Matt and Sean talk about breaking through Star Trek Strange New Worlds’ La’an’s tough shell, and finding… Kirk? That’s James T. Kirk. How well does it work?
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So we’re talking about season two of Strange New Worlds, which means we’re also talking about, well, basically about eight months ago, 2023. It’s not too way back in the way back machine this episode, but trust me, we’ll get there before too long. We’re just a couple of months before we head back to the original series.
And at that point. We’re talking about, uh, some, some ancient history compared to the, the Ferrell brothers. Who are the Ferrell brothers? Well, that’s me, Sean Ferrell. I’m an author. I write some sci fi. I write some stuff for kids. And with me as always is my brother, Matt, who is the guru behind Undecided with Matt Ferrell, which takes a look at emerging tech and its impact on our lives.
And Matt, how are you? You do not have a new episode this week of Undecided for a very special reason. What was it?
I was on vacation. The first vacation I’ve taken in six years, Sean, six, six years, I went, I went to, uh, the happiest place on earth, Disney World, and I got back literally last night. So I’m still kind of like on Mickey Mouse time right now.
Still quite not back to reality. Um, but did stuff, Sean, that you are going to love. We’re going to talk about this probably out of time, but I. Walked aboard the Millennium Falcon, Sean, quite a few times, and, uh, the first time was kind of a, uh, religious, emotional experience for me, so there’s a lot to talk about about that.
Yeah. If I get the opportunity to do that, and I was just talking about that with my partner because we were talking about your trip, and she said, well, what would you even do for that many days? I said, first I do this, and then I do this, and then I do this, and then I do this, and that’s why I would need a full day for that.
And then I started listening and she was like, yeah, I guess that all does make sense. And I really want you to be aboard the Millennium Falcon. And I know that if I have the opportunity to do that, I will hear choirs of angels singing at that moment. It will be a profound moment for the seven year old that lives deep inside me.
Before we get into our conversation about this episode tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, we always like to take a look back at what you guys have shared with us in the comments. So Matt, what have you found in the mailbag for us this week? Uh,
we have one from Jason Dumb from episode 133, which is Ad Astra per Aspera.
Um, he said, I enjoyed this conversation more than the episode, a fan, a fanfic version of what we had seen before. What is the moral of the episode? Discrimination against especially talented people is bad. Sounds like garbage and anti affirmative action message. Really wish the Augment storyline was not a part of the show.
Um, I thought it was a kind of interesting take from what you and I had talked about. on that episode. Yeah. Um, it’s one of the reasons I love these comments to hear very differing viewpoints. Um, and then there was a couple of funny ones relating to your shout out for what is the, uh, title mean. Uh, PaleGhost69 wrote tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow, a self help guide on how to deal with mental health issues one day at a time, fighting depression and unalive thoughts via procrastination.
And then another person, AJ Chan wrote, uh, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, Little Orphan Annie Learns How to Use Conjunctions. Yeah.
Okay. That may have broken me. Um. Yes. That’s terrific. Yeah. The sun will come out tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. Annie stop it.
That’s very funny. Thank you so much, guys. And I agree with you, Matt, that it’s nice to hear differing opinions. One of the things about Star Trek, uh, like, one of the messages of Star Trek is be open to hearing a difference of opinion. So, like, on that level, we gotta practice what we preach. You know, if the messages of Star Trek are to be, uh, taken in and honored, then that difference of opinion is fine.
Uh, the other side of it is One of the key things about Star Trek, for me, is that it very often tries to present ethical and moral dilemmas along that razor’s edge, where you can understand, you can, you may not agree with, but you can understand the perspective of the antagonist or the opponent. And it’s not about vilifying.
It’s about opposition. So you are. Pushing against somebody else’s viewpoint, not because they’re bad, but because you just have an opposing view and that between the two, you eventually can reach a consensus. And I think that taking a look at an episode, which is trying to make a moral argument about acceptance and judgment.
And having a difference of opinion makes perfect sense because that is what they’re trying to do. They’re trying to say these issues are not cut and dry. There’s no black hat. And so I appreciate the comments and keep them coming, especially if they make me laugh out loud like I just did. That noise in the background, of course, is the read alert, which means it’s time for Matt to set his phasers to bifocal and to read the Wikipedia description.
Good luck, Matt.
This is gonna be fun. A mysterious wounded man appears on the Enterprise, gives a time travel device to La’an, and then dies. I think that could just
be the description right there, Sean. There you go. There you go. That’s the TV Guide version.
Yeah. La’an finds herself in an alternate timeline where Earth is ravaged by war and the Enterprise is captained by James T.
Kirk. The device transports her and Kirk to the 2020s, Toronto, where the pair form a romantic bond. They search for the point of divergence that caused the alternate timeline with help from a younger Pelia. And find a eugenics lab where a young Khan Noonian Singh is being raised. A Romulan time traveler named Sera intends to change human history by killing Khan and preventing the eugenics wars, which would keep humanity from the path that led to unity and the Federation.
Sera kills Kirk and fights La’an who kills Sera and saves Khan. Wow, that, just that one sentence alone makes this worth it. Yeah, exactly. La’an returns to the Enterprise in her own timeline and is thanked by a time traveling investigator from the future, a colleague of the mysterious man who confiscates the time travel device and swears La’an to secrecy.
La’an contacts her timeline’s Kirk, but he has no memory of her. She keeps a 20th century watch that they used to find, that they used to find the agenda for. I’m sorry, this description, Sean, is breaking my brain because it sounds like a fifth grader’s book report. on any just fill in the blank of book it’s just like just a couple of the key plot points not in exactly the order they all happened in and they’re not actually that important but we’re gonna highlight them all but anyway she keeps a 20th century watch that they used to find the eugenics lab I don’t know why that’s an important point to point out, but okay.
There you have it. This episode, episode number three, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, directed by Amanda Rowe, written by David Reed, originally broadcast on June 29th, 2023. As usual, we have Anson Mount, Ethan Peck, Christina Chong, Melissa Navia, Rebecca Romijn, Jess Bush, Celia Rose Gooding, and Babs Olusanmokun.
In their usual roles and Paul Wesley as Kirk, once again, that’s James T, not his brother, Sam, who we find out is George Sam, original broadcast, June 29th, 2023. Well, Matt, I don’t have to tell you, you were still dancing along to Last Night by Morgan Wellan. I know that of the 29 million downloads that week, you were responsible for probably a cool 2 million.
And at the box office, I’m not quite sure what happened with the dates and corresponding films. I think last week I said it was Spider Man Across the Spider Verse. That’s actually the number one film this week. So I’m not sure. How I got dates conflated and confused, but trust me, I know what I’m talking about now.
And on television, well, we’ve already talked about S. U. I. T. S., that surprise resurgence of a program that was off the air by 2023, becoming the number one streamed program of 2023. And we’ve talked about Bluey. The Disney Plus broadcast of a Australian BBC program, which Matt and I would both argue is more about teaching parents how to parent well as opposed to teaching kids how to be kids.
Kids already know how to be kids. Parents don’t always know how to be parents. So now we’re at week number three. So we’re talking about the third most downloaded program and we’re talking about NCIS. Yes, Matt, NCIS, a program which if you had to ask me, when did it originally appear? In broadcast, I would say probably 1983, and it is, I believe, still on the air.
So NCIS, the number three most popular streaming program with 39 billion minutes viewed out of just a rough guess. I don’t know if you’re looking at our show notes right now, but if you’re not, do you want to take a quick guess about how many episodes of NCIS there were in 2023?
I’ve already looked at the show notes. So I already know.
Okay. We’re talking about a shocking number.
443 episodes of NCIS. NCIS is of course the American Military Police Procedural Television Series in which it was Focused on the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, combining elements of military drama and police procedural. So, the best of both worlds. And in the news on this day, in June 2023, Well, I had completely forgotten that this is when we were going through this particular event.
The smoky skies. Uh, Canadian wildfires covering most of the United States, including right here in my Brooklyn, New York, which is a good reminder to exactly how old my air filters are. Yes, that’s right. I bought air filters. Because of this, the thick gray smoke covering most of the United States led to toxic air quality and an upsurge in purchasing of air filters so that we wouldn’t choke to death in our own homes.
There was also an article about something affecting the Earth’s axis, the Earth’s orbit. Normally has a wobble to its axis, but that wobble had become more pronounced and scientists determined it had to do with humans. We by using water sources were adjusting the weight of various pressure points on the planet and it was affecting the Earth’s axis and rotation.
That’s not concerning.
I think the key is as a mass group of humanity. What is it now? 7 billion people? Um, we should all avoid everybody drinking a glass of water and then traveling to one side of the planet. And reliving ourselves there because if we do that,
you want to talk about Wobble.
On now to our discussion about this episode, which involves not only parallel universes, which I’m always whenever a parallel universe appears, I instinctively think, oh, they’re talking about the mirror universe. It’s always a nice relief to me that they step to the side of that whenever they do in Strange New Worlds.
And they do it here. The ease of doing a mirror universe story around this and making everybody barbaric, evil side. And they don’t do that for the obvious reasons. They need Kirk to be Kirk. They can’t have La’an go to an alternate universe in which Kirk is just like, and I’m going to take you and make you my woman.
So Kirk needs to be Kirk, so it can’t be the Mirror Universe. And I, as an audience member, am immediately relieved. And also, not only do we have the parallel universe, we have the time travel aspect. So I’m going to kind of like push those two things together, smush them together, and say out of the gate, I’ll start the conversation this time.
I actually enjoyed the exploration of the alternate timeline side. A little bit of a depiction which reminded me of the episode of Next Generation where they have the temporal experience with the Enterprise, yesterday’s Enterprise, where Enterprise C comes through and you get to see an alternate timeline where humanity is struggling and there’s, there’s conflict and everything is depicted as things are falling apart because of something that changed in the past.
This episode reminded me very much of that. Right down to the romantic storyline, yesterday’s Enterprise included Tasha Yar as a reappearance of her character and then a romantic storyline for her with a member of the Enterprise C. I liked that in this one as well, the depiction of here’s a change, humanity is still in the stars, humanity is still out and exploring and not a barbaric version of humanity, they’re not out doing conquest.
But they are scrambling to survive. They are, they are trying to survive effectively without Earth. And I found that compelling. I found it entertaining and then mixed in with that, the time travel aspect. Like I said, very similar to yesterday’s Enterprise. What about this timeline changes? And in both cases, a seemingly minor thing, the destruction or removal of one starship.
Setting the next generation timeline on a very different course and here we have of course the reveal by the end of the episode that it is a plot to not allow the eugenics wars by the killing of one individual. This is effectively Star Trek embracing the philosophical argument, if you could travel back in time and kill a baby Hitler, would you be moral in doing so?
So it’s the whole thing of killing an innocent in order to avert A calamity with the added wrinkle of, well, that killing of that innocent would in fact save billions of lives in the short term, but potentially cause deeper issues. In the long term, so where does ethics and moral decision making come into play in that circumstance?
I found all of that very interesting. I was very engaged by the episode on that aspect. How did you feel about those aspects of the, of the show? Oh, the,
for me, this is like the reason I watched Star Trek again, it’s just like these kind of ethical dilemmas, the moral implications about. What’s gonna happen, um, like there’s the conversations between La’an and Kirk around him saying, if we succeed at what you’re doing.
I’m not going to exist. So best course action for me is just to sit back and enjoy myself and let this play out. I enjoyed that conversation and those kind of like dilemmas that they’re wrestling with in the episode. Um, but this is going to sound like I’m putting my glasses on and going, but the, you know, in episode 42, the torpedoes came out of the phaser banks.
Um, The part that always drives me nuts in episodes like this one is, Oh, it’s the exact same Enterprise. In fact, half the crew is still the same crew and it just happens to have Kirk on board. No, wait, but wait a minute. If they aren’t exploring and he’s bragging about all these planets that they’ve been going to, which are basically in our solar system and stuff like that, it’s kind of like, uh, how come the Enterprise looks like the Enterprise?
The Enterprise looks like the Enterprise because they worked hand in hand with the Vulcans, but yet you’re not working hand in hand with the Vulcans in this timeline, which means the Enterprise would look completely different. I know from a TV production point of view, that’d be expensive to design a whole new ship and have a whole new set that they have to build out.
But that’s my problem. It’s like, okay, this makes no sense. It wouldn’t, it wouldn’t, this reality wouldn’t exist. So why are we on the Enterprise? It’s like, it wouldn’t, it wouldn’t happen that way. You wouldn’t have. All the same bridge crew on there. It’s like it would make more sense if she walked out and it’s like this kind of foreign looking bridge and Kirk’s there and like everybody else is not, you know, you know what I mean?
It’s like, it was a little too close for the huge ramifications that are supposed to come out of this one tiny change that everything else basically stayed the same. It just. That, that kept in the back of my mind, making the episode unbelievable. So it’s like, I kept trying to disconnect myself from that and just be in the moment.
And when I was in the moment, I was really enjoying the ethical dilemmas and the things that we’re wrestling with. But in the big picture, I kept like, wow, man, it didn’t have to go. That far, you know, I mean, like they could have kept it a little closer to what actually happened in our timeline to kind of make that not an issue.
But the fact that they were basically saying it’s a huge hard right turn because of this one thing, but yet nothing, none of the window dressing in the universe changed. Uh, that’s where I got stuck.
Yeah, I, I have less of a problem with that for a couple of reasons. First, it follows within the footsteps of every other parallel universe story that they’ve done in Star Trek.
So I’m like, yesterday’s Enterprise, the only big difference is Tasha Yar wasn’t dead and Worf was not on the bridge. That was it. Um, something like the parallel universe storylines all the way back to Mirror Mirror. Everybody’s there. Like, like I said,
I know why they’re doing it. Yeah. I know why they’re doing it.
But at the same time, it’s just like, if you take this to its logical conclusion, yeah, that wouldn’t happen.
I also wonder how much of it is from a production standpoint, you already mentioned like the dollars behind, like how easy would it be to say like, okay, let’s make a bunch of panels that look differently.
Like, just painted panels that look like different types of screens, and just lay those over what we normally have. Would that be too expensive? Potentially, it would add to the cost of the show, so maybe they crossed that off the list. I also wonder how much their hands are tied from contracts with the actors, who are contractually to be in a certain number of episodes.
And I wonder if there’s just a point where, like, they’re like, we can’t not have These people appear a certain number of minutes, there’s possibly a thing behind that that’s at work too.
That’s my point though. It’s like there’s production reasons why they did it. Yeah. It could be money, it could be casting, whatever.
Fill in the blank that you want, but that’s the, the business affecting the storytelling. And like they, they had these grand visions for the storytelling, which I think were kind of like undercut because of whatever the reasons were. So I was. For me, it was just kind of caused kind of a dissonance that was bothering
me.
Moving on then to the next layer of this that I wanted to talk about, which is the two main players within the storyline. We have La’an and we have Kirk. Let’s start with La’an and I found there have been other episodes that focused on La’an. We’ve had, going back to the first of the Gorn episodes, in which she is very clearly, the PTSD comes right to the front.
Then we have subsequent episodes which have included her pretty Uh, intensely in how she is adjusting to first a leadership role, a mentorship role, uh, how she deals with finding out that Una has effectively been lying by keeping a secret from her for their entire relationship. So it’s a number of things that have have focused on La’an, but I found myself as I was watching this realizing how much of a secondary character I still felt like she was until this story where I really felt like she stepped out into a fully fleshed way.
And I think it’s related to two things. First, this gives her an opportunity with a little bit more humor. than previous episodes the other thing that I think is working in her favour in this is They, right at the beginning, and we talked about this, I think, last week, a well written episode is like, here’s a lock. The story is, is a lock. And in order to understand the story, you have to unlock it.
And a good story will always start with a very subtle, here is your key to get into that story. And for me, it’s La’an sparring with Babs Olusanmokun as Dr. M’Benga. Yeah. Their sparring session. I love it for a number of different reasons. I always love. There’s many reasons why I love it too. I always love it when you have characters in a moment revealing aspects of themselves that have either, they either more fully paint something that’s hinted at in the past.
Or they reveal a side that once you see it, you’re like, of course, that makes perfect sense. Like for me, a moment like in Next Generation, when you begin to see as the series continues through its, I think it’s fourth, it’s fifth year, that Worf teaches a Klingon self defense class. Like for me, that was just a little bit of just a little bit of color in the background that suddenly it’s like.
That’s why they all walk around and do the palm, heel, punch. Like they’re all fighting like a Klingon because they are all getting trained. So you see these people go into this moment and they’re all like, plink, including Troy or Crusher. Like, oh, they’re all taking this self defense class. That all makes perfect sense.
I love it. In this, it’s Dr M’Benga. In the previous episode has revealed we got this super soldier serum that we use and I carry it with me. He’s got some dark past. He’s got some PTSD from some crap. He has the heart of the show has been looking at different people at different times and saying, I’ve been where you are and I know it hurts.
And he’s done that with La’an previously. And in this one, he right on the nose says, you must be very lonely. And there’s our key. We get this beautiful sparring match. He calmly says in some great writing, you’re going to take my head off. You’re, you’re not approaching this from a sparring position. You are coming at me.
You’re going to take my head off and says something as her doctor and she says, you’re not my doctor right now. You’re my sparring partner. And he says, well, as your sparring partner, I think you should see your doctor. I thought, I thought that that was some fantastic writing. Uh, yes. And he gives us the key for the episode.
You must be intensely lonely. And I don’t know that you need to be. So we’re piecing together a lot of previous episodes. I find myself thinking, like, how much of this was mapped out? Did they have a show Bible where they were like, the series is going to be five years long. We’re going to start in these places with these characters.
Here’s the arc that they’re all going to take, and they’re going to be these moments where they have these kinds of stories, like how much of this has been mapped out? Because this feels like, for me, with La’an, the culmination of Here’s a big episode which has her, and then a drip, drip, drip, and another episode that has her, and then a drip, drip, drip, and now here we are connecting all those dots and creating this moment for us to see her step forward into a third dimension, which is born of her loneliness, the romantic connection, and her finding somebody who does not judge because she says, everybody knows my name.
And here’s somebody who’s like, Noonien Singh, what is that? And she’s immediately like, the walls fall. I really, really like that. How did you feel about La’an in this episode? Oh, I,
I’m right there with you. Like this episode, I remember the first time I watched that this is the first time I kind of clicked with her where I kind of like started to kind of like her as a character.
It’s not that I disliked her, but it’s like she became one of those primary characters I really enjoy seeing more about. Um, the one thing about this episode that I took away from it was how tragic the story is. you said that the key is you are. incredibly lonely and you need to talk to somebody. Yeah.
And then where it ends is like, Oh, this is ratcheted her loneliness up by about a thousand times. So it, it didn’t give her a happy conclusion. It made that realization of how lonely she is worse because it’s, she can’t talk to anybody about what she’s experienced. So she literally is now forced to be.
Isolated. She fell in love with Kirk, who no longer remembers who she is. So she’s got this mourning the loss of this love. And so it’s like, there’s so many aspects of this episode that I thought were just absolutely kind of gut wrenching and tragic by the end. Um, and it really makes you kind of appreciate her as a character because she’s that, you know, surly Kind of like she’s constantly feels like there’s a bubbling anger.
And now it’s kind of like you, you empathize with her situation at this point, which means in the future episodes, you’re going to feel even more for her because you know, all this weight baggage that she’s carrying with her. So I really enjoyed that a lot. I thought, I thought this was a good. Not just the key for unlocking the episode, I think it was a key for unlocking this character, just in general.
I also, in that, in response to that, just want to say before I move on to the next aspect of the show, uh, hats off to Christina Chong. She does a fantastic job, I think, in this episode of conveying all these levels of focus. The anger, the vulnerability, which the anger is trying to hide and the romantic connection.
And in some moments, just straight up comic timing. She does a great job in this episode from top to bottom, I think. And with that, now we’ll transition to Something we’ve talked about in a previous episode, Paul Wesley as James T. Kirk. I will let you start off on this one. What do you think about what’s going on with this?
This is definitely
not your Shatner’s Kirk. So it’s like, it’s one of those, he is not trying to emulate Shatner. No. At all. He is bringing his own take to this character. I’m so glad. I’m so glad because if you end up trying to emulate Shatner’s Kirk, it could go into parody territory because of how he delivers his lines is so.
It’s like Christopher Walken. It’s all it’s a meme in its own right because it’s kind of like comes across as a little bit at times as bad acting. Yeah. And so it’s like if you’re trying to mimic that, you’re almost kind of mimicking. It could look like you’re making fun of him more than you are emulating him.
So I really appreciate it. That didn’t even go there. It was like, okay, here’s your take on Kirk. He’s got the swagger. He’s got the. the humor, he’s got that affability, he’s got that charisma that makes you want to like him. And I think those are the key traits of Kirk that you need to tap into. For me, I really liked the portrayal of this Kirk.
Um, I also liked building off of what we saw about him last time about how he’s. Doesn’t like to lose. He’s always kind of thinking outside the box. It’s like, you saw a little more elements of that in this one. So again, it felt very Kirk y to me. Um, also women falling in love with Kirk. That’s right. Here we go again.
So it’s like, it leaned into that as well. Um, even at the end when he doesn’t remember who she is, he just gets this random call from this random security officer from a random ship. Yeah. And he’s like, Hey, you got to buy me a drink next time we’re in a, you know, he’s like, he’s just being that. Always
looking for a guy.
Charming guy. Yeah. It’s like, I love that. Constant charm offensive. Yeah.
Yes. It’s like, that’s just who Kirk is. And I really enjoy that. They, they brought that in with a unique new take, um, for who this character is.
Yeah. I think that there’s. We’re not even into the original series yet. And I’m going to share part of my defense of William Shatner.
Uh, the rap as a bad actor, I think is unfair for one particular reason. There was a window in time in the late sixties from about 65 to 68, 69, where there was a style of acting that came into the fore. Especially on television that quickly disappeared because we moved into the 70s and in the 70s there was this big, uh, surge toward realism.
Whereas what existed at the end of the 60s was a manufactured internal tension that came through in the way lines were delivered and you can see it on display. And a lot of different actors from that era. Um, if anybody’s familiar with David Jensen, who was the fugitive, if you watch the, the show, the fugitive, he displays it constantly and basically every.
Extra and guest star in that series displays it. So you can watch a series like The Fugitive and see that style of Shatner acting on display constantly. Another place you can see it is in the TV show The Prisoner. Patrick McGowan did this style of acting where he would put emphasis on an unexpected word and it would make you say Is that important or is this guy just strange because we now are watching it from a perspective of that style of acting disappeared.
It’s almost as if there was a point in time in the late 60s where they were taking a lot of theater actors and putting them right onto television without anybody saying, should there be a different style on TV? And now there is, you have a stage actor who moves onto television. There is, there are schools that teach people who are stage actors, how to do television because they.
Instinctively know that they’re not projecting to the last seat in the theater and when it’s on camera, it stands out. Another place you can see it is in some actors who continued to work well into their 70s and 80s. And there’s one actor in particular who I always loved. If you watch early episodes of Law and Order, the actor who played the district attorney who’s always, who’s always.
In the sessions mentoring McCoy as the lead attorney in the prosecution, the actor who played the DA had a Shatner style delivery. He did. He would rumble through his lines. He was an older gentleman. He would, you gotta get a little bit of evidence. You gotta give it a good case. And it was that kind of delivery that was on display.
So that’s my, you know, we’re not even to the original series, but I’ve now laid out like why I think Shatner is not a bad actor. He was just an actor of a certain style that at a certain point in the 70s and 80s, we look back on and it was too baked into him. By that point, when they started doing the movies, so we ended up with a guy who started to create a almost meme of himself.
So, like you said, it would be a parody to have somebody come in. I mean, what were they going to do? Cast Kevin Pollock to come in and play Kirk in this episode? It would have been, it would have been Impossible to watch. It would have been so distracting. So what do they do? They, they key in on the key things about Kirk, his affability, his thinking outside the box, his relentlessness in pursuit of success.
And let’s face it. He has an in with the ladies. He knows how to talk to women on any planet, no matter what color they are. He ends up in every episode. We’re going to talk about that a lot in the next coming years. Uh, he shows up at a planet, Hey girl. And before you know it, they’re making out that happens here, but it happens here in a way that I absolutely.
And I think his performance, Paul Wesley’s performance as Kirk from the comedic timing, the, the attitude he has when he discovers like, okay, we’re back in the past. And he’s kind of like staggering around. He’s like, this is New York city and he’s wrong. And it’s like, that’s the kind of comic moments that they would make with McCoy and Spock there.
If they had been. Time traveling with him. It’s got a kind of Star Trek 4 vibe, this one to me. When he steals the car and there’s the difficulty of driving it and he’s just like, and he’s starting to figure out, he’s like, there we go. Like he’s got this kind of, like, even though he’s grinding gears terribly and the car isn’t actually moving, he’s like, I got this.
Trust me. Like I know what I’m doing and by the time they get into the car chase and he’s like, hold on. I didn’t mean that literally. It’s full on Kirk for me. It’s, it’s got a Star Trek 4 vibe and I was totally on board with him in this. So having said that. That takes us directly into my next thing I want to talk about.
This is a rom com. I was not anticipating that. I started the episode and realized to my surprise that the episode is a little bit like a minute past an hour long. And I was like, well, that’s long for one of these. They’ve been typically like 50 minutes, maybe, maybe not even that long. And here we have a full hour.
And I realized about 20 minutes into it, this is just a rom com movie. This is a story that start to finish focuses on two people effectively falling in love in circumstances where they have a meet cute and then go on a wacky adventure where they’re two fish out of water and have to work together.
It’s a, it’s a formula. It’s a paint by numbers approach to Star Trek that shouldn’t work as well as it does. And yet 30 minutes into it. I heard a little voice in the back of my head say, Do you realize how much you’re enjoying this? I was sitting there watching it with a stupid grin on my face. I was just, I was just like, this is so much fun.
And yeah, rom coms don’t hit everybody in the same way. Rom coms aren’t everybody’s cup of tea. And I’m not fully on board with any rom com that comes along. I want well done, whatever it is I’m watching. I thought this was it. This was a well done rom com. And it has the advantage too of having a deep seriousness to the beginning and the end as anchors that really made it feel.
Three dimensional and fully fleshed out. This isn’t two people having a wacky adventure and then it ends with wah, wah, wah. It ends on a sad note and it starts in a dark place. So you have this character emerge three dimensionally and then the story supporting that. And then at the end, it remains three dimensional.
I was very impressed by the rom com aspects of this and found them very charming. How did you feel about the rom com ness? At a
high level, I agree with you. Um, but kind of like the dissonance I had with the, you know, it’s, well, how is the enterprise even here if this stuff didn’t happen? The way some, there’s some things that happen in the episode that they do that from a storytelling point of view, it is that rom-com, like the whole car scene.
It’s funny, there’s a lot of humor in it, a lot of the, like, I didn’t mean that literally, that the, the whole stuff with the, hold on, all that kind of stuff. It’s charming, it’s fun and ridiculously stupid. And the reason I say that is because. He knows they’re back in time and their effect, they can affect the timeline.
They need to play it low key. And what does he do? They steal a car by literally, like, nerve pinching and, like, knocking a guy out on the street. They do a carjacking. They do a car Jacking. And take this guy’s car. And then he proceeds to drive around like he’s high on cocaine and just rarin everywhere like there’s no ramifications.
And it was like, what do you think is going to happen when doing this? Of course the authorities are going to chase you down because you’re driving like an idiot. And of course they’re going to pull you over. And what happens when they get pulled over, Sean? Nothing. Because this woman comes out and starts like accusing the cops of not having their body cams on and all that kind of stuff.
This guy was high, basically a high speed car chase through the city. They’re just not gonna let that go. It’s like they had every right to pull him over, but then the cops are like, Oh, we’re on camera, buh bye. And they just walk away. It’s a stolen car. The first things they would have done is put the plates through the system and all that kind of stuff.
At that point, the guy who’s, who was unconscious in the street is probably awake and reported to the police that he was just carjacked. So there’s like all these things that just don’t make any sense and the writing in my point of view, this is where as well crafted as the romance is and some of the comedy is and the big picture elements, the details like this just Pissed me off.
It was like there was no reason any of that. They could have had the similar exact plot points, but it could have been more subtle. Like maybe he just turned right on red when it said no turn, you know, right on red. Like something simple to have him get pulled over. But the fact that it was a carjacking and then he was like high speed car chase through the city.
That is just ridiculous to me. It was just so, so beyond stupid. Um, it, to me, it was kind of, um, unforgivable, but they decided to go that route. So I think you’re going to disagree with me on that, but yeah, that really kind of pissed
me off. I, I think that’s a great opportunity to invite our viewers and listeners to jump into the comments and say, are you team Matt, that there was too much here that just reminded you, like, this is being put together by people to entertain me and I’m constantly aware of the fact that they’re doing things that I don’t like and therefore it’s distracting.
Uh, or do you agree with me that it’s a waste of time? The payoff of these things is worth it, because for me, the romantic comedy motif is very often that putting people in situations that at a logical perspective don’t make a lot of sense. Um, but the payoff is worth it. I’m not asking for perfection.
But
the payoff is worth it. I’m not asking for perfection here, and I really did like this episode, so don’t take this as me
dissing the episode. I’m not interpreting this as you dumping on it. I’m making
it clear for anybody listening to it. I’m making it very clear that anybody listening to this, I did like this episode, but there was a couple of key points to how they constructed it that I thought was a huge miss.
And if they just hadn’t done that, it would have been an even better episode than it already was. So, if I put those things to the side and let it kind of wash over me. I just had a good time with this episode, so I’m right there with you. It’s just, wow, this was just, to me, stupid. There was no need for it.
It was just unnecessary.
I think it went hand in hand with the entire fantasy of the way they managed to navigate the 21st century as a whole. None of it made sense, and I was okay with that. There was a point where, like, the most realistic thing that they did was Kirk playing chess. Oh,
don’t get me started there, Sean.
He had no money to start with, so how did he get the money? Who’s going to bet him, oh, you don’t have money to put down, but I’ll put my money down? What, what, what is going there? Like,
how, how does that work? I’m surprised you even have a problem with that. Uh, I could absolutely see him walking up and saying, I’ll bet you my jacket.
No,
no, no. I, I, I know. I’m, that to me, that was such a minor nitpick I’m making there, but it’s like, that to me is just like another one of those, if you made a list of all the things that don’t make sense, that still is there because they didn’t show us. But I agree with you. It’s like, he could have been trading his body.
He could have been trading his jacket. He could have been saying, I’ll give you my shoes, you know, it’s like, it doesn’t matter, but it’s like, the idea that they never even showed that of how it started, it’s kind of like. But again, for me,
it’s the payoff that’s worth it. So it’s like, you know, I’m, I’m more open to like the rom com formula is going to be this doesn’t make sense logically, but it’s because we’re looking for this payoff.
And if the payoff is worth it, it works. If the payoff isn’t, it doesn’t. And whether the path works is totally dependent on the audience members. Interpretation of it. And so I have no problem with anything you’re saying. I absolutely agree. There is missing information throughout the rom com plot line, but to me, it didn’t matter because I liked the payoffs.
I liked seeing Kirk play chess because we know he can play chess at Spock level. So for him to come out and say, like, this is like kiddie chess because it’s two dimensional doesn’t. Like, this is super easy. Hearing him say that made me smile. Seeing him drive the car fast because he’s going to drive the car fast.
Regardless of traffic rules that he may or may not know, he’s going to drive it fast. So, I enjoyed that part of it. I enjoyed the fact that he apparently won enough money on the street to pay for a hotel that has multiple rooms. Like, okay, I know why they did it. They need them in the same room with enough privacy so that we can have the discreet moment of, I am attracted to this guy and I don’t know what to do about it.
And he’s attracted to her and doesn’t know what to do about it. We need to have them in the same proximity, but not in the same room because that would be then too intense. So he apparently has won, what, at least 450 to 600 dollars, on the street, in a handful of chess games, like, that’s what’s happened here. I’m fine with it.
Like, I like the payoffs. I like how it’s taking us from these, the peaks of the mountains, where they’re actually talking to us, as opposed to the detail of the journeys up. And I’m like, I’m okay with it in this context. I don’t necessarily, I’m not necessarily as forgiving in more serious episodes.
Because more serious episodes, I want there to be like, I want the logic of these moments to build. But in a rom com, I’m not looking for logic. I’m looking for the fun of the path. So for me, it’s fine. So I invite, you know, the, the viewers and listeners jump into the comments. Are you team Matt where there’s too much distraction about these gaps?
Or are you Team Sean where, yeah, it’s about like these high points and the payoff of these moments as opposed to the connective lines between them. So this episode felt to me like it had a twist, not twist in what the plot is, what the nefarious plot of the Romulans is. And I liked, let’s just talk about the Romulan in the room.
Um, I liked the introduction of the Romulan agent as having been on Earth for a long time. That she calls out the timeline issue with, in the 1960s when they first introduced Khan, that all takes place in the 1990s. And she says, this was supposed to have happened 30 years ago. I’ve been killing myself on this stupid rock for a long time waiting for this moment.
So addressing timeline issues within the Trek universe, I thought that was a great funny hand wavy, like, Oh, things didn’t work out the way that we thought they were going to. No explanation. Zero, zero like, oh, it turns out the history books were wrong or the third world war created confusion and nobody remembered the details.
Like didn’t even get into that. It was just like, this was supposed to happen in the nineties. It didn’t. I’ve been here for 30 years waiting for this crap and I finally get my shot at killing this kid. Killing a child, killing a child that we know is going to grow up to be a genocidal. Sociopath. Killing a child that we know is going to grow up to be Kirk’s greatest nemesis in a storyline in which another Noonien Singh is Kirk’s love interest.
The balance of that, the moral dilemma of that felt organically built into the episode for me and at the same time felt like just enough of a twist to give me a dramatic Like intake of breath of like, Oh, that’s where they’re going with this. Having it turn into a legitimate dilemma. This woman who appears at first to be mentally ill, conspiracy theorist, walking around and saying like, you know, it’s government plots.
They’ve got cold fusion. They’re doing these things to keep us. Moving slowly because alien plots and da da da da da. And then it turns out she is a Romulan agent. I really loved the diner scene where she’s laying out all these photographs and casually puts down one of a clearly Romulan ship in the atmosphere, which to me looked like it was intentionally designed to look identical to the episode from the original series where the Enterprise arrives in 20th century earth and is photographed by a fighter jet.
And. The angle of the shot, the clouds in the background, all of it looked like this is us tipping our head to that original episode. So all of that felt to me like it was a surprise, even though it felt very organic and natural to appear in the episode. And then I found myself legitimately, dramatically engaged around the tension of How does this resolve itself?
The turn of her revealing her Romulan nature, Kirk sacrificing himself, the bravado and bluff of go ahead, anything you do right now is going to raise alarm, and then you’re not going to get away with it, and then he ends up getting shot. Sudden turn, but also organically earned, so I didn’t feel like the tone of the show was suddenly different.
Even though it was, and I think that that is a testament to the filmmaking here on display, for me at least, how did you feel about all of
that? I’m right there with you. With the other nitpicks and stuff I’ve been bringing up, I didn’t have any nitpicks about the sequence of events, the mystery box of how it unfolded.
It felt natural. Like I said, you used the word organic, and I would agree with that. It felt very organic. It didn’t feel like, oh, the last five minutes, they take a hard right turn. That’s like a, what the what? How is this even related? It felt like it belonged. It felt, oh, this makes sense. When she reveals that she’s a Romulan, it’s like, oh, she was playing them this entire time.
It all felt true. And then with the whole, uh, Noonien Singh stuff, it, once again, it, it amped up the. The morality and the ethics, ethical dilemma around how, like, if you go back in time when you killed baby Hitler, that whole aspect, because, I mean, they had that kind of lighthearted conversation where he said, you know, Kirk said, My best option is to sit back and relax and that ensures my timeline happens.
If we do what you want to do, I’m not going to exist. And now here’s this other choice where they can actually have a dramatic impact in the future if she kills her ancestor, which would in fact kill herself, but she would end up saving millions of people. So it’s like, I thought it was just a natural extension over what they had already been exploring.
throughout the episode. And that’s part of the reason for me it didn’t feel out of left field. It felt great. It was, it was a nice, it was a nice twist, um, in an unexpected way at the end. Because of course the MacGuffin in the room was the whole, the bridge, you know what I mean? Like the you’re, you’re under the assumption that there’s this cold fusion reactor and they’re going to destroy this stuff.
And it’s, that had nothing to do with anything. It was just a way to keep things moving forward, which, and it worked. Very well.
Final couple of comments here. We end up going back to the regular timeline once they accomplish the mission. And as we’ve mentioned already, we have the conversation where La’an looks up James T.
Kirk and is trying to, there’s clearly a part of her that wants to reach out. There’s clearly a part of her that wants to say, like, you don’t know me, but I know you. And can we contact each other? Like, there is clearly that motive and she bites it off. And then we end up with a closing scene of her breaking down on her bed.
The loneliness is now right at the fore and she is forced to confront where she has been, where she is and where she has been and how she cannot go through this alone because she Caught for the first time now a glimpse of what help would look like, what connection looks like. And she’s heartbroken by the loss of that.
I found myself incredibly moved by the closing of this. Did the ending, the final scene work for you in the same way? Oh
yeah, this is what I was saying before of tragic, just absolutely tragic, her just completely breaking down, um, it’s heart wrenching, because like I said, the beginning, that key of her being told, you’re so lonely, you have to make connections, and she finally makes a connection and now she’s back to not just being lonely, she’s been told, you have to be lonely, you can’t talk to people about this.
It’s just absolutely tragic that she’s having
to go through this. I also want to give a quick nod to the reemergence of the temporal agency that is in charge of making sure the timeline operates the way it’s supposed to. This is something that they wrestled with in Enterprise and did it in a kind of clunky way that didn’t quite work in the way we would hope it did.
Uh, but it has deeper roots than that. It goes back to Gary Seven in the original series, which was an attempt at a, at a show of its own. It did not get picked up and they ended up using Gary Seven in an episode of the original series as a time traveler who goes back into 20th century earth in order to remedy a problem.
And Gary Seven refers to the fact that he has a boss. And his boss, to move through all the different versions of Star Trek that have existed, is now heavily been implied that Wesley Crusher is in fact that boss that was revealed in Picard Season 2. So we have now years of Showrunners trying to make this temporal agency idea work, and I feel like they landed on a really good setting in this, where we see a guy show up and hand La’an this device and say, you’ve got to get to the bridge and then die.
He is wearing an outfit that looks like Gary Seven’s outfit. This apparently is the showrunners have decided time travelers look like Gary Seven. So they wear this suit, just kind of a casual gray. Uh, yeah. He dies, and then we see another temporal agent at the end, again, gray suit, and she shows up and says, Great work.
We really appreciate your help in keeping everything on the straight and narrow. You can never, ever, ever talk to anybody about this. And putting La’an back in the box. You got to be lonely. You got to be by yourself in this. Um, but I really liked the depiction of all of that and the hearkening back to Gary Seven.
So everybody listening or watching jump to the comments. What did you think about this episode? And I raise it again, Matt and I had both enjoyed the episode, but have some differing opinions about some of the nuts and bolts of it. Which side do you land on? I’m curious to find out. Next time we’re going to be talking about episode four, Among the Lotus Eaters.
Please also jump into the comments to let us know what you think that’s going to be about, wrong answers only. And before we sign off, Matt, you’ve just been on vacation, but I know you’ve been hard at work on upcoming episodes. What do you have coming up on your main channel?
Yeah, by the time this episode’s out, my most recent undecided is about, I think I mentioned this last time, heat pump water heaters.
Doesn’t sound like a sexy topic. But there’s this insanely cool, just the genius simplicity of how a heat pump, hot water heater works. Go into that and the pros and cons of it, because I have one here at my house. So if you’re interested in that kind of thing, check it
out. You say it’s not sexy, but I would say it’s not the size of the pump and the heat, but the size of the heat in the pump.
Wow. You made that work. And as for me You can check out my website, seanferrell. com to find out more information about my books, or you can just go to wherever it is you buy your books, your local bookstore, your public library, Amazon, Barnes and Noble. My books are available everywhere. Thank you so much.
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