Welcome back to Subspace Radio. It is me, Rob, and joining me as always is Kevin. How are you?
I'm great.
Wonderful to hear your voice as well. We have officially hit the halfway point of season two of Star Trek Prodigy. We're going to look at five episodes in the second half, the back end of, um, Season 2 of Prodigy. Netflix have done their usual thing, they have dumped an entire season on Netflix, but we,
We're here to pick up the pieces of that dump.
We are here to pick it up. And we are the connoisseurs of Star Trek, and we are not going to devour it all in 20 episodes.
No, we'll pick through it, meticulously.
Right, because
any rush whatsoever.
Exactly. Slow and steady wins the race,
We'll savor it. We savor this pile of Star Trek.
Exactly, so we're gonna go through 11, 12, 13, 14, and 15. Oh, and, oh yeah, spoilers, 15 is, uh, the start of a two parter. So, damn you, algorithm.
Uh yeah, our crew has reunited with Chakotay, who's a bit of a broken captain, and that's our theme for this week is broken captains, or captains broken by tragedy. So we'll be talking about that after, after we run through these 5 episodes.
And as always, it wouldn't be a Star Trek Prodigy, uh, exploration episode by Subspace Radio if we didn't have an introductory breakdown of said five episodes by Kevin Yank. So, DJ, spin that wheel.
Alright, um Episode 11, Last Flight of the Protostar, Part I. The team meets a marooned Captain Chakotay, who's lived for ten years on the dead hulk of the Protostar. His first officer Adreek having died in search of antimatter to refuel the ship. Before they can fix the ship, they must first fix its captain. Dal gets lost in a storm and stumbles upon Adreek's body and the antimatter he managed to collect before he died.
In Last Flight of the Protostar, Part II, the crew retrofits the Protostar to sail across the ocean of vapor in search of deuterium to power the ship's engines. Chakotay teaches Dal to look past his bruised ego and to go where he's needed most. With the ship circling the eye of the storm, Dal saves Chakotay's life, when he falls overboard. They use the last of the ship's reserves to collect the fuel they need to escape. Meanwhile, Admiral Janeway makes a call to Wesley Crusher's mom.
In a Tribble called Quest, Zero gets slightly crushed on a desolate world that promises to be a source of bosonite to power up the Protostar's proto core. The planet is overrun with genetically modified Tribbles thanks to a Klingon scientist. Rok-Tahk helps Dr. Kruvang to engineer a virus to solve the Tribble problem. The crew gets its bosonite and they adopt Bribble, a mutant Tribble with a face, and legs, if I'm not mistaken.
That's right.
In Cracked Mirror, the crew of the restored Protostar reunites with Voyager A, only to find that they have slipped into an alternate reality. As they work with the Doctor to unravel this puzzle, the team makes the rookie mistake of splitting the party, and soon discovers that different decks exist in different alternate realities.
That sounds familiar.
Yes, it does sound familiar. They visit Captain Tuvix's Voyager, hunt for souvenirs with Okona in a trashed mess hall, and finally end up in the Mirror Universe, where they manage to convince Mirror Janeway and Chakotay to help them return home. Chakotay and Janeway are reunited in the transporter room. And then, in Ascension Part I, Dal joins the Nova Squadron cadets in their training. The Doctor and Jankom Pog start work on a new body for Zero.
Janeway tempts fate with the statement, I'm looking forward to what comes next. Jelico orders the two ships back to Earth. A call from Gwyn's father on Solum warns of Asencia using time manipulation technology to build warships, one of which arrives to attack Voyager and the Protostar. Despite heroic maneuvers, both ships are disabled. Asencia watches on with her prisoner, Wesley Crusher.
Dun, dun.
Dun, dun, dun. Should have seen it coming, but I didn't.
Neither did I!
Where could they have gotten such time bending technology?
So yeah, there's a lot to unpack. There's a lot they went through in just five episodes. The two-parter opener in particular, Last Flight of the Protostar, they went through so much in just two 20 minute episodes.
There was a lot of passage of time in that as well, so it felt like there was that one shot of, like, the Protostar lying there with days passing and rapid flicking through, uh, through the sun going overhead, and it was amazing.
Definitely, definitely. Um, first thing off the bat, we did talk about it in previous episodes, um, I was a little bit cautious about how, Chakotay would be voiced, but um,
Yes? Yes? Verdict?
I was, I was quite happy. I was suitably impressed. It's not, he's not, you know, up there, um, with Kate Mulgrew or, or
No, not gonna win any awards, but he acquitted himself admirably, I thought.
I wasn't disappointed and I wasn't embarrassed.
I think this is the most likable Chakotay has been ever.
I was about to say that, yeah, yeah, that is exactly right. I'm there going, I like this Chakotay. This Chakotay is good. This is like, you know, I like cranky, emotionally damaged Chakotay, who has to, you know, and I love the fact that they've set up these kids as going, These kids can help anyone. They're very much like the nerds in, um, uh, Galaxy Quest, like Justin Long all those
Their enthusiasm will carry anyone through anything.
Exactly! They just go, we're not gonna fight ya, we're gonna love ya to death, and you're gonna love us back.
I have to say, possibly the highlight of this block of episodes was a really subtle thing, but I can't believe I didn't realize we'd be getting it, is, uh, re meeting Hologram Janeway, before she knew knows her crew and the fact that we know that character really as someone who died who sacrificed themselves, those opening scenes where Chakotay is like at the bottom of the ramp of the Protostar and she's up inside which is only as far it's as close as
she can get with her holo-emitters, but she's over his shoulder, this teeny little, uh, presence in the distance who's like shrugging silently and it reads like her ghost to me. Like she had this ghostly presence in this, these opening scenes that was just haunting and I thought it was so effective. Both times it choked me up just seeing her there.
Definitely, definitely. And it did seem like, yeah, the, and for Chakotay it was the, the spirit of, you know, Janeway haunting him as well. Because he had a lot of haunting going on, so much time passing, like, representing
Ten years of missing her but being, having her presence there the whole time.
So, the, do you think they've leaned into… I think they have, they've leaned, like, it was, what we've talked about before when it comes to Voyager, the, you know, is there something there between the two of them, and there's like one episode we reviewed with Janeway going, was there ever anything between us? And he goes, purely professional, and she goes, Oh. Like, almost a could been, and then out of the blue in season seven, oh, okay, Chakotay's with Seven of Nine now, Okay, bye.
But it does seem to be this sense of, it is a professional, but there is a professional relationship, but there's definitely something under there that they are not shying away from.
It's more than friendship and I too am getting, they're definitely walking that line and I feel like they're walking it deliberately. Having him be nervous and dressing up to meet her and, and like the, the hologram saying, is it so bad that it looks like you tried? The, the moment when they, they hug in the transporter room, there is a sense they are both, like, feeling emotions they're not entirely acknowledging or communicating or saying out loud.
I think it is all there for the fans to see if they want to, um, but there's nothing here that tells me they've crossed the line. It reminds me, you know, if it was Spock and Kirk, and Spock was not an emotionless Vulcan, and they were heterosexuals of the opposite sex, would it have been just as charged when Spock and Kirk reunited in Star Trek III, at the end of Star Trek III? I feel like it might have been.
Like, that, that friendship that is deeper than words that comes from a captain and their first officer, I think that is at least what they're going for, and the fact that they are, you know, warm blooded man and woman who, who, uh, have, eyes for the opposite sex, it seems like there would be a natural connection there that is at least bordering on romantic.
Mm, yeah.
Even if they feel like they could never go there, they would both still be feeling the feelings.
And can I just say, you know, we've talked a lot about, when it comes to Prodigy, about how impressive the animation is when it comes to, landscapes and, uh, spacescapes and all that type of stuff, and we've had little conversations here or there about how the animation of the humanoids or the facial expressions aren't the most expressive or, but to get all that subtext to get all that detail for what they're working with, that's an incredibly impressive amount
of work with the animation that they have and what they're doing, so my hat's
I said earlier in this season that I could see Kate Mulgrew through the animation of the close ups. Think the same is true of Robert Beltran. Like, I forget we are not watching human Robert Beltran at parts here. Um, yeah, it was amazing. And watching his mirror, both of their mirror opposites was, like, I feel like that was just as, uh, delicious as watching the Intendant on Deep Space Nine. I don't, I don't feel like we missed out on the live action version of that.
I feel like we got to see exactly what it would be through the quality of this animation.
Agreed. No, it's definitely, um, uh, they're working within their, I hate to say limitations, but with their, with the facial expressions and stuff like that, they're not, they don't have a budget like, you know, a Pixar.
They're putting the money where it matters, cause the body, like the, the walking animations and running animations, the, the figure animations are still to my eye, stilted and, and, uh, stiff, but the facial animations that really sell that there is a character there, they are spending the extra time on making that work.
And I wouldn't have the opposite, you know, given, given they are working within constraints, I feel like they're doing a great job of putting the attention to detail where it matters most.
Agreed. Totally agree. Yeah. Yeah, these first two episodes are great. Really good. And it doesn't, like, the time passing doesn't seem like they're rushing. Doesn't seem like there's chunks left out. It seems like a, like a really compact, efficient way of telling, telling the story.
A Tribble called Quest lost me a little. That one, not my favorite. And there's not a whole lot there on rewatch, I feel like.
It's very, it's very kid orientated, uh, there to get us to the point where they have their new Tribble Rok-Tahk blend?
Uh, yeah, I guess so. It hadn't occurred to me that it was part Rok-Tahk. I just thought it was a, a mutated Tribble, but uh, yeah. They don't really go into detail. is a, a tainted specimen.
It was good to see, and this was a potential topic, uh, mentioned by you, to see a Klingon scientist. Um, particularly the, the episode we, I reviewed, um, couple, way a few episodes ago from Enterprise where they had the, um, the Klingon in prison with Archer and talking what Klingon culture used to be before this bloodlust took over and this We were cultured. We were, you know, explorers. We were, you know, scientists type stuff. Um, it was good to see a little taste of that here.
It was funny when Chakotay said, Klingon scientists, you don't see many of those nowadays, ha ha ha. Wow, casual racism alive and well in the 24th century.
It's still, it's still there, thanks Chakotay.
I'm surprised that scientist didn't go, I'm gonna rip your throat out! A fun character, I thought, that Klingon and that they had to, you know, take his phaser away when push came to shove,
Yeah,
was kind of fun. But yeah, this was kind of a hollow episode to me. Um, Cracked Mirror, much richer, I think, because of that Mirror Universe, um, Chakotay Janeway stuff. Um, I don't know. Okona, nice to see him back. Don't think he did much.
No. And it was a case of, like with the Borg episode in Season 1, this was very much a, you know, an introduction into what the Mirrorverse is,
realities, oh, and the Mirror Universe specifically.
Specifically that, so we weren't dealing with, overly sexualized interpretations,
Yeah, it was the kid friendly version of the Mirror Universe again,
Yeah, no graphic violence from, thank you Discovery. It was, um, it was very much a case of Chakotay could kind of get away by putting grease on as his goatee.
then Murf did the same, Uh, silly Murf almost gave the game away.
Ha ha
Uh, I noticed that, uh, I don't know if it's a Mirror Universe thing, but, uh, or if it's a Robert Beltran thing, but Mirror Chakotay did not know Come out, come out wherever you are as, as like a rhyme with that cadence. He said, Come out! Come out! Wherever you are! Like someone told him, sing it! It's like a song! And he was not familiar with that song.
What's it, it's from a horror movie as well, or a, actually,
out, come out, wherever you are. I'm sure Captain Picard has sung it at least once.
I mean, but, uh, it's ingrained in my childhood of knowing that so, but yeah, it is repeated, this type of format of it's a different dimension, uh, On every different level. It's like a Voyager episode we've reviewed
Chakotay even says, I've been through something just like this. I won't go so far as to mention the episode title, but my ship also is split up into multiple realities. It seems to be a Voyager thing, apparently. Have that happen to them.
I did like the re I do like how they title the uh, Mirror episode.
Oh yeah, as soon as I saw it in the list, I was like, we're going to the mirror universe, Cracked Mirror, very
yep. yep. Related to, I'm assuming there's a bit of connection there to the Agatha Christie novel. So, we take that.
I really love the cracked screen in the trashed mess hall of, of the, the Starfleet that had suffered devastation from the virus on board the Protostar. And they were like hanging out at the mess hall and it was just like, someone's head had obviously gone into that big screen in the mess hall was just shattered from a point.
But not only were like parts of the display showing like different colors like you'd get from a broken liquid crystal display, but parts of it were also showing graphics at the wrong scaling level so there were some like extra large numbers and stuff, and I just that's the second time this season that Starfleet technology has glitched in an interesting way that I appreciated, uh, so yeah, um, there's obviously some, some computer nerds on the team somewhere there at
Prodigy who are thinking a little, a little more about, okay, it's broken. How would it break?
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, shout out to the mention of Tuvix. We didn't see Tuvix. So justice,
Captain Tuvix, if you will!
Captain Tuvix. Hashtag justice for Captain Tuvix.
Yeah, exactly. And apparently with at least one officer on board from that, uh, that race of All the World's a Stage, that was the, the people mocking Starfleet.
Right. I did see them pass by and went that, uh, is, are they all on here? But no, it was uh, one of them there. So
And then we had Ascension part one with a big, another big spiky ship coming out of, you know, a plane in space. It seems to be a recurring thing. It's just very, very reminiscent of the Shrike and Nero's ship in Star Trek, uh, 2009.
That's right. Yeah. I saw that and I went, this looks familiar. Um, this, this was intense, and this was very much the first part of of a two part, uh, storyline where they were put in the worst situation imaginable. Kind of like, um, in Picard Season 3, where it's like, Jonathan Frake said the famous lines, fire everything, and they all pretty much destroyed the ship.
Yeah, it, it is a little awkward that we're talking about only part one of a two parter here, but it does feel like that was intended as a Best of Both Worlds-style cliffhanger. We're meant to be waiting for what happens next week at this point, at least in the writing.
And, also this episode was very much structured like one earlier in the season where I feel like, the first two thirds of this episode was kind of collecting ourselves and catching our breath and debriefing from what had happened to this point and talking about what, what would happen next. And just that, that standoff in space with Asencia's ship really was kind of just a button on the episode.
It was a good 10 minute button, but it was more of a coda than the bulk of, or the body of this story.
Yeah, definitely there's, um, taking that time to breathe to, you know, reconnect Chakotay and Janeway and have the, the Prodigy cast sort of like do their debrief and reconnect and see how everything is. Ooh, I forgot to mention, oh yeah, Mirror Universe Evil Whale as well.
Yes, of course, even the whales are
Even the whales. I love that line. Yep. Um,
In Ascension, uh, when, when I really appreciate it, I'm, I'm, I'm part of a very narrow target demographic for the scene, where, uh, Janeway and Chakotay are bonding over comm badge designs. That was, uh, Right up my alley. I think I mentioned previously that those gold comm badges were specifically introduced in Endgame, and they have that conversation on screen in this episode,
I did, I did think of you going somewhere right now, Kevin Yank
I'm squeeing!
Ha ha ha, or doing the meme of, uh, Leonardo DiCaprio from Once Upon a Time in, uh, Hollywood, doing the, Yeah.
Pointing at the screen violently, yes. Zero's story of getting a new body, I thought it took, uh, a slight turn here, a very subtle one, but it's starting to bring me around, is Zero saying the line, More than anything, Doctor, I just want to feel like me.
And I feel like I at least have criticized earlier in the season Zero's story being a bit homo-sapiens-first as, uh, yeah, you know, walking, treading that well trodden soil of an alien species or a non-human species wanting to be human and, and therefore, you know, implying their, their original form is lesser than. That's one thing for an android created by human hands in Data. It's another thing entirely for a fully evolved, full, full-fledged non corporeal species like the Medusans.
And especially with, um, say a character like Odo. Odo seemed to be, you know, his human form and becoming more human seemed to be a trap for him, like a cage, an imprisonment. When he started to fully explore and find out what his true form was and what he could achieve, that was a freedom there, which I really appreciated.
And that's what kind of held me back, you know, one of my major criticisms of the most perfect Star Trek series ever is when you finally meet the, uh, the Founders, they look, they have the same facial expressions as, the same face as Odo. And I'm there going, no, no, no, people are more, these are more advanced members of his culture.
They would be to literally transform, and they do transform into anyone, it doesn't make sense that they have the exact same face as him, and they never really justify it, explain it, we are taking this form to make you feel more comfortable, or whatever.
This is our, this is our casual humanoid like, you know, we give you the gist, but it's not a great effort.
But yeah, so there was always that case of Odo never wanted to really, he had to conform to fit
Oh, he went through, I feel like he went through several interesting kind of arcs with that as well. It was like, it was something he did to fit in, uh, something he did to please his captors.
he was punishment, he had to be
Yeah, it was something he was curious about or that he did because he was in love with a human or a humanoid in Kira. And then by the end he discovered you know, yes that's something I can do and something I can be but I can also be many other things. And that, that wholeness of my being is who I am, and, and the person I love has to be on board for that and she is and that's the, that's the delight and the tragedy the ending.
Yeah, and that took seven seasons of development, which is incredible. So, um, having, you know, you know, being halfway through the second season for Zero, definitely. Uh, you know, there's so much potential there for it to be. I love that line. Like you said, it's, you know, I
Yeah. So coming back to Zero in this episode, I feel like. I don't know if it's entirely there, but I want to see it there, is there is a sense that this is, now at least it is a personal journey for Zero. It is not something that we assume all Medusans wish they could be humanoid, or all non corporeal life wish they could have senses, physical senses. But this is something that Zero is wrestling with in their identity, and it has a bit of a trans narrative about it, to me.
I am, I am a corporeal born as a non corporeal, uh, you know, and that to me is interesting. That is something we've not seen before. Uh, it is, I think probably no coincidence that it is coming from the character with non binary pronouns. This character is the one they have chosen for these kinds of narratives, but I'm happy to go there with it. And I hope through the rest of this season they have an opportunity to lean into that further.
I hope, beyond hope, that we get to see more stories of this character beyond season two and that we will be able to explore that further because that feels like a juicy thing to be exploring through science fiction in an honest, genuine, good natured way.
Yeah, I agree. I agree.
Beverly Crusher feels like, uh, maybe something worth taking a moment to acknowledge.
was, I was wondering if we'd take a moment for, for Bev. It's great to have Bev back. Great to have
And to see her at a moment in her life where we've not seen her before. I feel like, I guess we're getting that with, with Janeway and to a lesser extent Chakotay as well this season. But, uh, we've seen Crusher before this, and we've seen Crusher after this, and seeing this at this moment, where I guess she has not had her second son yet? She's still at Starfleet, it seems? She's helping with the, the Romulan, uh, evacuation?
is before the big, uh, disaster.
Yeah, before the big disaster, there's some mention of the androids that go haywire in Picard, uh, season one, and, uh, yeah, so it is, she is on the precipice of basically leaving it all behind and going off on her, uh, her unexpected departure. Uh, and it's really interesting to see that character here. I don't feel like we've seen that look of her as well, the short, uh, uh, kind of white hair, um, it was, and yet, the likeness came through, um, it was, it was lovely.
And just to hear her talking about Wesley, that's something that has felt off limits for that character, it's like, it was so weird, it was so sci fi woo woo, what happened to her son, that having her reflect on it felt like something they could never do justice to on screen, but they, they, they walked that line here, and I liked it.
Yeah, and especially because we talked about it before, but I'm there going, they didn't mention him at all, really, in Picard Season 3. It's all focused on, let's focus on the new model. Um, so to actually have, you know, because they were pretty much inseparable for the first couple of seasons, you know. Where Beverly went, Wesley was there, you know. Literally, the first time you see them as characters, they are together.
Um, and so Yeah, it seemed a bit odd that they purposely avoided, you know, obviously, you know, uh, you know, a female character isn't defined by the fact that she's a mother or by her, you know, that her son is there, but, um, uh, it was good, especially because there was no mention from Beverly of Wesley in Picard Season 3 to have her openly talk about, to find out, and this type of stuff, um, when she's still with the Federation, high up, you know, good position for her
before everything goes to crap for her. Um, it was wonderful, just to have that, yeah, like you said, that time sci fi woo woo thing of going, yeah, he's a temporal agent, um, multi powerful time lord, um, but, you know,
wish he just had more time for his mother.
Yeah, ha ha ha ha ha, good line.
All right, so, uh, was there anything else you wanted to pick out of those episodes for discussion?
Look, yeah, I'm just, just overall, it's It's such a good watch. It's such an easy watch. It's such a, yeah, um, I don't know what show, uh, those, I mean, fandom across all franchises is getting quite toxic and, um, gets the forefront of attention online and in the world, um, but this is just such a, a show that loves it's Star Trek and loves the essence of what Star Trek is. It doesn't get caught up being in it's own backside.
It has its incredible episodes, its dull episodes, but it's, it's producing the goods consistently and,
Yeah. It's not perfect, not every episode is a 10 out of 10, but it is rewarding to watch, and, um, yeah, it pays back, uh, love of Star Trek in kind.
Yeah, so it's, it's, it's, it's a joy to watch and it's a joy to talk about it with you, so I'm glad, um, you we've, we've, we've been doing this thing so long so we don't just, you know, it was all started just to talk about, um, Strange New Worlds and, uh, it's opened my, uh, perception of Star Trek to strange new worlds as well.
This feels like a question to ask at the end of the season, but I'll maybe plant it now in your mind, Rob, is Is there too much fan service here? Are we at the point where the young, uh, new to Star Trek audience that this show was ostensibly created for would be feeling estranged or a little lost?
That's definitely something to work, for us to explore more in detail after we get through the rest of this season. Um, and it's finding that balance of, did, was, was season one enough of a, uh, an introduction for them, and that encouragement of going, Here are all these characters, especially the episode where there was the hologram of Odo and Scotty and Spock to go, go and play.
You know, when it wasn't on, on Paramount Plus that was pretty much an invitation to the young Star Trek fans watching going, you haven't seen any of this? Go explore. Go find. Um, and so, yeah, I'll be, I'll be interested to talk more about it in detail once we've got the whole picture of Season 2
Ditto. Yeah. Alright, but let's talk about broken captains.
Mmm.
Well. Season two of the original series seems to have been a time where this idea of, uh, a, a captain who's been through tragedy being the heart of an episode, because they did it twice. They did it in episode six, The Doomsday Machine, which we've talked about before. And they did, they did it again in episode 25, The Omega Glory, which I don't think we've talked
We haven't. Wonderful title!
Mm. I want to revisit Doomsday Machine, because last time we talked about it, it was about the ship being sacrificed, and we, I talked a lot about the CG, especially in the remastered version of the episode, being worth a watch. And all of that is still true. But what I didn't maybe give enough props to the last time we talked about this, was the performance of Commodore Matt Decker of the USS Constellation.
Um, and he's played by William Windom, who strikes me as one of those Paramount Day players who's probably played a million sheriffs in westerns or whatever. But yeah, he, uh, he took us on a ride here with this broken captain. So, if you haven't seen the episode, the story is the Enterprise discovers the Constellation adrift in space and like one of its nacelles is half torn open and it is basically a dead hulk in space.
And they beam aboard and find no one aboard except when they go to the auxiliary control room, they find Commodore Matthew Decker slumped over the console there. And he is catatonic with grief and shock at what has befallen his ship and his crew. We learn that the ship has been on the run from this planet killer device, which is the, the threat in this episode, this big kind of cone shaped snake with a fiery maw that, that travels through space and eats planets.
When the ship was crippled, Commodore Decker, to protect his crew, to save his crew, beamed them down to a planet for safety. And then the transporter was knocked out and the planet killer proceeded to consume the planet where his entire crew was taking refuge, and he was left alone, last man on the ship, uh, to watch this tragedy befall his crew.
When they are trying to get the story out of him, Spock and Kirk, they're trying to talk some sense into him, he does these like silent screams where you, he's just looking into space, reliving it, and screaming without a voice. And it is haunting. Kirk shakes him and says, Matt, where's your crew? And he says, on the third planet. There is no third planet. Don't you think I know that? There was, but not anymore. They called me. They begged me for help. Four hundred of them. I couldn't!
I couldn't! It was amazing, especially for the time. Just this little, like, guest star part in an episode early in Season 2 of this series. It is I think, probably, the most dramatic performance we get in Star Trek. You know, maybe when in Amok Time, when Spock realizes that he hasn't actually killed his best friend Kirk, and calls him Jim, maybe that is a little more like emotionally affecting, but this is probably the dramatic performance of the series for me, Commodore Matt Decker.
OK, played by the great William Windom. I love a good, I love a good research into, uh, stuff like that. He's a heavy hitter. He's a heavy hitter. Sadly passed away in, uh, 2012, but he got his cinema break. His fir first big movie in, uh, on the big screen was in To Kill a Mockingbird. He played the prosecutor against,
There you go. Okay. Not just a Paramount Day player then.
No. Uh, he, but he did a lot of stuff. He did the Donna Reed show, Gunsmoke, um, he did four episodes
Impossible, Ironside. So, day player there, but his big break was the prosecutor in To Kill a Mockingbird. He, um, Matt Decker reappeared in Star Trek New Voyages. I'm not sure
Oh, that's a fan film.
fan film. He came back for that. Um, and, Yeah, he's just this, uh, fabulous catalog of movies they did. He's in Escape from the Planet of the Apes, wonderful, wonderful, one of fav franchises. Trains, Planes and Automobiles, Uncle Buck,
what a career. He's done a bit of everything.
huge, huge career. So, I'm not surprised when you say one of the greatest dramatic performances of a, uh, supporting actor in Star Trek, or of any actor. He knew how to turn up, you know, take his money, and he never phoned it in.
Because we're here to talk about how captains are affected by tragedy, beyond this, like, first scene where we meet this damaged captain, he goes on to do some out of character things, and often that kind of tragedy is what enables characters to be pushed to places that you wouldn't normally expect them to go. Uh, I think we get a bit of that from Chakotay as well in, uh, Prodigy.
Very much so.
Decker here, he beams back to the Enterprise to be treated for his ordeal and Kirk stays behind on the crippled Constellation. Inevitably the planet killer comes back, knocks out the transporters so the captains have effectively swapped ships, and Decker, who outranks Kirk, assumes command of the Enterprise and goes on a vendetta.
He decides he got it wrong the first time, now he's got his second chance at revenge, and he tries to take on the planet killer, all the while Spock trying to talk some sense into him. And he does something that I've seen, I can think of at least Captain Stiles in Spacedock in Star Trek III, when they steal the Enterprise. You remember the captain with the riding crop? Yes. He's the Excelsior captain. We sometimes get these power mad, uh, captains who have a quirk. Stiles had his writing crop.
Decker here gets two of those colorful recording tapes, and he, he fiddles with them between his fingers, and he chews on the corner of them in his mouth, as he's plotting his maneuvers, and it's, it makes you hate the guy despite the tragedy he's been through because now he's about to be responsible for the same tragedy for the characters that we care about. And, uh, Spock comes to the brink of mutiny, leading a mutiny on the bridge to regain control of the Enterprise. It's really good.
There's lots of debates on the bridge about regulations that apply when a captain is mentally incapacitated and attempted suicide would be a proof of mental incapacitation, and I would relieve you under those grounds, Commodore. And yeah, really good stuff.
Excellent.
I'll segue over to the Omega Glory, which is another example of a captain who has had tragedy befall his crew, who seems a bit warped by the experience. In this one, the Enterprise discovers a Starfleet ship in orbit around an uncharted planet, and there's nobody aboard, so they go aboard, and there are the remains of the crew aboard. They've all been turned into these white crystals. They're all desiccated bodies.
So there's like, you know, uniforms hanging over consoles with white salt crystals hanging out of the, uh, the cuffs of the, the uniforms. So the entire crew has perished, apparently due to a virus. And the logs reveal that the landing party contracted the virus on the planet below, they beamed up, and the entire crew contracted it and died.
Captain Tracey stayed below when the landing party beamed up, and assumed he would befall the same fate, but by the time he realized he wasn't getting sick, his entire crew was dead. And he assumes that there is some immunity on this planet. And it has a very similar kind of plot to Star Trek: Insurrection, where we have the bad admiral there who thinks they've found the Fountain of Youth.
In the Briar Patch.
And Ronald Tracy basically decides, oh, well, my crew is dead, but good news is I've found the Fountain of Youth, and that is how I'm gonna redeem myself. That is pretty much, you know, the good stuff of this episode. The Omega Glory is commonly considered one of the worst episodes of the original series, unusual here in the second season.
Yeah, normally they're all piled into season three.
I'd say the first half of it is fairly watchable. There is some cringy, uh, racial stereotyping, but they are, their heart is in the right place. So on this planet, there are two, um, racial groups. There are the Yangs and the Coombs, and the Yangs are white people who are like barbarians. They can't be reasoned with. They live in the hills. They have no culture. Um, and the Coombs are kind of Asiatics, they are called in the episode. They, they look Asian to outward appearances.
They seem cultured. They live in, um, they live in, in cities, but they are primitive cities. And we learned there was an atomic holocaust on this planet that basically destroyed the culture of the Yangs, nearly destroyed the culture of the Coombs, and now these two races, uh, don't communicate anymore.
And Ronald Tracey, Captain Tracey goes, well, If we're going to bring this technology to, uh, the Federation and perhaps sell it to the highest bidder, we need to defend these gates from the barbarians. And so he uses his personal phaser to, to, uh, to kill off about a thousand of these barbarians that are attacking the city in flagrant violation of the Prime Directive.
Ah, yeah!
And this is what Kirk and Spock and Bones discover when they beam down and their ill fated red shirt who takes one for the team pretty early in the episode.
Respect to the redshirt.
So yeah, Kirk discovers that Tracey has violated the Prime Directive and is continuing to do so, takes the Enterprise landing party hostage. Uh, Bones figures out that the infection is actually cured after a couple of days on the planet's surface, and it's safe to beam back now, and if only the crew of the, uh, the Exeter had beamed down for a couple of days, they would have all been fine, but, uh, that, so much, so much the tragedy.
That's a tragedy as well. Yeah. Of course, Captain Tracey played by Morgan Woodward, who was player and had some time in the TV show Gunsmoke, was in the Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp. These two biggest roles were, uh, as Boss Godfrey in Cool Hand Luke, incredible 1967 film with Paul Newman and George Kennedy, and also in the 80s, uh, 70s and 80s had a role in Dallas as Punk Anderson. So there you go.
He also was previously in a guest starring role in the original series. He appeared in, uh, season one's Dagger of the Mind and was Simon Van Gelder, who I think may have been the recipient of the first on screen Vulcan mind meld with, uh, Spock in sickbay, while he relived the horror that he had, uh, he had experienced in that episode.
But, uh, ultimately he is, he is irretrievably corrupted before we even meet him in this episode, and this episode is more a process of discovering just how bad he's made it for himself, and, uh, Kirk in the end needs to take him down.
Uh, this episode goes off the rails in the third act, where they discover the Yangs and the Coombs are twisted versions of the Yanks and the Communists, and that this entire planet was a parallel evolution of Earth, so much so that they had these same, … Rob: terminology? yeah, the same names for the, uh, the Communists and the, the Yanks, warring and with each other, and that nuclear World War III is what decimated the planet.
And they discover that the Yangs, what they worship is the United States Constitution, word for word. They speak a twisted version of it that Kirk recognizes and recites from memory with old glory, the United States flag, which, is present on this planet as an object of worship. The score of this episode mixes the fanfare of, of Star Trek with The Star Spangled Banner at the end, and it is as cringy as one might imagine.
Yay?
Yeah, but yeah, good stuff, good fisticuffs, lots of wrestling and fighting with the two captains there. It does ultimately come down to a wrestling match. That is how they decide to settle their differences. And it's, uh, yeah, good fun, but very much 60s popcorn fare at that point.
We wouldn't expect any less for those old scientist episode of Star Trek.
So I'm, I guess the summing up here, the original series used captains who've, who have had tragedies befall them as, an excuse for having them behave as villains effectively, even if only temporarily.
Exactly. Yes, that's a, that's a good way to look at those, uh, those examples that you gave. I'll follow on in that connection, it's a small part, but it's a very tragic part, uh, looking at Star Trek II, The Wrath of Khan, and we're looking at the captain of the Reliant, uh, that is, of course, Clark Terrell, the captain, played by the brilliant, Paul Winfield.
Ah, yes.
So, Captain of the Reliant heads to Ceti Alpha V, and they come across of course Khan and his followers. He's taken over by the mind worm.
All I can remember of this character is him turning his phaser on himself to relieve himself of the screaming mind worm in his skull. It's pretty memorable.
He gets, he has the worst day ever. He starts
Is the worst day! Yeah, it all goes wrong very
He, yeah, everything goes pear shaped. He gets, he gets kidnapped, he gets tortured, you know, he has no control over his, uh, own faculties. He has to witness the massacre of the scientists. He then tries to fight his way out of being controlled and then takes his own life. It's not a good day for Captain Terrell. It's, it's, it's, it's horrifying stuff.
It's tragic stuff from a point of view of just a supporting, a glorified red shirt, but so much tragedy added to it and, uh, being forced to be the assistant of the villain.
A heroic end, I suppose, the, uh, the ripping off the communicator from his wrist. I feel like that is the one time those wrist communicators that, that came in in Star Trek, The Motion Picture. It's the one time they, they did something interesting on screen is when Terrell had to rip it off with his teeth. Um, pretty cinematic. Uh, it wouldn't have been quite the same if he'd just like thrown his communicator on the ground and stomped on it.
Nicholas Meyer, man, he knew how to, you know, to amp up that tension and bring you theatricality. Um, and yeah, the ultimate sacrifice, he, you know, to, to kill himself so he no longer had to feel that pain or be under the control of Khan.
It's hard to know how much to attribute to the, the eel in his head and how much to attribute to the tragedy, but he does have that, that catatonic broken man look about him when they discover him. And, and he talks about what happens and how Khan was wild and screaming. And yeah, there, there are those, there is that scene of seeing that broken captain that is quite affecting.
Yeah, Paul Winfield was a great actor. He also appeared in, um, the original Terminator as one of the cannon fodder cops at the start. Um, he also did a show that I loved as a kid that didn't last very long called The Charmings, which is pretty much like all the characters from, uh, fairy tales go into the modern world. And he played the magic mirror that the, uh, stepmother, who's the wicked witch, talks to. He was very funny in it.
And he also won an Emmy for Picket Fences, a David E. Kelly show that I really loved in the 90s, that kind of, as, you know, Don Cheadle was in it, and, um, it was a great TV series, but, um, not many people remember it. But yes,
I will always remember him as the captain from the one of my favorite episodes of Star Trek, The Next Generation, Darmok. So he did come back to Star Trek in The Next Generation, yeah, Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra. That was him, that captain.
There you go. So I wanted to move on and talk briefly about two captains that are familiar within, and are lead characters within the Star Trek franchise, one that is pretty much based in tragedy, and we are now in the process of seeing that being played out, and so much so, people wondering whether they're gonna take that tragedy away and give him a happy ending. So there's, uh, Pike, looking at, you know, our dear Pike in Strange New Worlds.
Um, we've talked many episodes about him and his, you know, original appearance and they couldn't get the actor back for when they just put him in, put him in a self contained wheelchair slash, uh, iron lung, and the brave choice of bringing him into Discovery. The only way that he could help in the mission is to find out his own destiny. And so, are they going to change canon?
They can't, they can't, they can't have him end up the way that he ends up because he's just too good a character and we got to know him so well.
I, yeah, I don't know. I I'm not sure I'll go along with it if they do change his fate because
They can't.
They can't. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, the tragic, the tragic destination is so much of this character. I don't think they could, they could back out of that. It's interesting to me how they changed it to make it more tragic for Strange New Worlds. In the original series, when we met him, it was really that he had, I think they mentioned that he had like saved a crew of cadets or something like that.
But the tragedy was really that, that, that amazing captain, that amazing leader was now, uh, an invalid physically for the rest of his life. That was one kind of tragedy, but in, in Strange New Worlds, they introduce us to the kids who will die on that deck when Pike survives and is mutilated. And that, the deaths of those kids is now the tragedy that, he is faced with, it feels like.
Yeah, it's definitely added in that other component and shaped it into more than just that rather limited 60s justification to get to the point of, well, we can't have the original actor back and, um, we've got to make him hideously beyond repair and we'll do all this type of stuff and he saves some people. Um, but you can actually explore what that means on an emotional level.
It's interesting, it's like a pre tragedy. Like, that is a very science fiction thing. It's someone who is yet to experience a tragedy, has foreknowledge of a tragedy.
And, you know, what his legacy will be and what he wants his legacy to be and what he gets within the ticking clock that he has in life now, what that means.
No less affecting. In some ways, is affected just as some of these other captains we're seeing, that, uh, that it changes the decisions they make. Their judgment is affected by that, that event, even though it's in his future.
Exactly. And the one thing that we've brought back many times before, the whole point of the original return episode of him, he knows what he wants to do. He wants to go back to where it all started because that's where he can be in the form that he wants to be and live out his life on that planet, uh, in his original form. They can't have forgotten, right? They know, they're pushing the tragedy a lot, and maybe those people who are believing the tragedy, haven't seen those episodes.
But he, he, gets what he, what we can consider a happy ending for, you know, his containment. So, are they keeping that back for a reason? But I'm also got that maybe they've forgotten.
no, we know that, but Pike can't know that yet
No, he can't, no. Because that takes away, that takes away the importance
heroism. Yeah. Yeah. it's like when a character sacrifices themselves, but then are saved through some trick of science fiction, and it's like, whew, I'm still a hero because I sacrificed myself assuming I would die, but I'm here to come back in the next episode next week. It's one of those.
Exactly. It very much is so one of those, one of those, um, wave your hands away of the justification of it. And finally, it's that case, we have talked about it before, but it's the, the longer you play a character on television especially, the writers are inspired by the actor's unique personalities, their backstory, their history, and all that type of stuff, and how the character blends into the actor the longer you play.
Case in point in Modern Family, the character of Cameron, the actor who played him trained to be a clown, so they incorporated that element into the character.
On other shows they've incorporated elements like in Brooklyn Nine Nine, they've incorporated elements of the actors' backstory in their own life, and with, Picard, with Jean Luc Picard, elements of Patrick Stewart's, the issues he had in his own past has been incorporated to dramatic effect to influence Picard's dark backstory that we never really knew about. The only huge tragedy we kinda knew about was the loss of his brother's family in Generations.
Um, so, but in Picard season two, we find out this whole deeply dark backstory that doesn't really go with the Star Trek world of where they were with medicine and mental health and all that type of stuff.
You know, you look at Picard, the longer you play a character, the more losses you face, and you look at him at the end, it goes, and he ends quite, um, optimistically in Season 3, but in Season 2, there is that element of, you know, at the end of Season 1 of Picard, he dies, and he comes back as an android. Season 2, the android version of him has to go through this emotional trauma of remembering the tragedy of, you know, domestic violence and abuse at home.
Yeah, it's a, it's a different kind of tragedy than, like, it's not in the line of duty, but it is definitely there in the character, for sure.
And so, and that's where a point of adding in those tragic elements. Does it muddy the water? Does it, does it shift the established lore of a character? And, or does it enhance them in some way? That's very, interesting choice that was made, and the backlash from it was quite a, um, an interesting thing to witness as well.
It's not like Picard Needed more tragedy. I guess they went, you know what, you know when Picard is really good, is when bad stuff happens. What other can we make happen to him? Yeah, strange one.
The exploration of a family tragedy rather than a tragedy in the line of duty and as a Starfleet captain, I suppose, maybe appealed to the storytellers, including Patrick Stewart himself, who, um, the story goes was motivated to return to this show by taking the character to places that we had not seen him go before. So I suppose that might've been the draw here.
If you really wanted to squint and look for it, I think you could maybe tell yourself that Picard being forced to acknowledge and reckon with those childhood traumas and experiences and remember them again and take them back into his being maybe softened him a bit into the man we see in season three the show. I don't think it was necessary for the character. I think everything we saw in season three from Picard could have been done without that additional element.
And it is very much case of it wasn't really brought up again. And so us, us as fans, as we are wont to do going, how can we justify this, um, to make it work and fit in with the whole picture of an arc, a character arc that hasn't really been filled in because season one, two, and three are so disjointed in its storytelling.
I had a couple of others that I left on the table that I'll just briefly mention completeness sake. In The Next Generation Season 4, Episode 12, The Wounded. This is a good O'Brien episode. O'Brien gets to meet an old captain of his, Benjamin Maxwell, who is now in command of the USS Phoenix. Benjamin Maxwell lost his entire family to a Cardassian, uh, war invasion that he was too late to save them from.
And now he is in command of a, a new ship that is required to assist with enforcing the peace under the new treaty with the Cardassians. And so he is a captain who is affected by that tragedy in his background. He does not trust the Cardassians. He goes rogue to attempt to prove that they are still smuggling weapons under a flag of truce. And, uh, O'Brien has to talk him down. And if you're thinking I wonder if he was right? That is a very good question. You watch the episode to find out.
Ha ha.
Uh, and then in, uh, Voyager, there's the season five finale and season six premiere, Equinox, part one and two, where we get to meet Captain Rudolph "Rudy" Ransom of the Equinox, uh, a much smaller ship that, you remember a few weeks back, or a few episodes back, when we were talking about Caretaker, the, the premiere of Voyager, and I remarked on this one line that said, a bunch of ships, they've been bringing ships here for months. And I was like, why didn't we ever meet any of those ships?
Well, it turns out we did. We met the Equinox. The Equinox was another Starfleet ship that got brought into the Delta Quadrant just like Voyager and was also trying to find their way home. But they were a smaller ship that had a rougher ride. They lost half their crew in their first encounter with an alien species in the Delta Quadrant and the captain, um, took it pretty hard and started making some extreme decisions.
They ended up, torturing and killing, some life forms from another dimension in order to get power to boost the speed of their warp engines and, and shave some of their time off of their trip home. And when Voyager, it takes a little while for the truth to come out of exactly what's gone on, on board this ship. And, uh, Rudy Ransom and his crew.
inevitably become the antagonists in this two parter, where Voyager has to, uh, attempt to bring them to justice without getting themselves killed in the process.
I do remember that one. It's an incredibly powerful episode, the two parter, where everyone goes, well, why are they, for, up until that point, everyone had been going, why are they just sticking to the Prime Directive? Why are they doing all this type of stuff? And then you see in Equinox what happens when Federation members, uh, push to the point where they just, let go of everything that they believe to survive.
And it's, um, it's, it's ugly, and it's, yeah, as you said, they had a rougher ride. They're a smaller ship, so they didn't have as much protection or, um, firepower as Voyager.
There's a delicious little scene on the bridge where, uh, where Rudy goes, Hey, so, Janeway, uh, no particular reason, but, uh, I was wondering, did you ever have to break the Prime Directive? Janeway goes, Oh yeah, we came close, bent the rules now and then, but never completely broke it. Why? How about you? And he goes, Oh, no reason. Yeah, me neither.
At the, at the end of this episode, I think some of the crew that survive the Equinox actually come on board Voyager as
Three of them, yeah. Janeway gives them a dressing down and names them by first and last name very conspicuously. And it's you are now part of this ship, Brendan Fraser or whatever their were. And, uh, and you're like, Ooh, I will remember those names because obviously they're going to be return characters. None of them ever returned on screen, unfortunately.
Again, another letdown of not really embracing the arc of what it could be. But it's a powerful two part story and I really like that, that moment of what could have been, Voyager could have gone down a darker path.
At least two of those three characters were memorable enough that when they said their names I was like, whoo, I look forward to seeing these come back. One of them is an ensign who was like, racked by guilt, but felt like her job as a Starfleet officer was to follow the orders of her and when her captain gets relieved, she's like, Oh, I'm so glad you, you know, made it so I could stop following those terrible orders. And then the captain resumes his post.
It's just like, Oh, I guess I got to go back following these orders. And it's just really, um, yeah, you know, rich stuff watching those, uh, those torn characters. Um, yeah, a shame they didn't come back. You know, what stands out to me is that we never saw a tragically affected captain, quite the same as Chakotay here in Prodigy. A captain who is affected by tragedy and basically like, gives up, and becomes a hermit on a ship.
I mean, Raffi Musiker in Picard season one has a similar kind of arc that she, you know, turns to drugs in the bottle and goes out and lives at Vasquez Rocks in a, a combi van, but, um, but she was never a captain. I am happy to discover that, that with Chakotay, we are seeing a story that we've not seen in Star Trek before. And, uh, that's very refreshing every time it happens.
Definitely, yeah. And we, cause we had like a brief encounter with his number one and to be told about Chakotay, sort of like the loss of his number one's life just simply because Chakotay had given up and didn't it was possible. And that guilt racked with him going, I didn't believe him and I didn't believe that we could get out. So that arc of him, redemption arc, was a, a beautiful thing to see.
All right, well there you go. We got one last block of five episodes and then we'll be on hiatus until the final season of Lower Decks. So, uh, I hope Star Trek makes these last five episodes a good one, because it's the last new Star Trek for a little while.
It is, it is, and hopefully it's not the, uh, last, uh, what we see of Prodigy.
No, well, it won't be because the show ran out of steam. This is as good as Prodigy has ever been, I feel like. And if it goes out, uh, this way, it'll go out on a high note at least.
Most definitely. It's been very consistent. Two seasons of very consistent Star Trek, which is a odd thing to have, and, uh, embrace it while we have it.