Matt and Sean ask whether Star Trek SNW Season 4, Episode 3, "Human Best Friend" works better as a live-action Lower Decks episode. The shore leave setup gives Strange New Worlds room for drunk-planet chaos, La’an taking over a gang, Spock mind-melding with a plant, and Scotty and Ortegas turning into a buddy comedy. But with only 10 episodes in the season, they also question whether this much goofiness helps or hurts the larger story.
Order Sean’s next book, “In the Fields We Thirst” here: https://undecided.link/in-the-fields-we-thirst
Chapters
- 00:00: Intro
- 02:46: Today’s Episode
- 03:07: Episode Description
- 03:44: This Time in History
- 05:25: Today’s Discussion
• 0:00: Intro • 01:03: Viewer feedback • 03:32: Today's episode • 04:00: This time in history • 06:07: Episode discussion
Transcript
Intro
Sean Ferrell: In this episode of Trek in Time, we're talking about the Courtship of Eddie's father. More on that in a moment. Welcome everybody, to Trek in Time. This is the podcast that takes a look at Star Trek, all of Star Trek in chronological stardate order. We're also taking a look at the world at the time of original broadcast. We are currently this close to the end of the original series. And once we finish the original series, believe it or not, yes, we're going to do the movies and we'll be moving on to Next Generation and then eventually weaving in Deep Space Nine and Voyager and well, by that time it'll be 2059. But we're taking a break from the original series right now because we're doing Strange New Worlds. Yes, we like to take a look at the brand new episodes of Star Trek that are dropping while we're doing our rewatch of old episodes. So thank you for joining us. Here we are still Strange New Worlds, Season four, Episode three, Human Best Friend. And who am I talking about when I say we. Well, talking about my human best friend. Yeah, that's right. It's my brother. It's Matt. He is the host of Undecided with Matt Ferrell, which takes a look at emerging tech and its impact on our lives. And I forgot to introduce myself. I'm Sean Ferrell, Matt's brother. And I'm a writer. I wrote some sci fi, I write some horror. As a matter of fact, I have. I keep saying to people when we open these episodes, more information about my book as it becomes available. Well, big news for me, big news for everybody here. You can pre order my book now. It is now available wherever you buy your book. So whether that's bookshop.org, which I love because it supports local bookstores or Amazon or Barnes and Noble, wherever you'd like to go, we'll have a link in the show notes. You can go pre order my next book, which is dropping in April of 2027. It's in the Fields We Thirst. It is a little horror novel I've been working on for most of my life. I hope everybody enjoys it. So I already mentioned Matt at the just a moment ago and I mentioned that we're going to be talking about the Courtship of Eddie's Father. Matt, first, how are you? And second, do you know what I'm talking about? Matt Ferrell: Well, first, that intro was a wild ride. Sean Ferrell: Yes, everybody was glued. Everybody was glued to the hood. Matt Ferrell: On the the second point, I do not get the reference to the Courtship of Eddie's father at all. I never watched that, so I don't know. Sean Ferrell: Yeah, if you don't know it, why don't you just listen to it a little bit right now under the hook section, just click that link and listen to the theme song from the Courtship of Eddie's Father. Matt Ferrell: Okay. I know this. Yes. Okay. My best friend Sean.
Today’s Episode
Sean Ferrell: It just seems to fit. It's. I want to see that theme song along with brief clip of that along with just an image of Spock and Kirk would make my heart grow three sizes, let's say. So today we're going to be talking about the third episode of the fourth season of Strange New Worlds. This is the 32nd episode of Strange New Worlds produced. It's the 33rd released. It's originally written by Kathryn Lyn and directed by Yana Gorskaya. This is an episode that originally dropped on August 6, 2026. Those flashing lights you see and those alarms you hear, it's not time for you to run out into the street screaming. Nope, it's the read alerts. Time for Matt to share with us the Wikipedia description. But this is not even a Wikipedia description. This is actually from the very valuable fandom website Memory Alpha, which is completely focused on Star Trek. So, Matt, jump into the Memory Alpha summary. Matt Ferrell: Shore leave on a pleasure planet turns dangerous when the crew's promised escape stops behaving like fun. Sean Ferrell: Not entirely grammatic, but it is a sentence. Matt Ferrell: Yes, I got tripped up there. Sean Ferrell: Yeah. This episode originally on August 6, 2026, what was the world like at the time of original broadcast? Well, Matt, I don't need to tell you this, but the number one song that everybody was rocking out to on Spotify. That's right, it was Into You by Ariana Grande. Take it away, Matt. Good. Sean Ferrell: And at the movies, Matt, you forecast this last week saying, hmm, the number one movie's not gonna stay Odyssey for long. And it certainly didn't. What? We will be talking about this one for a few weeks. That's right. Spider Man, Brand New Day took the number one spot and at this point has become one of the most successful movies ever to drop from Hollywood. Matt Ferrell: Good job, Spider Man. Ever. Ever. Yep.
This Time in History
Sean Ferrell: And on television on August 6, 2026, a new documentary dropped on HBO. This is a five episode true crime docu series about exotic reptile smuggling. It's created by the same team that created Tiger King. Yeah, it's Monsters of God. And just reading the sentence, this was by the same team as Tiger King. I had a whiplash flashback to the early days of the Pandemic when nobody was allowed to go outside. And everybody said, thank goodness we have this documentary about crazy people and large cats. And in the news on this day, August 6, 2026, the headline from the New York Times revolved around hacks on the US Water supply follow years of warnings and neglect. Federal and state officials are racing to address an assault on the nation's water supply that they believe is the work of Iranian hackers. That's right. We put a stick in a hornet's nest and then we were confused about what the hornets got angry on. Now to our discussion about Human Best Friend. Matt, do you you back when we watched the first episode of this season and you had already seen beyond that episode, so I had bemoaned like, oh no, I don't know if I like the tone that this first episode forecasts for the season. And you said, oh, well, you know, hold on, I've seen things. So you know, let's, let's give them some room to breathe. And then we talked about the second episode and I was like, holy cow. Like boy, did that turn into a better episode. And then we come to the third episode and I am genuinely, genuinely curious. Which side of that fence does this episode fall on for you?
Today’s Discussion
Matt Ferrell: I did not hate this episode, but I also didn't love this episode. I felt that sense of whiplash, of like, it feels like, you know, like they made one for themselves. They made one for us and then they made another one for themselves. And now I'm hoping number four is they come back to us again and make one for us. I have a feeling that might be what they're doing is because they're kind of like, it's a humorous one, lighthearted, super dark, scary and then lighthearted. I'm wondering if they're just trying to keep that balance going. Cause like you don't want the show to feel too dour, too dark, too dreary. So they're probably trying to bookend that horrific episode with two lighthearted ones. But yeah, this one was a little rough in the sense of if you don't like silly, goofy Star Trek episodes, you are going to hate this episode. But I'm going to defend it. Sean wouldn't defend it because every single Star Trek series has goofy ass episodes just like this. Every single one. Original series, Trouble of Tribbles. There's been numerous ones in the original series that both of us were like, what is going on here? They did it Next Generation multiple times. Was it. Commander Barclay says hello. There's been a bunch of them in Deep Space Nine and Voyager. Every single show has goofy episodes to lighten the mood. So I'm going to defend it on that count. In the sense of I thought this one, as far as goofy episodes are, I thought this was way better than episode one. Like, this is way better than the start of the season. I think this, I think that was a train wreck. This one I don't think is a train wreck. It's just kind of a. If you don't like the musicals, you're not going to like the musical episode. If you don't like goofy episodes, you're not going to like this. But I still felt like it felt Star Trek y. It just wasn't my cup of tea. Sean Ferrell: Right.
Matt Ferrell: If that makes sense. There are going to be Star Trek fans that will like this episode and for them, I'm glad this exists. It's not for me. But David Foley, I'm very happy that David Foley was in this. Sean Ferrell: Yeah, Dave Foley, hats off to him. And as far as, like, goofy, goofy characters that have been portrayed by comedic actors, I think he's up there. As far as like instantly creating a character that I don't know how they would do it, but I would love it if it returned. Matt Ferrell: Yeah, me too. Sean Ferrell: There's. This is, this is Harry Mudd. I had no problem with Dave Foley showing up and just being like, oh, I didn't see you there. Actually, I did. Going from there, it set the tone perfectly. Matt Ferrell: And his character has a dark past. Like in the, in, at the end when he talks about, like, I didn't know he used to be like this. It was like, oh, he's got some kind of dark, sordid history. There's something there that could be a lot of fun. What if he came back and he's out of that planet and his dark side comes back out again, you know what I mean? Like, there could be something fun about that.
Sean Ferrell: They could do something like that. I have a lot of thoughts bouncing around in my head. So much like the opening to this episode, I may not be fully coherent. So I hope people are willing to join me on this wild ride of how I'm going to describe my feelings about this episode. I've seen some chatter online, mainly on Reddit, where I've seen people discussing Star Trek in general, but this particular season in general, and not liking the tone of the season. I haven't read details, but I have seen people voice something similar to what you and I have said. When you only have 10 episodes in a season, you don't have a lot of episodes to squander on either weak scripts, which I would say was episode one, or goofball like this, when, I mean, this is now 10% of your season, and if you have another goofball now, you've got a 20% of your season. If you have another weak script now, there's 40% of your season has been either goofball or weak script. So it's like you don't have as much wiggle room. Having said that, this one does not, to me, suffer from the weak script issues of the first season at all. I felt like it was very tight. I felt like it was paced well. And every single set piece of this episode felt like it. It worked on its own terms. The karaoke to Klingon with Total Eclipse of the Heart, I thought that was great. I thought that was. I thought that was. I thought that was really original and more fun than if she had been singing simply Klingon opera and somebody had been like, she knows Klingon opera. That would have been funny. But it being Total Eclipse of the Heart, she's doing power ballads in Klingon because it's. And the way they phrase it as, like, total Klingon power ballad. The idea that there are Klingons who are listening to Klingon versions of these things made me laugh. That it kind of harkens back to the throwaway line where it's.
You haven't really understood Macbeth until you've heard it in the original Klingon. It's that kind of hearkening back to do the Klingons have their versions of our things that they hold onto for reasons that, yeah, a power ballad, okay. It kind of fits in with the mood of Klingon opera. I loved it. So that I thought was funny. But some of the things that they were doing did hearken back to a little bit of the feelings from episode one, in that it didn't always feel like these were the characters. It just felt like these were set pieces. Let's show somebody singing a power ballad in Klingon. It happens to be Number One. In no way referencing her as a person. I felt like the only people that genuinely felt like, okay, this is that person inebriated was Spock Spock. That was it. Everybody else felt like, interchangeably, like, let's do a crazy frat party drunk, including Scotty, which was unfortunate and very disappointing because we have an episode that revolves around Scotty being drunk. And this performance, the characterization and the writing on this did not feel like they had done any kind of double take on what Scotty, when he's drunk is like. It was depicted very much like he's kind of putting on the funny party hats. And we've seen the classic episode. They even harken back to it with, what is this? It's green. Okay. Like, you're aware of that moment of Star Trek history. You couldn't write and then direct this actor to portray Scotty in a way that was that kind of super committed to his duty that. That Scotty demonstrated, because he wasn't the kind of like, I'm going to put on a weird costume sort of thing. So the places that felt like they were tightly written and worked and were entertaining didn't always feel like they were of these characters. So for me, that was a weak spot.
I found myself thinking, I mean, you said at the beginning of your response, I'm going to defend it. I'm going to defend it, too, for at least having as much of the story. I wish it had focused on more in it at all, which was the. I wouldn't even call it the B storyline because they barely touch on it. But Spock's hallucinations of Kirk and sitting down in that room to talk to the hallucination, because clearly my mind wants to have this moment. And then it being revealed. This is actually Kirk. He's been there the whole time. The reveal being conveyed through him slapping Spock, I thought was great. Matt Ferrell: Yes.
Sean Ferrell: And the closing line of, are you going to hug me? Do you want me to? I thought that was fantastic. Give me. Give me just a little bit more of that. Give me just one scene, maybe montage style of Spock revealing details about himself. Scattershot. So that we know as deep fans. Okay. When Spock says, I told you everything, and Kirk is like, yeah, and it's all in the vault. That's a touching moment. Give us an earlier shot of him saying, like, I had a favorite pet who died because of something I did as a child. I did, like, have him dropping truth bombs on. I do not know if my father genuinely cares for me. Make it hard. And then that closing line will have even greater depth for people who don't know the history of the show in the way that other people like us do. So I was like. I was like, you had. You had a perfect moment to kind of wipe away some of the pushback that people had to the Mind Meld episode where people were saying, well, that's too cheap a shortcut. You've just cheapened their relationship, because you made it about this. And here was the opportunity to. They. They did do it. They had the like, no, this is about personal connection and sharing who you are. Not just having touched minds, but actually, like, connecting because you chose to. That's what their friendship is built on. Having this moment was really great, I thought, and I wanted more of that because I understood in a kind of Perfect Strangers kind of way that what they were going for with Scotty and Ortegas, and I can take or leave that. It didn't bother me, but it didn't rise the level of, oh, I'm really loving this back and forth. I'm loving the relationship they're developing between these two. Because I'm like, it's fine. It's just fine.
Matt Ferrell: This episode is the movie Dude, where's my car? Yeah, it's that movie. And so it's not so much the relationship. I mean, the relationship was a key aspect that they were telling between Ortegas and Scotty, but it was ancillary. It wasn't necessary. It was more just the plot, like a fetch quest in a video game of them just trying to find the mystery of where the hell the shuttle is so they can get back in time for that thing. It was just there for a loose thread to kind of string us along to have fun and just kind of be kind of like, oh, isn't that kind of cute? And that's how I felt about their relationship, where it's like, there's not much meat there. There's not much to it. But it was a nice way for them to kind of resolve the thing they had established in episode one. It's like, okay, they. They closed that loop. It's now closed. The two of them now understand each other. So on that regard, I thought that was interesting just for Scotty more than her, because Scotty goes off into the future and, of course, has relationships with Sulu, another pilot, and like, things like that. So it's kind of like. It's interesting to see how he's broadened his worldview because of Ortegas in this episode. So I thought that was kind of nice. I will push back on you, though, for the portrayal of him as a drunk, because I have made a note of this myself. I said the same thing in my notes of, like, this is not how I know Scotty as a drunk from the original series, but he's a young man. Think about, like, getting drunk when you're in college versus you get drunk with some friends after work when you're in your 30s. Sean Ferrell: Right.
Matt Ferrell: It's like, there's very different aspects. So the fact that he is a different kind of drunk here is fine for me. But it still comes back to. It didn't really enhance the characters. It didn't enhance anything to the storytelling. And then again, in defense of the show, they're not drunk. They're intoxicated from some kind of. It's like somebody taking ecstasy and combined with other hallucinogens. Sean Ferrell: And, yeah, they kept making the point. It's specific to everybody. I liked. I did like the fact that they were like, if you hold on. If you hold on to anger, it's going to do something else to you entirely. And so it was like. I liked the fact that they played with all of that, too, and they Matt Ferrell: kept talking about your journey. The whole, everybody's on their own journey, and it's like an acid trip, so everybody's gonna behave in very unique ways. So that kind of also explained to me why the captain was behaving in a way we've never seen him behave. Scotty is behaving in a way that we've never seen him behave. Because this is something completely different from just, like, getting drunk on, you know, Romulan ale or something like that. This is something completely different. Sean Ferrell: Yeah, good point.
Matt Ferrell: Yeah. But for me, I'm with you. The B plot of Spock and Kirk was my favorite part of this entire episode. From the very first moment where they leave the room and Spock's hallucinating you, and I think I'm hallucinating you because I need a friend and I want to confide in somebody. He's doing all this stuff. And that scene, I was like, this is hysterical. He's hallucinating Kirk. And the second time he showed up, I was like, I think he's actually there because he kind of walked in from out of frame. Like, he was just waiting in, like, the. The side room, and then just walked out when those guys left. And then it made me realize, I think Kirk was doing it deliberately. He likes to be, like, mischievous and, like, screw with people and be kind of a prankster. And I think he was doing this deliberately to Spock and was never correcting him, saying, no, no, no, I'm actually here. He was letting Spock unload because he knew Spock needed to do that. And two, I may be able to have some fun with this. So I thought that was a great portrayal of Kirk as Kirk. It's a very Kirk thing to do in my mind, of being. Not being a dick, but Being, like, you know, playful.
Sean Ferrell: Well, I mean, I had to lean into that, to lean into everything you just said a little bit more. Kirk was there and was under the influence of that stuff as well. Yeah, exactly. And so it's heightening his tendencies toward that kind of mischievous nature. And you also referred back to, like, the planet is effective. The. The entire mode of this is it's about your journey. It's an acid trip. But for some people, it's also going to be more than that. It's the kind of like, Uhura is just in there having the best party she's ever been to, but other people are having emotional breakthroughs of different types. And I'm like, the episode we've just seen Kirk go through previous to this was him coming to terms with, I am so desperate not to be the man my father was. I think I have to walk away from my child so that I don't disappoint him. Where does he go after that? He goes to a place to unwind. And what does he do? His journey is to connect with Spock. It goes back to that being the point of him being there. So I like that a lot. And I do agree. You just have to watch an episode like the Corbomite Maneuver or any of the episodes where he gets the ship out of danger by basically faking it to. To a threatening alien, where he's just like, we've got this thing, and we're going to. We are ready to blow ourselves up, because that's what we do. We don't let our technology fall into the hands of anybody else. And everybody on the bridge looks at him like, what the hell are you doing? And he's just, like, winking and like, trust me, this is going to work. Like, that's. This is that moment of him. Yeah. He hears the doorbell go off. Spock goes to answer the door, and Kirk goes and hides behind a cabinet. And then when people leave, he steps back out because he just like, this is great. I get to hang out with Spock. Nobody else knows I'm here. It's just him and me.
And he legitimately likes Spock. He does like this guy. So he's like, yeah. The fact that part of my confusion about this episode, and, you know, you and I just talked about a bit about it, like, in order to get those connective moments that we just described, we have to know the show very deeply. We have to bring it to the show for the show. And yet the episode is called Human Best Friend. I'm like, is There a version of this script that started with all of this being inverted. And everybody in the background on the B plot is having this weird kind of like, where'd we leave our ship? And the main plot was that the Kirk Spock relationship. I can't help but think that, because the episode is titled about them, and it's just like, okay, why did you do that? Matt Ferrell: Otherwise, I will disagree with you on that. Sean Ferrell: From their perspective, the writer's perspective, it's Matt Ferrell: Ortega's and Scotty are now close friends. So they're close friends. And then you've got Spock and Kirk becoming best friends. It's one that. The title, I think, holds to multiple characters on the show. So I don't think it's. Sean Ferrell: But didn't Spock say, do I need a human best friend? I think Spock actually says that. Yeah. That's what, to me, ties it to the B plot more. Matt Ferrell: I don't disagree with you. I wish they had inverted it. I wish it had been more about. Especially after that last episode, I think. Wish it would have been great if it had been more about Spock and Kirk. And then you could have had Kirk having his own catharsis based on what had just happened. And so it's like you could have had some really nice character development and evolution there. And then the B plot is Scotty and Ortega's burying the hatchet.
Sean Ferrell: Yeah. And that takes me back to what I had said before. I would have loved a moment where you had showing Spock dropping truth bombs about himself. And the other thing I wished for was if they're having this long conversation. Conversation where they're just sitting in a hotel room together just talking. Do we also get a moment where Kirk says, I'm so conflicted about what to do about my son. And just have him say just that. Have those nuggets in rapid fire showing this huge passage of time, the two of them having this long conversation. The other thing I don't want to lose at all from this episode is Spock mind melding with a plant and then seeing everybody as plants. I thought that that was just, like, absolutely unnecessarily funny. And I was on board for Ortega Matt Ferrell: with her cast going like this. And then it showed what he saw, and it was the little cactus with his arms up. Yeah.
Sean Ferrell: And him saying, my mind to your leaves. It was just like. It was ridiculous. It was over the top. It was cartoonish. This was effectively. I. I finished watching this episode, and then I was. I was going about my morning, getting some coffee. And I was just like, that was an outer decks episode, a lower decks episode. It was just like, yes, it was. And it worked because those episodes work. And I'm just like, yeah, there's Trek and then there's animated Trek. And animated Trek is. I full. I fully believe animated Trek should be considered as as much a part of the canon, as non animated. But it is a different flavor. It is a. It holds a different spot. And it felt like, to me, this episode felt like this was a lower decks episode where, you know, if this had all been animated, it wouldn't have been any different, and it might have actually fit the tone of the storytelling a little bit closer. You know, you started off by saying, I'm going to defend it. I feel like I'm defending it equally as much as you are, because I was like, I didn't feel like this was an episode that I would avoid in the future. Because no different than some of the original series episodes that we've been talking about from season three, where we're like, wow, these are some not good episodes. But there's still a moment that I remember from my childhood. There's a moment, a scene where I'm like, oh, yeah. But that critical moment always stood out to me as one of the coolest things about that character. And I feel like this episode did that with the Kirk Spock relationship, where I felt like, you got those moments where I walked away from this thinking, like, I will remember this episode because of the B plot. I'll remember some of those things. I'll remember the way Kirk slapped Spock. I'll remember the way Spock said, are you gonna hug me? Do you want me to? Like, you know, and.
And the kind of loving relationship that's already developed there, where Kirk is just like, you need a hug, Hugs him, and then Spock's hands reluctantly go up and accept the hug and reciprocate when they're in the hotel room. I was just like, that's. That's the beginning of the loving relationship that we hope to see. Matt Ferrell: So there's also the. I gotta bring up the Uhura thing because I thought her storyline, as thin as it was, as small as it was, I thought it was great. And it was perfect for her because her character in the original series sings in numerous episodes. There's an episode where she's singing in the cafeteria and everybody's enraptured with her. She's this beautiful woman that has charms and can charm a room. And here she is charming a room and having the best party that everybody wants to get into. And she's being very selective about who can come into her journey. And it's like she's so buttoned up and proper when she's on duty. And here she is in. Her journey is to let loose and just have fun, to finally release because she's never done that on the show. Sean Ferrell: She's been so wild together, bringing people together. Right. Matt Ferrell: So I thought her storyline, as small as it was, was very on point for her character. I don't know if you, you agree with that.
Sean Ferrell: I, I do. I think that there, I really liked the final shot of her where she turns around, she just yells, who wants to do shots? And it's just like, yeah, she's just, she's having a great moment for herself. La' an also was the other character I mentioned before. Spock felt like he was the one who was most consistent with, what are they like when they're inebriated? I felt like La'an's also made sense because they're, they're teasing out this, this element of her where she is feeling some sort of genetic urgency around power and strength and it's becoming, it's rising closer and closer to the surface. So for that to be hers, her journey in that moment, becoming, effectively taking over a gang in one fell, in one 60 second moment where she's just like, I convinced them to demand more of you to turn over the ship. And just like, now I need to get your shirt, otherwise they won't learn the lesson I'm trying to teach them. I was just like, okay, that, that worked. Uhura worked. Nobody really stood out as being problematic. It just sometimes stood out as being like, this is what, this is what you're going to show us. Because sometimes it just felt kind of generic. And then having the ticking clock. I understand why you need a ticking clock. Oh, my gosh. The peace talks have been moved up and here come the people. And I'm just like, if that's when, if those two warring factions were ready to have peace talks at the spur of a moment like that, why was it two weeks away? Like, yeah, yeah. I found myself thinking, okay, there's a goofiness to that. That just doesn't need to be there. You know, at a certain point, can't it just be, we're supposed to rendezvous with the ship, they will declare us as missing in action and wonder if we're in trouble. We have to find the shuttlecraft so that we can get back to the ship that could have been enough.
Because this episode is, at base, goofy. So give us a goofy reason. The whole ticking clock, the will there be peace? The offended dignitaries. We've seen that so many times on Star Trek, various Star Trek shows we're going to see it in. And I think there's at least a half dozen episodes of Next Generation where Picard is pulling the diplomatic fat out of the fire at the very end. And everybody's just like, whoa, it came close to being war until you sang that song. We're gonna see it again and again and again. We didn't need that in this one. And I also understand this. I say this as just a point of. If you're watching any program and there's something in the program that makes you stop and think, I am currently watching a program, then it's kind of. Matt Ferrell: It's kind of.
Sean Ferrell: It's not the kind of. You want to slide people into the storytelling so that they forget that they're consuming something that is being told to them. And then they come at the end, they're just like, wow. That was. That was. You know, the suspension of disbelief never was interrupted. And this episode kept reminding me, effectively, you're watching a sitcom in this world, in this moment, in this episode, nobody else is available to do anything for them other than our main characters. Not even Pelia, who is operating as the chief engineer of the ship. Scotty, this season. We've only seen her in a couple of scenes, but she is supposed to be the chief engineer of the ship. Scotty is working subservient to her. At no point did anybody say, can we go to find a comms unit and contact the Enterprise, because there's going to be an entire B squad that is going to be able to do everything we need to be able to do, including the diplomatic mission. Having a captain get back to the ship at the last minute to show up with a tattoo on his face, still inebriated, trying to fake his way through the diplomatic stuff. It's a sitcom and I get it. It was funny having him read his speech off of his fingers. He went into the tattoo shop and was just like, this is an important speech. I need it on my body. I got the joke of that. But within this episode, watching the episode, it just kind of like, was another element that pushed me out of it a little bit.
Matt Ferrell: You hit the nail on the head when you said this is like a lower decks episode. Yeah, it is. It felt very like a lower decks. It was humorous. Like, it had the same style of humor. The. The rapid jump in between the different scenes and the jokes and the delivery, it felt very lower decks, and I liked it for that. It just felt goofy. I know there's gonna be a lot of people, they're going to hate it because of that. Yeah, I'm still here defending it, saying, yeah, there's a. There's, there's a. There's some good. There's some good in here. There's some good.
Sean Ferrell: I think. I think it's one of those things where I'm reminded of, like, in thinking about the lower decks. The lower decks has an animation style that is similar to Family Guy, Rick and Morty, where the little aside comments where it's just like, well, like, does he have a phaser? Well, I think he took one quick cut to a person clearly without a phaser running for their lives. Like that kind of, you know, punchline to the setup of the jokes. I would have liked this episode if it had more of that. I would have liked it if they had been like, does anybody know where Spock is? Have we even seen him cut to him saying, like, I don't know if my father loves me. And Jim going, like, oh, that stings. Like, like, like having that kind of moment would have. Would have punched it up in the way that, like, okay, if you're going to be producing goofy, that feels sitcom-y, go full sitcom-y, like, make it function the way a sitcom does. And then you could have had, like, the pacing of it would have maybe benefited from speeding it up a little bit. And then as a viewer, I don't have time to think, like, wait a minute, don't they have an entire B command crew? Like, you literally have the captain and number one on this planet, which means you've got a. Other officers in command of the ship. So it's like, I had too much time to think. Effectively, they were trying to maybe have their cake and eat it too. Be a little too much like a standard Trek episode when they might have gotten away with more if they had just been like, let's throw stuff at them so quickly that they don't have time to think about whether it all adds up. And like, a lower decks episode gets away with. Yeah, there's nobody else on the ship who can do any of these things because these are our main characters. It's a sitcom. So having said, like, I will loop back one more time. Didn't hate this.
It just, yeah, like, it does make me say, like, wow, a little bit of emotional whiplash. Weak writing episode that left me feeling like one of the best Star Trek stories I think I've ever experienced followed by this. And I'm just like, are we going to be doing this all season? That's going to be. That's going to be exhausting. Matt Ferrell: We are. Yeah. Yeah, it is. Sean Ferrell: So, viewers, listeners, what did you think? I would love to hear from anybody who was like this was. I mean, either extreme. Matt said there are going to be people who hated this. Are you one of those people who hated this? Let us know. Are you one of the people who love this? Let us know. I want to hear from both extremes about this one because I feel very much like I'm landing right in the middle. So let us know what you thought about it. Next time we're going to be talking about the episode A Case of Chiaroscuro. Let us know in the comments. What do you think that means? And like me, did you need to look up the pronunciation online? Let us know in the comments. Commenting, liking, subscribing, those are all very easy ways for you to support the podcast. And as always, if you would like to support us more directly, you can go to trekintime.Show. Click the join button there. It allows you to become a direct supporter and it will sign you up as an Ensign, which means you'll be signed up for our spin off program out of Time, in which we talk about things that don't fit within the confines of this program. We hope you'll be interested in checking that out. As I mentioned before, my book available for pre order link below, please Pre-orders matter. So I thank you for your interest and your support if you decide to buy the book. And as always, thank you so much for your time watching or listening. We'll talk to you next time.
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