Matt and Sean talk about loving the alien in Star Trek: The Original Series. Who knew that was a female gas cloud? Clearly, Spock and Kirk do, but did you?
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Welcome everybody to Trek in Time, where we’re watching every episode of Star Trek in chronological stardate order. And we’re also taking a late look at the world at the time of original broadcast. So we’re taking a look at 1967, November, and who are we? We are the Ferrells. 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. He is that Matt behind Undecided with Matt Ferrell, which takes a look at emerging tech and its impact on our lives. So together we have the sci fi tech brain that is ready to talk about sexy space clouds. How’re you doing today?.
I’m doing good. And speaking of sci fi, Sean, watch Silo, if you’re not watching Silo. It is on the list. Yes, it is on the list. We have right now So good. We’ve gone through It feels like in this household, there was a bit of a dip of like, we really don’t know what to watch. And then suddenly there’s been this spike of like, oh, we’ve got like 20 things we want to watch.
And so we’re in this weird zone of, oh, we know there’s other programs that are on the verge of coming back, like Severance. This is just about to come back and we’re looking forward to that, but Silo has been, is one that we’ve talked about like, Oh, this is getting a lot of buzz and we want to jump on. So today we’re going to be talking about metamorphosis, but before we get into the details on that one, we always like to revisit your comments on our previous episodes.
So Matt, what have you found in the comments for us this week? Well, from last week’s episode on Cat’s Paw, we had one from Sam Higdon who wrote, I’m gonna be laughing, I had to Google this to make sure he wasn’t pulling a fast one. Fun fact, the wizard’s robe worn by Korob is the same costume that was previously worn by Bob Denver in the Gilligan’s Island episode, Lovey’s Secret Admirer, which aired on January 23rd, 1967.
I looked it up, And yes, Sam, he’s 100 percent correct. The same costume from Gilligan’s Island made it onto Star Trek. Dare we say it looked like it? Yeah. It looks a little bit like something that might have been on Gilligan’s Island, strangely. Looked very goofy. All right. Then we had one from Steve C. Photos who wrote, Matt, you make a good point regarding the next generation’s character development, but they had more time to get it right. I’d say if the original series had a first or second season of similar quality to The Next Generation, They’d have been cancelled much sooner in the 1960s. In my opinion, other than the measure of a man, more than half of the original seasons, the original series first two seasons were vastly superior to Next Generation’s 1 and 2.
I would also say that the sexism is very cringe in the original series and it deserves to be called out, but I don’t think that it diminishes how much better this show was than many of its counter contemporaries. Maybe not Cat’s Paw. I can also recall how T’Pol was treated at times in Enterprise. I think it is, was similarly bad.
So Future Trek didn’t immediately solve that problem. Yeah. Keep up the great work. And I like the call out to T’Pol because yes, it’s a nice reminder that in a modern show. And we talked about it quite a bit. The way they objectified T’Pol. We talked about that when we watched Enterprise. It’s shockingly bad at times.
Yeah. Like really bad. Yeah. Then we had a long one from Mark. Loveless. Who I’m not going to read the whole thing. You can read it yourself. I’m going to focus on the last paragraph. It’s a really good comment. He gives his feelings about Cat’s Paw, but at the end he made a comment that, uh, brought up a point that I thought was really good.
In general, modern shows like The Expanse and its emphasis on dead accurate physics have definitely spoiled a lot of older sci fi television and film. However, it’s a, it’s like a young kid today listening to Hendrix and saying, but so and so is a better guitarist and trying to explain to that kid that Hendrix did all of this stuff first.
Star Trek did do a lot of firsts, but explaining it to a modern audience and even ourselves at this point, you have to do things like ignore accurate chain of command and physics plus sexism and plot decisions to try to get better ratings. Yeah, I thought that was a really good call out because you and I have been like, you Me particularly.
It’s like modern Matt’s having a problem with this episode. And I like that he called this out of like, if we put ourselves back in the 1960s. Star Trek did a lot of firsts and it broke tons of ground and it needs to be applauded for that. But sometimes I have difficulty disconnecting 2025 Matt Brain from 1968 Matt Brain.
Yeah. And there’s two ways of approaching that. And I think that I’ve been trying to, and I always pick up on like, you’re maybe a little bit more on a line than I am. But when I talk about stuff like that, I always try and bring it up from a perspective of, isn’t it amusing? Isn’t it funny that. Like, last week’s episode, the top four commanders of the Enterprise all went away on the way team.
And it was just like, like, that’s funny. Like, that’s just outright funny. Like, like every commander is just like, well, I’m going to go down and then like, well, no, I’m going to fix this. And before you know it, like everybody on the ship is just an ensign and they’re all like, so which one of us outranks the others?
Well, it’s funny that you bring that up specifically because PaleGhost69 wrote about this. Wait, this wasn’t the, about Catspaw. This wasn’t the one with the time Traveler and Shapeshifting cat. Seriously though that episode, operation Earth was scarier and more eerie than this one, which just left me bored and upset.
Also, you guys haven’t figured out why Kirk only brings the senior staff on away missions? When he brings anyone else, they die. That’s true. Yeah, he wrote, also, also, Matt is right. Picard is the better captain. Kirk kills his crew through incompetence way too often and leads with the wrong head, if you get what I’m saying.
Oh, I get what you’re saying, and I completely agree. So, yes. And then on that note, we had Mark didn’t put in a wrong answers only, which I’m very disappointed in you, Mark, but I get it. Takes time and effort and maybe you didn’t have time for this week, but we had a couple other options. Uh, one from PaleGhost and one from OldTrekkie and I’m not going to read them both, but I recommend everybody go in there and read them both.
But PaleGhost69 wrote a short sweet one called Metamorphosis. While on an away mission, Sulu gets bitten by an alien insect and morphs into a bipedal butterfly with big flashy wings. In an interview years later, George Takei said the costume was his favorite thing that he stole from the set after the show ended and still wears it at Halloween.
He always knew he could be a beautiful, beautiful butterfly. Yes, he is. With the deepest voice. Oh my. Oh my, this chrysalis.
That sound you hear and the flashing lights you see, that could only be the read alert, which means it’s time for Matt to tackle the Wikipedia description for this one. Take it away, Matthew. Okay. A shuttle crew from the Enterprise encounters a castaway who appears to be Zefram Cochranee, the inventor of Warp Drive, and his mysterious alien companion.
And his mysterious alien companion. I can read sentences. Yes, but also that sentence is very poorly structured. Yes. Kirk, Bones, Spock, and a disease stricken officer are brought down on a planet surface en route to the Enterprise, where they meet Zefram Cochranee , who’s recorded to be dead for 150 years.
Cochranee explains that the companion, a mysterious energy field, keeps him alive and well. But recently decided that he needed a companion. That’s a really weird sentence. Just keep going. I’m having trouble here, Sean. After investigating and challenging the alien companion, how many times can we say companion in this paragraph?
Kirk realizes that the companion has feelings for Cochrane and finds a way to get back to the Enterprise in a surprisingly romantic episode. Okay. One of the things I like about Wikipedia is that when it’s poorly written, it’s really poorly written. Yes. Not to make this podcast about Wikipedia, but the first sentence basically says they encounter a castaway who appears to be Zefram Cochrane and his companion.
And then the last sentence implies that Kirk realizes that the companion has feeling Cochrane and finds a way to get back to the Enterprise in a surprisingly romantic episode, which implies that Kirk does something romantic. Yes. Yes. Zefram, you have to let me kiss you.
This episode, as we’ve mentioned, Metamorphosis from the original series, season two, episode nine, directed by Ralph Sinensky, written by Gene L. Kuhn, and guest appearances include Glenn Corbett as Zefram Cochrane. Elinor Donahue as Commissioner Nancy Hedford, Eddie Paskey as Lieutenant Leslie, William Blackburn as Lieutenant Hadley, and Lisabeth Hush as the voice of the Companion.
The main two guest stars here, Glenn Corbett and Elinor Donahue, were not new to television. Glenn Corbett was a regular on the show Route 66, which was an adventure crime series in the early 60s, and he would go on to star in television and movies before passing at the young age of 59 in 1993. In an interesting side note, both William Shatner and DeForest Kelly had guest appeared on Route 66, but DeForest Kelly had guest appeared in an episode before Corbett had joined the show.
Effectively, the show was four seasons, and after the second season, one of the members of Route 66 left the show. Corbett joined as a regular, and then during his time, he did star with William Shatner when Shatner guest appeared. Elinor Donahue was the eldest daughter on the long running Father Knows Best sitcom and at the time of this episode of Star Trek, she had already been a main character in the Andy Griffith Show.
She had been introduced in the first season of the Andy Griffith show as the love interest to Andy Griffith’s character. And after one season, she asked to be let go of her contract and she left the program. Among the main actors from the program that we would see, we’re of course going to see William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, and DeForest Kelly on the planet.
We’re also going to see James Doohan and Nichelle Nichols aboard the Enterprise with George Takei at the helm, but there’s not a whole lot of conversation between them, but there are a lot of fun knowing looks, which I actually found myself enjoying quite, quite a bit. So we’ll talk about that in a little bit.
But what was the world like at this time in history, November 10th, 1967? Well, Matt, I remember this fondly, even though neither of us was born yet, you were singing along to, to Sir with Love by Lulu. Take it away, Matt. I know I’m not speaking just for myself when I say one of my favorite things about Matt’s rendition of To Sir with Love by Lulu is the fact that he sings it in the voice of Sulu.
And in the movie theaters. Yes, once again, Matt, we are facing A number one film, which is a movie that we’re like, the number one film is a movie that had been around for at this point, literally decades. Gone with the Wind was the number one film at this time in a reissue. Gone with the Wind is the 1939 American epic historical romance adapted from a 1936 novel by Margaret Mitchell.
The film was produced by David O. Selznick and directed by Victor Fleming. If you don’t know what Gone with the Wind is, I don’t know what to tell you. And the fact that a movie took the number one spot three decades after its initial release. Can you imagine that happening today? Not well, this has been done.
Can you imagine? But it’s never been first. Do you think It’s never coming first. Do you think The Matrix, if The Matrix The Matrix might do it. If a movie like The Matrix was re released today Well, Star Wars. Star Wars. Or the original Star Wars film. Perhaps it was do you remember when it came back out and like that was like the early 2000s late 90s.
I don’t remember that I think it may have taken the top spot when it came out Briefly. Mm-hmm. But I’d have to double check that. Yeah. But it was the reissue where they did new special effects and all that stuff. Yeah. It was, it wasn’t just a a, just a reissue of the exact same movie. Yeah. I don’t think that they add any extra spaceships to Gone with the Wind.
I think they just showed the original version or, or the Jabba scene. . Yeah. That would’ve . Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn. They wanna wanga
and on television, Star Trek had moved to Friday nights at 8:30. So it’s lead in starting at 7:30 was Tarzan. What a great pairing that must have been. And the variety of programs that were in competition with Star Trek at this point, we talked about a lot of these programs earlier during season one so we’re going to see familiar faces come back around as top shows but there’s been some shuffling as the ratings moved programs falling deeply like bonanza has fallen quite a bit uh and other programs rising like this week’s. Season two of star trek the show averaged 11. 6 which is a slight dip from its 12 in season one. And to compare that to other programs that were on at the air at the time, we’re looking this week at The Lucy Show, which earned a 27. We talked about The Lucy Show previously. It is the follow up program for Lucille Ball. It ran on CBS from 1962 to 1968.
And it was not a sequel. It was just, well, let’s bring Lucy back to television. It was effectively a show originally intended to last no more than one season. It was pitched by Desi Arnaz as our production company is struggling. Let’s bring you back to television because it’ll, it’ll get enough eyes on it that it will give us a boost and it will keep the company afloat.
It turned out to be kind of an accidental hit and it lasted for multiple seasons and it earned Lucille Ball the Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for the final two seasons, 1966 to 67 and 67 to 68. And in the news, here we are, Friday, November 10th, 1967, and, well, what is that that I see?
Why, yes, it’s a little story about something called the U. S. Space Program Landing Surveyor 6 Gently on the Moon. This, of course, is a precedent to The actual landing of people on the moon on this day in 1967, they were landing the unmanned lander Surveyor VI, which took several pictures of what was described at the time as a rather barren landscape.
The fact that there didn’t seem to be much to look at didn’t dissuade anybody from wanting to go there. And I’ll admit it doesn’t dissuade me from wanting to go back. On now to our conversation about this week’s episode, Matt, we have, dare we say it, a sexy space cloud to deal with. We’ve talked about, we’ve talked about in, in, uh, more than once, and it came up in the comments, the discussion about sexism.
And of course the sexism is something to be kept in our conversations to point out. But also, to keep it referential to this is 1967 and we’re trying to balance those two things. And I, I do know that we try and balance it. As the comments pointed out, you can’t always measure everything by contemporary standards.
But this episode struck me as a particularly egregious one. It was a little rough to hear a dying woman say. I’ve been proud of my profession, but I’ve never loved and to see that as Okay, . Well, it’s, it actually started out with Zefram Cochrane when they land. Yes. And she gets off the thing and Zefram Cochrane goes, I can’t remember what he says to her exactly, but it was like a, like food to a starving man.
Yeah. There you go. It was like, he said that it was like, Oh, Oh, this is going to be the tone for the rest of the episode. Yeah. And boy was it. Yeah. Let’s take the, the sexism and the gendering of a space cloud out of the conversation for a moment and just take a look at it from a, from a character perspective.
Here we have Kirk, Spock, and McCoy on the planet. And they are trying to figure out, first of all, what is going on, and somewhat more importantly, how do we get off of this rock safely? Because in order of, I find it difficult in this episode to see what they find most important. There is Supposedly a war going on that supposedly this ambassador is the only person who can stop it.
That gets hand waved at the end in a really, really remarkable fashion. Do you think that their drive for a solution here is born of professionalism or personal, I am terrified of dying on this rock?
You say it got hand waved at the end of the episode? It got hand waved in an incredibly sexist way. Oh yeah. They’ll find another woman to do that. Like, I’m sure the Federation will find another woman that will stop that war. It’s like, wait, what? Record scratch. Yeah. I’m sorry, what were you asking? I was asking, do you think that there’s Like, it feels to me like the reason, I couldn’t help but wonder if this episode was written and then rewritten and then re rewritten so that more layers of purpose behind their actions was added to it without it actually changing anything because it felt to me like this could have been a much more pure episode if it had simply been, we’re desperate to get off this planet because we don’t want to die here.
And it was presented with like, well, there are lives in the balance somewhere else. And then her life has to be in the balance here because, well, we need a, we need a motive to get off of here quickly. She’s going to die. We need another motive to get her off of here because why does she matter? She can stop a war.
And it just felt like all these things were thrown at us, but then when they’re on the planet, all they’re talking about is effectively like, we don’t want to be trapped. And I’m like, this might’ve been a better episode if it had just been like the Galileo seven and it had been, Oh, they’re on this planet and there’s something here that wants to harm them or they’re scared of, and they want to get away.
Leave it at that. I agree with you, the point you’re making, uh, for me, the, what struck me was this was not a well written episode because they were throwing everything at the wall, there was no focus, um, the two things that jumped out at me were the ticking time bomb that a lot of Star Trek and all TV shows do to create tension, To try to get things moving, they had two clear ones.
There’s a war that can only be stopped by this woman. And then the other one was, she’s dying. It’s like, you didn’t need both. And because they needed her body so that by the end of the episode, she can merge with this female cloud so that they can run off into the sunset with Zefram Cochrane. It should have been, they should have dropped the war.
You know what I mean, like as this imminent war thing, it could have just been like, we’re picking up this emissary. She has to get to the star base because she’s going to die. We have to transport her there as quickly as possible. Oh, we’re on the planet. God, we have to get out of this planet because we have to save her.
We have to save her. We have to save her. And that could have been the focus. And then, you know, it would have given the episode way more of a clear through line versus arguing we can’t be trapped. You know, we must, you know, we have to evolve. And his whole speech at the end was like, none of this makes any sense, Kirk.
Like, what are you, what are you saying here? This is not true what you’re saying. It doesn’t ring true. It feels very false and very hollow. It could have all been about her. Or you could have said, there is no, uh, you know, war, there is no, uh, she’s not sick, they’re transporting her to a starbase, they get pulled onto this planet, and they’re just trying to get off the planet, like, let us go, stop trapping us here, and something happens where she gets hurt and is dying on the planet, and then she could have been saved by the creature.
It’s like, there’s so many different ways they could have gone about this that would give it more focus, a little more interest. I found this episode just kind of like a hot mess. It really was just a hot mess. It just had no focus whatsoever. I found myself. Kind of consistent with our conversation last week and the comments that you read earlier, comparing this to, like, there’s a, there’s a wild number of episodes that we’ve just talked about where I keep thinking, boy, they really just did cherry pick for the first two seasons of Next Generation.
And they cherry picked from themselves in creation of the, the first Star Trek motion picture. It was space cloud. It was merging with the female in order to understand what love is. It was the mysterious, like we’ve got this connection, but we haven’t figured out what it is yet. Oh, it’s just primal, like physical human love.
Like, that’s what’s at work here. That’s the motion picture. There are aspects of episodes that we’ve talked about recently, which are evocative of the first season of Next Generation episodes, like the, they find the planet where everybody’s dead except for one little tiny house where there’s two old people.
And one of them turns out to be this omniscient, omnipotent, powerful thing. Feels very much 1967. But I feel like this one has this, it, for me, it tied into the headline when I was looking at the headlines and I saw that, yeah, here’s the lander on the moon. And I feel like, If that’s in the zeitgeist at this time, that’s the origin of Kirk’s speech.
It sounds very much like somebody who is living in an era of we are no longer limited to this planet and we won’t be held back and we’re going to go and we’re going to do great things. What are we going to do? We don’t know, but we’re going. Well, and there seems to be an urgency there that I think. I can’t help but wonder if, from our perspective, we’re listening to the emerging, we’re really breaking the sky open, and we’re going and doing this thing in a wild way, and everybody on Earth knows about it, and we’re all doing this thing together in a way, spiritually.
If that’s part of what Kirk’s speech was, and that to us all these decades later, it’s just like, Hmm, well, is that enough? I wonder if it’s a, actually now I’m thinking about it, 2025 Matt, Sean, maybe having trouble resonating with this. Cause it’s so far removed. But at the time you have the Vietnam war and you brought up the landing on the moon.
So space travel is. Everywhere. And then this war that we seem stuck in is not going anywhere. So I wonder if his speech about we have to go out, we have to get out of this, we can’t be stagnant. I wonder if that speech is more about the Vietnam War, about You know, we’re stuck in this and we have to get out of it.
And then even though it was a very sexist, I bet we can find another woman that will solve this war. It’s like, there’s almost this whole thing of like, are we in this quagmire because of men and machismo and this Vietnam war, we just can’t get out of it. Maybe there’s maybe if, if women were negotiating this, we could get out of this.
You think there’s a wave of cultural criticism here. Yeah, I wonder if both aspects of that were trying to play into the zeitgeist of not just landing on the moon and going into space, but also what the hell is going on with Vietnam. It’s interesting. It’s like a never ending war that we can’t get out of.
Interesting. Because another headline from the newspaper, and we can put the headline, we can put the newspaper back up as an image now. Another headline that stood out was at this point, Johnson was defending Vietnam. He was rebuffing critics. And we had talked during the first season about there’s, there was posturing from the Johnson administration about like, it’s almost done.
Don’t worry everybody. It’s almost done. And of course we know it’s not, and you know, we won’t be talking about the end of the Vietnam War during our coverage of the original series. It will outlive this program. So, I wonder if you’re hitting a nail that was invisible to us just because of the context that we’re watching it in being different from the context of the people of time.
I wonder if it really is a marriage of the space program and the Vietnam War with somebody saying like, look, things change. We have to move in order to change them and maybe we’re not the ones to do it. There does seem to be a, it’s patronizing, but I think everybody involved in this patronizing view toward women thought they were being laudatory.
Yes. I think it’s that kind of toxic masculinity, which is like, but we love you. Because the way they talk about the diplomat and the way they talk about the space cloud, which like there is an entire separate podcast that could go for a hundred episodes just about the idea of gendering a space cloud and Kirk’s Or Spock’s.
I don’t remember now whom says it, but one of them says, well, genders are universal, basically, which is like, like, not genders are everywhere. And it’s just like, dude, there’s asexual reproduction on earth. Nobody’s saying that. Exactly. This is universal. Like, You know, there’s a mommy germ and a daddy germ and then they have germ sex and then they have a little germ baby.
It’s like, no, this is not what happens. And it’s a space cloud. It’s a space cloud. And the idea that somehow the space cloud has brainwave patterns that match up with women think. It’s just like, but you can tell they all think they’re being really like, like, yeah. And that’s, that’s okay. Like you can tell they’re like, like, but we’re not saying they should get out of this business.
We’re saying it’s okay that they’re women. And it’s just like, okay, it’s patronizing. It’s not great. And the whole, I feel like even that final statement is part of that of like, they’ll find some other woman to solve this war. He said, he doesn’t say they’ll find some other person. And I think it does kind of lean into what you just said is like, are, do they think they are saying really positive things like, yeah, maybe the way forward can be paved by women?
Yeah. Yeah. And I do agree with you. And they’re like, I think they thought they were the good guys in that conversation. Fast forward 40 years, 50 years. It’s like, Oh no. Yeah. Not good. Yeah. So to step back from like, we’ve been discussing like, is this cultural criticism, is this them trying to be the good guys and saying things that time doesn’t treat kindly and all of that. But just from a, there’s a part of this episode I do like, I like the portrayal of Zefram Cochrane. I like the portrayal of him. He’s got this real dashing leading man look. I mean, he looks like, he looks like a guy who’s going to be like, I’m going to fly in space. He looks like that guy.
And I like his portrayal as kind of like, I’ve just figured out a way to survive. I just cobbled stuff together as I needed to. And I figured out how to survive and I’ve been alone, but I’ve got this thing here with me. I call it the companion. And like, I like all of the portrayal of that. Plays it very all American, says what he means, means what he says.
He has no sub, he’s not trying to hide anything. Early on they’re like, you’re not telling us everything, but it’s a little more along the lines of he’s almost embarrassed to admit. Yeah. Like it comes across like, I’ve kind of been here for 150 years, like, like, oops, like, and there’s an aspect of that that I like, and I’ve always liked it.
And I like the movie first contact. Oh, I love the first contact movie. It’s great. And this is supposed to be the same guy, kind of a wild casting choice. If you’re trying to keep canon canon and say like, yeah, that’s Zefram Cochrane on the planet. And this guy is Zefram Cochrane, because those two actors, one does not turn into the other.
The only, like Oh no, they explain that, they actually explain that across the different shows, of like, he’s kind of this drunk who’s lost his way, and then the first contact shows him kind of getting on the right path. And then, referencing in Enterprise and other shows, is of like, It’s referenced that he goes off and hit near the end of his life and he disappeared.
Nobody knows where he went. Oh, I completely understand that. They explain, they explain how he like, he kind of lost his way and then found his way back. And I love the fact that they explained the way he found his way back was Picard came in and like slapped him around and said, get with it, man, and pulled him in.
So it’s like, I like that. That’s, that’s not the problem for me. The problem for me is that first contact actor, drawing a blank on his name now, he’s a tall, gangly man. Yes he is. And he’s fine. He’s great in the role. And he’s a good actor. And I like him very much. But physically, they’re saying, like this guy turns into that guy.
Because, and one of the aspects of this that I do lean on for my own headcanon. And the first guy is older than the second, the original guy. I mean, the second guy is older than the original guy. Yes, but that’s one of the things he says. He’s like, he’s like four. The companion de aged me to a young man, he says.
Like, which means he’s younger than he is than we see him in first contact. Yes, yes. So I’m like, part of my headcanon is just like, the liquor years were really rough. Like, that’s part of my headcanon response to this, like, okay, it’s like, it, he really did a job on himself. But there’s an aspect to all of this where it’s, he’s the, in this, he’s the inadvertent recluse.
He’d gone into space to die. He said, I wanted to die in space. And then they come to the end where it’s, oh, the companion is willing to let me go, but he chooses to stay out of love. And I’m wondering what aspects of that do you think they did or did not pick up on in creating the first contact representation of this guy as the kind of man who would say, I’m going to go into space and to die.
What kind of, of. I guess I’m asking what seeds were planted in this episode that you think that they actually picked up on for the portrayal of him in future episodes? Well, in first contact, he’s a drunk and he’s a loner. He’s a loner in the movie. Like, he doesn’t really have friends, he pushes everybody away, and so it’s kind of like, I feel like they did kind of pick up on that thread a little bit in the movie portrayal of this character that was introduced there.
So I don’t, I don’t think they kind of like said, okay, here’s a character name, let’s do what we want. It did feel like they were kind of playing off of that. He’s been a loner his entire life, and now he finds love at the end of his life, and is willing to kind of stick it out. That’s kind of the way I took it.
So for me, it didn’t feel completely disjointed. I wonder, do you not feel that? Do you feel like there was a disconnect? No, I feel like there’s kind of a, a big meta one, which is they meet Zefram Cochrane. And he, he knows 150 years have passed and they’re like, we’re from the Starfleet and like they introduced themselves and there’s discussion amongst the Kirk and Spock.
And I don’t recall now if Cochrane is involved in the conversation or not, but it’s effectively like there are schools and hospitals named after this man all over the galaxy. They’re like, there are cities named after him. And this is him. And it’s kind of like the original series version of what happens in next, in the first contact film where it’s like, this guy invents warp, which makes our future happen.
Like this is the guy. And for me, it of course is not intended in the creation of this original series episode. How could it possibly be? He’s super, super casual. With the fact that these guys show up and are effectively representing his future. He takes it on at face value, super casually, like, oh, there’s a star fleet and you guys are flying around using my technology and everything you are, you know who I am because I am talked about in your society.
He’s been unplugged from that. He doesn’t have a moment where he’s just like, Wrestling in any way with I, I did that and I kind of feel like it was absolutely accidental because they were trying to tell a story and they were like, this is the story we’re telling. And I feel like there’s a moment in First Contact, where Riker is talking to Cochrane and says, Someone once said, don’t try to be a great man, just be a man and let history do the rest.
And Cochrane’s response is, that’s good advice. Wait, who said that? And Riker laughs and is like, you did in about 25 years right over there where a statue to you will be. And I feel like this portrayal of Cochrane accidentally is a Cochrane who knows what’s coming. This is a Cochrane who has been through all of that with the Next Generation crew and is on this planet like, yeah, I knew the Starfleet was going to happen.
I knew all of that was coming. I feel like it’s inadvertent easter egg. It’s accidental because obviously they didn’t know any of this was going to happen. Obviously not. But. It’s very easy to figure out why. Because if he was an old man and flew off into the sunset, he would have already at that point in his life seen his warp engines taking hold and Starfleet, even though it wasn’t called Starfleet yet, starting to take shape and spaceships being built and it starting to kind of evolve.
He would have already known this was going to happen. And he would have also been giving speeches and all that kind of stuff. So it’s like you could very quickly right away say that’s maybe why he wasn’t just so. Like, in shock as to what’s happening, because he saw it starting to happen in his life. One of the things I like is that he is, they, they show in Enterprise, he’s already gone. Yes. So he doesn’t see, it’s not called, he’s not, there’s no Federation of Planets and everything like that. No, but he sees them taking shape of all these ships being built. Like he can see where it’s heading. But it’s, for me, one of the nice little nuggets in this is when he sees Spock and he’s like, you’re a Vulcan, aren’t you?
Yes. And like, for me, like that connects right to the, the, First contact. He’d know Vulcans. Like, of course he knows a Vulcan. It’s just like he reaches out, you’re a Vulcan, aren’t you? And like shakes his hand. Like for me, there’s enough there to say like this kind of casual attitude about all of this is because he’s had not just the insight of his lived life. But when he first invented the warp drive, the first contact experience, and I like, I like for myself that idea of like, he knew what was coming.
He’s not surprised that a bunch of people showing up in the same uniform, but they’re not all the same species. He knew, he knew what was going to happen. So it’s not like, like, wait a minute, what’s a Vulcan doing here? He’s like, and you’re a Vulcan. Like that’s, but I will say when he first shows up in the episode, Sean, he’s, he’s Excited.
Not just to see people. Oh, he’s super excited. The way he’s like, hey, hey. Yeah. And it’s all those shots of him just being like, yeah. And he comes over. It’s like, he is excited. He is. To meet all these people. But then he also thought that that was shot really nicely. I liked the shooting of that. They gave a sense of scope and scale.
It looked like he was really far away. And I was, I couldn’t help but in that moment, think like, How did they shoot that? That made it look so vast and camera tricks. Yeah. Like really well done. Cause he runs across that and he’s like, Hey, it’s like, yeah, he’s like a puppy dog. He’s, he’s like finally people to talk to.
And then he immediately gets sexist. Yes. Unfortunately. As you do. Yeah. It’s gonna happen. So everybody, what did you think about this episode? Did you see anything in this episode that Matt and I did not talk about or did we say anything? Yes! Suddenly Matt interrupts. We just skimmed over Scotty being Scotty in charge on the ship.
Oh yeah, we did. Yeah. Awesome stuff. There was great character development with Spock and Kirk, like on the planet. They discover that this thing is intelligent, they can speak to it, and they’re talking to it, and Spock’s like, let’s ask it about X, Y, and Z. We can learn so much from it. And Kirk’s like, we don’t have time for that.
I love that aspect of Spock is science Spock. He just wants to learn. There’s little aspects like that in this episode that I thought were very charming and very good. I liked when McCoy found Spock. After being knocked out by the thing and runs over to him, he’s just like, it was fascinating. He, it was a massive charge of electricity.
It’s just like, it’s like, are you okay? And, uh, and yeah, everything aboard the Enterprise, we, we are in a weird state where for me, so much of what happens on the ship when the main officers are off ship is in some ways It’s more interesting to me because you’re seeing the competence of this crew.
Nobody’s panicking. Nobody’s dealing with like, we’ve lost contact with the shuttlecraft in a way that’s just like, dear God, what are we going to do? It’s well, scan for the stuff. When you find the trail, we’re going to follow it and we’re going to follow it as far as we need to. Oh, it’s leading to this asteroid field.
All right. We’re going to have to start scanning them individually. Of course. And Uhura’s like, that’s going to take forever. He’s like, well, we’ll just do one at a time. We’ll do one at a time and we’ll, and we’ll get them all. And then it’s just like, eventually, like they get there. And it’s just because Scotty’s a good commander and Sulu’s a good helmsman and Uhura’s doing her job.
Like everybody’s doing their job and they express concern to each other, but it’s not panicked. It’s like, gosh, how, like, how are we going to, like, what, what do we do next? How do we best do this in the best possible way? And I loved all that. That was great. Competent people being competent. Yeah. So, you know, hats off to the 1960s audience that let the producers know we like Scotty because we get this because they recognized back then, like, Oh, they want more Scotty.
So here you go. So as I was saying, jump into the comments. Let us know about what you saw or didn’t see in this conversation that you wanted to hear or talk about. And we will visit those comments next time. And next time we’re going to be visiting the episode of Friday’s Child. Please jump into the comments and let us know what that’s about.
Wrong answers only. And before we sign off, Matt, is there anything that you wanted to share about what’s coming up in your main channel with our audience? Uh, by the time this is out, the latest episode will be about this zinc battery, um, which is really kind of zinc is kind of becoming a thing in energy storage.
And we explore why and what the benefits are and the challenges. So I find it fascinating. As for me, you could look for my books. If you’re interested in taking a look, they’re available wherever books are sold, or you can visit my website, seanferrell. com. Don’t forget, if you’d like to support the show, comments are great, likes are great, subscribes are great, sharing with your friends, those are great, and the great thing about all those great things?
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If you’d like a sample of what I’m talking about, we released an Out of Time widely on YouTube recently. You can go back into, I think it was three episodes ago, and take a look at what we do in that program. And if you’re interested, we hope you’ll be interested in joining us. Thank you so much, everybody, for taking the time to watch or listen.
We’ll talk to you next time.