Hello, hello and welcome back to Subspace Radio. It is your two favorite Star Trek nerds online, ready to talk about the latest episode that has dropped in the world of Star Trek. That's right. It's me, Rob. And joining me as always is Kevin, how are you?
Yep. Hello. I'm well, thank you.
Excellent stuff. And we are here to talk about the most recent episode of Picard, which is the most recent episode of Star Trek, just to drop. And we're getting close to the sticky end. We're getting close to the end of season three. We're up to episode eight of season three, Surrender.
Yes.
And we are here to talk about that episode, and that, of course, is gonna spiral us off into inspiration, into a deeper topic to explore that topic throughout Star Trek larger cannon. First off, what are our initial thoughts about episode eight, Surrender?
I feel like when we boil it down, there is not a lot to this episode. I think you could sum it up in about three sentences, and a lot of it is speeches that are just characters showing their character, actually saying a lot of substance.
Yes.
What did you think?
After the rewatch, it is very much a case of that prolonged section of the Titan being taken over and the agonizing drawing out of that, to lead to the glorified fan fiction stuff right at the end that everyone has been crying out for decades, and especially for the last seven and a half, seven, three quarter episodes to get to that good stuff where we can just pile upon pile of of that sweet,
mean where they all end up around the one conference table
Well, yeah, there's all the usual stuff of, you've got Geordi and Data walking down a corridor. You've got the entire crew,
their friendship to each other. The bromance is stronger than ever.
bromance is strong with this with this pairing and everyone reconnecting and in some of the longer shots, I've paid particular attention the second time round where Michael Dorn is just clocked out. He's there going, the camera is not on me, so I am not engaging. I could see like his eye in profile just wandering everywhere. I'm going, he is not focused in this particular
Now I've gotta watch it a third time cuz I did not catch that.
Everyone's being so deep and meaningful and resonating and all this stuff. And like you could excuse it as, oh, it's Worf just wanting to get to the stuff, and he's not fully en engaged in these human emotions that he is trying to. But there's also a point is this the actor Michael Dorn just, just a second away from yawning? I'm not sure.
He had an early morning in the makeup chair. What can, what can we say?
And yes, and leading finally to the next step, which we didn't really get. Like the promise of cliffhanger episode seven was, let's find out who you really are, and we
It's time for you to find out who you really are after the next episode.
But it is definitely that setup for our final two-parter, which is a apparently, yeah, nine and 10 are connected is with a with a, to be continued at in the middle, which like they're going on sale in America to watch in IMAX.
They've ratcheted up all of the tension and like the only real release we got is the defeat of Vadic, dot, dot, dot question mark, here.
But it, yeah, it looked pretty definitive.
Seemed pretty pretty definitive. So I can only assume there is an even bigger bad to be brought in for the last two episodes. Vadic's boss, mysterious floating head, goes, oh well, I guess I do everything myself.
Exactly, or is even that floating head just another, conduit to the bigger bad? Is it gonna be something we know? It's gonna be very interesting if they pull out something we didn't expect, and that's gonna be a surprise. But then everyone's expecting something to come back that we all expect, so therefore that expectation isn't really unexpected. It's it's interesting how they're gonna balance that.
And Terry Matalas has been balancing that well, better than the previous two showrunners from season one and two. But he's laid everything out on the table and it's gonna be interesting to see where it goes.
Yeah. So big picture here, like the plot movements were hostage situation on the bridge. Jack comes clean to his parents and finally says out loud, I'm hearing voices. I'm seeing red doors. I can control people with my mind. And they're like, oh, cool. Go to the bridge then.
And Geordi's daughter got very okay with it very quickly.
Yeah, was. She's like, okay, well he is telling everyone, so it's not about me.
Sure he violated my mind, but he's doing it to everybody. So that's okay.
It wasn't personal. It wasn't personal.
Thank you? Yeah,
He goes to the bridge holding this orb that the computer helpfully identifies as an unidentified object. He holds it up and a computer voice offscreen with no one having asked the question says, unidentified object detected. And I think it is just there so that no one thinks to ask the question, what is that object you're holding? It's unidentified. Don't bother asking. Nobody knows. So that at the end, when it's revealed not to be a bomb, but a shield generator, we're like, ah, cool. Fair game.
But if the computer hadn't asked, I'm sure Vadic would've said, what is that? And then he would've had to tell the truth. That's the rules, right?
That, that is the rules. That's how the higher ground is by being very truthful.
I feel like on rewatch, the strength of the characters and the broad sweeps is all there. But a lot of the small bits of this season are held together with people not quite saying what they mean. There's been a lot of Picard saying to Jack, tell me what's going on with you. And he'll open his mouth and a couple of words will come out, but he won't quite say anything of substance and Picard will change the subject, seemingly satisfied.
And that's happened several times now and every time it happens it buys us another episode of people not knowing what's going on with each other.
Yes.
But it's wearing a bit thin for me, so I'm glad we are getting to the pointy end where all is to be revealed.
Yeah, I think I have mentioned it before. It's very much a case of as there's criticisms towards the most recent Obi-wan Kenobi series with Ewan McGregor coming back, and it was very clear that was meant to be a movie. And then they took that movie script and turned it into a six episode series. And you can clearly tell when it works, is the movie sections. And you can certainly see those stretch marks and you see that here as well.
People going, you've got 10 episodes of Star Trek Picard with the original cast, and then you get to episode two or this one, it's been covered over with duct tape and a lot of hope and nostaglia.
And it's mostly worth it, like it buys us time for the character moments, I wouldn't give up any of them, but it's hard for the plot to make room for that many character moments.
Exactly. There's a lot of leaps of faith put in there, and we've been finding that a little bit in this whole season. But we did get moments like Riker and Troi reconnecting.
Before we go to Riker and Troi, blowing the escape hatch on the bridge, nice callback to Star Trek IV, although that escape hatch on the bridge was on a Klingon Bird of Prey.
It was literally like a submarine hatch, whereas this up with the doors and shut very quickly. It opened very slowly for dramatic effect, and then said, okay, got the bad guy out. Shhp.
Yeah. But did you catch it when Seven decided to stay on the bridge? Vadic says it is. She says something like it is appropriate that you of all people would be here to witness this.
Yeah.
And so I'm thinking Yeah, it's very, it's sounding very Borgy, now. Like, further to my comments last week.
Yes. It started out the whole episode with the, the possession of the Titan. It was very brutal. It was very vicious. It was very violent and very You hear the, the crying of
Yeah. You hear screaming and you hear her like conducting the orchestra of misery on the bridge.
And then there was a crew member hanging up by like a dagger stuck into her throat. I'm there going, a lot of crew are dying right here.
Yeah. That's what we've chosen as our topic this week is like one very prominent Vulcan dies on the bridge and among the several deaths in this episode, it stood out as a moment of someone we barely got to know,
That's a big thing that we get in Star Trek. We have a prominent supporting character and how much do we show, how much do we not show, and how much do we invest in the tragedy of their loss? And whether that's reflected upon. So this character has appeared in the season pretty much since episode one.
Relatively few lines, but each one you're like, that's an interesting person. That was an interesting line reading. I want to know more about that character.
Exactly. But with their demise, I dunno if the emotional weight, there was meant to be some emotional weight, but there wasn't as much. And maybe
It was really weird. They lined up the bridge crew and then Vadic got two of them to introduce themselves to her. And I was like, this is really hanging a lantern on the fact that we as the audience don't know any of these people, either. Like, just like on Discovery, we've got an entire bridge crew and we don't even know their names, really.
Yep. And so when one of the bridge crew dies in Discovery, we have to do a flashback sequence, but more about that later.
Yeah, yeah. It's probably, for me, it's less of a problem here in Picard where the point of the show is the other characters, not the crew of the Titan. Nevertheless, if you're gonna line these people up on the bridge and make us worry for their safety, you probably owe us some investment in their characters. And it was funny to me, in a grim sort of way, that we got introductions to the two people who survived and then Vadic goes, I'll shoot the one you don't know.
It was definitely the old bait and switch. But that's the thing. There's no gravity there because we have Seven of Nine say what happens and actually say the character, the crew man's name. And I think that was more for us to go, remember this is the character's name. We've never heard it. But then there was no acknowledgement afterwards. And so later on we're all happy and joyous because we've got the old crew back together. They're going, quite a lot of crew have died.
Is there we don't have time to reference this. We've gotta move on to, Geordi and Data sharing a moment where they look into each other's eyes dreamingly.
They did some work off screen, like there's some, been some stuff in the interviews and the kind of social media material of this Lieutenant T'Veen, the bald Vulcan. And the story that she had worked out for her character was that her grandmother was Deltan, just like Ilia from Star Trek The Motion Picture. Why she had the bald head and she had a bit of that kind of sensual, you must take a vow of celibacy to, to serve on the ship sort of thing going on around her.
But it was all just background for the actor's process, ultimately. What actually made it on screen was a Vulcan who is very interested about the nebula readings in that one episode, and then took a phaser hit to the head.
And that's the thing. It loses that visceral, emotional connection as soon as someone's phasered and they disappear. You don't have that even like that crewman who I've never seen before, but who died with a dagger stuck in them, that was a, for me, that was a visceral reaction of Oh my God, as opposed to they're just phasered away and I didn't even know who they are.
So the only one, one of the only phaser, like complete phaser destructions that really work for me is in Star Trek II with the with the captain
captain who's got the earworm and
Yes. And kill and he shoots himself. Beautiful performance and a beautiful sort of like, moment of wow what he sacrificed to, to go. So yeah, for me that opening part was quite grim. And I had to keep on remembering that this doesn't seem like Star Trek, but it was very much previous Star Trek. And it has been in like Star Trek II there's a lot of that grim violence and stuff with the scientists discovered by McCoy and Kirk. So it is a part of Star Trek.
It just still felt quite a little bit jarring.
All right. Moving on from Jack and the hostage situation on the bridge, we had Riker and Troi reunited having some deep and meaningfuls in their holding cell. I really enjoyed this stuff. This and the Data and Lore stuff that we'll get to in a bit, they both worked a lot better for me than the main plot, which really for me, hung on Vadic's performance, which continued to be strong. Really loved her in the captain's chair going, Ooh, this is comfy. I'm gonna take this with me when I go.
Lot of smoking
Oh. Lots of smoking. But uh, yeah, this B and C plot of the reuniting legacy characters, they were generally strong for me. What did you think of Troi and Riker uh, finally sharing their feelings with each other,
I, I adored the scene and the acting was top notch and it was good. That stuff you're talking about earlier where you felt a little bit Frakes didn't really give himself good direction while he was directing episodes. So this was a good episode that he was out of the director's chair so that he could just focus on, there was a lot of beautiful naturalism between the two of them. This beautiful natural back and forth, almost overlaying of dialogue.
And they seeped that in with Star Treky techno babble. So they do these beautiful moments of, oh, I wish I'd taught you more words to describe me. And then they talk about, oh, this and that. And then they go on to talking about, the bridge codes and all this type of stuff. This beautiful seeping in of natural conversational banter, connection done within this universe. It was some of the best one-on-one acting I've seen in Star Trek. Just natural conversation.
I can't believe how much I have, until now, craved hearing Troi talk about her profession as a professional. As a therapist who helps people with their mental health, this is something I live with or something I can observe or an opinion that I have. We got seven seasons and, what was it, four movies with that character, and I don't feel like we ever got to see her truly being a professional.
Like there were times where she would come into the captain's ready room and say, look, no one else is gonna say this to you, but I need to express my professional concern for you. But her like, expressing a professional opinion and showing competence, citing best practice or lessons she should know.
The, you can't skip to the end of healing line really hit me as not only is that a great character moment, but it, so for the first time makes me buy her as someone who is trained in a profession and is better at the things she does than anyone else that we've met in that universe.
Exactly, yeah. She's got those natural gifts from her species and actually turning it into a profession. So it's that case of she has to follow a code and practice and all that type of stuff. And yeah, it was an incredible line for that to be discussed by two actors who've known each other for decades and are just, as comfortable with each other as actors, as they are as characters, to really bring out the best of each other.
The idea that they were both city people who were staying in the country because they thought the other one liked it was glorious.
Do you see the little bit of the jab at the original creators of Picard as well? Like they're saying like the squeaky doors and the front porch that seem possessed and they're going because I bought it a little bit when I got there going, oh, Riker and Troi are back, and they've got their daughter here and the tragedy of their son. Oh. And they're so homely and stuff, and it cuts to them going that's not who we are. I'm going, oh.
It's funny cuz I thought that was who they were. I saw the logic of Troi, someone who, you know, her entire professional life has had to live inside other people's heads and hear their thoughts, the getaway from it all and be out on my own where I can have some peace and quiet with my thoughts, I could see the logic of that.
And Riker has always been the alpine ideal of masculinity who grew up in the Yukon and belongs astride a horse on a mountain like that, that always made sense to me, that picture.
He does look a lot like how Pike looked at the start of Strange New
Two of a kind. And so I, I definitely bought the idea that they would live in a log cabin by a creek with a pizza oven. That made sense to me. Now that they're saying, actually, I miss the hustle and bustle. I loved hearing people around me and being among thoughts and Riker. Likewise I, I mean, I can see maybe that was my father and I want something else for myself. I can buy it, but it definitely feels like a rewrite of these characters.
Yeah, a a little bit of a not too subtle jab at the showrunners of season one, possibly.
Well, now we get to see the sitcom with Riker and Troi living in a big city apartment. I'm there for that.
It's City Change. Exactly. Instead of Sea Change.
We have not seen the Star Trek sitcom, so bring it on. The two camera studio audience sitcom in Riker and Troi's city apartment. I think they could do something with that.
I think pretty much most of the Star Trek crew have guest appeared on Big Bang Theory. So they would
Yeah, exactly.
and they've done enough cons, they know how to work a crowd. I think in the, is it The Captains'… wonderful documentary they made years ago where they had Frakes, Stewart Shatner and Nimoy, and was hosted by Whoopi Goldberg, and they talk about conventions and Frakes said, for years we tried to get Patrick to do it, and he never would. And and they talk about the fact that you have to, you have to be able to tell stories, do stand up, crowd interaction, all that balance.
You need all those skills as an actor from stage work and screen work and all that type of stuff.
They're ready. They've been training their entire uh,
This is what they were born for. There was a one interesting moment when they played a bit of a, it's like in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, when he goes What? You gave the codes to, to them. And he goes knowing Jean-Luc Picard, he already thought of a plan already back and they're in the grimmer situation. I'm going someone's about to die here. I dunno if that comedy really balanced out. Yes.
I thought it was This is a second watch observation for sure, but the implication there is they are going to threaten Troi in order to make Riker talk. But then they let them sit there in a cell for the entire episode
But they did. It did imply there was a point where they said, why did you give the codes? And he said, I just couldn't see you being tortured anymore.
Okay, so it all happened off screen, I guess.
Yes. So she's being tortured in a way that hasn't left any bruises or
Yeah. She looks remarkably un unharmed where she's dabbing the blood off of Riker's beard in, in
Now there's a big, there's a big line in this episode that's caused a lot of, consternation online with the Good at bed, bad at pizza. And a lot of fans have been taking it literally, which they shouldn't have, going, Oh my God, she slept with the Changeling and No, and everyone's forgotten. She immediately changes it. She clarifies it in a second when she goes, I knew as soon as they came in.
That's right. Yeah. No, she was joking with him.
Yes. Yes. But I think a lot of people wanna put that on a shirt and fair enough too.
Yeah. I think that that would be a good seller for sure.
Then of course, Worf comes in and the awkwardness just goes
Oh, such awkwardness and so well sold by Marina Sirtis, there. Worf just running his mouth and Riker going, Inappropriate. And just Troi's reactions in that scene are where the gold is. She is making them both look incredibly good.
Yes. And then right at the end when Worf turns around, she gives a look to Riker. Whoa, what was that? She did it brilliantly. Incredible.
So good. Like on the one hand to address the awkwardness of that love triangle that's been in the, established in canon, but never really dealt with, they dealt with the awkwardness without dispelling it. I feel like they didn't explain it to death either. It's still there to be enjoyed.
I'm definitely finding older Troi has a lot more to play with. They've given her more to play with than in many ways they did in the original series. This is coming from someone, I've only seen the odd episode here or there, but you can definitely see her character is allowed to have more than just calm, worried, look on her face and going,
the character has really evolved to play to Marina Sirtis's strengths as well. You go back and see Encounter at Farpoint, and she is like strapped down and hairsprayed up and she's putting on a, an alien accent and you can barely see the person behind all of that affect.
And here now all these years later, almost every part of that characterization has been dropped and Sirtis is being allowed to play her comic strengths, her true accent the, the softness that you need if you're really going to help someone work through a mental health challenge. Like all of that now it's become a living, breathing character.
And you could try to stand on ceremony and say it's not true to the original character that was established, but what we've got now is so much richer, realer, more believable that I think it's a win all around.
Definitely. They've definitely haven't had Troi in it as much, which we've talked about, but they've definitely elevated her this episode, and especially with the end, which we'll talk about a bit later. They've definitely gone, okay, this is who we've actually been waiting for to come back in the show. They've the strength and the skills and the knowledge and the ability to really deal with this.
The last big thread of this episode is Data dealing with his brother once and for all. And the suspense of what will happen when we let down the wall in his mind. Although, I don't think it was ever really that suspenseful. The moment they said, look, it's Data and Lore in one body and there's a wall between them. If we ever were to drop it, they would have to fight it out, and we don't know what would happen. And I'm like that's happening. Obviously that's happening. It's just a matter of time.
And no matter how many times they say Lore's gonna defeat him, Lore's gonna take over him, Lore's gonna just, it's all gonna be Lore. Yes, they were over milking it a lot saying if they drop this down, Lore's gonna take over completely and Data's gonna go and there's no way for Data to come back, and he's gone forever. I'm going well,
All the blue lights are turning
All the blue lights
It, he's about to die, everyone. I hope you're worried. And I was never really worried.
See, yeah, for me, that part felt very much like traditional science fictiony stuff, and that felt, that whole sequence was shot very much for me. It felt like it was from one of the episodes from the nineties, even to the point of the double having a wig that was clearly far too white than the actual hair of Brent Spiner. See if they didn't spend so much money on that bloody bar.
It was the cat. The cat had a very expensive rider, Rob.
They've got a good agent. They've got a good agent. They know how to fight for it.
What did you think of Data's last bit of himself that he gave over? The very last thing that he would give up would be Spot.
Of course. Yeah, for me, the things that really stood out for the things I remember, so the dear stalker, the pipe, obviously having Denise Crosby appear in hologram form. Tasha
It was, It was almost played for comedy like that hologram was never held reverently. It was always held at a comedy angle so that she was not standing straight, she was standing at a pitch. And yeah, they were having fun with it, I felt like.
But yes, I think Spot was in one of the movies and I think
Yeah, he was in
Yeah. So that's where the tears came out and stuff like that. So I didn't have as much investment with Spot as you next gen fans would've, but it was a beautiful moment with, right at the end the, the embracing of the brother as they fade to become a part of each other, which is yeah a very poetic way that, you are claiming all my trophies, so therefore you are keeping all my memories, so therefore you have completely taken all of me. So now you are me.
Yes. I think, yeah, for anyone who was paying attention, you could see what was happening. But it made you feel smart. I think it's one of those things that it's just mysterious or it's got the air of mystery enough that you feel good about yourself and as an audience member that you can pick what's happening.
And there was the almost corny, almost cheesy line of, now we are me,
Yeah.
I'm there going, oh my God. I've gotta get my head around. Yep. Okay. That actually tracks. Okay. I needed a PowerPoint presentation to figure it out. And a whiteboard marker.
And coming out of it I really like the characterization that Brent Spiner has found with it. Like he's got just enough Data that you feel like our old friend is back, but just enough Lore slash wacky Spiner comedy that it's something fresh but not too indulgent as well. I think there's, it's still respectful of the innocence of Data while having just enough fun with it, walking right up to the line and then stepping back.
Yeah. And a lesser actor would've tipped over the edge and fallen into the abyss. But when you've got Brent Spiner, that man can literally do no wrong. There was a lot of swearing in this episode.
I have to confess, the moments in which it occurred were heightened enough that I, my attention was on other things, so it didn't stand out.
Yep. Fair
It, it wasn't the conspicuous f-bomb from Picard in a silent room where all eyes were on that character. It was in the heat of a moment where it was there and gone. And yes the final line from Vadic I did kind of go, rolled my eyes little bit at that one. I don't think it was needed. But apart from that, it didn't stand out for me.
The Data pissed off android line worked for me, but yeah, Fucking solids was, I could see what they were going for, but it did stand out cause it was the final line of the character.
I could buy that, like Data inherits a bit of a potty mouth from Lore like that is the negative influence of his lost brother and I I could if Data was now the only character in Star Trek who swore and he owed it all to Lore, I would be like, yeah, that's
But yeah it's, it all leads itself up to our, cliffhanger that we didn't actually get answered all episode of who's Jack Crusher, because we had to wait for Troi to step in and she's the one, the only one who could take Jack through that door.
It's time to open the red door.
And find out it's the Borg!
So let's revisit some other minor characters past, whose untimely demise stuck with us.
There's a bit of a trend been going online at the moment, especially on Twitter, about characters who whose deaths were undeserved or they deserved more. And so there's and I think that's been inspired by, the most recent, from this episode with the characters who have gone too soon or before full So that's been a, everyone online seems to be reflecting on that.
So I thought it'd be a good idea for us to have a look at those side characters, supporting characters, cameo appearances, or who their deaths meant something or should have meant something. Or the writers have tried to make us feel something and was it earned or not?
We've done one episode in the past, so if people want to hear more thoughts on this stuff, you can go visit our very first official episode one, The Red Shirt Problem. But back then we were dealing with the untimely loss of Chief Engineer Hemmer, and it felt more like, major characters who died before their time or died in an unfortunate way. What intrigued me about today's loss and y as usual, take this in whatever way, in whatever direction you wanna take it, Rob.
But intrigued me about it this time around was the idea of a character that the story was never about them.
Yeah.
They were also not a single episode guest star where they were introduced at the start of the episode. And we got to know just enough about them so that when they died at the end of the episode we felt bad about it. It was someone who we were carrying along in the background and suddenly they were gone and we didn't realize we missed them until they were gone. And I feel like that's, what we've got here,
That's a very poetic way of describing it.
I might go first, if you want.
Please do!
I brought two from Voyager here, and the first one I'm gonna talk about is Hogan, who is a character who appeared in seven episodes and yet, his rank is unclear because he is that somewhat underserved as a character or underdeveloped. He is one of the ex Maquis on board the ship, and he is a pretty, with apologies to the actor, he's a pretty vanilla, unremarkable white dude. He works in engineering. He was given the rank of Provisional Ensign when he was brought over from the Maquis crew.
And there are indications like in at least one occasion, he's wearing the rank pips of a lieutenant, but it was never commented on. So it's never quite clear. Did he get promoted? Did he become even a full Ensign?
Because the Maquis officers have their own sort of pin, don't they?
They did too. Yeah. They had the Maquis pins as well. Anyway, he worked in engineering and he was often, he was that crewman who had the well-intentioned bad idea where it was like, I know that Captain Janeway said, we need to follow the rules, but if we're really gonna get this ship home to the Alpha Quadrant, we probably need to sell our all our computer records to this alien species that's gonna give us a thing in return. He was the one who is arguing for breaking the rules.
And that's in my view why he never got ahead. On several occasions, he was the engineer assigned to work for Neelix. Like he was the one who had to fix Neelix's kitchen. That the duty that he was pulling. He was in six episodes in season two. And then met his untimely demise in Basics Part II, the season premiere of season three. And we talked about that last week. This is the episode in which the crew of Voyager was stranded on the primitive planet and there were giant serpents in caves.
They land on the planet and they immediately start having to like scrounge for provisions. And Neelix says to Hogan, Hey, see that pile of humanoid looking bones in front of that cave? Go and pick those up for me. And I think even Chakotay goes this looks like a, a stay away sign to me. Don't you think? And Neelix goes, yeah, you're probably right, but waste not, want, not. Hogan, pick up those bones. And Hogan, bless him. By the end he's like, look, I've been wrong so many times.
I'm just gonna do what I'm told. And you can see hapless Hogan go, ah, just do what you're told, pick up the bones, and he like picks up the first bone and kind of goes, I can't believe this is what it's come to. I'm the crew member assigned to picking up these gnarly bones. And then sure enough he looks into the cavern and the camera comes flying at him and he screams and is never seen again.
And there is a, there's a moment or two where Neelix, like oh, I should never have asked him to pick up those bones. But Janeway goes, don't beat yourself up, Neelix. Could have happened to anyone. That man, Hogan, will be the last person who dies on this planet if I have anything to say about it. And he's, it's not dwelled on past that point.
Yep. And that's I think we've talked about before with Voyager. They set themselves up into a position where they could completely change the format and they went with that. But it was the death of a thousand cuts where they started with this bold concept and idea, which would've taken them in this really strong arc story that was really powerful in Deep Space Nine.
But they doubted themselves, or for whatever reason, they were only stuck in way of going, we only know how to do that procedural week by week thing. And so they fell into that trap repeatedly. Hogan was one, and one of mine is from Voyager as well. Where you have that.
Wonder if we've picked the same one. But there was, like, this is something I don't think Voyager necessarily gets as much credit for as it deserves, is it did have this like, recurring cast of background characters. There was a sense that it wasn't, there wasn't an infinite supply of new background cast of the week on that ship.
It was very much a lot of the same faces again and again, which really sold this idea of a small crew, on a small ship, stuck on their own with no crew transfers or anything like that. And so a character like Hogan, who like I don't think he got the arc he deserved. The fact that he again and again played that role of the ex Maquis with the bad idea who turned out to be wrong in the end.
It's a shame they never quite took that, turned it, gave the character an arc and then let him die in a tragic or thought provoking way. It was more like, okay, he's had the bad idea five times now we're not gonna be able to do that again, so we might as well kill him.
Yeah.
get something of a follow up because later in season three, episode 23, there's an episode called Distant Origin where these like dinosaur aliens who live in a culture that they believe they are the only sentient life in the entire universe, but their scientists start to find evidence to the contrary. And one of the pieces of evidence they find is Hogan's remains in that cavern.
The cold open of Distant Origin is the dinosaur alien kind of creeping down that hallway and finding Hogan's bones and his torn uniform. And so we do, in his eighth and final appearance, we see Hogan's skeleton laid out on a table during the episode, Distant Origin. But I can't speak for every Star Trek fan, but as someone who watched Voyager week in, week out, religiously, 22 episodes after his death, I could not have told you who Hogan was or whose bones those were on the table.
That's what he would've wanted? Yeah.
Who's your first one?
Well, I'll go with Voyager as well because when I first went to watch Voyager for the first time, this was the one I was really waiting out for. I'm there going, I'm gonna pay particular attention to see how they deal with it and what is gonna be done when they lose their first crew mate.
Yeah. A, A ship on its own. How many of us are gonna make it home was a particularly poignant question for those seven years. So every person left behind I think hit harder than it has in any other Star Trek series.
And so for me, I think I have mentioned this before, I was paying particular attention to see who it was, how it was gonna be handled, and how would the crew respond to it. And I believe, I think this is the first crewman who was killed off, who did have one previous appearance in a previous episode, but I think it is Lieutenant Peter Durst. So he first appears in Cathexis and then he appears again in Faces, which is season one, . Episode 14.
They went 14 whole episodes without losing a crew member.
Yeah, from what I can recall. For me, it stood out as the first one that I was waiting for,
right, I am looking at the official Memory Alpha list of casualties from the USS Voyager and Peter Durst is the first one after their arrival in the Delta Quadrant. They do lose some people on the journey, like that, that rough trip from the Badlands to the Delta Quadrant does lose some people, but once they're there yeah. Peter Durst is the first one to go.
Yes. And so in Faces, this is the one that primarily focuses on the Vidiians the villain in this one, particularly one particular doctor Sulan who becomes enamored and obsessed with Torres. And he is able, because of his skills as a geneticist and stuff like that, split her into two. So her completely human form and a completely Klingon form. And Durst and Torres are the ones who get separated from the ship. And so they're both there together. And Durst is killed.
And Sulan takes his face and to make him more appealing to Torres puts Durst's face on his. Now, of course, the same actor played Durst and Sulan. But at the end of the episode, I'm there going this is the first loss they've had since they've got here. Is there gonna be any focus, any attention? And there is none.
None at It's more about how Torres is messed up and disturbed by this, and how her two parts have to be brought together and there is nothing, no reference to him, no funeral for him, no acknowledgement of him in any way, shape or form. He is killed. He is mutilated. His face is used by a villain and there is nothing. They don't call back to him in any other episodes and he is gone. He is the quintessential representation of a red shirt.
The only thing special is that he appeared in one episode beforehand. And this for me is where everything about Voyager that I was hoping it would be collapsed. That I just went, so this is just gonna be every other Star Trek series where they say it's different, but it's just like Next Gen. It's just like,
it was the fact that he appeared in a previous episode, like adding insult to injury. Like it would've almost been better if they hired an actor just to be the red shirt that episode.
Yeah, very much so. He appeared in one episode before, so you kind of had seen him before.
It's almost like they said we're gonna have to kill some people, but let's set a rule that you can't kill anyone unless you've seen them in at least one episode before, so that they know we're playing fair.
It's a particularly horrific episode. And the Vidiians as a species were particularly, Kronenberg esque with that
They were I, I remember going, this is not what I want outta my Star Trek. I'm like, in hindsight, I think they add a very powerful bit of spice to Voyager, especially in those earlier seasons. And the fact that they are used sparingly over the run as that specter of oh, every once in a while it's like, it could be the Vidiians, and you're like, oh, no, I hope it's not the Vidiians and like the boogeyman that you're grateful doesn't come back. I think it works really well.
But I remember that first episode where we met them and then this one where, they had one of our favorite characters captive. And I remember going, wow, I do not want this to be Star Trek Vidiians, because this is too creepy.
Yes. And with elements of what was appearing in this week's episode of Picard, it was very brutal and very nasty the Vidiians, and as it showed. Like, Durst was put through the ringer and not even acknowledgement of him. And that broke my heart. I'm there going, I know we've only met this character once before, but this is where, this is where arc storytelling can really come into play and taking time at the end of the episode to acknowledge what we've lost and what that means.
And there's nothing, it's just oh, poor B'Elanna, she was split in two oh, but she'll go back together again. But that will haunt her for, another couple of minutes. And then we have to move her on back to, get, set her back to zero and set everyone back to zero, which is quintessentially the opposite of what they were trying to do. So that's where love hate relationship with Voyager began, where the hate started to intensify. So yeah, Durst.
We will have to do an episode about Star Trek characters split in two at some point.
Of course. Will that be and then, or Star Trek characters who merge into one.
Don't give it away. Don't give it away. The real fans know what we're talking about. By any chance was your second Voyager character Lieutenant Joe Carey?
No. Well, I only had one Voyager character. My next character is from a different, so yes. I'll let you go back to
Well, Lieutenant Joe Carey likewise a fairly unremarkable white dude, although he did have red hair. He, He had red curly hair, so you might remember him as the red, curly haired assistant chief engineer who was almost promoted to chief engineer at the very start of Voyager. But then B'Elanna Torres was given that job and he was the butt hurt white dude who didn't get the job that he felt was coming to him on the ship.
And this guy, I feel like did get an arc, over a relatively small number of appearances. He too appeared episodes of Star Trek Voyager. He had four appearances in season one, and then he disappeared for a good four years, and he came back for one episode each in season five, six, and seven. And it was a lovely kind of implied arc because I feel like at the start he was very much that Starfleet engineer who was there to butt heads with B'Elanna and question her Maquis way of doing things.
And that served a purpose, but that purpose passed and then they stopped using the character. But when they brought him back in season five, he was a much more kind of like mature, well-rounded, bought into the team. It was nice to see that character having grown. Although we didn't get to see the growth on screen, it was a nice kind of feeling of, oh, there's that character we saw way back in season one. Come a ways, it's good. His ultimate demise is more poetic than Hogan's, but not by a lot.
This is episode 24, an episode entitled Friendship One. And as you can tell from the episode number there, this is coming right up to the end of series. So we're just a couple of episodes from the end. They were clearly like tying up loose ends in this series and deciding who would make it home and who wouldn't. And sadly for Lieutenant Carey, he was one of the ones who is not going to make it home. Friendship One is at this point, Voyager is on the doorstep of the Alpha Quadrant again.
And they are in regular contact with Starfleet. And Starfleet sends them on a mission. They say, Hey, while you're in the neighborhood, we sent out a probe a long, long time ago, and it probably ended up somewhere in your neck of the woods. Would you mind stopping on your way home and executing a search pattern and seeing if you can find our ancient probe Friendship One.
Voyager sure enough tracks down its signal, and it turns out it it deeply broke the planet that it ended up making contact with. This was Friendship One is a probe very much in the spirit of the Voyager probes, where it was sent out into who knows where, with a message of peace and good wishes from the people of planet Earth. And the only problem with it is it was powered by a anti-matter drive.
And so when it entered orbit of this fairly primitive alien race, they took it down to their planet, dissected it, and went, we can use this. And they adapted anti-matter or warp technology for their own purposes before they were ready for it, effectively proving the theory of the Prime Directive by destroying themselves.
Their power reactor that they created in the image of that probe exploded and sunk the planet into a nuclear winter that survives to this day when Voyager rocks up looking for their long lost probe.
And the surviving 5,000 people or so on that planet who are all suffering from radiation poisoning, they have decided that what was done to them by this probe was deliberate, that Earth sent out this probe apparently with a message of friendship, but in fact, it was a Trojan horse hiding this bomb that was destined to destroy whatever uh, civilization it encountered so that humans could conquer it.
So this whole episode is a, ironically, for this week's episode is another hostage situation where the crew that goes down looking for the probe gets taken hostage by the locals and Janeway has to bargain for their release and convince them that humans are not all evil and that we are really here to help. And in the end, she does succeed in that, but not before Carey pays the price.
The leader of the planet allows Carey to set up his transport enhancers to, to be beamed up to the ship in exchange for supplies. But before he does he says, I'm very sorry, Mr. Carey, and shoots him in the chest. And he is, he's killed off screen. We hear Tom Paris over the comm say, what are you doing? No. And then there's the sound of a phaser blast. And then The Doctor from sick bay says they, they killed Carey. And you see him with a smoking chest burn on the floor of sick bay.
The final thoughts about Carey in this episode are in a, in the coda at the end of the episode. Janeway is sitting in his quarters looking at the ship in a bottle that he had been assembling. And he, it was a little model of Voyager in a bottle. And the story is that Carey was like putting it together and he promised he would get it done before they got home. And all that was left was a single warp nacelle to be added to it. And and he didn't make it home.
But this to me feels like, apart from his long absence from the series, the fact that they took a character who was grumpy and immature and not fully formed at the start of the show, and they brought him an a on an arc and they gave him a semi heroic slash tragic ending and they acknowledged his passing. It felt maybe the best version of this that we got from Voyager?
Yes, I believe that. Yeah, that's a, that's the essence of what we wanted with the, with this type of show, is that a character, he starts a particular way. He comes in and out over the course of the series, and if he is sacrificed at the end, that hits us in some way. And so maybe it was done in a way to remind us of the appearances he has done before. Whether we, because he appeared so infrequently, especially with the last couple of seasons, we're going, do you remember, Carey?
This is a way of remembering.
There's a little bit of heavy lifting at the start where like Tom Paris, who's, B'Elanna is about to give birth to their child and he's really sensitive about her going on away missions, and so they're bonding as father and father to be. So they conspicuously mention that Carey has a wife and children before they kill him off. And so they do a little bit of that just in case you forgot who this person was, let's build him up again for you, right at the start of this episode.
And what I did like is, although his death does pass pretty quickly, and the crew of the Voyager who are trying to win over these, this alien race pretty quickly allow the outrage over Carey's murder to pass a and get back to the business of trying to win over these aliens. Janeway is the last person to let it go. She is outraged and that for her is the last straw. She says, you know what, I was here to help you.
I was gonna try and demonstrate that you were wrong about us, but you don't win over Janeway by murdering her crew members in cold blood. So that's it. That's the line. And Neelix and Tom Paris talk her over and they're like, you know what, this is just one man out of a race of 5,000 who deserve saving, and if you don't respond to this, you can prove them wrong.
Yeah. Good choice. Excellent choice.
What's your second one?
I'm gonna go it has been mentioned earlier in the previous episode where not as well executed as that and hamstrung. We're going with the death of Lieutenant Commander Airiam from season two of Discovery. Now this is an interesting one where Airiam has appeared a couple of times in season one. They changed the actress, they
Yeah, they sure did.
one to season two. Yep.
They said, we're gonna kill off your character. How do you feel about that? She's like, I'll only do it if you get someone else to play my death. And I get to come back at the end of the episode as a different person. I don't know how. It is more absurd the longer we have to live with what happened there. They're like, we want to kill the character, but we want to keep the actor.
Yeah. And so a lot of heavy lifting to explain, and to almost manipulate us into caring about this character who was only really a glorified extra in the background. In many ways, most of the bridge crew, all of the bridge crew were glorified extras in season one.
That's the tragedy, Rob, is they had every opportunity to create this character for us over many episodes and make us care about them and feel their loss, but they left it to the last minute and it played completely hollow, as a result.
Ah, I mentioned it cuz I had my ups and downs with season one, mostly downs. But then when season two started and you've got Pike on the bridge as the captain and the first thing he does, he sits down cuz they're so used to Lorca being an asshole, and he just goes, name yourself. Who are you? Who are you? Who are you? And you're going, yeah, it's taken an entire season. And when they announced themselves, I'm going, yeah, I didn't know any of that bridge crew's first name.
She was in 21 episodes of Discovery.
Yes.
21 episodes, and they had to introduce us to her as a person in the same episode that they killed her.
Yep. And like her name, I, we didn't even know their name all that time. She of course is cybernetic and she is taken over by Control, who are the, the AI force that wanna wipe out humanity in season two. And she's the one who's been manipulated by the Control system throughout the entire season two run. She is taken over to the point where she's in an airlock.
Doesn't make any logical sense cuz she's been taken over completely, but she regains lucidity just enough time to tell Burnham to open the lock and she's transported out into space and then there's, they have a big funeral for her. And, Tilly stands up and does this empowered speech about her and the entire audience go, I'm glad you are feeling something, because we are feeling nothing and no matter how much you've tried to make us feel something, we don't care.
It's manipulative and back-pedalling, and it was so awkward. So awkward. Yeah, that one didn't ring true for me, and that's one case of them trying to put more import into a glorified extra.
The tragedy of it, Rob, is that it could have been such a rich character like this could have been the Commander Data of Discovery. The stuff they built at the last minute in that final episode, that this was a character who had a limited memory capacity and she had to choose which memories to keep loaded in her brain and which ones to offload.
What a rich tapestry of storytelling possibilities that would've unlocked, but instead it was a throwaway idea for a throwaway character in a throwaway demise.
And that's the thing. Yeah, she showed up in so many episodes, but she was only ever there sitting down while they focus. And that's the thing. The problem for me for Discovery is it was never an ensemble. It was always the Michael Burnham show. And when Michael Burnham is really annoying, in my opinion, it's hard for me to watch a show where its lead character is so annoying.
They have one season yet left to get it right, Rob.
They do. But that means I have to now go back and watch the season I haven't watched so I can catch up. I haven't watched season four, so I have to watch four before we do five.
Yeah.
So yes. Airiam we hardly knew you, and uh, you tried so hard to make us care that you are gone.
She's still there in a way, as her replacement human character.
It's so odd.
It is so strange.