137: Star Trek Strange New Worlds Season 2, episode 6 “Lost in Translation”

In this episode of Trek in Time, we’re going to be talking about identifying when you’re having an impact. That’s right. We’re talking about Star Trek, Strange New Worlds, season two, episode six, Lost in Translation. Welcome everybody to Trek in Time. We’re watching every episode of Star Trek in chronological order, according to stardate.

And we’re also taking a look at the world at the time of original broadcast. So we’re currently looking at Strange New Worlds, which means we’re also looking at just last year, 2023, but that won’t last for long. We’re just a handful of episodes away from jumping back to the original series. So it’s going to be quite a timey wimey transition.

And who are we? Well, I’m Sean Ferrell. I’m a writer. I write some sci fi, I write some stuff for kids. And with me, as always, is my brother, Matt. He is the guru and inquisitor behind the YouTube channel Undecided with Matt Ferrell, which takes a look at emerging tech and its impact on our lives. Matt, how are you today?

I’m doing great. I actually, um, I wasn’t sure if I was gonna bring this up, but I will. Just got a dog. Sean knows this. And we adopted a rescue. She’s two years old and we have a two year old cat. And on both, they’re like the certificates that we got. Sean’s gonna find this funny. They have the same birthday.

That’s so weird. I’ve been joking with my wife that it’s like the movie Twins. We have Danny DeVito and Arnold Schwarzenegger and they’re twins. It’s been a little bit of an adjustment period over the past week because we’ve had her for one week. And the big concern was how she can be with the cat. And she’s actually great with the cat.

The cat’s kind of not so great with the dog, um, stalking the dog, which is not great, but, uh, it’s been a interesting experience so far.

I inadvertently, uh, for unrelated reasons, I called Matt like 30 minutes after he had gotten the dog and had just brought her home. And I was talking to him about a

different subject. And then he said, well, we just brought the dog home. Do you want to see her? I can put you on FaceTime. He put us on FaceTime and saw the dog walking around with what looked like a very, very clearly distressed face. Yeah. Because she was like 30 minutes in this house and she’s like, I don’t know where I am.

What the heck am I doing here? And four feet behind her. is this entirely black cat with a tail that looks like it’s about 12 inches around. And wherever the dog went, the cat was just very quietly right behind her staying within four feet. And I was just like, Luna, you’re going to be fine if you just back the frick up, just leave the dog alone.

And then more recently, Matt shared a photo of the dog eating its dinner and sitting right next to the dog, watching the dog eat the dinner. is the cat but she looked very calm so it looked like things are progressing in a good direction

yeah it is progressing but it’s it’s interesting to see how they’re as Willow, the dog gets a little more comfortable in the house.

It’s interesting to see the dynamic slowly shifting. So it’s six months from now. I don’t know where we’ll be, but it should be interesting.

Well, six months from now, hopefully they’ll be best friends. As we get into our conversation about this week’s episode, we always like to start off with comments from our previous episode.

So Matt, what have you found in the mailbag for us this week? Okay. A

lot of good stuff, Sean. That’s one. Last week, we talked about charades, episode 136. Sean, To say he hated this episode would be an understatement. Um, I don’t know if my opinion came through clearly, but it’s like I really enjoyed the humor and the acting and all that kind of stuff, but I thought the story was kind of like weak.

So for me, it was like a nothing burger, but Sean, he actually hated it. The comments were divisive. People liked it. People hated it. But I was surprised at the number of people that said they love this episode. So let me, let me go through some of the kind of cherry pick. There were so many I wanted to put in here, Sean, but of course I couldn’t put them all.

Uh, one from, uh, fresmarco78 wrote, yeah, there was definitely more of a comedic take on things and it really shouldn’t be tried to compare it to more serious episodes. So maybe lighten up just a little bit, but I can understand that perhaps the style of comedy is not your cup of tea. I love that because you get the jokes on because in the episode, the whole Vulcan tea ceremony.

I just got to tip my hat to Marco for that one. Thank you very much. Then there was one from Wayouts that said, I just took this episode as stepdad Pike did what he can for his kids. It shows again why Spock stole the ship and risked his career and life to take, to help, to take Pike in the menagerie.

Sarek may be father, but Pike is dad. Anson Mount was hilarious in this. I agree completely. Also, it’s another episode showing just how good the cast is. The acting saved a crappy episode. That to me was kind of like, that’s a good summary for how I felt too. It’s like kind of a crappy episode, but I had a good time watching it just because the acting was so much fun.

Um, then there was a long comment, I’m not going to read the whole comment, but uh, Happy Flappy Farm. Go to the comments on YouTube and read this because it’s really good, I’ll try to summarize it. But, what is happening? This was a fun romp, break from the serious, a new take on an old theme with the Star Trek New Worlds cast.

We loved this episode. All the comic relief, watching Spock eating too much, acting like a teenager, being spontaneously emotional, and being taught how to be wooden faced with a raised eyebrow by Erika Ortegas, of all people. What? My husband and I were laughing out loud constantly. She went through the whole thing about like, All the stuff that she loved about the episode.

And I thought it was a great summary of why an episode like this would resonate so positively to some people. And this PS is a reference to something I said to you, Sean, when we started this show. The PS on here, Sean, you’re going to really enjoy because she also wrote, Looking forward to Sean’s next book.

Pre ordered it today. I read Sinister Secrets of Singe three times.

Great book. Oh, thank you so much, . Thank you so much. Flappy. Uh, I will, I will say in response to like taking a break from the serious, like everything you’re describing, I, I can see all of that and I do appreciate the previous comment. Al also pointing out the performances here are fantastic.

I am inclined by persona. the hardest nugget of Sean that is in Sean. I’m not inclined to certain types of romantic comedy, and I feel like this episode skewed toward that zone of romantic comedy, but I also understand that a well done romantic comedy is not easy. And I also think there’s, there’s that side of it.

And another side of it is, I think there’s a, I’ve begun to wonder about that episode in particular, if audience experience collectively adds to the enjoyment in the same way that seeing a movie in a theater feels great, when there’s a lot of audience response and you realize you’re kind of swelling up with the rest of the audience and laughing or screaming at the right moments, that collective experience.

And I wonder if Matt and I had watched this in the same room, if I might not have enjoyed it more because I would have enjoyed it through his enjoyment and we would have been having a good time together. So I, in watching it. By myself in a dark room early in the morning on a Friday and like, this is how I’m starting my day.

It didn’t hit the right note. And I’m, and I’m curious, like, uh, happy you’re describing a kind of collective experience. And I think that’s fantastic. So like, I, I don’t, anybody who enjoys this episode, I’m not critical of your enjoyment of it at all. I think it’s fantastic that you’re enjoying it from one perspective in particular, we only have so many episodes of a show that we love, wouldn’t, I want every single episode to be enjoyable for every single audience member.

So if, if I’m enjoying 85 percent of the show and you’re enjoying 100 percent of the show, I’m so happy for you because that’s like, that is the goal for all of us. So, uh, so I appreciate your perspective. Thank you so much. And thank you for the support for buying my books.

Also, to add on to that, I watched, when I watched that episode, my wife was half watching it.

She was doing some chores in the kitchen, but she was watching it and she was belly laughing herself. So it’s like I had that communal experience that may have helped me as well. The fact that both of us were laughing and kind of egging each other on. So yeah, maybe don’t watch it by yourself, Sean. Yeah.

I was flashing back as I was talking to, to my movie going experience of having seen the movie Nope. And I saw it in a full theater. I saw it in a packed theater. And the experience of seeing that in a theater, I cannot imagine that I would have, I know I would have loved the movie regardless of where I saw it, but I left the theater so jazzed on adrenaline after seeing that movie.

And I know that a huge portion of that was because I just saw it with an audience that was responding to everything that was going on screen, viscerally. Everybody was shouting back at the screen. And I, I had never been in a movie going experience like that. So audience participation, audience experience is such a big part of all of this.

So

another, there were other comments like Dr. J2U2 wrote, it’s my favorite episode of Star Trek Strange New Worlds. Oh, well. So, hey, doctor, don’t say, oh, well, enjoy it. Enjoy it. Like Sean said, it’s like, yeah, just own it, that you’ll like it. I’m great. I’m, I’m happy that you, you loved it. Uh, but the last comment I want to bring up, and this is something I brought up to you when we were in Strange New Worlds, and it was one of the first.

I think it was one of the first Spock romantic story episodes where you were kind of like, I don’t know about this. And you were kind of like, not digging it. Um, and I said to you, Oh, Sean, there’s an episode coming up in season two. That’s going to be kind of a doozy. Um, going to be really interesting to see what you think of it.

Well, Eric Dunn wrote, I cannot wait until you get to episode nine. Your brotherly interactions with each other had me laughing. Episode nine, Sean, is the one I was referring to. So, okay. Strap yourself in. Just know when we get to episode nine, go in knowing,

oh boy, something’s going to happen here. Yeah.

Okay. Yes. The entire

premise of the episode is quite a doozy. So strap yourself in.

Looking forward to not looking forward to it. That noise in the background, of course, is the read alert, which can mean it’s time for Matt to buckle up and read the Wikipedia description. Matt, best of luck. Okay.

The Enterprise joins the USS Farragut to repair a deuterium refinery.

Ensign Nyota Uhura begins experiencing hallucinations of strange noises and frightening images, including the deaths of her parents and a former Enterprise engineer, Hemmer. Pelia discovers that the refinery has been sabotaged. Saul Ramon, the officer responsible for the sabotage, is taken to sickbay. He exhibits symptoms similar to Uhura’s.

Ramon escapes sickbay and attempts to sabotage the Enterprise. Matter of fact,

Uhura

pursues him and unsuccessfully attempts to calm him down. James Kirk, visiting from the Farragut, Rescues her before Ramon is blown away into space by an explosion. Uhura disc does this feel like a second grader’s book report to you?

Because it

kind of does. It feels almost like it’s a picture book version of the episode. Turn the page.

Uhura discusses her hallucinations with Kirk, and he helps her realize that she needs to confront her grief about her parents and Hemmer rather than ignoring it. With the help of Kirk and his brother Sam, a xenoanthropologist, Uhura realizes that her hallucinations are messages from aliens who live in the Deuterium and are being killed by the Refinery.

She reports her theory to Pyke and he orders the Refinery destroyed. Uhura later introduces James Kirk to Spock. I’m sorry, sometimes these Wikipedia descriptions are so bad.

That one is a Wikipedia description, uh, communicated via telegram.

Yeah, the Enterprise joins the USS Farragut to repair a Deuterium refinery. Stop, Ensign Nyota Uhura begins experiencing hallucinations. Stop. This is episode number six, Lost in Translation. Dan Liu directed, Anitra Johnson and David Reed were the screenwriters and this originally broadcast on July 20th.

2023. We have, as always, the, this is effectively a bottle episode. Um, we have Anson Mount, Ethan Peck, Christina Chong, Melissa Navia, Rebecca Romijn, Jess Bush, Celia Rose Gooding, who does a remarkable job in this episode. I think she’s very, very good in it. And Babs Olusanmokun and Paul Wesley returns as Captain James T.

Kirk, although he’s not Captain James T. Kirk. That is how he’s listed in the IMDB page, which I think is very funny because then like, Oh, he’s of course he’s Captain Kirk. No, no, he’s Lieutenant Kirk. Bruce Horak returns as Hemmer and Dan Jeannotte is once again, Lieutenant George Samuel Sam Kirk. And Carol Kane returns as Pelia.

I like in the Wikipedia description also, it just says Pelia did this and it doesn’t describe who Pelia is. So it’s like just a bunch of random names jumping in. He’s a xenoanthropologist. He’s a xenoanthropologist. Don’t forget that. And what was the world like at the time of the original broadcast? This was on July 20th.

2023. And Matt, you’ll be surprised to find out that you were no longer at this moment, uh, boogieing along to Last Night by Morgan Whelan. I know you were enjoying that song very, very much, but this week, what you were dancing along to was Vampire by Olivia Rodrigo. Yes, that’s right. You were one of 35 million people downloading that song again and again and again and again.

And at the movies, people were lining up to see a little film that nobody knew if this film would actually have the chutzpah to reach the audience. Very high in the box office charts. It persevered and it was able to break through. Yes, I’m talking about Mission Impossible, Dead Reckoning Part One, which in its opening week earned 54 million at the box office.

And on television, we’ve been talking about streaming programs, comparing apples to apples as much as we can. So up to this point, we’ve talked about Suits, Bluey, NCIS, Grey’s Anatomy, Cocomelon. And this week, a little show called The Big Bang Theory, which is available on max. It’s 281 episodes, totaled a 27 billion minutes viewed.

I think it’s fascinating that here, once again, with Cocomelon, one step above it with only 22 episodes had 36 billion minutes viewed. So it’s a steep drop off to get to number six and it’s Big Bang Theory, one of the most successful sitcoms. of the past couple of decades. And in the news, the New York Times headlines included Russia in its continuing war in Ukraine, uh, was beginning to attack grain ports and threatening ships that were headed to Ukraine, which was potentially expanding the war in questionable ways.

And In China, China’s premier rebuffed our president, Biden’s climate advisor, John Kerry, Kerry had called for China to respond faster to climate action and premier Xi responded to rebuff that. And also in China, former secretary of state Kissinger had visited China and was warmly met. And there were also analysis of the recession, which never appeared.

So there were questions beginning to emerge of, were we ever headed into a recession and what role did inflation at this point have in rebuffing or increasing concerns about recession? On now to our discussion of this week’s episode. To me, and I’m just going to say this and then invite you to respond if you had a slightly different take or a very different take.

Uh, to me, this episode was all about recognizing when you’re having an impact. I saw the multiple storylines around Uhura, uh, Kirk. Spock and Nurse Chapel, Hemmers no longer being present on the crew, all of these to me felt like they were opportunities to evaluate the impact you have on other people around you and how you may or may not recognize it in the moment.

As a theme, did that seem to be what was coming through to you or was there a different nuance to this for you? For me,

it was more about recognizing. Uh, kind of unconscious impacts on your emotional well being and how it impacts your decision making. Um,

because every interesting, it’s almost the inverse of what I said.

It’s almost like mine was inward looking and yours is outward looking. That’s interesting. Yeah, exactly.

That’s what I took away because all the different things like that we’re going to talk about, uh, kind of played into that of people kind of recognizing. How, what things had impacted them in their decision making.

’cause they were kind of in denial about it in some fashion or not recognizing it.

Mm-Hmm. . I have a list here of the various storylines. To me, the prime. Storyline. And I think this is a good example of an episode that thematically all of these things wove together beautifully so that it didn’t feel like we had a plot A and a plot B that needed to be married by the end.

It felt very much like they were all plot A, but subsets of plot A. So they’re very close to each other. To me, Uhura is the main focus. And so I’d like to start with her and examine her storyline in the most detail and the dealing with grief, the echoes of the echoes of grief, and the unexpected rising of grief.

I had a, a personal experience that felt sort of similar to some of the themes of this episode, um, when I was a junior in high school, so I would’ve been like 17. Matt and my grandfather passed away and we went to the funeral. We went and were with our grandmother and dealt with it as a family. And there was never a point where it was, anything was put like intentionally repressed or pushed away.

There was, there was nothing like that. There was no strife in that regard, but it was nearly four years later, maybe four and a half years later, I was in college. And I watched an episode of, of all things, The Wonder Years, in which the main character of The Wonder Years, Arnold, goes on a road trip with his grandfather, who’s getting older, and by the end of the episode, his grandfather gives him his car, gives Arnold his car, because it

has come to his attention. He’s like, I’m getting too old to be able to drive safely. And it’s kind of a road trip. It’s like a mini version of a road trip story of two characters, not getting along well at the beginning. They don’t really know each other. By the end, they formed a bond. You’re going to tell is going to resonate forward.

And Wonder Years was just a show at that time to have in another background. If. If a new episode was on, I’d have it on the background while I was doing some, some schoolwork and that kind of thing. And by the end of the episode, I was sitting in my dorm room and I was crying my eyes out unexpectedly and it hit me like a lightning bolt.

I was suddenly just absolutely weeping. And for a half a second, I thought, what is going on? And then it quickly surfaced like, Oh, this is about my grandfather. This is a well of emotion. I hadn’t fully tapped and hadn’t fully processed. And this show helped me process that. So. In the Uhura storyline, I saw similar techniques and, and storytelling devices around that the metaphor of the otherworldly experience that she’s having with the sound and the hallucination felt like it was representing that kind of experience of the sudden resurfer resurfacing of grief that you don’t quite know what the trigger is.

It’s not that the sound itself is triggering the grief. The sound is the grief. The hallucinations are the grief. So we end up seeing an aspect of Uhura, and this is something I find remarkable about this program. I was talking with my partner about this just a couple days ago. When I knew Strange New Worlds was going to be done, I anticipated that they would be leaning heavily on entirely new characters and telling stories about characters we had not seen.

In any other version of Star Trek, I was aware that Spock would be a part of it. How could he not be? But then when Uhura was introduced in the very beginning, I thought, well, that’s an interesting place. I don’t know if it’ll work. Like there was an aspect to that. I was like, how will this work? And I’m finding myself now really so impressed by their ability to take a character who.

I thought I knew, but knew, of course, as she’s a secondary character. She’s not one of the big guns of Star Trek. She’s in the background, but she’s involved, but she’s a second tier character. And to have that mind in the way it is, and turned into the character that she is, is making me retroactively redefine what she means to me Yep.

In the original series, even though we haven’t gotten there yet. So I’m redefining her role on the bridge, her support of the various characters around her and the kinds of trust that they have in her as a result of the storytelling here. And if there was a class on how do you do a prequel right, this is it.

This is like, this show is the, how do you do a prequel the right way? opposite end of the spectrum would be like episodes one through three of star wars where some bad decision making is this really what we’re supposed to expect happened in the past like the dissonance there but this is doing things to these characters that i’m just like Holy cow, this, having Uhura dealing with grief in this way, giving her the backstory of, she goes to Starfleet fleeing grief, and now, in multiple episodes, leading to this sort of pinnacle moment of, yeah, you can’t outrun the Your emotions, you can’t outrun your past and having it resurface in this way, having her grief appear in this way really was so powerful to me that it’s like I said, it’s redefined her character moving forward, which I think is fascinating.

So what were your thoughts about the depiction of this, the hallucinatory quality of the kind of horror storytelling? Of her seeing a degraded Hemmer coming after her, the flashes with her family going into the crash site, which in my mind was built entirely of fantasy because I don’t know that she was there.

So like the aspects of all of that. That mixed with the quality of the sound she’s hearing and the way that the, the manifestation of this interaction with this alien species takes place. What did you think of the two sides of it? The emotional aspect that I talked about connecting to the future and also the storytelling technique of how it’s depicted on screen.

I’m right there with you on if you want to do a prequel, how do you do it right? This is a perfect example. I am giddy with excitement, Sean, to get to the original series because the way they’ve crafted Nurse Chapel, Spock, And Uhura has put a completely different spin on them that still feels true to the characters that we know we’re coming up to, but it’s going to give me a completely different interpretation of it.

And Uhura is kind of, she’s kind of a background character on the show, um, but she’s going to have so much more weight for me now, even in those little moments. She’s going to have so much more weight because of what Strange New Worlds has done. Um, what, the aspect, one of the things I did want to bring up, this is the perfect time to bring it up, is Strange New Worlds is a gorgeous show.

Like, the visuals, the way it’s filmed, the cinematography, everything about it is just so beautiful. It’s such a pretty show to watch. In this episode, the sound design blew me away. Um, I don’t know how you’re watching this, but I’ve got a big, like, Atmos surround sound system on my TV. And that sound that she heard was overwhelming.

And just like the low tones and the stuff that comes out of it, low tones on a human body, it makes you feel uncomfortable, unnerved. So in the beginning, I don’t know if you picked this up, but it’s like, it was very uncomfortable, very loud. And as the show went on, every time she heard it, The tone, kind of like a little more high end started coming into it and it wasn’t so oppressive and by the ti by the end it felt almost like a voice.

Yeah. Even though nothing was being said, it felt less ominous and I thought the sound design of that, whoever did it, I didn’t look in the credits, who did it, but like man tip of the hat. It was amazing. It was a character in itself for how they kind of communicated the. The horror show aspect of it of like, Oh my God, what is that?

It’s unnerving. And then as it gets unraveled and she starts to come to terms with what it’s meaning and how it’s communicating with her through her emotional resonance of how it’s communicating, it becomes less ominous and just becomes like a voice of somebody crying out for help. So it was very well done.

Um, I was kind of blown away by that whole thing. And I thought in that regard for the Uhura character and the stuff that she was dealing with with Hemmer and, uh, what happened to her family, it, it kind of reminded me of that episode where she didn’t know if she was going to stay on board the Enterprise, where she thought she might leave Starfleet.

That was like a key part of her character that she got, we got to watch her realize she had found her family, she had found her place. And then this episode, we’re watching her. Basically, grow into the Uhura that we know, like she’s, she knows she’s in her family in her right place, but she’s coming to terms with her past and her grief and now she can finally move forward.

So it’s like, it’s kind of a, I thought this was a great kind of like, um, touchstone for the character overall.

It has a nice, uh, key also for what’s driving some of this triggering of. The grief in two different characters. And I’m talking about Pelia, who in this Pelia has a brief moment with Uhura in which Pelia says like, I get, you’ve been avoiding me because of Hemmer.

And then the same thing is at play with Una Chin-Riley. Who is abrasive with Pelia and Pelia basically picks at it until finally it breaks and is able to break through and like, I understand you’re dealing with the grief of your friend and that I’m a constant reminder that your friend is dead and I’m sorry for that.

And. Does all of that with a kind of, Pelia is an interesting character to me because she carries none of the Star Trek decorum with her. She’s almost more of a character from like, you can see her fitting into a show like Voyager really well, because Voyager was born of, some of these people are not Starfleet, so you end up with.

Like some, some characterizations that are outside the norm or deep space nine, where again, these people aren’t Starfleet. So why should they, they carry themselves with decorum? The sequence where Una Chin-Riley says, you have crumbs on your uniform. When did you eat? And it’s, and she has for a good portion of the episode, a big black smudge of grease on her chin that is never explained.

It is just like, it’s just, she’s filthy. She just doesn’t look like she’s taking care of herself. Um, and so it’s Pelia who is kind of a trigger for both of those characters. The Una Chin-Riley is. A little more condensed. It’s a smaller version of what we’re talking about as the overall theme of the episode, but I found it equally pleasant in dealing like being able to address grief directly in that way.

And Pelia, we’ve talked before about like, what is the key to the episode? Pelia provides that key. In that, in that final, in that final sequence with Una Chin-Riley, where she’s like, I understand you’re dealing with grief and that’s, and that’s difficult. And I’m sorry for that. Um, while also not blaming Una Chin-Riley for having that response.

Yeah. She’s very compassionate in that moment. And Uhura, Earlier in the episode is watching videos of Hemmer giving her guidance. It is resurfacing these things because something is going on. She’s had this audio experience. So she’s going through the process of checking her station’s entire circuitry through the ship and ends up watching this video with Hemmer.

And you see the kinds of relationship that they hinted was growing. And that’s the thing about the show is it did a nice job of showing you the first steps of the two of them becoming legitimately friends. So that when you see the video of how he was with her, when they were completely alone, you buy it.

I found it like very believable that Hemmer would be making jokes of like, no, not that. And scaring her in that moment just to tease her. I thought that was, that was lovely. How did you,

yeah, go ahead. I, I was gonna, this is kind of a right turn, but like, the other thing with Uhura, with Kirk, I mean, obviously, Uhura and Kirk, uh, they’re, they’re together, and this is exciting, um, but one thing I liked about that, also with her portrayal and how they wrote it, shh, their introduction was not good.

Like, at the bar with the, he, she says, I don’t want you hitting on me. He’s like, I’m not hitting on you, even though he’s totally hitting on her. Yeah. And he’s totally, and the way she just rebuffs him. And then when she’s having that hallucination in the hallway and it punches herself and it turns out she didn’t

decked Kirk and the way Kirk responds to that by not reporting her, not taking her to the sick bay because he doesn’t want her to get in trouble. He understands something’s weird going on here and he wants to help her. It’s like, it felt so true to Kirk and it felt so true to Uhura. And here’s Uhura, who’s a strong woman in the original show.

She’s a strong commanding presence, even though she doesn’t say a lot or do a lot. Um, and it was great to see that that’s how her first interaction with her future captain. actually went. Um, and it kind of helps to show where the relationship’s going to go in the future. I thought it was a, it felt very true, very, um, on the, not on the nose.

It just felt very true to me. I really did like how that was portrayed too.

It’s, I kept like, I’m going to keep going back to this. Uh, I kept retroactively reconnecting it to the original series and saying, like, Oh, and just remembering moments, the episode when Kirk and Uhura are becoming the the aliens that are like Greek gods and force the kiss between the two of them and Her speech to him of how I’m not afraid when I know you’re here.

And then they have that kiss. I kept thinking about that moment. I kept thinking about Kirk when he travels back in time and He meets the woman who must die in order for World War II to end the way it should. And he says to her, there’s a novel in which the author argues that, let me help are three words that are better than I love you.

And he reveals something in this. I thought the writing of that scene where he in the hallway with Uhura says, In the relationship with his brother, the complication comes from the fact that they were constantly chasing after their father, who was moving from assignment to assignment to assignment, and when they would complain to their mother, where is dad?

Her response was, he’s helping people. And for him to grow up with that as the North Star, helping people must be very important. I was like, sitting watching this episode, And getting overwhelmed by my fandom of Kirk and Uhura, Kirk and his family, Kirk and his brother, the, the, the relationship that they’re showing between Sam and Jim is going to make the Episode where we see what happens to Sam have so much more resonance.

It’s already a powerful moment to see Kirk say like, this is my brother and he’s dead and all like, and I’m like, I’ve lost my only brother. Like that’s a powerful episode on its own now. I’m starting to find myself, like, they’ve done such a great job of crafting two guys who really do reflect a kind of brotherly response to each other.

And I’m finding myself retro, like, already mourning the character because I know what’s going to happen. And this episode, to kind of like show the balance of it, I thought the humor in this episode was perfectly rendered. Sam’s constant. Looking for his brother to own the fact that he thinks he’s the favorite.

I’m like, that’s Sam’s problem. Sam’s problem is he thinks Jim’s the favorite and he thinks Jim is. outshining him. Well, that’s for Sam to deal with, but Sam wants Jim to say, I’m sorry for that. And the humor that came out of all of that, I thought was really well done. But

there’s, as a brother, what I can also say from my interpretation of that, it wasn’t just him trying to look for an apology from his brother.

It was also, he was just looking also for recognition. I’m proud of you.

Yeah, he was looking for, he was looking for Jim to say, I’m proud

of you too. Jim said, I’m proud of you too. You do great, you’re doing great stuff. He just wanted some kind of acknowledgement from his brother. And there was this brother, brotherly gleefulness.

That it came across to me that Jim knew that’s what he wanted and was refusing to give it just to needle his brother. So like in all the scenes, especially when in the bar where Sam’s going, uh, uh, and then doing the looks at each other and you heard it goes, what is going on here? It was Jim just like, I know what you’re looking for.

I’m not going to say it. It was just, I thought that was. Fantastic. It was a

really nice dynamic. And again, to take that as a way to link it to the original series, I saw that and thought that’s Jim Kirk with both Spock and McCoy, his, us, his, Found family aboard the Enterprise, his ability to needle both of them and to use both of them as foils against each other for his own enjoyment and camaraderie in that moment where he would say something and You could see that he was intentionally setting Kirk up.

He would be intentionally setting Spock up for McCoy to say something so that he could give McCoy the little glance. Like, yeah, like this, that’s part of his, I love you to his family is to say, like, No, I know what you want, but I’m not going to give it to you because when I don’t give it to you, the connection we have right now maintains.

So he’s looking for that constant reassurance. Um, and he’s also born of the background that he gives in this episode. We didn’t have our dad around. So, like, Not having the, I love you in the room means you have to find some other form of communicating that. And it comes out in this kind of like needling, which, uh, again, the performance of, of, um, is it Wesley, Paul Wesley?

Uh, he’s really, I think channeling the, the character while not channeling William Shatner. And I think that that is great. I don’t know if you picked

up on it, but there were some sentences that he said in this episode. that were very Shatner esque without being How Shatner would say a sentence and he’d put a weird pause right in the middle of a sentence to make an emphasis on an odd part of it.

Like, he didn’t do that. It was, he was saying the whole sentence, but then he put a pause between the sentences. And put an emphasis at the beginning of the next sentence. There was like this subtlety. I don’t know if you picked on it. It was when it was clear to me in the scene when he’s in Uhura’s cabin and Uhura had fixed him and he’s, they’re trying to piece out what’s going on with her.

He delivered some lines that I was like, wow. There was like a hint of Shatner in there. Yeah.

Right when he’s like, he’s massaging his sore nose. Yeah.

Yes. Yeah. It’s like, so it didn’t come across as, Mockery or anything like that because of the way he did it, he made it his own, but it still felt Shatner related.

So I was kind of like, I kind of thought, man, he is doing such a bang up job being Kirk and making it his own, but it still feels related to what Shatner

did later. I just love that. Really well done. Moving on to what to me feels like the final thread of all of this is Brief scene between Chapel and Spock, but it had a resonance that made it feel bigger.

Then just one scene, uh, kind of like the Una Chin-Riley, Pelia stuff was a few scenes sprinkled in here and there. If I remember correctly, this is just the one scene of the two of them playing chess, but it has a much bigger resonance and it also ties in nicely to something. If I forget to say what it ties into, Matt, remind me to point it out.

The two are playing chess, Chapel is clearly distracted, and. Spock is trying to address the elephant in the room, which is there could be complications of a superior officer having a relationship with one of their subordinates and regulations means we have to tell Starfleet about us. And we know from previous episodes that she does not like defining a relationship and she is having a tough time here.

I thought this was Again, to connect it to the original series, it had always been in my mind, oh, he was the reluctant one in the relationship. That was the struggle of their relationship. They’ve twisted that and turned it on its head here because he is basically in a mode of like, We’re dating and she’s like, I don’t know if I want to call it dating and makes what I thought was they act as if it’s not a good metaphor, but I thought it was a brilliant metaphor.

It’s a great metaphor. You got this cat. It’s in a box. Is it alive? Or is it dead? Quantum Mechanics says it’s neither and it’s both until you look in it. And when you look, you as the looker are affecting the results. You are causing the outcome. So her saying, if we don’t look at it, the cat may still be alive.

Let’s see how big the cat gets. And I thought, terrific metaphor. That’s a really great, it’s encapsulates her character in this moment so well and connects to what we’ve seen. in previous episodes of how difficult it is for her to navigate this kind of relationship. And we’ve seen in the previous episode, she was even thinking of leaving the ship in order to get away from this until finally everything broke between, uh, Spock and his betrothal and now his openness to like maybe exploring a different side of a romantic relationship than he had expected.

Very small scene, but it felt like a huge rock into a small pond to me. How did it feel to you?

Oh, same thing. It was, it also felt true to Chapel’s character because they had established in season one and stuff like that, that she didn’t stay in relationships, that she’s had problems with relationships, that they always tend to fizzle out and she tends to walk away from them.

So they’ve already established that as her MO. So when she’s giving this whole Let’s not define what we’re doing. Let’s just kind of enjoy it and be in the moment. It was very true to her. And I did like the way that they’ve twisted it and made it that Spock is all in on this. He’s like, yeah, let’s do this.

But she’s the one that’s kind of keeping it. On the fringes. At arm’s length. I thought it was, I thought it was a very great resonant scene. And also it was just a great, here’s just a 90 second scene to kind of keep that storyline going and then we won’t talk about it for the rest of the episode. So I thought it was just a nice way to kind of, even though this is a bottle episode, they were trying to kind of continue that thread going just for like a little hop, skip and a jump.

I thought that was

good too. The other thing I wanted to mention that it tied into for me, uh, when Uhura goes to the bar and meets Kirk for the first time, he’s been watching their game. Yes. Yeah. And I absolutely adored his, like he’s got a guard, his rook, he’s, he’s was three moves from checkmate. Um, and the reference being that Kirk is one of the only people who can beat Spock.

And that’s something from the original series as well. Like I’m, little moments like that send electricity up my spine in a way that probably isn’t psychologically healthy. And so I’d like to bring it all back around to the final closing shot. In which we see, as Wikipedia put it so succinctly, Uhura introduces Kirk to Spock.

Like, Wikipedia would have you believe that that it was just like a, like, a perfunctory thing. But it was a bigger moment, and I found myself, I am brave enough to admit it, I was getting weepy. At the moment, that’s who I am. I’m not going to apologize for it. I’m sitting there watching it. I’m just like, I’m just like, Holy cow.

I’m starting to get emotionally moved at this moment. Seeing the two of them meet each other for the first time. I thought it was. A terrific closing to the episode, uh, because of the resonance of what their meeting means to the larger storyline, the larger fandom. But as the camera, I thought they did a fantastic job.

The director did a terrific choice here, not resting on them at the table. Backing out of the room and making the importance of their meeting about the larger scope because the camera moves backward out of the bar. You see the larger group of people in the room and who you see is a wide assortment of humans and aliens that are all working together in Starfleet.

One of the, the key things of this shot for me was like, they are really putting a nice point on what is the role of these three. In the larger picture, it is in support of this larger effort of the community of Starfleet and the Federation and what that means. The collective working toward a common goal, and I thought it really resonated for me in that closing moment.

I think that’s part of what swept me up into it. And like, it’s not just about the three of them. It’s not just about Kirk and Spock. It’s about what Kirk and Spock represent within the larger picture.

Yeah, I felt the same way, but there’s like a difference in how I interpreted it as it was going back. It was, I liked that they pulled it back and we couldn’t hear what they were talking about anymore.

We could just see the body language. But as it’s pulling back, it felt like It, it looks like a completely inconsequential meeting. Just people hanging out, having a drink or schmoozing, whatever. It’s like, but we know that that group is going to play a very big role in what’s going to come in the coming decades.

So it’s like, It starts small, but it’s going to get big people. Um, that’s kind of how I looked at it. So I wouldn’t say I got weepy, but I was just like, you know, little kid in a candy store like, this is awesome. I was loving every minute of that.

So thank you everybody for hanging out with us and listening to me talk about how often I cry when I’m watching television.

The episode entitled Those Old Scientists. Please jump into the comments and let us know what you think the episode is going to be about. Don’t forget wrong answers only. Before we sign off, Matt, is there anything you’d like to share about what you have coming up on your main channel?

Yeah, sure. Um, I have an episode out that’s out right now about thermal energy storage.

I’ve done videos about this before, like gigantic sand batteries that are for like utility scale energy storage of heat and reusing it later. There’s actually options for this that are now hitting the home market that you can get these thermal energy batteries. They’re sand batteries for your house.

Very interesting. Um, will it work? Jury’s out, but check out the video. I thought it was a very interesting topic.

As for me, check out my website, seanferrell. com. You can find more information about my writing there. You can also go directly to whatever bookstore You like to use my books are available everywhere.

And don’t forget coming out in June, that’s June of 2024. Uh, my second book in the Sinister Secrets series is coming out. The Sinister Secrets of the Fabulous Nothings, which is available for pre order now. I’ve said this before, I’ll say it again. Uh, pre orders. really matter for an author and purchasing a book is great to support your author, but pre ordering your book to support that author can do even more.

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