picturing the inside of Riker’s head is terrifying.  

Kuhan’s website is http://iamkuhan.com/ and he can also be found on Twitter at https://twitter.com/kuhan.  The alternate episode with Derek is here: http://www.vanvelding.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/Future-Imperfect.mp3

Derek and I talk about the one where Worf learns that he is a dad and Picard chooses, admittedly by default, the new Chancellor of the Klingon High Council.

This episode is a little different: Worf gets a kid. It changes a lot of things and it’s really scary for everyone, but luckily, it’s forgotten by the next episode.  

I gripe about post-Season 2 TNG, but I feel like this one really hit all the goalposts for being intelligent, emotional, action-packed, and having a science fiction idea buried in there (someone’s arm, specifically).  

I assume could K’Ehleyr have survived? Should Alexander have stayed around? For being such a big deal, there are no actual consequences for the immediate future.  

Jay Donks is this week’s guest host. You can find him on Twitter as @SimbadGaming and on his website, simbadgaming.com. 

I usually bring up when TNG goes for some of the harder-edged stuff folks accuse it of never going for, but while this one has some real elbows out, it feels softer-edged than other instances and I don’t know why.  

We need to stop catsuits and start bras. When Carrie Fisher died, lots of newspapers reported that she wanted her death reported as “drowned in moonlight, strangled by her own bra” because of a ridiculous conversation she had with George Lucas about there being no bras in Star Wars.  

Wookiepedia says differently, of course: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Brassiere  

Are we off in seeing the potential for class playing into the “chess vs poker” debate? Could 3D chess be a set of tools like a deck of cards and not one game, like conventional chess?

I don’t mean to seem ungrateful because no sooner do we start getting Troi doing her job than Wesley’s throughline starts unraveling. Really? “See past the numbers”?  

Are the crew justified in assuming that everyone from Tau Alpha C is a Traveler? It always seemed like a really big jump. I get that it’s far away, but it seems like they’re adding dragons to a place on the map because they haven’t been there yet.

We don’t mention it in the episode, but I think the internal contradiction of xenophobia and taking alien babies is an internal contradiction that makes the Telarians a little more real. What it is that separates that from inconsistent characterization of an alien culture is something I can’t define.  

This is definitely one of the weakest episodes of season four, but that conversation between Picard and Troi is a shining beacon of humor and characterization.  

My one gripe is making Picard such a singular figure in Starfleet. Do you prefer Picard be a guy who’s ordinary but has worked hard to become a captain or do you want Picard to be someone who has dedicated himself singularly to becoming a Starfleet captain, to the exclusion of even having a normal childhood?  

I guess I also skipped over saying explicitly that Jono was imagined by Tommy Westphall and that there’s a lot to unpack there. The Tommy Westphall Universe Hypothesis is detailed more under Tommy Westphall’s Wikipedia page. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Westphall

Doctor Soong is the worst.

Can we count this as Star Trek’s first three-parter? It’s like the third part of the foundation that makes the most celebrated parts of the Star Trek franchise going forward. I rail against the continuity, but it’s clearly one of the parts of Trek that people look forward to.  

They call up Wil Wheaton to do an acting exercise, Picard is cool as heck, and we learn that Worf apparently shares parents with Mike Warner. It’s a good ‘un.  

“Captain Riker, Ambassador Picard”: Good idea or bad idea?

We talk about the character work, Riker’s command decisions, and maneuver naming conditions. Some of that is really good and some of it is disappointing.  

I don’t question it because it smooths the rough edges of the narrative, but Derek has a point about making Worf Riker’s executive officer instead of Shelby. Shelby’s great and all, but if something happened to Riker, you’d  want someone who knows the crew.  

Also, we get the Borg queen presaged. I mean, insect queens don’t really issue commands as much as they act as a unique and hard-to-replace part of the colony’s biomachinery, but the point is a salient one. Is there a better, accessible analogy for the Borg than colonial insects?

All the murder doesn't work, so Reileen tries the revolutionary futuristic technique of ASKING HER BROTHER TO MAKE A CHOICE!

Also, I'm looking forward to Altered Carbon, Season 2: Chronicles of Lizzy.

This mystery reveal is--I'll say it--perfect. It's good and confident and it deserves its confidence. 

I mean, as far as Reileen's plans go...I feel I need to point out that they are...sub-optimal.

How is Ortega this not-smart? Maybe it explains why she lost her arm.

Have I talked about Reileen's plans and how good they are?

I want to see the CTAC propaganda erotica. Not for personal reasons, as a purely academic interest.

Reileen's plans continue to make no goddamned sense.

I wish it had been Ortega's mom.

I didn't write blurbs for these episodes back when I made them and I barely remember them so I needed something for the blurb.

But I also needed to know if I edited out the dirty words for Anchor, but the near-instant use of and oft-repetition of the phrase "pumpin' Ortega," fulfilled both of my needs.

Raaaaaaaaampage!!!  

When you have a character who is a badass killing machine, you want to set up a scenario when they’re allowed to go all-out. Maybe not on the cogs in the wheel of an unjust system. The cogs Kovachs just gunned down in the corridors.  

What’s interesting about media is that characters are rarely called upon to make the banal moral compromises most of us have to to pay rent. So when our dude starts killing every minimum wage worker and middle-manager trying to get by in a world run by disengaged Methuselahs it takes me a minute to realize we’re supposed to be rooting for him. Ew.  

I’m also angry he only uses his gun’s retractable bullet thing once in this whole series. Like…what’s the point, man?

Two people fight to the death and I’m still fighting a hardcore case of yawns here. This episode’s central theme is that the wealthy are corrupt, but it can’t even draw a clear bead on that point and fire. It’s allegory that fails to link its allegory–the long life of the Methuselahs–with what it represents–obscene wealth and the detachment it brings.  

Also, there aren’t enough frowny faces on the emoji menu of your keyboard to express my disappointment with the Kovachs-sleeps-with-Miriam plot. It just fizzles out and it’s not no one gives, a damn; it’s that Altered Carbon works so hard to inform us that someone would and then never pays that off.  

Can I make it through seven more of these?  The video version of this episode can be found on YouTube at https://youtu.be/2MVYkca1EQ0

Man, does this title even work? In that everyone in this setting is pretty damn fallen, it’s not really–oooh, it’s probably about the girl who fell into the lake from the cloud layer and died.  

I’m doing these solo now and I’m doing my best. I have a lot of questions and a lot of speculation. Is Abboud having sex with Ortega’s mom? 

…other questions.  

The mystery itself is going to plod along and I expect it will unfurl alongside the setting.  The video version of this episode can be found on YouTube: https://youtu.be/c5TmxJM1vas

During our break, The Beige and The Bold is going to watch Netflix’s Altered Carbon, a ten part series which explores a future world in which human consciousness can be reduced to an electronic signal and stored in devices called a stack. In an inversion of our usual roles, Derek has seen Altered Carbon and I have not.  

We cover a lot of stuff and I freely admit I’m one of those guys who’s a bit prickly when they’re not on familiar ground. My initial impression of Altered Carbon is that it has a lot of potential and is a fine show, but is so eager about telling its story that it sometimes forgets the basics.  

Time will tell if I’m wrong.  

A video version of this episode can be found on You Tube: https://youtu.be/_aE77g-Eapc

We get right into it in this season’s supplemental, rolling from the season three finale right into:  

-The Question  

-Season 3 versus Seasons 1 and 2.  

-What we’re doing during the interregnum.  

-YouTube, sound quality, iTunes, and listener feedback.  

-Characters and characterization.  

I’m serious about podcast recommendations. Maybe I’m a bad participant in the podcasting community because I listen to Writing Excuses and…nothing else. Given that my music playlist is getting a bit stale, I’m wide open for suggestions.  Anything else we’re missing though? We do this casually, but we would like to improve.  Also, there will be a brief–odd–mini-series of Altered Carbon for the next four weeks. Then we’ll start season four.

It’s weird for me to say right out of the box that something is overrated and then to laud it for forty minutes, but there we are. If nothing else, it’s a satisfying episode, like a Saturday afternoon earned after a particularly hard week. It’s a lot of reward, not for anything unpleasant, but it’s gratifying, like a pizza after a strict diet.  

I’m not trying to make the rest of The Next Generation sound like a chore; it’s just that it’s a responsible, restrained show that’s got all kinds of ideology and knowledge that are the bran and vegetables of television so the episodes where it can be equally smart and high-minded but also indulge in canon and action scenes feel very, very, very, earned.

It's done. 

It's hard to say anything about what might be–as a Deep Space  Nine fan–the greatest multi-part Star Trek story ever told. Star Trek:  The Next Generation is creating something here.

We're finally to the really forgettable episode where they find a guy whose whole species seems to be on the verge of becoming Q or whatever for no danged reason and we never see them again when...a glowing race of supermen seems significant.

Maybe they all died.

Planetary security, diplomatic incidents, and transporter protocols are just a few things that utterly baffle us about this episode. Like…are there not telepaths on Space E-Lance?  

I know it’s a ‘fun’ episode, but it’s nonsense.  

Is there a difference between the words “nice” and “good”? Is Daimon Tog a bad person who is nice? Can we separate a pleasant exterior from a malicious interior? Can I load these questions any heavier?

Derek’s 80/40/40 joke was really good and I missed it. I’m not sure what else there is to say here.  

Was there another way to slip some elements of TOS into the series? I feel like this series quickly forgets the lessons of this episode later, but it is a good one.

This is another one of Season 3’s signature solid episodes. I think it’s a bit underrated by the fan base, honestly. Maybe because the stylistic choices are so bold it gets cringey for some folks. Honestly, this thing gets high marks for me for conflict, villain, universe building, continuity, and characterization. It tells us so many things about all of the working parts in it that the worst criticism I can give it is that it’s not longer.  

The auction house I was thinking of was Christie’s. I don’t feel bad for blanking; I mean, who uses Christie’s when eBay exists?  

Before every episode, Derek and I warm up a bit and do some planning–that’s where I get the SoundCloud teasers from. Part of the discussion for this episode was about serialized series versus episodic series. This is a smart, self-contained episode that would lose a lot of momentum if these Data/Fajo scenes only happened once per episode over three or four episodes or if we filled those same episodes with failed escape attempts. On the other hand, the concept of Data’s death is big enough that we should see its effects on the Enterprise.  

I dunno, it seems like TNG and DS9 balanced the serialized/episodic divide much, much better than Voyager and (or so I’ve heard) Discovery.  This is a good episode to demonstrate that, right?  

“Sarek” trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5h_-bG5Mvkc  

The SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/vanvelding

My main complaint with Barclay is that he’s overrated. But that only comes because he’s vulnerable in a way that no main character could be. My main complaint isn’t with the fandom, but with the cultural limitations of the 1990’s. I guess that’s a recurring theme.  

“Look behind you,” stretches back at least to Cu Chulainn, the mythical hero of Ireland. It’s an old, old trick.  

It’s really frustrating to see the main cast be so bad at basic leadership. It’s not just about them, but about the setting and the philosophy behind it. What could they have changed to keep this episode essentially intact but to still functional?

Y’know, when I say an episode is boring, I don’t mean “it’s so boring, I’d edit it and then totally forget to post it,” but that’s what happened.  

I’d apologize for our weird digression into class structure but honestly, what else is happening in this episode? What’s your favorite class, listener? The humble proletariat? The reactionary bourgeoisie? The redoubtable bürger?

We compare Riker vacations to Picard vacations, gush about Vash, and also there some time travel there…just because?  

Vash seems like such an outside-of-the box perfect fit for Picard. I’d be curious about other such fits for members of the crew. I would not put K’Ehylar in that place for Worf. They have dynamite chemistry, but she borders on whatever a Klingon version of a manic pixie dream girl is. I’d be interested in seeing the “Vash” for the rest of the crew.

This one’s got Libertarian jokes and pacifist jokes in it because we are both fair and balanced and neither Libertarians nor pacifists. “Allegiance” isn’t bad; it just fails to be inspiring and is another in a long line of episodes that are about Picard, but don’t need to be.  

I also have to apologize because it was only during editing that I realized I missed a long line of “you might be a Libertarian if…” jokes. I’m sure we’ll get to them.  

Finally, I want to introduce everyone to my son, Applied Research VanVelding, and my daughter, Doctoral Thesis VanVelding. They’re great kids and my hopes for them in the future are modest. Really, naming your kid ‘fighter’ in a martial society works, but it would be hilarious to see a more modern/post-modern culture do it. Maybe the diversification of labor keeps us from doing it, but we could still go for D&D classes, right?

Weeeeeeeaaaaaabbbbb.  

It’s good to see Worf successfully engaging with his heritage in a way that his progenitor character, Spock, never did. It’s weird that, in retrospect, Worf is the number three or number four character for development and storylines in this series. I approve.  

Also, Riker should have been the cha’DIch.

That Andorian looks like The Great friggin’ Gazoo. Data is a great dad. Beverly in grade school was whatever Mean Girls look like in the 24th Century.  

Where are we on Worf needing a permission slip to give birth to Klingon Jesus?  

Also, I swear we recorded this over a month before any actual famous people blamed prescription drugs on saying racist things.

In the "Skin of Evil" versus "Yesterday's Enterprise" war, I am firmly in the "Skin of Evil" camp. "Yesterday's Enterprise" is a fun little romp through continuity with the giant 'Member Portal, but let's save it for a really big episode.

He's also the dad from SLC Punk.

So we’re a bit offended here and maybe just bored enough to make up a B-plot where Worf and Geordi are trying to complete space’s most insane scavenger hunt.  

Roshamon was directed by Kurosawa, but I was only correct because I am too much an unwashed pleb to know a second Japanese director. It’s a classic example of answer by accident, I assure you I am a buffoon.  

We understand how the Tanugans’ legal system is a bit unfair, but it still feels like Starfleet closed ranks around Riker and his alleged murder with an unsettling quickness. Why couldn’t Picard have just been, y’know, in the right here for extradition? Why didn’t we examine Federation Law and space law in more depth? Why couldn’t we even work a mention in edgewise about state v federal power, or at least one where federal officials aren’t inherently personally involved in the conflict? 

I'd like to add that you guys are lucky we didn’t record this episode with the same commentary repeated three times, but with different attitudes.  But don't worry; I'd stake my honor on us never doing one episode multiple times for its own sake.

The flaw with Star Trek (and maybe television of its era) is that it can’t give its protagonists real, intentional flaws. What happens is that we search for humanizing flaws from less-than-perfect writing and sorta crack open this implicit pretense of characters. Modern demands for high-resolution characters take the old 4:3 characters and stretch them into 16:9 frames. That’s part of why we’re so hard on Commander Riker, I think.  

Also, these four episodes–“A Matter of Perspective,” “The Offspring,” “Sins of the Father,” and–not so much but it’s in the sequence–“Yesterday’s Enterprise” seem to mark a turning point where the staff of The Next Generation gave up on Riker as a protagonist and started focusing on Picard.  

Riker’s flaws had always been easily redeemable with a bit of maturity and seasoning. All they would have had to have done was to execute the most basic–and I can’t emphasize that enough *BASIC*–character arc to make Riker likable. Instead, he gets thrown on the pile with Geordi and Troi where he’s occasionally trotted out for episodes where we’re reminded of exactly which wheelhouse he’s confined to.

I can’t believe this episode has a moral after all.

Unspoken emotions in a relationship we don’t ship, a stock villain with one quirk and a paper-thin idea behind him, relevant technology we’ll never see again, and a sociopolitical conflict that gets The Federation’s fingers slick with blood just by touching it that we never see or hear from again. This episode has everything.  

I don’t think I completed my thought on the IRA. I have a layperson’s knowledge of The Troubles and despite being acquainted with Britain’s history of imperialism and oppression, a sympathetic view of the IRA is far enough outside of my scope that I’m skeptical of it. It’s something I’m not educated on and which is far beyond the scope of the research I do for The Beige and The Bold.  

Derek’s second guessing of tactics towards the gun-wielding kid at the end seems like criticism for criticism’s sake? It feels like it’d be easy if we followed his advice–if the cops jumped a child from behind to wrestle a gun away from him–to argue with equal fervor that it was foolish because the kid might have gotten a shot off. Am I being sensitive about the critical light Derek is here to shine on this series? Or this a gratuitous reach for a ‘well actually’?

We talk about Angosian architecture, re-using actors, and how everyone expects the Picard Speech to support them until it doesn’t. Also, we bemoan the lack of kids these days being unable to artfully turn an authoritarian invocation of the Prime Directive.  

There’s so much to unpack with the Angosian leadership wanting Danar to put their arms down before negotiating. I know the analogy is veterans and their mistreatment, specifically the treatment of Vietnam veterans, which was a larger issue back in the late eighties/early nineties.  

There’s also–with the reservations and the call to disarm before negotiation–a parallel with Native American treatment in the United States. I wish we had a little more time to look into the realpolitik of the disarmament of minority groups, but I guess that’s what the comments section is for.

There have been good episodes of TNG up until now. But I strongly feel like The Defector is our first Hot Damn episode of TNG. It’s not ‘every frame a painting’ good, but it’s a lean 45 minutes of television and it’s gripping. There’s no personal tsuris about–I don’t know–Troi grappling with drug use or Crusher having trouble at home. There’s no lagniappe drama; there’s no small, personal bullshit or character arc that Jarok’s mission folds neatly into.  

Again, I kinda freewheel about what I’m going to call “VanVelding’s Starfleet TOE,” which I think I hit on just enough to quiet the voices. I’m not going crazy when I expect the Enterprise to have a home port and to be assigned to the command of an admiral, right?  

The book that Derek is referring to is the one, I think, Picard and Wesley talked about in “Samaritan Snare.” It included the work of American philosopher William James.

I would have liked a musical cooking montage where Riker bonds with Yuta. This episode needs an additional Riker/Yuta scene and improvements on the ones its already got. I like the dimensions of Acamarian society, but it comes at a cost of the heart of this episode, which IS Yuta.  

The idea of having Riker’s emotional investment in folks get the viewer emotionally invested is a good one, but the execution is often a bit too romantically focused. It comes off forced and shallow. That’s probably because I’m a homosexual man. On an earnest level, I hope it works better on straight dudes.  

Does it?

50 Shades of Grey (1989)

I’m still stuck in this thing where I’m kinda obsessed with how aware the writers were of the size of Devinoni Ral’s terribleness. I feel like they wanted us to think of him as appealing and then suddenly realize he’s terrible for reasons they couldn’t articulate, but I have a hard time believing they could be that bad at writing. On the other hand, the alternative is that they knew he was terrible and made Troi an idiot.

Should the Romulan they found have had some well-buried desire to live? Oh yeah. Derek was even right about Worf reading between the lines on that one. Alas.  

Still though, I really like this episode because it’s good to have a Geordi episode which lacks a certain level of…romantic complexity.

I feel like this episode has really lost itself, despite having Guinan pitch the lesson across the plate in the first fifteen minutes. I complain about Star Trek fans not really getting characters and I will continue to do so.

It's a ghost-powered plot. I understand the ghosts are necessary, but I wish the team had had the time/skill to think of something better. 

Derek and I definitely get into the awfulness of Troi not being used more here. Literally, Picard and children do not mix.

Derek is an atheist guys.

And change your plasma filter every 2000 hours or else you might reintroduce religion to a primitive civilization.

We like this. It’s a good one. The sidelining of Troi is at least an acknowledgement of how useful she could–hypothetically-be. As depressing as it is, it’s something. It’s also notable for using Worf a little more than we’ve come to expect.  

I do kinda want, “When you least expect it, the Breen will be important,” on a t-shirt.

I think Derek’s most charitable laugh in the history of this series happens early in this episode.  

Also, we’re offering a $1000 reward for official Paramount Pictures concept work regarding Data’s D:\.

Good Wesley episode? Good Wesley episode? Good Wesley episode? Aaah, I’m sure it is. Sadly, I think this marks a dropoff in the number of eccentric Great Man Scientists we see in Star Trek. They still come around, but they’re more rare. I’ll miss all you lil’ Rick Sanchezes. I’ll miss all y’all.  

We’ll get back to making fun of Doctor Crusher’s parenting skills in time. In time. Right now, I’m going to celebrate Troi having a handful of scenes.  

Also, I know the sound quality is bad. I honestly don’t know why. If it’s too bad, go ahead and tell me. I’m not leaning towards rerecording, but I’d hop over that line with a gentle push.

IT’S BEEN A LONG ROAD.  

You’ll have to excuse the audio. Derek and I started this conversation over a friendly game of Stellaris and the topic of Tarantino’s Trek came up and we started recording…without headphones. Both of us. Sorry.  

We’re finally done with Season Two and while I feel really good about Season 3–yes, Riker gets his redemption–I would like to do something like Season One’s Skreliosis or Season Two’s marathon. I’m open to suggestions. We’d even be willing to have some guests.  

I also wanna say that–and maybe it’s because I’m listening to the Enterprise intro for no reason–we’ve been doing this for three years and it’s been great.  

Thanks for listening.

Just like all the emotional parts of my relationships, my only contribution is, “Let’s get this over with.”

I think I missed a great opportunity for a Data/infallible/space pope joke here.

It's a great episode and we have a lot of fun and the Riker-scene-inducing Ferengi are actually completely useless and break our flow.

But it's fun.

It's a straight. Pulaski's got a straight.

Picard loses a bet to Riker and he's gonna be angry at Worf for a long time I bet.

I’m convinced Picard liked Dixon Hill as a kid and slowly fell out of love with them as he grew older. You can’t trust nostalgia Jean-Luc.  

This week’s episode is “Manhunt.”

One day, we will stop fencing over the nature of Riker and Troi’s relationship. Today is not that day. 

Also, the Hellghast are from the Killzone video game.  

It’s hard to say, “I’d rather watch a 40-minute anti-abortion allegory than watch this episode,” but I’d mean it. Every time. How many other, actually productive, directions could this thing have gone into?

Man, this is a great episode about Picard and Wesley and NOTHING ELSE. 

My experiences with handed-down wisdom probably aren’t singular, but they aren’t universal either. 

Ah, being Southern.  

*Sigh*  

Will Riker continues being a bit disappointing. He’s getting offered commands left and right and episodes like this make him seem not ready at all for them. Not at all. I wonder if there’s another Will Riker around that they keep recommending for commands and the offers keep ending up in this Will Riker’s mailbox or something.  

I don’t know if it’s conceited that I want “I live an alternative lifestyle of austere bachelorhood” on a t-shirt.

I’m holding onto this “Q is a benign, albeit adversarial, guide for humanity” idea for as long as I can. 

Sometime in Season 3 if I remember correctly. 

I think I was wrong about the number of Borg episodes in The Next  Generation. I think it’s six, including this one. 

The Borg cast a big  shadow over the series though, especially season three. I knock Voyager  for running them into the ground, but what could have been a better  villain for Voyager? Could you have made anything as iconic as the Borg  when Voyager was on the air?

What can we say about Pen Pals?

What CAN'T we say about it?

OH MY GOD. The Melbourne WAS a punk-ass extra ship! I mean, spoilers, but Derek called the USS Melbourne’s fate.  

In other news Star Trek is full of daddy issues and Derek’s pulling me over to the “Story arc or no, Pulaski is a dick” camp.

Some things about canon just don’t sit right. They irritate us like grains of sand in the mouth of an oyster. This is our pearl: the notion that Deanna Troi hates her job and is intentionally useless.  

Also Worf’s incessant cry of, “mobiusmobiusmobiusmobiusmobiusmobiusmobiusmobiusmobius.”

Isn’t it cool how this episode…um…has actors…and those actors just say all of these things that are things? It forces us to ask so many deep questions like “ew?” and “what?” and “no, where’s the real episode?”  

Did I come down on Derek too hard on calling them “lasers”? I mean we decontruct elements, calling Data a “robot” and phasers “guns” because those are the story elements they represent. Is “lasers” too far a departure?  

I said “Will and Grace” when I meant the much more obscure “Hope & Gloria.” The 90’s had its naming conventions and stuck to them.

We pick this one apart, but it’s a good one. Maybe we’re hard on it because it’s an action episode with a few action-y one-liners. It uses the ensemble well and gets the fundamentals of the story well. It’s a good one, but not so great we gotta give it respect.  

I’m glad the Iconians get revisited one time, although I would have preferred a catchall ancient civilization that handles those stories the same way Q incorporates (most) of the omnipotent being stories.

We missed a lot of opportunities here. Salia’s ability to shapeshift seems like an apt (if accidental) transgender analogy. At which point in the relationship should that come up? Wesley’s reaction works for both cases. Admittedly, we came down pretty hard on him. 

I think Derek said “alt-right,” like, four times.  On the other hand, IS Salia a manic pixie dream girl? I dismissed it out of hand because I bought into Derek’s question as an either/or. This perfect woman who exists free of her own baggage to help Wesley out with his because she’s composed of infinite patience and love? I think the MPDG exists because some writers create the woman they would have liked when they were younger. To Salia’s credit, she does have her own issues and she and Wesley tangle each other up in a way that feels more real. 

I think we all agree that she needed more characterization.  This is the first of six streaming episodes, which we streamed on Twitch back in September. I hope you all enjoyed and if you wanted another stream, let me know.

It’s hard to work with good episodes and despite what I said last week, Measure of a Man is probably the best of Season 2. But Derek does what he does best and cuts through my blind adulation. 

This is what we’re here for.  

I mean, Derek is probably not great at poker, but we’re on the same page here. #LouvoisingIt

It’s a good one? The premise is sound. The acting is good. The action is a tiny bit contrived, but I forgive it.  

I’m kidding about the Data/Microsoft bit; we all know Data is an Android. 

Is this the best episode of the second season? I personally love the upcoming “Peak Performance,” but I know I’m biased.  Also, those Klingon lawyers and chefs are in Deep Space Nine. 

Sorry about the sound quality; there’s a mic issue with these episodes that builds on my already subpar enunciation. Working on it.

Pulaski continues to be a bit of a dick and it’s weird with the kids-as-adults and it’s ignorant of evolution in general. Otherwise okay episode? 

Also, gene-freaks, shapeshifting crewman, and missed potential for Riker’s character.  The quote I was thinking of was “the soft bigotry of low expectations” from George W. Bush’s speech to the NAACP in 2000.

I hope you enjoy talk about emotionally dependent geese and series from 1966 which aren’t Star Trek.  

Schizoid personality disorder is a real disorder characterized by social isolation, reduced sex drive, and limited emotional range. 

That somewhat describes Ira Graves, but I feel personally called out.  Regardless, I’ll take Alexa over Ira Graves as the ghost in the machine any day.  

…and look, just watch The Prisoner, okay?

Riva is bad at everything and not very likable. I feel maybe the Enterprise left him on that planet as acceptable losses. 

Marvel with us as Troi’s usefulness:potential ratio reaches a new low. In fact, can we make that a thing? Can we call it a “Troi Number”?  

This is also the 1,542nd time I’ve made this exact Batman reference. We’ve got nine more episodes in the can due to editing bottlenecks, but from this point forward I am forbidden from talking about Batman.  

I didn’t mention it in the episode, but if this episode was made today, I think we would’ve wasted five minutes learning about the aliens who are fighting and their planet and that would have been a real waste.

Okona is a mary sue, from the series that inspired the first mary sue. But through Derek’s eyes, even the most mundane second season episodes are exciting.  

At some point we’re going to get past the bizarre work schedules of Starfleet crew members and Troi’s usefulness, but today is not that day (and tomorrow isn’t looking too good either).

This week we talk about actors and accents, the lost plot of Data’s sapience, and how Jean-Luc Picard would totally kill a guy.  

Is Picard a good leader right now? We make fun of his standing orders and how well the crew is trained, but are we being too hard on him? Was it just that they couldn’t write these episodes to improve the crew’s abilities or do the folks on the Enterprise have to be poorly trained for these stories to work?

The actual narrative is so short here, I wish for a better B-plot. I feel we learn nothing, the crew learns nothing, and nothing actually happens. It’s just a bunch of filmmakers asking if they’ve blown our minds yet.  We’ve had worse stories, but nothing that’s really felt so amateurish.  

Speaking of amateurs, on September 10th Derek and I will be streaming as we watch six episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, “The Dauphin,” “Contagion,” “The Royale,” “Time Squared,” “The Icarus Factor,” and “Pen Pals.” I tried to get the biggest streak of bad episodes possible. 

Stream will start at 9:00 AM central time and will feature stills from the episode with audio from Derek and myself. We’ll be at: https://www.twitch.tv/vanvelding

I would love to visit spreadsheet planet. It would accomplish more than this episode.  

In this episode, I forgot what the name of my website was. Was it Kris.com? It’s not. I also mixed up “The Omen,” “Rosemary’s Baby,” and “Eraserhead.” But I did not mix up how much I love potatoes though.  

Also, shout-out to listener and commenter Skiltao who pitched the idea of a “Skin of Evil”/”Conspiracy”/”The Child” three-parter which would have given us the kind of through-line and body horror that would’ve done some of these episodes some justice.

Season 2 is going to be better. End of.

Unedited, slightly incoherent, and mostly redundant, The Beige and The Bold Solo Sessions are episodes where I run through a show without Derek.

Are archetypes bad? No. Are tropes bad? No. Is it bad to give them more depth? No. Especially when that depth excuses the use of tropes. 

Unedited, slightly incoherent, and mostly redundant, The Beige and The Bold Solo Sessions are episodes where I run through a show without Derek.

Looks like Yar and Worf are having a scene together...*singing* one last time *singing*.

Kickboxer (1989) had Jean-Claude Van Damme was followed by Kickboxer II  (1991) was with Sasha Mitchell. This episode was made in 1988, so it predates the Kickboxer series.

Unedited, slightly incoherent, and mostly redundant, The Beige and The Bold Solo Sessions are episodes where I run through a show without Derek.

THIS mother-president!

Lemme tell ya, it's February of 2017 and I am sick of this fella.

Unedited, slightly incoherent, and mostly redundant, The Beige and The Bold Solo Sessions are episodes where I run through a show without Derek.

Ok, Lore isn't that deep, but then Data isn't either. Y'know, all respect to Brent Spiner, who takes so much of Data and Lore and makes them work.

Unedited, slightly incoherent, and mostly redundant, The Beige and The Bold Solo Sessions are episodes where I run through a show without Derek.

We learn a little bit about Yar's character that won't ever come back to have any negative consequences.

Unedited, slightly incoherent, and mostly redundant, The Beige and The Bold Solo Sessions are episodes where I run through a show without Derek.

Can I "oof" this one? I already "oof"ed "Code of Honor"? Damn.

Unedited, slightly incoherent, and mostly redundant, The Beige and The Bold Solo Sessions are episodes where I run through a show without Derek.

Y'all are sleeping on this episode.

Have a blanket. This one is worth sleeping on.

Unedited, slightly incoherent, and mostly redundant, The Beige and The Bold Solo Sessions are episodes where I run through a show without Derek.

I go on, for the first time perhaps, about the relationship between Geordi and Yar and I wish both would have gotten more time for each other and with Picard. 

"This is happening" is something that I feel a lot while watching this episode. You've gotta ground yourself.

We're back!

We will be back for the Season Two Supplemental, then for Season Three after a short break.

And so our journeys have brought you, poor listener, to discussion of the Shatnerverse.  First, Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens were the ghostwriters/collaborators/spinning-crap-into-clay-ers of the Shatnerverse. Michael Jan Friedman is one person who also wrote Star Trek books, but didn’t write these ASCII-compatible abortions so they’re in the clear. 

I apologize for besmirching your good name, sir.  

While we’re talking about Star Trek novel writers; Diane Duane is fantastic and Peter David is pretty cool. Duane wrote “Spock’s World,” and “Rihannsu,” which got frequently ripped off in TNG. 

David wrote “New Frontier,” which used a lot of characters, from the show, including Commander Shel–  We’ll get to it.  

Also Victor Milan wrote for both Star Trek and Battletech, so there’s a factoid for your next nerd party. 

I do kinda wanna see monthly issues of “Time and Bull****” now. I’d expect articles like, ‘This Android Just Disproved Scientific Consensus…Again,’ ‘Telepathy: What the Hell, Man?’ and ‘Lecture Series – Would You Rather: Jim Kirk’s Career or Introductory Temporal Mechanics.’  

There’s a single diamond in this rough that’s a flaw in Picard’s self-image and this episode could not care less about it. I’m furious about a missed opportunity to deconstruct Jean-Luc Picard.  

The fencing thing Derek is referencing is–I think–Choi vs Baldini in 2012. 

Underneath it all, “Skin of Evil” is a pretty straightforward episode. Again, I don’t know if authorial intent can be used to condemn a story that plays well, especially when it’s presaging internet phenomena in the earliest days of the Internet. 

Literally, the late eighties and early nineties were the years that the Internet was transitioning from research/military networks to public, commercial networks.  

And Derek was right about the IRC thing. I don’t know why I thought it was “IIRC” and not “IRC.” Also, the Charles Bronson films I was thinking of were the “Death Wish” series. Marina Sirtis was in the third one. I mentioned “The Executioner” or something which is a book series. The mix-up was because my dad loves both. 

Derek and I watch "Symbiosis" again, except this time to  make fun of pharma-douche Martin Skireli. Regular episodes of the  podcast continue next week with "We'll Always Have Paris."  

We do not endorse punching any particular persons in the face. Any  expressed desires to punch people--in their smug faces or otherwise--are  figurative expressions of mankind's collective disappointment and  frustration, not literal and not to be interpreted as a call to action.  

Specifically the action of extralegally pistoning your fist into the  soft, punchable face of bad people who deserve to be punched. 

We are not  endorsing that. 

We largely gloss over the conflation of junkies with addicts, the characterization of the Onarian culture, Frakes’ electrocuted acting, and the Picard/Crusher Prime Directive Elevator Ride of Logic-Bro Condescension. 

So much to unpack and we focused on the Brekkian’s slit-condom chic.  

Also, the guy from Doctor Quinn, Medicine Woman was Horace, not Lowell. Don’t wanna get the Quinnhead fandom mad at me. 

“Symbiosis” is good for it’s time, but it feels a bit lacking. Deep Space Nine–coin drop–covered this all pretty well in “The Wire.” Were there other drug episodes in Star Trek that cover this better?  

Our talk about tropes, blocking, and narrative foibles is all pretty pedestrian for an extraordinary episode. Also Beverly Crusher’s credit score.  

We do gloss over the dangers of shortsighted capitalism and militarism that underlie this whole thing. We also skip the arbitrary disdain the audience is supposed to feel about the folks of Minos dealing arms to both sides in a war. 

Am I supposed to be outraged that they’re not taking sides in a war? I mean, I watch this show about the Prime Directive…  

This episode was cursed. We had to record it twice and we still had recording issues. Ironic that it’s one of–if not the–best episode of Season One. Thanks for bearing with us, y’all.  

It’s Antares, not Ares. Antares is butts. I apologize for forgetting that, crew of the Ares.  

When I was a kid the Klingon death yell was cringey has heck. As I grew up and it was revisited over time, it faded into the background of Klingon culture. Is it the open, bare showing of emotion that makes it cringey? The whole-hearted dedication to something weird? 

I dunno. 

This one is really great about the strong ingroup/outgroup perspective of television and how it feeds an action/methodical work paradigm that eventually makes the main characters the infallible, victory-through-action doers of things that are morally flawless and beset by inferiors.  

But certainly, there’s no cultural consequence of that being pumped over the airwaves for decades.  Certainly.  

Apparently, Denise Crosby is Bing Crosby’s granddaughter, but that’s a whole capital-“T” Thing. 

Night Court did not have a spin-off, though it shared two characters–Bailiff “Bull” Shannon and Judge Margaret W. Wilbur (played by Florence Stanley)–with “My Two Dads.” 

This week we talk about actors and accents, the lost plot of Data’s sapience, and how Jean-Luc Picard would totally kill a guy.  Is Picard a good leader right now? 

We make fun of his standing orders and how well the crew is trained, but are we being too hard on him? Was it just that they couldn’t write these episodes to improve the crew’s abilities or do the folks on the Enterprise have to be poorly trained for these stories to work? 

I said “Univac” instead of “Multivac” here. Univac is a real computer, but Multivac was a famous supercomputer from a series of short stories by Issac Asimov. Specifically, I was referencing “All the Troubles of the World.” I don’t know if I have to say this, but they’re good reads.  

The lack of Aldean culture is an unspoken assumption of this episode, but then The Federation doesn’t have much culture either. Is culture a reflection of cultural strife? Do broken hearts, historically fictitious murderers, and creeping social capgras delusion define the biggest sources of conflict for folks in the US?  

Imagination has to play a part in culture, but people in Star Trek can’t be sci-fi nerds imagining their future because they are the future, but if a people don’t have a need to imagine a better future, what do they imagine? 

 PROFESSOR X IS NOT TELEKINETIC. I AM STRUGGLING ALONGSIDE YOU, LISTENER.  

Slavoj Žižek is Slovenian political commentator. And I was serious about June Shannon; you don’t see people from the Honey Boo Boo clan on television because television prefers to show them as figures to be laughed at. Women who are every bit as talented as Marina Sirtis are turned down for roles because they don’t look like Marina Sirtis did in 1987. I don’t know if that’s June Shannon individually, but Derek’s quick dismissal underscores my point, doesn’t it? 

I kinda missed that we never got the “whole crew goes on downtime and we see what they do as people” episode in the original series. Maybe in a lot of ways, that’s how “11001001” really separates itself fro