Matt and Sean talk about STAR TREK … the original series. Finally. It’s a little jarring going from one of the newest Star Trek series to the oldest, but how does it hold up?
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We’re finally there. We’re going to be talking about Where no man has gone before. Not the first broadcast episode. We know that because we are doing everything here. This was the design of the program from the beginning, everybody. We’re going to talk about Star Trek in chronological stardate order. So this was effectively the second pilot produced.
Stardate wise, it is an episode that takes place before the original broadcast episode. So, we are talking about Where no man has gone before. And who are we? Well, I’m Sean Ferrell. I’m a published writer. I write some sci fi. I write some stuff for kids. And I recently have gotten into the D& D adventure writing game.
I’ll talk more about that at the end. And with me as always is my brother, Matt. He’s 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. So between the two of us, we’ve got Star Trek covered, or we try to. We also have the help of all of our viewers and listeners who jump into the comments and we’ll get to your comments in a moment, Matt.
Before we do all that, first, how are you? How are you doing today?
I’m doing really well. It’s been a good weekend. I’ve been very excited for this moment, Sean, because for me, I haven’t watched the original series in years. And so I was been crazy curious. To see how jarring an experience it would be to go from all the new stuff back to the old stuff and how well it would hold up.
It’s going to be a fun conversation.
It is going to be a fun conversation. I think it’s going to be a fun, uh, couple of years as we wade through the original series and there’s going to be some rough patches, but right out of the gate, I am super excited to talk about this episode. As we always like to do, we like to jump into the mailbag and see what you’ve been saying about our previous episodes.
So even though we are now moving forward into the original series, we’re going to talk probably about a few things going on in Strange New Worlds. Matt, what did you find in the mailbag for us?
Yeah, there were some good comments from the last episode, which was The last episode, um, Hegemony. Uh, Wayout123 wrote, One, I want Pelia failing people to be the running joke in Star Trek.
You know she failed Hemmer. Pike’s F in astrophysics was the year she taught it. Admiral Vance talking about how Pelia failed his butt. When Lower Decks does its Enterprise episode, a scene of Trip talking about Pelia. That would be great. Yeah. Two, this reminded me so much of the Kobayashi Maru test. Yes.
And three, I was so happy to see Scotty. I wonder if Scotty’s trick in The Next Generation came from what he learned from M’Benga in episode eight. I thought that was kind of interesting little tie in between the two. And okay, one more, how he stood in attention when Pike introduced himself. Yeah. Um, I thought that was great.
Uh, PaleGhost69 wrote, I have a confession to make about the original series. This will be my first time watching it in full because I’ve always struggled with the old set and effects. I’ve seen a few episodes when they were randomly on TV, but every time I’ve sat down to stream it, I get turned off by it.
And I brought this one up because we need to talk about this when we actually get into the actual episode, because there’s the enhanced version. And there’s the original version. And I talked to Sean about that. Yeah. And then there were a couple of comments that referred to Sean bringing up Supernatural.
You made a comment. I don’t know if you remember you said that, Sean, you said you figured most people listening to this will have probably watched Supernatural. So I don’t need to explain much about that TV show. Uh, Technophile1 wrote, possible offshoot Supernatural in Time. Specifically watching that show in real time.
I recall the writer’s strike of, uh, 07 and 08 drastically changing the show. A change for the better, in my opinion, with the exception of a few of the seasons fell flat. And then OldTrekky23 wrote, Nope, never seen Supernatural. Can’t wait for the original series. Yeah. Takes on it. One that was like, Hey, Supernatural.
That’s awesome. And then another one was like, What’s that?
Yeah. For Supernatural, uh, the only Supernatural podcast I think you need is the Supernatural Then and Now podcast, which is doing to Supernatural what we’re doing to Star Trek, which is taking a look at every episode. And it is hosted by Rob Benedict and Richard Spate, two of the actors from the show.
Rob Benedict played Uh, the author who is supposed to be Chuck, who is supposed to be the author behind the fictional story, and it turned out that Chuck was in fact God. Uh, so it’s him and Richard Spate, Richard Spate who played Loki the trickster, um, and, and he is the co host of it. The two of them are old friends. They are terrific in their podcast, which is doing the same thing that we’re doing here.
So as much fun as it might be for a couple of brothers to do a Supernatural podcast about a couple of brothers, I don’t think we’re going to do a Supernatural podcast. Let me just put this out there. Maybe we will when we’re done with this podcast. When we’re 72. Yes. We’ll be lucky if we’re 72. On now to this newest episode, that noise in the background, as always, is the read alert, which means it’s time for Matt to buckle up and tackle the Wikipedia description.
But this is in fact, not truly a Wikipedia description, it is more of a Wikipedia distillation. Take it away, Matt.
Where no man has gone before, this episode the third of the first season was the second pilot produced for the show after the first one, The Cage, which was rejected by the NBC. This episode follows the USS Enterprise as it attempts to leave the galaxy and encounters a strange barrier causing two crew members, Gary Mitchell and Dr Elizabeth Dehner to develop powerful ESP abilities.
These abilities make Mitchell arrogant and hostile. Do they make him that way, really, though? Because he’s kind of already kind of a Yeah, he’s already that guy. Yeah, he’s already that guy. These abilities make Mitchell arrogant and hostile. leading to a confrontation with Captain Kirk. The episode marked the first appearance of William Shatner as Captain Kirk, James Doohan as Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott, and George Takei as Lieutenant Sulu.
Gary Lockwood, who played Mitchell, and Sally Kellerman, who played Dr. Dehner, both needed silver eyes for their roles, which were achieved using What is that? scleral How do you say that?
scleral
scleral lenses. I was actually wondering how they did that because they looked Very uncomfortable.
Yeah, they did.
The episode’s title, Where No Man Has Gone Before, is the final phrase in the show’s opening voiceover and has entered into popular culture.
Just really quickly before we get into the show, scleral lenses are large, rigid surface contact lenses that are custom designed and computer lathed for each individual patient.
Uh, so what you’re looking at in the show is probably incredibly uncomfortable and probably blinding. I assume that from the way that the two actors angled their bodies in most of the scenes as you’re out there. Am I facing the right way? Uh, yeah.
So you could, you could tell that they were affecting their performance because of their contacts.
Yes. So this is episode number three of the season. It’s the first one. It’s the second pilot. So it was the second produced. It has the start date that follows in chronological order from the original pilot. So it is the first we’re dealing with. I think it also physically looks like It would predate the series we know is to come.
The costumes are effectively the original pilot costumes. Things look like they’re experimenting a little bit. Spock in particular doesn’t quite look like Spock yet. Uh, for some reason they gave him incredibly bushy eyebrows, which makes him look like Spock just came running out from his quarters without having had time to, to comb his brows and tame them.
Uh, and the angle at which they are Placed is a little too demonic. He looks a little bit like the devil, but this episode directed by James Goldstone, written by Samuel A. Peeples, originally broadcast on September 22nd, 1966. And a couple of quick fun facts. I think we’re going to be doing fun facts now as a thing.
That’ll be new for us in this program. Uh, even though we are full of facts, most of the time, when you go back in time to the 1960s, the facts become fun. It’s a little byproduct. Uh, Samuel Peeples was the writer of this episode, and I just like his bio quite a bit, so I wanted to share it before we get into talking about the episode.
Samuel Peeples was a literary science fiction enthusiast who also occasionally wrote science fiction for television, starting by providing advice and reference material to his friend and colleague Gene Roddenberry for Star Trek. Peeples’ was one of three writers selected to write a proposed second pilot for the series, and his script, Where No Man Has Gone Before, was filmed and sold, and was filmed and sold the series.
He contributed the first aired episode of the animated series as well, Beyond the Farthest Star, in 1973. He worked with Roddenberry again on the script for a 1977 movie called Spectre, and Peoples wrote an unused alternative script, Worlds That Never Were, for the second Star Trek motion picture. I think that that sounds really, really interesting.
The name of one character from his draft, Dr. Savik, would eventually be reused for the character of Lieutenant Savik. So Mr. Peeples, his DNA is deeply entwined into Star Trek. Having the first, uh, produced Star Trek original series episode and the first animated series episode, I think is an interesting twist.
As Matt mentioned in his summary, this is the first time we are seeing what will be a good portion of our main cast. We have William Shatner as James Kirk, Leonard Nimoy as Spock, DeForest Kelley is not in this episode. I’ll talk about that a little bit more later. James Doohan appears as Scotty, Nichelle Nichols is also not in this episode.
We’ll talk about, again, that later. George Takei as Lieutenant Sulu in a role that seems to be different than the Sulu we know. He seems to be primarily a science officer in this one, who misuses the term, in my estimation, of geometric. And we also have no appearance yet of two people who will be regulars on the show off and on.
Madgell Barrett, of course, as the voice of the computer. She has no appearance on screen in this one, but she was the original number one in the original pilot. And we haven’t yet seen Grace Lee Whitney. As Janice Rand, the captain’s yeoman. I’ll have some more details about that in a little bit. So what was the world like at the time of original broadcast?
September 22nd, 1966. This is now, like, we’re now going to be naming number one songs that will be not only familiar to me and Matt, but they will probably be Widely remembered by a huge portion of the population. So when I read that the number one song in the country at the time of this broadcast was, You Can’t Hurry Love by the Supremes, I was like, I know that song.
Yeah. And at the movies? Well, a little film called Dr Zhivago was the number one film in, get this, indicative of the change of what it means to be a box office release. It returned to number one in its 39th week of release. Jeez. Dr Zhivago is the 1965 epic historical romance film directed by David Lean with a screenplay by David Bolt.
It’s based on the 1957 novel by Boris Pasternak. The story is set during World War I and the Russian Civil War and stars Omar Sharif in the title role as Yuri Zhivago, a married physician and poet whose life is altered by the Russian Revolution and the Civil War. And Julie Christie as his love interest, Lara Antipova.
It is a terrific film. It is a long film. Get ready to buckle up for a three hour epic that I think in most releases has a built in intermission. So even if you’re watching it on DVD or streaming it, you are going to have red curtains on your screen with the word intermission, which gives you a nice opportunity to go to the lobby in your home and get some popcorn.
I also love the fact that the budget for the film, one of the most beautiful films I have ever seen. It was $11 million. But how much is that with inflation built in? How much is that with inflation built in? But I will also say it profited 111 million. Imagine if a $200 million movie today did tenfold, you’d be talking about a $2 billion movie maker.
It. The scale is just astronomical.
Actually, I just looked it up, Sean, if you’re curious. Yes. $11 million for a budget. With inflation, it would be 109 million today. That’s still an affordable movie in today’s terms. It’s still an affordable movie compared to what we are accustomed to seeing.
Yeah. That’s pretty wild.
So, in looking at other programming and comparing shows, I thought we would take a different tack than we’ve done previously. In the past, I’ve Through the Strange New Worlds, through Discovery, we talked about streaming programs, trying to compare apples to apples. When we were talking about Enterprise, we compared Enterprise to shows within its own time slot.
And we talked about the evening that it would be on and the shows that were on. I wanted to kind of find a halfway ground between those two things. So in looking at the shows that Star Trek was up against. Just kind of get of a general picture. We’re looking at, in its own time slot, 8. 30 on Thursday nights, it was up against the Tammy Grimes show, a show I’m not familiar with at all, and the dating game, it was also up against Bewitched, Love on a Rooftop, That Girl, My Three Sons, the CBS Thursday night movie, and it was preceded on NBC by Daniel Boone and followed by Dragnet later in the evening, also the Dean Martin Show and the Dean Martin Summer Show starring.
Victimone. So you had some variety stuff toward the end of the evening, but that kind of contextualizes, I think, the show is to like what it was competing against. A show like Bewitched and My Three Sons and paired up with Daniel Boone, which is going up against Batman and F Troop. This is that era of television.
So a lot of classics that we’re probably familiar with. The original series Averaged about 12 points viewership on the Nielsen scale. And that’s for season one. It would go down over time as we, uh, the show ends up getting shifted around. And there’s actually some articles that I stumbled on about the difference.
In storytelling, the story is told that Star Trek was losing its viewership, but it was being moved to dead evenings, eventually landing in its final time slot in its third season on Friday nights. at 10 o’clock, which is a dead zone. And it still earned almost the same level of the 12 points. It was still getting 10.
8 in its third season. So there is a bit of a conspiracy theory that there were actually network executives who just simply didn’t like the show and were trying to tank it intentionally. So the other tack in looking at viewership. As I mentioned, the original series, season one, got on average, a 12 point Nielsen rating.
Its peak was during a menagerie. Episode, which is the original, uh, pilot split into two and turned into a two parter. That earned a 15 point. So that was the high point of the show. How does that compare to the top programs of the year? Well, the number one show for 1966 was Bonanza on NBC, which earned a 29 point rating, so that gives you a sense of the scale.
Bonanza earning more than double of what Star Trek was getting at that point. And when you look at the year’s shows, as we scroll through down to the 29th most popular show. When we get down to 29, we’re still at a 20 point rating. Star Trek would not break into the top 30 at any point during the 1966 year. And what was going on in the news? Well, there was a lot of Vietnam going on.
There was a lot of protests. There was talks between the U. S. in ways to urge peace. in Vietnam with the Soviet Union’s involvement. The Soviet Union was in the process of handing over more MiGs to North Vietnam. And there was also clashes in Harlem, in New York City, as picketers were demonstrating outside a new school in Harlem.
The principal of which was white and the neighborhood did not like the fact that this brand new school, the first school that they were getting for high schoolers in Harlem, did not have a person of color as the principal. And it led to clashes with the police. On now to our discussion about this episode, Matt, I’m going to open up the door for you.
Should we hit some fun facts? And talk about some of the missing pieces that would eventually come. Or do you want to talk about the episode itself first and then revisit some of those things later on?
Let’s talk about the episode first and then we
can get to those fun facts. Alrighty. So starting us off, I couldn’t help but question the tension and drama versus the original pilot.
I couldn’t help but think in terms of like, okay, so this is the second pilot. This is the one that NBC said, yeah, okay, we’ll go with this, but the first one didn’t. And I’m curious. What did you see on display in this that you’re like, that’s one of the things that they amped up from the original pilot in order to make a bigger splash?
There was a ticking clock in this one. Uh, the first one, the Menagerie didn’t have a ticking clock. It was a lot more cerebral, uh, talking about morality and ethics and those kinds of things, which is typical Star Trek. But this one, which still grappled with moral issues, there was a clear ticking clock of, Our crewman has been infected with something, and he’s getting progressively more godlike.
And we have a small window to figure out what to do, and it’s shrinking faster than we can imagine. And so there’s this sense of thrill and sense of, um, danger that’s just looming and getting worse and worse the longer they hem and haw, um, that really kind of added tension that was non existent. in the original one.
So for me, when I was watching, it was clear to me why they would be bought in on this one versus the original. They both are very heady. They’re both very cerebral, but this one had a sense of danger. This is a thrill. You’re kind of like, Anticipating, oh my god, what’s going to happen here? How is he going to get out of this?
He’s like a god. How are you going to stop this god? So it’s like, yeah, there’s the sense of danger was a lot more in your face than the original one. I
agree completely with that. Another thing that stood out to me was we have right here in the second pilot, the third episode to be aired, our first spotting of a Kirk Rip shirt.
It’s, there’s a lot more sex appeal in this one. We, we have a actor who is, and, and I liked Geoffrey Hunter. I liked him in the original pilot. I think in an alternate timeline where they stuck with him, uh, unfortunately by the time this show got to air, Geoffrey Hunter had passed away. So, he wouldn’t have been in the show regardless, and it’s really, I mean, in that alternate history, that happening potentially would have tanked the show.
So it’s really kind of strange that how things worked out, but I think that one of the things that Strange New Worlds leans into. is that Pike is a more cerebral captain. He is more prone to keeping himself reined in. And when they introduced Kirk into the Strange New Worlds show, they introduced him as, yeah, everybody knows this guy’s kind of a shoot from the hip guy.
He, he comes in with a lot of swagger. He comes in with a lot of energy that isn’t lining up with Pike. You see a different type of captain and right out of the gate in this one, that’s on display. He gets into the fisticuffs. He kind of takes the ship into immediate danger by, in a couple of ways, beaming aboard a beacon without knowing what it is.
And the first part of the show, and then when it starts to kind of like beep and boop and everybody’s just like, holy cow, now it’s on the ship. Uh, the other thing he does is when they’re like, Oh, we think they went this way. He’s like, we’ll take us that way. It’s like without hesitation and puts the ship into immediate danger and a way that seemed a little cavalier.
And we also see Which they never
I would actually argue they never grapple with that. Yeah. His decisions killed nine crewmen. At one point they say nine crewmen are dead and they never go back to that. He’s just sexy Shatner doing his thing and at the end it’s like, we’re done. It’s like, wait, His actions killed nine people on that ship.
Yeah. Yeah. And killed two additional people who didn’t die on the ship, but die as a result of the action. So it’s like, 11 people lost
their lives.
Yeah. And I think what we’re seeing in that is not, this is not, in my mind, actually the characters. It is proto versions. They haven’t figured them all out yet.
Even yet, they are still tinkering. So I put the cavalierness in the same category as I do the very bushy, bushy Vulcan eyebrows. It is like, Oh, they, they recognize probably on rewatching and future writers probably came to it as like, the captain should express more remorse and concern for his crew and potentially should only push the ship into danger with a little bit of debate And I think that, I think that a rewrite of this particular storyline would have still included going into danger, but it would have maybe had, again, a different reality.
McCoy on one side saying, Jim, what are you doing? You can’t take us in there. People could be killed. You have no idea what’s going to happen. And Spock saying, our mandate is to do this. We have to do this. And that would be teased out in a different way. You don’t see that yet. One of the things that stood out to me, and I, and I invited you to talk about like some of the differences we’re going to see and, and you said, well, let’s talk about the episode.
I don’t know how you can talk about the episode though, without mentioning it is so easy to see what Bones is to the show. Yes. When you don’t see Bones in the show. He is the humanity in the room. Kirk is not the humanity. Kirk is aspiration. Kirk is drive. Kirk is the one who says, we know what we are when we’re right here, but what will we be when we go there?
That is the, that is the drive for exploration. put into the show without McCoy. And I’m really like, find this fascinating. The drive behind McCoy was Roddenberry wanted to force Kelly to be the doctor in the show. And he was basically argued down and they used a character actor who played the doctor in this episode.
And I have to say, This guy’s not bringing a whole lot to this character. It is very, very much a, well, like he’s a non entity except for showing up and saying like, Oh, this person’s been killed and you’re injured and I can help you. Like, there’s not a whole lot that this brings to the
floor. I would argue all the characters were non entities except for Spock and Kirk.
They were the only two entities in the cast. And the other two entities that were there were killed off at the end. Yeah. So it’s like, it’s like I thought it was odd that here’s an ensemble show and they clearly have taken two of the people they want to focus on, Spock and Kirk, but they didn’t even focus on the Doctor.
They hear Sulu, but Sulu’s not Sulu. He’s just, he’s, he reads one line. That’s it.
And I think it’s a poorly written line that misuses the term geometry. I love the fact that he says, yes, we knew that the, uh, power was growing over time, but now we understand that it’s growing geometrically. And I was like, I think you mean exponentially.
Like, it’s now growing into a triangle. Just real quick. The, we all know of course that Leonard Nimoy is the only actor who appeared in both pilots and of course has the same character, even though the network originally said we don’t like the one with the pointy ears. He’s the only one who stuck around.
It also turns out William Shatner was the third actor to be considered for the role of James T. Kirk. Jack Lord and Lloyd Bridges were each offered the role, which I think Lloyd Bridges, who would have been the most similar. I don’t know that Jack Lord would have been. Jack Lord would have been more of a Geoffrey Hunter type, I think.
We’ve also just mentioned Paul Fix, who was the original ship’s doctor. He was in there replacing John Hoyt, who was originally in the first pilot. And Gene Roddenberry wanted to cast DeForest Kelley as the doctor. And after shooting this episode Roddenberry then got his way and basically said, no, we’re not going to stick with Fix.
We’re going to go with this guy that I wanted to use previously. I’ve also mentioned that Janice Rand, who would be the yeoman, was not in this episode. We see Andrea Drom playing the yeoman. She has a very, very brief moment where she has a couple of lines. She’s standing behind the captain and There were some rumors provided by Herb Sullo and Bob Justman who were involved in production that her role was actually a non part and that Roddenberry claimed he cast her just so he could score with her.
So that I think is indicative of some of the background tensions in the show. The show is trying to be progressive in a lot of ways, but this episode in particular has some moments that are real record scratching, sexism, and the fact that this actress was given a line simply because Roddenberry wanted to be able to score score with her is problematic.
My first note, Sean, I take notes every time we watch these shows, uh, my very first note is, ah, the sexism, because in that opening sequence on the bridge, uh, the guy who, in the description, was said to became, uh, Like this jerk. Yeah. Gary Mitchell. Yeah. He was a jerk from his first line. ’cause he says to the woman that’s there as the expert, um, yes.
That becomes his cohort. Dr. Elizabeth Dehner. Yeah. Sally Kellerman, he says to a terrific actress, he tries, he tries to flirt with her and says something. Kind of like a cerebral version of a wolf whistle essentially is what he does. And it’s just like a record scratch. Uh, and then when she shuts him down, his response was, uh, made a comment about her being a walking freezer unit.
Yeah. And it’s like, Oh, oh guys, you’re trying to be progressive. What the hell is that? Like, how did nobody recognize that as something that kind of falls outside of this utopian ideal they’re trying to create? It was just, to me, dumbfounding. And there’s going to be more of that in the show. I know there’s going to be more of that in the show.
Oh, there
absolutely is. This is going to be a refrain that we’re going to talk about. It is the sixties. It is going, it’s, it is going to be troubling at times. It is going to be gross at times. And. There are also going to be times where our worser natures will come out because there are going to be moments where I’m going to be like, Oh, but I really did like this moment when Kirk convinced this woman to change her planet’s ways by kissing her.
That’s like when you’re 10 and watching this, you’re just like, Oh, I guess that’s how diplomacy works. That’s,
there is something you want to bring up. Um, I don’t know if it’s on your notes to talk about, uh, the, the pilot ness of this. Yeah. There’s an aspect where it was kind of like, um. You’re on a ship, so they’re trying to make it feel like you’re on a ship, like a naval ship or a submarine.
And there are things that are done on submarines where somebody calls out an order and then somebody else barks that order back out to confirm that they heard it. It’s like being in a kitchen at a restaurant. Somebody calls out the order and the chef barks back because they heard it. Spock. It’s the only character in this entire Ready, battle stations!
He is yelling. He is yelling everything on the bridge. Nobody else is yelling. I find it so bizarre. It was like, did the director have a conversation with Nimoy about, we’re trying to make this feel like a ship, and then didn’t say the same thing to every other person on the bridge? Because it was like he was in a different movie, Sean.
He was in a different show.
I think it’s all intentional. I also think there’s a kind of fascinating, there is a fascination in me about that. What would a show that looks like that look like? I think it could be fascinating. I could be, I think it could be a sci fi Das Boot, which has, it feels a little steampunk ish is my point.
It feels a little bit like, yeah, that’s a different That’s really kind of an invasion of a far future with something that’s archaic in a way that’s fascinating. Don’t, don’t, don’t mistake what I’m saying though, Sean. No, I’m not mistaking. I’m just saying like, for me, like, that’s what my response was like, Oh, what could that look like if it was consistently done and worked or made to work?
Yes. They don’t make it work in this because they, like you said, only Leonard Nimoy is doing it. It is supposed to be the first officer on the bridge making sure he is heard. I think there is an interesting callback to it in Riker in The Next Generation, who at times will bark orders when they go to red alert.
He will literally like physically pop up. And yell out Red Alert at a higher level and it does have a kind of resemblance to this. I think it’s also deeply baked in because Roddenberry was in the Navy. And I think Roddenberry probably in production was like, this should look like the way a ship works.
This should look like Naval personnel responding to how you jump to attention. Captain on the bridge, like all of that should be Naval in its nature. And I think that somebody at some point was just like, and maybe an NBC executive was just like, yeah, we’re, we are going to go with the show, but why is that guy yelling all the time?
That was weird. And maybe it pushed, pushed it down a bit, but it is inconsistent. I think in the fact that other people seem to be more conversational, um, I doubt it would be Nimoy on his own or the director on his own saying like, here’s how I know I don’t blame
Nimoy. Yeah, I don’t blame Nimoy, but it was like there was miscommunication amongst the crew and the actors as to what to do.
Yeah. I just, I felt bad for Nimoy. It’s like, Oh, you poor guy. You’re the only person that’s screaming.
I also think it’s interesting to like think in terms of, we’ve talked before about what this reminds us of. And one of the things that I’m always reminded of in Star Trek is Forbidden Planet.
The classic sci fi film, which was in theaters years earlier, it was a 50s film, in which it was a retelling of Shakespeare’s The Tempest in a sci fi trope. So, a Earth ship lands on a planet, they find the remains of a group that was supposed to be setting up a colony. The scientist and his daughter are the only ones left.
Everybody else has gone. And there is a monster that is on the loose. And it turns out that the monster is the scientist’s released id that has been released by the technology of an alien race that destroyed itself through its own advancements without understanding that they were the cause of their own demise.
It is a terrific film. And in a lot of ways, I think it has seeds that have been planted that eventually grew. into Star Trek. It has that kind of pseudo militaristic look. It has the aspirational drive of exploration. It has a dashing captain played by Leslie Nielsen of all people. He does not do any of his front drum and work in the, in the film.
He takes it very straight and he’s very good at it. It has a doctor character who is really kind of the humanity of the program and it has the drive to explore feeding into action. So it is balancing those two things. Forbidden Planet is a great film. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend it.
It is a favorite of mine and a favorite of Matt’s. Looking at that from the fifties, in my mind, I was always like, Oh, this is what sci fi of the era looked like. But when you dig a little deeper, Star Trek really would have stood out as different in 1966, because when you look at the top sci fi that would have been on television at the time, we have shows like Doctor Who.
from the UK. I don’t even know if it would have been broadcast at this point in the U. S. at all. If it was, it probably would have been via PBS, but I don’t have any indication of whether it was being broadcast in 1966. It started in 1963, and at that time it was largely a child focused educational program about history.
The doctor would travel to different times in actual history and then talk about, oh, this is the castle where Mary, Queen of Scots is being held. She was being held because, and it would teach these children, the British children in the audience about history. So that was the original vision of that program.
Another program that was wildly popular before Star Trek hit the air was the Twilight Zone. Again, it Clearly not the same vein of sci fi. Outer Limits, again, same thing. Time Tunnel was a short lived sci fi show that started in 1966. It’s about two scientists going through time travel. Again, doesn’t bear a lot of resemblance to Star Trek.
After Star Trek would be a show like Land of the Giants, which is a group of humans who are miniaturized and stranded on a planet inhabited by giant creatures. So somewhat similar. Similar vein, but it’s not going to look the same and it’s more of a family focused thing. And the biggest show that I could find that would have been predating Star Trek, that would have been popular at this time, Lost in Space, which is clearly a different tone, a family focused tone on space exploration.
With a very, very strong goofball element to it. It is intended to be humorous. You have the doctor who is constantly working his machinations that get them into trouble. You have Robbie the robot. You have a main character, Bill Mooney, playing arguably the main character, and he’s a child. So there’s not a whole lot that looks like Star Trek.
On the air. So something like this, I could see why they said the first pilot wasn’t going to make it when it was so cerebral and looked so different. They lean on this one into almost more of the Western roots shows like Bonanza and Wagon Train, which were pop, extremely popular in television at the time.
This bears more resemblance to those in the idea of you get the pitched fist battle at the end between two people, you get the kind of we’re forging a new path. And of course, Star Trek was pitched as wagon train to the stars. And I think that is very evident in this episode is that as Matt mentioned, the pilot ness of this, they’re trying different things out and you can tell they’re pulling different levers to see what they can make work.
I think one of the things that they clearly understood did work was, as opposed to Geoffrey Hunter, William Shatner brings to this, the kind of swagger It seems reckless in this episode, but he has the swagger that is eye catching in I’m not gonna let this hold me back.
He’s also a dreamboat. There’s a lot of, yeah, there’s a lot of dreamboat shots of this guy in this episode.
Yeah. We have a Can you tell what they were trying?
We have a character here who we’ve seen in Strange New Worlds, and the background between that and this is built into the show, into the original series. We will get evidence later on as the series continues as to how he ended up as the captain of the Enterprise, but there’s basically, I think, roughly a 10 year gap between where Strange New Worlds is We’re started off and where he is now as captain of the enterprise.
And so what we’re seeing is it feels to me like we’re roughly a year into his captaincy and he. Reaches the captaincy as a result of events that take place on the Farragut. We’ve seen him as a crew member of the Farragut during Strange New Worlds. And the background there is there is a catastrophic event on the Farragut in which the captain is killed.
Kirk has to take command of the ship. The ship eventually will be lost. But it’s his actions that save the remainder of the crew. So at the age of 32, he has made the youngest captain in Starfleet because he has already demonstrated his keen abilities. His drive and his ambition that we’ve seen in Strange New Worlds is paying off dividends by the time he gets to this point.
So he is young, he is relatively green given his captain’s experience as opposed to Pike, but he is because of that ambition and that shoot from the hip quality, he has demonstrated an ability to lead the captain’s chair in a way that Starfleet has recognized. So that isn’t on the page yet. That isn’t on the screen yet, but it’s in the background for the character.
I think that the, the Strange New Worlds production team did a really terrific job of Dragging that back into their program to lay that groundwork. So for me, as I’m watching this, I’m not having a hard time transitioning from Strange New Worlds to this. How do you feel about that transition? Going back to a show, as you mentioned, that you’re like, I haven’t watched this in a long time.
So there’s, there’s two layers to this. In a storytelling perspective, it felt seamless to me. Especially with the opening scene with Spock and Kirk playing chess and Kirk looking like he’s half paying attention and he beats Spock and he’s smirking about it, laughing about it. I love that. I love that as an opening.
I love that as an opening. Ties directly back to some of the stuff we saw on Strange New Worlds with Kirk saying, Hey, your friend is about to lose that match. You know, it’s like, he, you can, they set it up seamless, wonderful, perfect. The attitude of the Kirk from Strange New Worlds fit with, uh, Shatner’s in this episode.
So it’s, once again, I’m really impressed with how well they’ve dovetailed these two shows together, the transition. So storytelling wise, felt right in line. Take the sexism apart, set it to the side, it felt Wonderful. For me, though, there is a, we live in 2024, we are spoiled by the riches of television and what we can do today, and the Doctor Who ness of this, and I’m talking about the old Doctor Who, like, sets that look like they’re made of cardboard and they had no budget and they were trying to do goofy things and it’s sometimes unwatchable.
Um, this is definitely not unwatchable, but for me, this, that second separate layer for me was, it was jarring to go from one of the most beautiful television show that’s on television shows that’s on the air today to this. It was absolutely jarring, and it’s gonna make watching some of these, for me personally, difficult, because you’re aware you’re watching an artifact.
It’s like, I, I, I never, I never once lost a, I never got wrapped up in the episode. I was always aware I was watching an old thing. An old
show,
yeah. Right. And there are old movies and things like that, that even black and white films, like Mr. Blanding’s Builds His Dream House with Cary Grant is one of the funniest movies ever made.
And I’m watching that and I’m not thinking, I’m watching an artifact, I’m watching something old. It’s black and white, but it is hysterical. I get wrapped up in the story. Yeah. I was constantly being reminded of I’m watching something that’s old, and I’m watching this because we kind of have to, because we’re going through the process of doing this.
And I’m watching it as not an oddity, but I’m watching it out of as a curiosity. Um, and so I’m hoping that starts to fade as we get more into the show and I’m assuming it will, but I found that jarring and it ties back to the comment that I read earlier of somebody saying they’ve tried to watch the original series, but always have to turn it off.
And the reason I bring all this up is I’m watching the blu ray and I know it’s the same thing online. I think you can do it online. Um, but there’s an enhanced version that you can watch where they’ve updated the special effects and it’s been re scanned and it’s in HD and it looks really good. And then there’s the unenhanced, which is still that high res scan, but it’s still the original special effects.
Which are not as high res because they didn’t have the original film stock for some of that stuff. And for me, I watched the enhanced version and it helped. It did help. But again, every time there was a special effects shot of this ship going through space, it itself was jarring because it’s not high end CG.
It’s kind of like, yeah, well done. From 15 years ago, kind of CG. So even the update is kind of dated and kind of like, ah, so there’s, there’s aspects to watching this that to me is going to be somewhat difficult to get past, but I think it’s just going to take some, uh, get my sea legs. on and watching a few more of these to get behind it.
Yeah. I think the comment that you read earlier and your response right now, I would say that I think with just a few weeks of doing it, yeah, it’s a little bit like if you haven’t been to the theater and seen a play in a while, you spend a good portion of your time sitting in the theater saying I’m sitting with all these strangers and we’re watching people pretend they’re doing a thing right there.
It can be a little bit like how long does it take for me to become to fall into the immersion? And, um, how long am I going to be aware of the fact that I’m not falling into the immersion? I’ve watched the original series more frequently lately, uh, by having it on the background. I use Pluto TV a lot for that.
So it’ll be washing the dishes or doing errands and I will have it on the background. And I think that has helped prep me. It was when I first discovered like, Oh, they’ve got the original series on Pluto. And I started watching it occasionally. It was jarring right away. And it’s worn, that’s worn down over time.
So I think it will be a few weeks and you’ll be like, yeah, it’s, It’s okay now. It’s feeling better now. I would also say I am also watching.
I say, but one thing that won’t get, you won’t be accustomed to that will always remind you you’re watching something in the sixties is the sexism is the things that will, those elements are definitely, those elements will always, no matter how good it looks, it will always jar you out.
So it’s like, those are going to happen.
Yeah. The cultural blind spots. are fascinating because the show is trying to be progressive and is and succeeds in being progressive in a lot of different ways. And in other ways, it continues to step in it. And I’m sure that is true. I know that is true of every era of art and programming.
And I’m 20 years from now, we might watch strange new worlds and say like, oof, That line. Yeah. That’s,
yeah.
Um, for sure. But we’ve got that on display here and it is something that as you pointed out, does not go away. But I find myself on the whole impressed with the show’s ability to create a second pilot that feels like the same show, but also you can see like, oh yeah, this is a better pilot.
This is for what they were trying to get to and what they had to do allowed them. To craft something that opened up room. for storytelling that looks like the original pilot later on. There are episodes of the original series that do spiritually feel like they connect right back to the original pilot because the show earned the ability to be so cerebral.
I think that’s especially true the further forward we go. As we get to the next generation, where next generation was trotting ground. That was so much of the original pilot, because I mean, when you introduce a character like Q, I mean, come on, you get a character like Q. There’s no fisticuffs with Q.
There’s debate. I just happened to recently stumble upon the episode again on Pluto TV, uh, the tapestry. Which is one of my favorite episodes of The Next Generation. Picard has his death experience with his artificial heart and has the experience where Q says, I’ll give you the chance to go back and make some changes.
So you don’t have that artificial heart. Brilliant, brilliant episode. It is so
high.
It is so cerebral. As to be like distracting in its cerebral nature and
so good. You’re calling the cerebralness, Sean. My favorite line from that episode, is Q in bed with Picard, no, and he’s not in bed with Picard, but he shows up delivering flowers, isn’t it?
He goes, is there a Jean Luc Pickard here? Yeah. It’s one of my favorite lines in all the next generation.
The So one of the things that I spotted in this was the level of action brought forward the level and I, and to go back to your comment about the special effects, I’m also watching the enhanced version.
I do think it’s very helpful. I do think the sort of goofiness of the original special effects is, um, Distracting at this point. Yes. So even though the special effects aren’t as good as strange new worlds, I think watching the, the barrier that they transitioned through in this episode, I thought it was impressive.
I think seeing the enterprise as the more modern CGI created ship works within the program and kept enough of the, like, you’ve got one foot in the 1960s. You got one foot in the early 21st century, but. It all kind of works seamlessly together enough to keep you immersed within the story. And for me, the psychological aspects, the growing sense that Gary Mitchell is fundamentally different, that the friend is gone, was Emotionally wrought and I thought it was well acted.
I think we, I think I was impressed with the wrestling that you see Captain Kirk going through. Jim Kirk, William Shatner is good. In this, as a, like, he looks at Gary Mitchell when he visits him in the med bay. And every time he’s in that med bay with him, he is looking at it and you can just see, like, I want this to be my friend.
And the acting from the actor playing Gary Mitchell does a great job of not being his friend, of, of ramping up an arrogance that again, I think the show is intentionally playing with the idea of, if somebody else was having this experience, maybe they wouldn’t have turned into a threat in the same way.
Yeah.
Because you have the Doctor, played by Sally Kellerman, she is saying, think of what could come of this. If she was the only one going through the experience, think of what could come of this. Think of the breakthroughs for humanity that could come of this. Might she have turned into something benevolent?
Might she have turned into something that would have said, I’ve lost interest in humanity and I’m going to go away. It could have been a very cerebral, very different storyline. We see Gary in the turbolift immediately be a jerk. We see him on the bridge at the moment of danger when they’re trying to break through the barrier.
He patronizingly reaches out and takes the hand of the yeoman as if he’s reassuring her, like, don’t I’m here. I took that as an arrogant move. And there’s even a moment. I don’t think it was directed. I think it was accidental. The woman playing the yeoman looks down at his hand at one point and she has a kind of look of like, can you let go of me already?
I think it’s accidental. I think it was an accidental.
I don’t know. Grimace. Like, But yeah, go ahead. We were making fun of the sexism. We were making fun of the sexism, but in a way, there was a scene later where, um, what’s her name again? The, the, I keep blanking on her name. The one that’s the cohort. Sally Kellerman.
Yeah. Yeah. When she shows up in the med bay at one point to see him and he says, he comes out and says, I’m really sorry about that. Uh. That comment, the walking freezer comment. He apologizes for it to her at that moment. And so it’s like, it felt to me like maybe it was deliberate. Yeah. And they did that, and it wasn’t an accidental sexism working its way into the episode.
They did it deliberately because as you’re pointing out, I think it was intentional. They made him kind of jerky. Yeah. And he evolved into super godlike jerk. Yeah. And she wasn’t a jerk. And she was evolving into something that wasn’t a super godlike jerk. She was evolving into something different. Um, because that’s why she turns on him at the end.
So, for, for me, I don’t think it was accidental per se that, that Yeoman gave that look, because I saw it too, Sean. Yeah. I saw that same look, and I was like, she’s kind of like, come on, buddy, come on. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like, I’m okay. That came across to me too. So, it’s like, looking back on it in my head right now, it feels like all of that was intentional, but super subtle.
Yeah, super subtle. I think that there is the accidental sexism and then there’s the intentional sexism. One is being done as a characterization, which is Gary Mitchell’s line. The other one is every time they refer to women, where it’s two men alone, the references are not always character based. They are cultural.
And there’s, uh, when Mitchell and he, there was a reference that I actually really liked and hated the way it was done. He says to Kirk, Mitchell says to Kirk, well, you would have kept being as tough as you were if I hadn’t steered that lab technician your way. That’s a sexist attitude right there. I steered a woman your way and then she softened you so that I could have an easier time in your class.
Pretty gross. But Kirk’s response, I almost married her. I’m like, oh, Carol Marcus. Yeah, that’s and like it’s the callback again to this is the Jim Kirk who when he was lieutenant he was already teaching at the academy. Again, Kirk’s background will include his involvement in experiences that raised his profile in Starfleet.
So that as a lieutenant, he was already teaching at Starfleet. It’s during that time that he’s met Carol Marcus, which is what we are seeing in Strange New Worlds. He has met her. He’s had this relationship with her. He reveals that she is pregnant. So again, I’m like somebody sat down with a huge board and created a calendar of all these events and was just like, okay, what are we looking at?
How do we refer to these things? So we’re already seeing references to Jim Kirk almost got married. In my memory, it is the only time that will be referred to in the original series. So it is easy to understand why it is forgotten, which is why in Star Trek II, it is like, what do you mean Kirk had a baby with a woman?
They have had this moment, this one moment in sickbay where it is like, I almost married that woman. Oh, okay. So Jim Kirk is a womanizer, but he is also somebody who almost Settle down with somebody. The depiction here, as we’ve just been talking about, of Gary Mitchell starts off as kind of a jerk. So with the growing power, his arrogance, and his willingness to say, like, I’m really kind of looking down my nose at you people.
While Kellerman’s growth, her character’s growth into the ESP wielding superhuman is, We’re not even aware if she’s aware of it. I believe she becomes aware of it at a certain point and is defending him. I think when she is defending him at the height of, no, you don’t know what this possibly could do. I think the reason she’s fighting that hard is because she probably is having glimpses into the minds of other people and is like, it’s happening to me too.
And she believes that Gary could be like her. We could be benevolent. So we see that tension grow. The middle act. The second act of this feels so cerebral to me. And then it culminates in fisticuffs with people that we’ve basically seen move cups at will, control aspects of the ship, see into people’s minds.
How did you feel about the rope, strangle somebody with a rope, a cable at a distance? And so how did you feel about the balance between like, Oh, it’s clearly laid out this very cerebral side. But then, we have to make sure people are entertained physically. So, we’re going to have fisticuffs with those same beings.
It felt to me like a little bit of two different shows, kind of like scotch tape together in the middle. How’d you feel about that? It,
I felt the same way. It was, I thought up until, up until Kirk billying up on the rock with his shotgun thing and he ends up falling down and his shirt’s on fire. Torn.
From that point on, it was like we’re watching a Saturday morning cartoon. It was like it didn’t make sense why what’s happening because he is literally a god. We watched the man in a completely different area of the base strangle another man. With his mind. Yeah. It’s like, it’s like he went into that guy’s, understood what that guy was seeing, where he was in space, to then manipulate the rope, it’s like, how would he be in danger from Kirk?
He would know exactly where he was, he’d know, he could make a boulder fall on the guy. It’s like there was no, there was no realm in which what happened should have happened. It should have been, because like, at the end, he talks her. into turning against him. Yes. And that’s the only way to take him out.
That should have happened way sooner because it was like the whole fighting and him shooting him and all that fisticuffs between the two of them made zero sense, none. Yeah. Um, so for me, that’s where the ship kind of like, I mean, the, the, um, The show jumped a mini shark was at that point where it, it was, Oh, it feels like they did this to have the fisticuffs for action, for TV.
It’s like it was there for that only, which is something that this show is going to do again and again. And again, like there’s many episodes that are fantastic. Like I keep picturing the Gorn, I’m picturing there’s fight scenes in engineering where Kirk is fighting some guy fist hand to hand and it’s always like far shots that you can tell that’s not Shatner rolling around on the floor with this guy and then it goes to a guy who is like 50 pounds heavier.
Right. It’s like, you know, they did that because that’s what was required to be on TV at that time. And it feels shoehorned in. So it’s like, for me, it was kind of a record scratch, but it wasn’t enough to kind of throw off the entire episode at all. But it was just kind of a record scratch.
For me, I felt like there was a way to get where they ended up, but it didn’t.
It just had to invert a couple of the scenes. Like, I agree with you completely. Uh, I love the conversation with Dehner, where he’s like, you are currently going through the same thing. You understand. He is not going to end up where you’re hoping he, he will. That conversation I thought was a great conversation.
He makes a great debate about it. I would have appreciated when he’s like, I got to go face these people. I think in that moment, a Dr. McCoy in the room would have been a good scene. Where he’s like, don’t wake up Spock until I’m gone. And the doctor is basically like, what are you going to do? And like Bones in that moment, a different character in that moment would have been like, Jim, you’ve got to remember, he knows everything that’s going on.
You can’t sneak up on him. I think that a slight rewrite to that ending of Jim Kirk not sneaking, Jim Kirk just walking. Jim Kirk just going to be like, you know, I’m coming. I know, you know. So I’m just going to show up. Exactly. Walking that direction. He was building up on the rocks. Yeah. It’s
like, what do you
think you’re doing?
Yeah. Like, what do you think you’re doing? Like, having him walk there and having Mitchell and Dehner off in the utopia that he’s growing out of the soil and have him say, Jim Kirk is coming and have her say, let me talk to him. And then she goes like that would have worked in this. It would have been in the same moments.
And I think at the moment when she then turns on Mitchell and she uses her powers to try and hold him back, it’s clear from that moment, Oh, he’s weakened enough that now the fisticuffs are the best response. And I have no problem with the fisticuffs leading to getting ahold of the phaser rifle, shooting the rock, crushing him.
Like, I think that that all for me works. And I also think it, the ending for her works in that Mitchell is more powerful. So he has effectively killed her. She’s still struggling to hold onto life, but he’s already killed her. She’s already dead and dying. And so for me, while it does feel like the tale of two shows kind of scotch tape together, I found both of them enjoyable.
And I found the whole arc of, you know, You name the show where no man has gone before, which is lifted directly out of the opening prologue. The significance of that line, giving the title to this episode, and then having happened what happens within it, I think it all is of a piece. I think it all works together for me.
And that isn’t just, you know, the 10 year old inside of me saying, like, we love Star Trek. That is me As somebody who aspires to write, who has written stuff, like, I look at this and I’m like, this is hitting a lot of really good notes, and I can see why it would work as the second pilot, why NBC would have said, okay, yeah, this is worth getting behind.
We couldn’t get behind the earlier version, but this one we can. How did you feel about that as a whole?
Oh, no, it holds together as a whole perfectly dealing with the absolute power of corrupts absolutely kind of like does it and then kind of exploring that with two different characters that become gods.
It’s like the whole aspect of what they’re exploring, what they’re doing holds together, which is why that record scratch, you call it a duct tape, scotch tape together, which is a good way to put it. For me, it’s that record scratch between those two sections. It almost doesn’t matter because the message doesn’t get muddied.
So it’s like you can kind of forgive it, that aspect of it. So for me, it holds together. Um, it’s a really good episode. It’s a very pilot y episode. Every show ever created typically has pilots that are kind of off. They don’t always grab right away. So it’s like, you can totally tell that they’re trying to experiment, find their footing, figure out what they’re going to do.
So like you mentioned, it’s missing Bones. Once you get McCoy in there, it changes the dynamic. Drastically. So it’s like, I’m really excited for, we’ve been saying this for a couple of weeks now. I’m really excited for next week’s episode because it’s like, we’re going to start to see some of these characters come in, see them start to kind of evolve and kind of really kind of gel the cast and the crew and make the storytelling even better.
Yeah, we did have in this the moment where it’s like department heads show up on the bridge and they’re like all lined up and it’s clearly a very pilot y like, we’re going to introduce some of these secondary characters so you know who they are. We see Scotty there. We see the doctor played by Fix that we will not see again.
We see Kellerman. And it presents the idea that maybe she’s going to be a regular. We see Gary Mitchell behind this chair piloting the ship. He, of course, dies by the end. We see a character named Kelso on the bridge as the navigator. He dies by the end and he’s presented in the episode, and I thought this was really compelling.
We don’t have a red shirt problem yet. Everybody is wearing beige. So they go down to the planet. We don’t yet know that these people who are talking that we’re getting to know Kelso has more lines than Sulu. He dies. And I found that very interesting. And it’s, he’s presented with enough lines that as you’re watching it, I just started to be like, Oh, he’s got a personality.
He actually has this kind of like, I’m good friends with Mitchell. I work with him. I come by to visit him to see if he’s doing okay. And I’m a little embarrassed to find out he’s, he’s basically trying to make it with the doctor. It’s. Like he has the moments of like, I found this thing and it was burnt out just the way he said it was.
And that’s an impossibility. And he’s in charge of Jerry rigging the on the ground aspects while Scotty is in charge of Jerry rigging the, in the ship aspects of repowering their engines. So he’s successful at that and it’s presented as like, you did a great job. You deserve a commendation. And I’m like, no.
This guy has a personality, and yet he doesn’t make it through. So we end the episode with two of the main people we’ve seen on the bridge gone. We need a Sulu. We need a Bones. We don’t really see Scotty do much, but we know he’s in charge and we know he’s got that cute little accent. We mainly just see Spock and Kirk.
And the two of them don’t demonstrate for me, and I’m curious if this is your feeling about it. They don’t yet demonstrate what we know will come. It feels still early days in their, in their relationship. The one part of it that does shine through is the chess match
and
Spock’s willingness to say, I know you care about your friend when he says, Jim, you know, we can’t make it anywhere.
If he’s on this ship, we need to kill him. Those two scenes are the closest we have to what will come. I really liked that second moment too, where Jim debates Spock about what we can do. We can’t go there. We’ll get trapped into orbital decay around that planet. We won’t be able to make it out. And then it ends with him saying, set course.
It’s like, this is Jim Kirk, who is going to Bark back at you. You’re wrong. I don’t want to do that. And the next thing out of his lips will be, and yet we will do it because I know you’re right. So those two scenes, the chess match and that scene were for me, like, those are the closest to what we will get probably starting next week.
So next week we will be seeing the Corbomite maneuver, another of the episodes that just saying the title makes me happy. And that’s not just because this is the first time we’re going to see Clint Howard in Star Trek. Uh, we saw him recently in the episode of Strange New Worlds where he played a kind of goofy doctor character in a war setting.
And now we get to see him as a small child. So, I don’t know about you, but that makes me happy. Viewers, listeners, jump into the comments. Let us know what you think that that episode will be about. Don’t forget wrong answers only. And before we sign off, Matt, do you have anything you want to share about what you have coming up on your main channel with our listeners and viewers?
Yeah, there’s an episode out now that’s about a new wind turbine that’s really cool that we thought originally was based on a very ancient wind turbine design that actually wasn’t. And my team and I got very confused and we tell the story about our confusion and why we made the connection that we did and tell the whole history of this thing.
Um, it’s, it’s, I thought it was fascinating, so I’m really excited to share it with everybody.
I look forward to that. As for me, if you’re interested in finding out more about my writing, you can visit SeanFarrell. com, find out more about my books there. You can also look for them wherever books are sold. I have a new book coming out in June, which is the Sinister Secrets of the Fabulous Nothings.
Pre orders mean a lot to an author. So if you’re interested in supporting my Please do consider picking up that book, pre ordering it now. I also mentioned at the top of the episode, I am dabbling with writing some D& D adventures. I have a Kickstarter going on right now. The link will be in the description below.
Please check it out. It is a Kickstarter supporting an adventure I’ve written, which is based on the movie Die Hard, but it’s set in a fantasy setting and is called Dice Hard. So I hope that conveys the tone of what I’m going for. It’s very cool. I’ve seen it. It’s good. Thank you. Thank you so much. If you’d like to support this show, please consider leaving a review, share it with your friends, jump into the comments.
All of those are great, easy ways for you to support us. And if you’d like to more directly support us, go to trekintime. show, click the become a supporter button. It allows you to throw some coins at our heads. We appreciate the welts. And then we get down to the business of making this program. And we also make a second program called Out of Time.
Supporting us directly. We’ll also make you an Ensign. Which will automatically subscribe you to our spinoff show, Out of Time, where we talk about things that don’t fit within the confines of this program. So sometimes it’s other Star Trek, sometimes it’s other sci fi, and sometimes it’s just whatever we’ve been consuming.
We hope you’ll be interested in it and check it out. All of those ways really do help support the show. Thank you so much everybody for your time, for listening and watching, and we’ll talk to you next time.