Hello and welcome back to Subspace Radio. Did you miss us? It has been so long since we've talked about Star Trek, so let's do it again. I'm Rob and with me as always is Kevin Yank. How are you?
Here I am. Hi. I just appeared from a time wormhole.
You certainly did just before I was about to blow it up, so um, fortunate for you, um, but I do hope you don't phase in and out of existence because that would be really annoying. Look at us! We're making references to something that has been on television. Well,
I hope you've watched the first five episodes of season two of Prodigy, dear viewer, because, uh, we've already spoiled parts of it.
You got a whole lot of spoiling in the first 30 seconds. That's what's guaranteed here at Subspace Radio. That's right, Star Trek is back on the air. It is on Netflix. That's right, Netflix is now showing
many times Rob have you already opened Paramount Plus, looked for Prodigy and gone, Oh, I'm in the wrong place and gone over to Netflix?
are here to talk about the first five episodes of Prodigy Season 2, and I opened Paramount Plus five times.
Yep.
Yes, the show Paramount Plus wanted to get rid of, even though they had pretty much finished Season 2, They wanted to get rid of it, Netflix picked it up, and so we are here trying desperately to use all the will of fandom to keep this spin off alive. Because why not? We enjoyed season
It's almost as if Prodigy is trapped in a parallel future in which Star Trek stayed on Netflix.
When we get Star Trek and temporal reality problems happening,
it always gives you a headache.
Always the headaches. We've got to get members from the temporal, you know, agency coming in and we'll talk about James T. Kirk and they'll go, oh, we hate that guy. So yes, Prodigy Season 2 is finally back. It's launched. All ten episodes have dropped, but we are going to break it up into two parts because we're not going to binge the whole thing. We like to
Four parts Rob, four parts. There's 20 whole episodes to this
That's right. Why was I thinking there was 10? I'm there going, season one was a big one as well. They split in two. That's
Yeah, that's right.
This is part
We're so used to our 10 episode Star Trek seasons. 20 episodes is downright scandalous.
almost feels like we're being spoiled when, you know, that's something we were used to quite a lot a couple of decades ago. Yes, 20 episodes. 20, 20 minute episodes, uh, coming our way, but we're gonna deal with the first five and then easily make our way through the others as we go. Doing mini binges. That's a, that's a phrase, isn't it, Kevin?
Sure. Yes. I am forcing myself to take it slowly. So, um, having only watched the first five, I still have 15 to look forward to. It's gonna be a while before we get more new Star Trek after this, so I don't mind pacing ourselves. But boy, has it been hard to dodge the spoilers out there on the internet.
Well, yeah. Yeah, it's, it's, it's It's really tough if you are a member of the, uh, the ex Twitterverse, to see any type of spoiler is pretty much a guarantee. So you've got to be very, very, uh, tenacious with your being able to avoid any type of spoilers out there.
As usual, we've chosen a topic from these, these first five episodes, and we'll be talking about that after we share our thoughts on the show, uh, the new shows. And the topic this week is dads, dads in Star Trek. We get to meet Gwyn's dad at a friendlier time in his life, and, um, and have a few heart to hearts, father to daughter, so I thought we'd, uh, use that as an opportunity to reflect on other dads in Star
Great idea. I'm looking forward to seeing what you think of, uh, whether we talk about the best dads, Benjamin Sisko, and the worst dads, Worf. poor old Alexander. He never stood a chance, that poor boy! Um, so yeah, let's, uh, this is something we've been looking forward to. We've, um, sort of like, I discovered, uh, Prodigy through doing this podcast, and you'd already started the process of watching it, so I had to do the catch up thing.
And it's been, you know, there was so much negative talk out there about Prodigy, especially old fans, you know, the, the defenders of the gate going, Oh, Star Trek, you know, made specifically for kids. Star Trek was always made for everybody, whether you're a kid or not. It, and they're going, just calm your farm, all right?
Um, and And getting into this show, um, you know, I love talking about it with you, I've loved the process of it, and especially what we talked about mostly, outsiders coming into the Star Trek world, and learning about the Federation, and the rules, and the guidelines, and the, you know, how this world is structured, as an outsider. A perfect inroad for what Prodigy wanted to be: getting kids in who had no idea about Star Trek, getting into it.
I agree. And in a season that's shaping up to be a fair bit of Voyager fan service and, and really heavy timey wimey, uh, storytelling that I think is almost at risk of pitching over the heads of the young adults who are unfamiliar with Star Trek straight into the laps of the fans like us, um, it's, it's, it's, I'm happy to say that there is still a certain amount of Welcome to Star Trek about this show. We're still learning about Turbolifts and Jefferies Tubes and, and things beyond that.
But we are getting into our analysis of the show so far. So, before we get any further, I'm just going to quickly recap the, the plot points of these first five episodes.
Go for it.
Into the Breach Part 1: the team, as we know them, they're mostly acing this Starfleet Academy Hopefuls program. They're invited on a study abroad on Voyager A and they get to meet the Doctor or the EMH before learning of Janeway's classified rescue mission to retrieve Chakotay from the rift or the wormhole to the future. Uh, in Into the Breach Part 2, Asencia has beaten Gwyn to Solum and has foiled her plan for a smooth first contact, forcing her to seek out her father.
Back on Voyager, the team attracts the attention of Maj'el, a Vulcan Delta Squadron candidate. A race to Shuttle Bay 3 culminates in an accidental launch of the ship, the Infinity, into the rift, and they are unable to heed the warning of an unknown, ghostly voice not to enter the wormhole. In episode three, Who Saves the Saviors, they crash land on future Solum, and the team tries not to interfere with Chakotay's escape, only to discover that they're fated to assist in it.
Despite their efforts to replay events exactly as they occurred, Chakotay escapes on the Protostar, and on present Solum, Gwyn challenges Asencia to an ancient test to prove her heritage, and loses. In Temporal Mechanics 101, the team is stranded on future Solum, and they receive a mysterious message instructing them to save Gwyn. On present Solum, Gwyn begins to fade from existence, also hearing a ghostly voice. And Gwyn has a heart to heart with her father.
With a lesson from Dr. Erin in Temporal Mechanics 101, the team retrofits the Infinity into a time machine are reunited with Gwyn and are back in their own time. A mysterious force repairs the Infinity so they can finally reunite aboard Voyager. And in episode five, Observer's Paradox, dodging the doctor's guard, the team tries to unravel the mystery of the ghost that helped to get them home. Murf is the only one who knows the answer, but all he can communicate is a spiral shape.
Guided by Murf's message, Gwyn has a vision of Chakotay's whereabouts, and under orders from Jellico, Janeway collapses the wormhole.
A lot happening in, uh, five 20 minute episodes. A lot to get through and with little bits of temporal, uh, exploration last season, obviously they're really, as you said, leaning heavily into, uh, the timey wimeyness of,
Yeah.
what can be achieved in Star Trek.
Big picture, how are you feeling about season two so far?
Yeah, I mean we talked a little bit about like our concerns about going into it and I mentioned the fact that what made Prodigy so special was how that structure was set up of them like learning about it as they went along and not being a part Starfleet, but so there was definitely a vibe of, and it was even, uh, called out by the Doctor, of, uh, it does feel in some ways a little bit Lower Decks in that sense of,
I've not seen a crew this, uh, this, dysfunctional the Cerritos. Yeah.
Cerritos, and so yeah,
It's funny because you could tell that, uh, that the actor there was saying the word Cerritos and he had never heard it before in his life. The reading was just, just slightly unfamiliar. But, but bless him. I think, uh, Robert Picardo is doing a great job with the role. And uh, the doc in general I'm finding is really well written. That character is back in full force and I'm surprised to discover I missed him.
Yes. Oh, I've, I've always was a huge fan of Robert Picardo and of the Doctor, but yeah, he is, he's done some voiceover work before, so he's definitely knows how to do it. Him and, um, Yeah, Kate Mulgrew as well, the two of them are absolute rock stars, which makes it even clearer that dear old Chakotay isn't what we'd say one of the most charismatic voice over actors.
I think he's doing all right with what he's been given, which is not a whole lot so far.
Um, but yes, have, great to have John Noble back as well as the younger version of Gwyn's dad doing a wonderful,
playing a very different shade of that character, like he's almost unrecognizable in temperament. Yeah.
Yeah. Um, so yeah, that part was really sticking out to me, um, of that sense of, yeah, there's a little bit of going over ground that we've already seen for a couple of seasons in Lower Decks. Uh, Dal was getting a little bit annoying for me about how, like, an entitled brat he was in this, in these episodes going,
Yeah, he keeps flirting with that. And, uh, uh, once every couple of episodes, he tips over into, like, I'm sitting on the couch going, you know what? This show would be better without you. But then he wins me back 10 minutes later, uh, with, with, you know, a pep talk to his crew or taking the initiative when no one else will. And so, yeah, it's, he's flip flopping for me. There are moments that I'm liking Dal, but just as many moments where he's grating for me.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, so I'm, I'm feeling a bit like, uh, Rok-Tahk is there going, I'm just gonna be here in the cetacean lab I'm just gonna do what I wanna do because we all wanted this and you're jeopardizing that. You're being really stupid right now. But yeah, it's great to have the characters back; I love the dynamic between them. There's been little touches of trying to advance their, their characters a bit.
So, um, uh, Jankom not wanting to lose his temper and be within the Starfleet temperament. Uh, Rok-Tahk obviously just excelling in Starfleet. Um, Zero exploring that lens, sense of lot, loneliness and sense of isolation.
Yeah. It's this fascination with corporeal existence and, and going, Oh, I'll never be able to experience that. The, the, the Doctor saying In my experience, we all have opportunities to, uh, grow beyond our programming. It's nice. It's very Star Trek.
At the same time, it almost feels like a disservice to the character, where Zero, to me, is an interesting character from a species we've never explored before, full of possibilities in their own right, and it seems almost a shame to me to reduce them to this, um, this, you know, Pinocchio the android archetype, if only I was human.
Yeah. Yeah. That's a, that's a great way of looking at it instead of, you know, they've lived in this, this form for so long and now they've got a way of existing within this world that they never have before. The advantages of that as opposed to playing, you know, the, oh, I, I want to be human that has been done so many times before. Yeah. I get, I get that and I, uh, uh, I appreciate that way of looking at it.
Once we get a little further in, there's obviously a, a budding romance between Zero and Maj'el, the Vulcan cadet. And that, to me, at least, is more, more interesting. I hope they go somewhere interesting with it, and, and move beyond the, uh, I don't know, the, the high school, um, blushing discomfort, and, and go somewhere. You know, honor that relationship and actually build it somewhere interesting. Uh, I'd be on board for that.
Um, Maj'el is, well, obviously named after Majel Barrett Roddenberry, character, which is a lovely And as soon as, as soon as the name came out, I was like, okay, so this character is going to be more than just a grumpy Vulcan in the hallway. Sure enough, came with us on the, on the ride through the wormhole. So I, I don't know where that character is going, but it seems like it's almost an addition to the cast this season.
Yeah, and two for two. Both animated shows are really bringing in a new Vulcan character and, um, really redefining how we look upon Vulcans. Both strong female Vulcan characters. Um, so well done Lower Decks for what you brought in last season and now Prodigy following a similar vein.
And I hope they do something different with it, because, you know,
It
has been done. are people. They're individuals with their own stories, so I hope we get more than a, a stereotypical Vulcan story. And I think that's, I think that's where we're going.
I hope so too. I hope so too. So yeah, how did you find these first five episodes? Were you drawn to it? Were you happy? Were you, um, with anything niggling at it? Where did you sit on the return season?
Well, I would say the headline for me is that this show never stops being jaw droppingly beautiful. With every, every new ship, new scene, new planet, I am dazzled by how pretty everything is, and just that new Voyager A, man, I love those, those Enterprise E design accents on a ship shaped like Voyager, like that is a beautiful merging of, of design ideas.
It doesn't really remind me much of the original Voyager, but it definitely has elements of, you know, the Enterprise from, um, uh, First Contact, and definitely has elements of, uh, Enterprise from Enterprise.
Yeah, there's angles like from from beneath the saucer looking up at the deflector dish, it does have that kind of squooshed like where the Enterprise E is more of I feel like a vertical secondary hull, this Voyager A is more squashed vertically and stretched out horizontally in a way that does remind me of the front of Voyager. So there is a bit of Voyager character there. Um, but yeah, I, I would certainly agree that it's more Enterprise than Voyager.
It does just kind of look like a, like the sporty, fast, you know, younger brother of the Enterprise or sister. If, if ships are women, then, uh, then there Uh, but yeah, love it. Great to see Janeway, you know, running a bridge again. There's some of those close up shots of her in the captain's chair, just tight in on her face, and she looks up in response to something. It's like it's Kate Mulgrew come to life over again, and it is so magnetic.
I mean, tiny little scenes like, uh, in the first episode, they have a conversation in the mess hall of Voyager, and I'm not sure we'll ever visit that mess hall again, yet the love and care that was put into that set, that virtual set, and the way they shot it with fuzzy backgrounds and, and, uh, and perfect lighting on our characters. I, I feel like I could just watch this show as a screensaver and feel like I was getting my money's worth.
Um, I'm generally enjoying the story, if the, the only thing that kind of worries me is, is, is, At points, it is so dire, like the situation has gone so wrong and seems so irretrievable by normal Star Trek standards.
Five episodes in!
Yeah! I'm afraid I'm not going to believe the resolution. Like, it feels like you can't possibly write yourself back from this in a way that is satisfying.
What got me, though, is in episode four in Temporal Mechanics and episode five, Observer's Paradox, when ultimately they've made, improbably, a time machine, and then that time machine is magically restored so that it can fly back from the Delta Quadrant, um, the question that the characters, like, the characters all turn to each other and say, This is impossible. This is ridiculous. We shouldn't be alive. We shouldn't be home. None of this should, should be going this well.
And the fact that the plot is unbelievable is itself becoming a plot point. And, um, boy, if they manage to pull that off in a satisfying way, I will be very happy with this season. But, so far, we're only a quarter of the way in, and most recent seasons of Star Trek, I'm feeling very high a quarter of the way in, and goes wrong in the second half. So, we'll see.
Yes, to quote the dean from Community, one of my favorite shows, writing time travel stories is really hard. So they've really backed themselves into a corner by, you know, the expectations are high, they're going, you've thrown some really big swings here, um, if they don't pay off, um, there's going to be, what other metaphor can I do, there's going to be egg on their face.
I think the high for me was when they got stranded on future Solum and they were like, whatever we do, we can't interfere with with Chakotay's escape. So steer clear of any prison cells. And they're like, you mean like that prison cell they get thrown in Chakotay? And at that moment, I had the tingles. I was like, this is a surprising, well crafted story, and I have no idea where this is going. And I was like, that's good. I am completely invested and completely, not knowing what to expect next.
Yeah. Getting back to talking about like little character's development. I like what they've done with Murf in the way of trying to understand what he's saying and his ability to communicate with the shadowy figure through time and the
a delicate balance, isn't it? I feel like if, if they, if they demystify Murf, if they managed to, like, start being able to translate everything that Murf says from now on, it would almost break the character. And I, I have to say, I would almost be okay with that, because I, I've yet to warm to Murf. He is still so alien that I, I, I can't quite relate or, or find a way to care about that character.
Um, so if, if he suddenly did get a universal translator, I, I think I would be okay with seeing where that went, but, they seem, uh, determined to keep him alien, and so that delicate thing of, we can translate him, but only with the help of a whale and only when he's underwater, and that's not going to happen very often, so, he's still going to be weird and alien, uh, a deft, a deft bit of storytelling.
And a little bit of a tip to the hat to Star Trek IV there, so I was very grateful for that. I loved, I loved
Gillian the whale, yes,
Gillian the whale, exactly, yeah! We'll see her around the galaxy. I liked Murf in the water, taking on a more, you know, uh, fish or, you know, marine life form. And that alien quality of being able to translate Murf through Gillian, I actually liked. There was that air of mystery and that still sense of wonder as opposed to kind of what we got in Discovery of like everything became magic. So, oh, I need a gun and it just teleports into your hand. It's that common takeaway of the awe.
I like that mystery. I like that tangibility of,
Yeah, they're not breaking the rules. They are, they are respecting their own rules, but finding a way to tell a story within them, and I like that too.
Yeah, so, um, yeah, I did get that sense of, okay, another thing's gone wrong, another thing's gone wrong, and it's, we're only five episodes in, and, but I'm trying to remember, they kind of played that card with season one as well, there was a lot of obstacles and problems and losing and missing and, uh, yeah, they learnt through their mistakes, and uh, those crazy kids are still making those mistakes as they go along.
I enjoyed them pretending not to know what Starfleet is, or what a tricorder is, when they met Chakotay. Like, that was fun. And, and Dal being unable to resist talking to them, or coach them to escape, that stuff did not work for me. Like, there, there are moments where they are, They're smarter than they should be, and I like it, and there are moments where they are dumber than they should be, and I really don't like it.
Yeah, yeah. Out of all of them, Dal's been the hardest for me to warm back to. Um, I'm glad Gwyn's now got that, uh, that chip that the Doctor's done for her so she's not playing that whole Yeah, it's the danger of becoming a damsel in distress where she's a lot more capable than falling into that trap.
Yeah, I agree. Although, it seems somewhat improbable to me that the Doctor managed to create a time
Heh. Yeah, just, uh, wave the hand away. It's
Wave, wave the hand, whatever. It's a number. Don't think about it
He can't pronounce Cerritos, but he can create a time machine keeps someone stable.
I don't know about you, but the voice sounds like Chakotay to me,
Ooh,
the fact that Chakotay, like Janeway has, has theorized out loud that could it be Chakotay, which says to me that it isn't. I think we're supposed to, we're supposed to guess that it's Chakotay, but I think we're going to find out that it isn't. And that again, puts me in this place of, are we going to believe it? Is it going to matter to us when it happens? Or will it be some like deus ex machina that, that we can't really, can't really care about.
Yeah, I think they're playing their hand a bit too hard there, so it's turned more from being a red herring to being a red lobster. It's really there going, there's no way it's gonna be Chakotay. So now my mind's expanding out. And then they're going, are they do a Daniels from the final episode of Discovery? And are they going to pull some obscure character from the, uh, from the canon of Star Trek? And go, who was this person all along!
And you go, oh, that character who appeared in three episodes back in 1984. Sorry, 1987. But yeah, well, that's the, the joy we've got for the remaining 15, is trying to solve it, figure it out, and see when they, they reveal all the secrets, and see whether they can pull off this, uh, this crazy second season.
It does really feel like this fifth episode kind of, it's a moment of, like, the chaos has subsided, everyone's come back together, and now we try and take stock and figure out what needs to happen next. I'll be interested to see if the rest of the season is structured that way in these five episode movements of, you know, diverging chaos and then, and then bringing it together to, to take
Yeah, they're definitely separating our worlds, so, the big promise in some ways at the end of last season was, the crew with the real Janeway, you know, with the pro, Protostar crew with the real Janeway, but they've pretty much poo pooed that straight away going, no, no, no, you're not ready for that yet. And so I was a little, uh, empathetic with Dal there going, I want to hang out with, I want to hang out with Janeway. I'm there going, yeah, I want them to be with Janeway as well.
But it's that
They were obviously conscious of that because they played that moment exactly that way, um, yeah, no, nobody but officers on the bridge. And yeah,
So I go, oh, you want that? You want that? Oh no, we're going to hold that. But we've got 20
You're have wait. It is a little unclear that I feel like episode, uh, season one ended with kind of this promise that Janeway had, had pulled some strings and managed to get them admitted into Starfleet Academy, and now they're like Academy hopefuls that are not quite yet into Starfleet Academy, but they were taking classes of some kind. I guess I'm saying is the admission process of Starfleet Academy continues to baffle
Yeah, is it like a summer school or is it an academy to the Academy? Is it, is it it's, it's very auroborous. It's a, it's an academy eating its own academy.
I remember in TNG when Wesley was applying to the Academy, they did, he had to go back to Earth to take entrance exams and there was studying for the entrance exams and so maybe there is some sort of summer study school on Earth that people can study for their entrance exams together at Starfleet Academy? Maybe that's what we were seeing?
Uh, we're, we're doing a lot of heavy lifting here,
We are.
But that's what we're here to do. We're here to, you know, fill in the gaps.
Not the first time that Starfleet procedures have not been entirely clear,
They just throw San Francisco at us with, with spaceships and expect us to just Oh, look, that's a really good vista. Anyway. Yeah. So that they they've done it
It did look beautiful. Looked so nice.
San Francisco, the Golden Gate Bridge still there and the Academy, you know, and Starfleet right at the heart of the bay. Oh, look, they've done it again.
Converging on our topic of dads, how did you feel about the scenes on Solum with, uh, Gwyn visiting her father and all that.
Yeah, I love that type of stuff. I adore that type of stuff. That's, yeah, that's like, you know, that's kryptonite to me. That just makes me melt. I love a good, uh, redemption story. I love a good father son or father daughter or, you know, child and parent, tension, tragedy, slash, you know, Distance that can never be solved, but then through the magic of science fiction you can resolve it. You know, it's a hokey film, but I love it. You know, Frequency is a is a good one for that.
I loved it too! No one liked Frequency, but I came out of that movie theater very happy.
Very much so. Um, and so, you know, even, you know, even Back to the Future, connecting Marty with George McFly and what that means, all that type of stuff is great. It goes from a fundamental thing of going, how were our parents or the people who raised us, like, when, you know, they were out when they were kids and would we have been friends or how would we connect?
Speaking of Back to the Future, they do seem to be The storytellers of this season are being forced to take a stand about the mechanics of time travel in Star Trek, which tends to vary from episode to episode, movie, how it works. And I'm sure this is not the last time that Star Trek will contradict itself, but this season, this story at least, it seems we are being told that time travel works like Back to the Future, where the the, let me get this straight,
Do need a chalkboard?
yeah, exactly, that changes in the future would affect the present or the past, but changes in the present would create a new future that don't flow back into the present. So yeah, if you, if you fix Solum today, it doesn't prevent the future bad Solum from sending the Protostar and the Diviner back to, uh, to make everything happen as it did. You can just create a new, better future in parallel. But if you go into the future and mess things up, you can actually mess up the past.
Which is a really, it's when you think through it, it's a very strange way to, to make time travel work unless it serves the particular story that you're telling as it did in Back to the Future and as it does this season in Star Trek.
It's definitely become the default in, sort of like, cinematic or televisual, uh, time travel communication. It was used in, you know, Avengers Endgame, and there's a whole gag running through it going, It's Back to the Future. No, we'll never do Back to the Future. Yes, it's Back to the Future.
That's now become, there's so many different variations on what the concept of time travel is within the world of science, but time travel through the Back to the Future eyes has been so hugely influential and so tangible. You see it explained so simplistically for such a complex format that it's bled into influence, you know, every other science fiction style, um, format.
Yeah, we got two pretty compact speeches laying this out. We had Gwyn on the comms link, which I loved by the way that the comms link froze, we've never seen a comms link freeze in Star Trek before, and it was used to great effect. And I felt like was a realistic technology glitch in the future. So I liked that.
Um, but yeah, she ex, explains patiently to Dal that the bad future has already happened, that's why we're here talking, but I am trying to create a new, better future, and they get interrupted at that point, but that by itself establishes that there are some ground rules there. And then we get the Temporal Mechanics 101 textbook, uh, lecture from Dr. Erin, who, I don't know if you know Rob, that is real world science consultant Erin Macdonald.
She is the real world science consultant on Star Trek these days. And they created an animated, uh, avatar for her to explain, uh, temporal mechanics to our crew, which was
I was gonna ask you about that, whether that was a, um, unique character callback, or if it was something within the behind the scenes of Star, of
No, you're like a real, a cameo of a real world person in the future of Star Trek, delighted her to get that, get that email. Um, but that lecture with the dominoes falling and sometimes you need to push one of the dominoes over yourself if you accidentally created a gap in the chain was, was nice.
I was so captivated, like, I, I was so following every moment of our lecture, because I didn't want to miss anything about how time travel works in Star Trek, that I completely missed the in between bits where they were in montage, moving the Infinity ship down to the bottom of the pit there. So that when they finished the lecture and they were at the bottom of the pit, I was like, hang on, how did they get there? I completely missed it.
Have to watch it again. Have to watch it
I did. I had to watch it again and enjoyed it. So yeah, anyway, The scenes with Gwyn and her father, I, I agree, they, they could have been saccharine or too easy, but it's, it's, it was really intriguing to me. He is such a different person that it raises a big question of how did he turn into that villain that we meet at the start of the series.
And I feel like that, it was so obviously deliberate, that contrast, that they know they're going to have to pay off that question with an answer kind. and I fear for Gwyn and, uh, her heart being broken if her father does change all over again.
It's tantalizing, you know, a civil war and the, you know, tragedy, what it shifts in people's minds either for good or for, for, for bad and for someone to be so good and so pure and so trusting and so to not make those mistakes. It's going to be heartbreaking if they, uh, if the inevitability of that, um, plays out.
Yeah. But you're right that by itself it is, rewarding to see that that character, you said redemption, it's almost a pre demption. He was not always so bad, once upon a time he was a lovely person and sometimes history changes ya man.
Exactly, exactly. So, um, so this leads us on into, um, the representation of fathers within the, the Trek, Star Trek world. And there's some daddy issues out there and I think of anyone else I'd rather talk to about this than, uh, than you, Kevin Yank. I don't know what that but, let's get, let's get into it. The good, the bad, the ugly. There's a lot of, to unpack when it comes to dads within Star Trek.
There is. It's overwhelming, and as you telegraphed at the start, they go from the, the great in Sisko to the horrible in Worf. you know, you can still be a hero and be a bad dad is what Star Trek teaches us. You know, seeing that the, the topic was too big to cover in, in exhaustion here, I chose to pick an episode and pick a single dad to talk about. There are probably other episodes that are really about fatherhood, but the, or father son, father daughter, uh, relationships.
But the one that came to mind to me first was Star Trek: The Next Generation, Season 2, Episode 14, The Icarus Factor, in which we get to meet Kyle Riker, the father of Will Riker.
Wow.
Yeah, we, it's actually surprisingly rare to, for us to get to meet the fathers of these heroes. Sometimes we meet the, the mothers, but the fathers are often cloaked in mystery. Like I, it took us a long time to meet Picard's father. And in season two of Star Trek: Picard, I think we kind of all wish we, we didn't in hindsight.
They, they should not have done that. There's a great, there's a great arc, there's a great arc within Voyager, obviously, with, uh, Tom Paris and his dad, and actually bringing, um, his story arc into it, and playing such a big part in getting them home. And that whole, you know, those moments when they communicate and go, Tom, is that you? Father? And you go, oh. But yes, we're talking about Will Riker, and his daddy issues.
Late in season two, uh, TNG was just kind of finding its stride. And this is one of the first episodes I remember that there is basically no science fiction element to this story. It is pure character drama that just happens to be set aboard a starship.
In this episode, Riker is Um, offered command of a little ship, he'll have to leave the flagship, but he'll get a command of his own and Riker finds out that this ship is heading off into unexplored space and it'll take many, I think they say months, if not years at high warp to get where they're going, uh, to investigate this remote, unexplored sector of space from which there are indications there might be signs of life, but it could just be nothing. So it's really flying into the unknown.
And so if Riker takes this, um, command, not only will he be leaving his ship, but he'll be leaving Starfleet and the Federation behind, going off on a long distance, long duration, remote mission, a long time to come. And so throughout this episode he starts to make his farewells as he starts to consider whether to accept this offer or not. There's some great Riker Troi stuff, as you might imagine.
There's a tearful farewell where Troi admits she can't read Will as she normally can because she's overwhelmed by her own emotions in this situation, and it is really touching. Um, I'd say this is a good episode to watch if only for the Riker Troi stuff. Um, there's a lot of Pulaski. Dr. Pulaski, it's revealed, is kind of an ex, uh, ex flame of Riker's father. They, uh, they had a flirtation but never quite got together.
Along with Riker, we get to learn the tragic backstory of Kyle Riker, that he was on an ill fated mission, where the entire crew was killed and, and Kyle Riker was the lone survivor, and was obviously quite traumatized by this, and Dr. Pulaski nursed him back to health, and the process, fell in love with this heroic man. Um, but they, the attraction was acknowledged, but they could also see that they were on paths in life.
Kyle was all about his career and, and being in Starfleet and had to, had to fly off, uh, and, and, and broke Pulaski's heart. And so, even as I buried the lead here, Riker, um, welcoming his father aboard the Enterprise as the mission specialist who will be briefing him on this mission into the unknown, Riker gives him a very cold welcome. He is not happy to see his father. They have been estranged for many years. Riker kind of blames his father for everything that was wrong with his childhood.
He tells stories about how growing up in Alaska, his father wouldn't even let him catch a fish by himself. As soon as he hooked him, the father would take the rod away from him he want him to let the fish off the hook, and Riker, uh, Riker kind of his whole personal identity turns out to be tied up in the fact that he grew out from under the overbearing thumb of his horrible father.
And Kyle Riker seems like a perfectly nice dude, like, yeah, I mean, he's an absent father, but he wouldn't be the first. And he's here with his hand outstretched. He knows his son might be going into danger in the unknown, and he asked to have this one opportunity to bury the hatchet and say goodbye, and Will is having none of it, but Pulaski kind of says, you know, he's not all that bad, your father, I would have married him in a heartbeat if he would have had me.
You know, these strong characters bumping into each other and having feelings. It's really dramatic. This is all cast against the backdrop of Worf feeling estranged on the ship because it's the 10th anniversary of his Rite of Ascension, but he doesn't have any Klingons around to hit him with painsticks to mark the occasion suitably. And the rest of the crew notice that Worf is, uh, grumpier than usual. Figure out what's wrong and throw him a painstick party in the holodeck, and that's fun too.
So both the A and B plots are just like characters feeling like, um, they, they can't talk about their feelings and ultimately being forced to do so.
Um, Kyle Riker of course played by, uh, Mitchell Ryan, a jobbing actor who, um, I know very well from, Grosse Pointe Blank, which is an incredible John Cusack film, uh, back in the late 90s with the sort of like resurgence of John Cusack. He did High Fidelity, Grosse Pointe Blank, but, uh, Yeah, Grosse Pointe Blank is like, uh, everyone focuses on High Fidelity, but there's just something about Grosse Pointe Blank.
He plays the dad of Minnie Driver, and I think he's also has big part in, um, uh, Liar, Liar. He plays one of the, um, heads of the law firm that, uh, uh, Jim Carrey's character wants to be a
Oh, yeah, that tracks for sure. I, I, re watching the episode yesterday, I, I did not remember the actor from anywhere, but he seems very comfortable with a camera pointed at
Yeah, he's, he's definitely been around a long time and he's one of those jobbing actors that just was in everything and would always have a, uh, a role appear in. You go, of course, that guy's in this and this and that. So, um, that's always good in Star Trek in the early days. Well, Star Trek now going, let's get someone in who knows how to be in front of a camera, oozes charm and is just working hard in this, uh, in this weird industry.
I always remember this episode a little unkindly because it culminates in, uh, what we are told is an Anbo-jyutsu match in, uh, in the gymnasium. Riker and his father ultimately cannot talk it out and decide to have a martial arts match in the gymnasium to work out their
That's how they do things in Alaska. That's how they do it.
Yeah, and they're coated from head to toe in like laser tag outfits. 80s laser tag outfits. And just as, as hokey as that sounds. Um, and HD does them no favors, I have to say, in the, in this situation as well.
If anything it does worse.
They're masked so they can't see each other. It's, it's introduced as Anbo-jyutsu, the ultimate evolution in the martial arts, as if all the martial arts culminated and merged into this perfect form called Anbo-jyutsu, where they stand on a platform surrounded by padded mats and poke each other with, uh, with sticks while blindfolded. And, um, it is, is somewhat undramatic, in the way that an 80s fight between actors, without the benefit of paid stunt doubles, is always going to be.
There's the, you know, the, the wild swings that were obviously never going to connect, were practiced over and over again to make sure they would never connect. There's a lot of that. It's, it's very Star Trek. Um, like it's no different than Amok Time with Kirk and Spock.
Look, I think, you know, you've actually gone against what you were trying to do. You've sold it really well. Um,
Ha. But yes, I, I always remember that fight and go, oh yeah, that's the hokey one where they fight in the gymnasium. But that's just one scene at the end and all of the drama and character stuff leading up to it is really good.
Great. Fantastic.
There's a, there's a conversation between Troi and Pulaski where they talk about fathers and their sons. Um, So, Troi says, Commander Riker and his father are in the gymnasium about to engage in a barbarism of their own. Pulaski says, Don't remind me, it's something of which I do not approve. In spite of human evolution, there are some traits that are endemic to gender. You think that they're going to knock each other's brains out because they're men? Human males are unique.
Fathers continue to regard their sons as children, even into adulthood. And sons continue to chafe against what they perceive as their father's expectations of them. It's almost as if they never really grow up at all, isn't it? And they, they both agree that that's why they like men. You know, it's, it's, it's Not great. It certainly doesn't pass the Bechdel test. Uh, but, uh, but it is a charming kind of 80s TV analysis of fathers and their sons.
It is very much of a, of a very binary time. But, um, uh, but yeah, it's, it doesn't two, uh, leading female characters talking about guys.
Yep.
Hilarious.
Uh, what did you want to talk about?
Well, you know, sci fi or fantasy genre is such a, uh, a fertile ground and, uh, for, you know, familial relationships. And especially a recent trend is the reluctant dad type thing. So you've got the Mandalorian, you've got The Last of Us.
Yeah,
You've got, uh, you know, those type of, you know, the reluctant dad taking
I'm thinking of God of War from PlayStation, also from the same pedigree as The Last of Us.
Yeah, exactly. Um, so I'm going to go the other avenue. I'm going to look at sci fi characters, Star Trek characters who embrace fatherhood and worked really hard on it. And we've got the perfect example in my perfect representation
Deep Space Nine. Let's look at the Sisko boys. Let's look at Joseph, Benjamin, and Jake. The three generations of Sisko's.
That is unusual for sure that we get the grandfather in the mix as well.
It's, it like, it's an odd thing. Like you talked about, up until this point, you'd only have, you know, a mother figure come in. Or if you did have a father come in, you'd have, you know, Sarek and, um, and Spock and their tension,
I thought for sure you were going to say Nog and Rom.
Well there's that as well, yeah, or there's, know, Paris and his dad, um, you can look at Odo and his relationship, his father figure relationship with the scientist who discovered him, that type of tension there. But, to bring in, uh, Avery Brooks as this character, the, you know, the big selling point was it's the first black captain in Star Trek, which is a huge step forward and all that type of stuff, even though he didn't become a captain until the start of season four, I think.
Um, but they took their time with him. But that whole thing, that new dynamic that they brought in, he was a dad, a single dad, and he had to maintain his job on a ship that he didn't, a space station he didn't really want to be on and keep and raising his kid. I love the fact that Jake doesn't go into Starfleet. He wants to be a writer and a, uh, a tenacious, awkward journalist. This is the flip where he goes, I want to be a dad. I want to be there for my son.
So not only does he have to deal with being the Commander on a former enemy's space station, not only does he become, uh, you know, the messiah slash prophet figure within an alien race on the verge of warfare, he's got to be a dad. He's got to make sure he's, you know, he's, his kid's grown up right.
It's refreshing, isn't it, that they made the decision that he would be a good dad no matter what happened. I feel like we never got the Sisko is failing as a father story. Would have been so tempting to tell. In seven seasons when you're obviously scraping the bottom of the barrel at times of stories to tell, that they would never have reached for Sisko's failing at fatherhood, that it's almost, it's baked into the formula, the rule is, Sisko's a good father.
And even when he starts, you know, seeing Cassidy Yates and Cassidy and Jake get on so beautifully. There's this, they work hard on their own personal tensions and dramas, but it's never a case of questioning. Even though we've reviewed it recently, a couple of episodes ago, where Jake is missing his dad because he's out on another mission and he's, um, you know, not home as much and all that type of stuff. And Bashir does the whole, you know, toughen up. Ha!
Dad's saving, your dad's saving the galaxy, alright? He'll be back. Um, and then you've got Joseph Sisko, who,
Yeah, you throw Brock Peters into the mix, if you please.
The great Brock Peters who went from being a treacherous, uh, Star Trek admiral in the Star Trek movies to being salt of the earth dad living in New Orleans and somehow running a restaurant even there's no money in the future. How
Universal basic income, uh, Rob. He's, yeah, he's getting those
He's getting those credits, you know, it's, it's, it's Bitcoin, you know what it is, it's Cybercurrency.
I have to say, his, his performance in Star Trek VI was so powerful that to this day, I can't look at Joseph Sisko and not be a little afraid he's about to betray the Federation.
Well there's a whole, I mean it gets a bit more complicated later on because then, you know, the prophets, then they were the reason that Benjamin was
Yes, they possessed his mother, and yeah, Sisko had a mother that he didn't learn about until Joseph was forced to, to come clean.
And there's big tension between and Joseph around that, but there was always,
tell you the tension I remember, and, and this is like, really, I feel like potent for our conversation today is when, when Terok Nor or Deep Space Nine is occupied by the Dominion and Jake makes the decision to stay behind as a reporter, and Benjamin, uh, unfailingly as a good father, grits his teeth, but makes the right choice to respect his son's career and decisions in life, and leaves him behind. But then Joseph tells him, You made a huge mistake, you gotta go and rescue him.
He's your son, goddammit, what kind of father are you, leaving him in enemy hands? That is a great family drama. It shows that, like, there's more than one way to be a good father as well.
Definitely. And yeah, finding that balance of respecting your son as a, you know, growing into a man and what line of work he wants to get into. And also he's had his experience in this, in this world, in this conflict, and yeah. Um, so over seven seasons we got not only a great father son dynamic, we got two, and we also got a father son grandfather dynamic.
It was, really stacked it, and um, it's a credit to Deep Space Nine, it's one of the, the shining lights of many shining lights on Terok Nor, uh, lit up from this show is, you know, you know, Brock Peters, Avery Brooks, and Ciroc Lofton. The three of them do incredible work. And it's a great statement as well, of sort of like, this is a successful black family, looking after each other, doing well, in all three generations.
It's a great statement, and it's, it's a shame that a statement like that made in the 90s is something that should be, you know, pushed now in the future so much more that it's, uh, it's, it's seen as some sort of an anomaly. It's a sad state of how we've gone back, you know, as a society.
That Ira Steven Behr must have had a good dad, you think?
I hope so. I hope so. It allowed him to have, you know, to, to do a purple goatee and wear sunglasses all the time. So, so I, I, I hope there's no
I think it is also, I mean, I think you touched on it earlier, but I'll, I'll, I'll complete the thought, which is, if you're telling stories of your first black captain, it behooves you not to play into those racist stereotypes of black men are bad fathers. I think playing averse to that is a way of honoring Star Trek's mission to project a hopeful vision of the future.
Mm.
And in the process, expose that as the stereotype that it is. A black man can be a great father, and here we'll show you.
Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it isn't done in a way that it's like a, character that's
not a perfect father. He's a good
He's a good father and that's, that's, that's the big, that's the big thing. He's a, he's a, he's a good father, he's not a perfect father. And that relationship dynamic shows across all the elements of science fiction and sometimes just kitchen sink drama, which is works beautifully as well.
Well, thank you for bringing that. I thought it's probably going to be Sisko, but we haven't really talked about this in depth and I'm glad we did because, um, yeah, it is, it deserves celebrating.
Definitely, and especially, you know, having three generations of the Sisko family presented so beautifully, um, and to have Brock Peters come back so regularly in the show was always a joy. Um, and like you said, you know, it wasn't all smooth sailing. They brought out that tension and the choices Benjamin Sisko made as a father, and how Joseph Sisko questions his decisions going, when you get to that age as a father son can then look at each other and compare notes of being fathers.
I love that. And see played out in a sci fi show? Ah!
Well, we've got, we got 15 more episodes of Star Trek just waiting for us to watch them, Rob.
Let's uh, let's watch another five and then reconvene and talk about those.
I wanted to take a moment to just reflect on the bounty that has been laid at our feet, all on one day. It seems to me like the, the apparatus of Star Trek fandom is ill equipped to deal with this much new material all at once. Never before in Star Trek history have we, you know, been given more than three hours of Star Trek at once, let alone twenty episodes all at
Yeah, even when, even when Discovery was on, um, season one was on Netflix, they dropped it weekly, from what I
Yeah, yeah. And yeah, so this is, this is the first time Star Trek has been bingeable as first run television. It's not safe out there. I, in preparation for this episode, I got spoiled on at least one thing that's happening later in the season, cause I clicked the wrong Memory Alpha link.
I've been spoiled on one thing as well.
Let's not talk about cause it might not be the same thing.
That's what I was afraid of as well. I'm there going, we oh, might talking about something different.
But it's really tough, like, even those Netflix episode blurbs are fraught. You read too far down the episode list and you're gonna find out things you don't wanna find out. That has never happened in Star Trek before. So yeah, I feel, I feel for all the other podcasters out there who are working through the season at different rates and trying to not spoil their audiences and not be spoiled by other conversations about this large amount of Star Trek that's landed all at once.
Yeah, um, um, I think we made the right choice of when we're trying to decide how to, uh, to consume this season, I think, you know, breaking it up into four parts is a great way.