0:09

Kevin: Hello and welcome back to Subspace Radio.

0:12

It's that time again. It's time to talk about an episode of Star Trek Discovery, specifically season

0:18

five, episode four, Face the Strange.

0:22

Welcome back, Rob. Rob: Look, I am indeed facing the strange right now, which is another weekly

0:27

installment of me reviewing Discovery.

0:29

How strange is that? Kevin: You like how I introduced the episode before us this time?

0:34

That is, that is like an example of the time twisting mayhem

0:38

that existed in this episode. Rob: are definitely on topic.

0:42

Kevin: Yes. And inspired by this week's episode, we are going to be talking about other

0:46

time puzzles, time traps, time problems that have our crews stuck and, uh, using

0:54

their brains to get out of the situation.

0:57

Uh, but before we get to those, let's talk about this week's episode.

1:01

Um, what did you think, Rob?

1:03

Rob: There was a lot of focus on, uh, Burnham.

1:07

Yes, there is. Um, but there was a focus on Rayner.

1:10

So with this particular time problem, the fact that, uh, Burnham was going

1:14

through it with Rayner was actually quite a good setup for the case of,

1:19

um, you know, the new crew member. It's a very Star Trek y way of doing things.

1:23

How do we get a new crew member up to date or a new cast member up to date?

1:27

Let's put them in a time situation where they go back through the

1:30

history of the ship so that we can connect this new character with

1:34

this entire legacy of the show.

1:36

Kevin: Yeah, some, some real growth from Rayner this episode, I feel.

1:40

Rob: Very much so. We do love a good anti hero or a gruff character that shows a bit of

1:44

his lighter side, but not completely. Kevin: It's like the one on ones from last week were an example of him being asked

1:51

to grow and refusing to do so, and it was like, you know, the hero's journey.

1:56

That was the refusing the call. This week was the answering the

1:59

Rob: Exactly, and it was that good connection of there going, he did

2:02

actually listen, he did absorb all this information, and he does it.

2:05

And now, connecting the information to emotion is going to be the

2:09

thing that he is growing with and he did a bit of that today.

2:12

Kevin: I loved this episode, Rob.

2:14

I think this might be my new favorite episode of Star Trek Discovery.

2:18

Rob: Well it's not up to that level for me. It's definitely quite enjoyable but, um, I could see how, um, Yeah, a lot

2:26

of the annoying traits of Discovery that people have kind of been put

2:30

off by were not on display here.

2:33

Even though we had two Michael Burnhams, they got away with not making it

2:37

as annoying as it could have been. So, which is, uh, which is, uh, which is a, uh, a major feat.

2:42

Kevin: I think it was the sense of epic and distance come.

2:47

Watching, you know, Season 1 Michael and Season 5 Michael come face to

2:52

face and realizing just how much they, they've changed, not just in,

2:58

in uniform and hairstyle, but in, uh, in characterization as well.

3:04

And, wow, like, kudos to Sonequa Martin Green pulling that off.

3:09

Like there was no question in my mind that that was season one Burnham.

3:14

And there was a difference. Rob: Very much so, very much so.

3:17

Kevin: And trading on that sense of, of distance come, with that final scene

3:22

on the bridge where Burnham has to talk down the bridge crew and it is going

3:27

back meeting that season one bridge crew that we never got to meet in season one,

3:32

Rob: ha Kevin: and using that as kind of a plot point that none of these people

3:37

knew each other or trusted each other and that is the ultimate challenge

3:42

that must be overcome in this episode is that Burnham needs to connect with

3:47

these people with whom connection was completely lacking in season one.

3:52

Maybe with the exception of Tilly. Rob: Yes, um, it was particularly interesting to have the, uh, the android

4:00

character, the, well, the humanoid cyborg, yes, back, again, it was that

4:04

case of we did talk about this, um, Uh, quite a few episodes ago about

4:11

the lack of emotional impact that that episode actually made because this

4:15

character was only a glorified extra, really, and then they sacrificed this

4:19

character and you're meant to, they sort of like did, they wrote backwards and

4:23

going well now this character's dead now we want you to feel for them and

4:26

this is why you should feel for them. So it was quite interesting to have them back.

4:30

It would have been more impactful if it was, you know, say a character like,

4:34

um, Tasha Yar coming back or Jadzia

4:38

Kevin: Hmm. Yeah. This was, this was Airiam's Yesterday's Enterprise, basically.

4:44

Rob: Um, Kevin: It's actually kind of funny because in season one, Airiam was

4:48

even played by a different actor, Sara Mitich, who has returned after

4:54

playing Arium in that first season.

4:57

She has returned as Lieutenant Nilsson, who is Airiam's replacement on the bridge.

5:02

But Hannah Cheeseman played, uh, Airiam in season two when she was

5:07

killed off, and so we have Hannah Cheeseman back as a guest star

5:11

Rob: There we go. Yes. Yes. It's uh, there's some mess in there about contracts or

5:18

Kevin: No doubt. Rob: Yes. Kevin: But, um, like kudos to the actors that I have such trouble

5:23

remembering who played whom and who's returned to play what.

5:27

And like, yes, these two women do a good job of creating that character together.

5:31

Rob: true. And I did like the fact that it was through her that, you know, that the

5:36

information is all given and she accepts it straight away, which I find the

5:41

justification of that was good for me.

5:43

So, I went with that. Um, I was quite interested in the fact that our last, when we did a

5:50

time loopy one, which is one of the few episodes of Discovery I really

5:53

like that we talked about, the, uh, the Mudd episode time loop one.

5:57

Kevin: Ah, yes. Uh, something, something to make the sanest man

6:02

Rob: Yeah, yeah, the blackest night to make the sanest green

6:06

lantern shine bright in a day, I believe it's, that's the title.

6:12

Don't need to look it up, it up, Kevin. Kevin: You know me, I look it Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad.

6:20

Rob: Course, and Stamets in that one was pretty much one of the linchpins as well.

6:24

So, there's something about Stamets that he can, you know, he can be involved

6:28

in time conundrums or time puzzles, and

6:30

Kevin: Well, that's twice now they've used that, uh, superpower

6:34

of his due the tardigrade DNA.

6:37

Rob: Those damn tardigrades. Kevin: I mean, there's, there is something about Discovery that they have so many

6:43

kind of unbelievable plot twists under their belts, that when you put them

6:49

all on the table and, and, and, and, you know, play fair with them, there

6:55

are so many loopholes to things and special powers that people have that,

7:00

yeah, it's all a bit wild when you take it at face value, but I feel like they

7:05

were being playful with it this week. Like, when Burnham mentions the tardigrade DNA and Rayner makes a

7:12

face, like, they're in on the joke, I

7:15

Rob: Yeah, and it's also that case of, you know, when you lay all the canon of a TV

7:20

show out and refer to it in its own way, you're going, this is some weird stuff.

7:26

It happens in Doctor Who all the time. Same with a bit of Star Wars with their online streaming shows.

7:32

But definitely here, you can see how much has happened within five seasons.

7:37

They didn't even touch on the fact of, oh, now we're thousands of years in the future.

7:41

But the whole case of the Kevin: Oh yeah. The connection to Calypso, which is a Short Trek.

7:46

Uh, I don't know if you ever saw that Rob: I didn't see that I didn't see many of the Short Treks.

7:50

I wanted to. There's a great one in the lift apparently with, uh, Ethan Peck uh, the characters

7:55

Kevin: Speaking of one on ones. Yeah, that's a good one.

7:59

Um, Worth going back to seeing Calypso.

8:01

Uh, it is a, it is a beautifully made piece of, of short Star Trek fiction.

8:07

Like it's only 15 minutes long, but the premise is, Uh, and this is before

8:13

Discovery travels into the future, uh, we as audiences don't know that Discovery

8:19

is going to travel into the future. Um, in this Short Trek, it begins with Discovery in some far future, sitting

8:28

in a nebula dormant with no crew aboard.

8:31

And the computer, for some reason, is sentient with a woman's voice.

8:37

And this is before Zora was established in the show.

8:41

And a, a sort of, kind of courier comes aboard, who's not

8:47

named Book, but behaves a Book.

8:50

And, uh, and that courier who is mystified by this empty starship converses with

9:00

and gets to know and eventually falls in love with this sentient computer.

9:05

And it's a little love story and they end up, her holographic persona and he end up

9:11

dancing on the bridge to these old timey black and white, um, show tune movies.

9:17

And that is what's going on on the bridge when Rayner and Burnham step

9:22

on and you hear the music playing. And yes, so we now finally understand under what circumstances in what timeline

9:30

the, the Discovery ends up sitting alone in some far flung future, um, talking to

9:37

Rob: There it goes. There and that puts those pieces together.

9:41

Excellent. Makes sense to me. Kevin: It was to the point where, it started to feel like that was a phantom

9:48

limb of canon, that they did that Short Trek, and they enjoyed the artistic

9:53

aspects of it, but they were never going to explain uh, and now they have

9:57

explained it, and I really like that. Rob: Yes, um, I, yeah, like we were talking about with, you lay out all

10:02

the canon and the fact that they're there talking and how weird it is that

10:06

they're going, right, so a traitor becomes the captain of the ship.

10:11

Kevin: Oh, it's amazing, I love Rob: Yeah, that whole case of, so it's like, oh, you're not just a lowly, you

10:16

know, lower decker or something like that.

10:18

No, no, no, no, no. You are a classified traitor within the Federation and you're gonna be made

10:25

Kevin: And there's something strange about it, that It, for me, it worked.

10:29

It landed for the first time this episode.

10:32

I don't know if it's the fact that that was obviously so built into the conception

10:37

of the series, is we are going to start with this character who has been arrested

10:41

for mutiny and follow their journey.

10:45

And almost the fact that that was set up, that she was set up to succeed from the

10:49

beginning, almost kind of has robbed it of its impact over the years, that every

10:54

success she has, there was a sense of, well, this is where we were going anyway.

10:58

So it does not feel especially earned.

11:00

But looking back on it now, and there was something about seeing

11:05

the before and after, that it finally, it, it landed with me.

11:10

I don't know if it was just the fact that we were playing this as an emotional

11:13

character beat rather than a plot point that really made it work for me,

11:19

but for the first time I cared about the journey that Burnham has been on.

11:22

Rob: Yeah, I mean, I, I particularly like the fact, like I said, it showed

11:26

the whole cycle, life cycle of, of, you know, uh, of a Federation ship, so

11:32

you, and it's, it's one of the better, one of the great episodes of Firefly,

11:36

I don't know if you ever watched that, there's a great episode of Firefly

11:39

yeah, where they go back and find, um, You know, they do the back story of how

11:44

they all became members of Serenity.

11:47

And this was, you know, the great moment of showing it's, you know, it's in dry

11:49

dock and that early start there and then going through all the stages of

11:54

it to the point where the potential, you know, worst possible future ever.

11:59

Um, it's a great way and that's, that's what you get in a final season episode.

12:04

You want to have those episodes where you reflect on what you've done.

12:08

It's, it's quite a common thing. It happens in all Star Trek final seasons and there will be in one of

12:13

the episodes that I'll be reviewing. Kevin: Ooh.

12:16

I still think there is a twist yet to come with Rayner.

12:20

I don't think, like, he certainly grew a lot.

12:24

I think there's going to be some kind of reversion because that, that moment

12:28

in the turbolift where he asks Burnham for her override code, and she types

12:32

it in in very large numbers right before his eyes, that, again, feels

12:38

to me like, something that's being put on the shelf for later in the season.

12:42

Like, it is not lost on me that Rayner now has the override codes to Discovery.

12:47

Rob: Yes, using the uh, impro term shelving.

12:50

Very good use there, Mr. Kevin Yank. Kevin: Mm.

12:52

Uh, anything else stand out this Rob: Um, no, that's pretty, yeah, that's, I've pretty much covered

12:57

everything but how about you? Kevin: No, I just want to reinforce, I said at the start, it might be my new

13:02

favorite episode of Discovery, and the real reason for that, it, it is character

13:08

driven narrative rather than plot driven.

13:11

I think so often Discovery has been guilty of being driven by plot.

13:17

And this week it was entirely character driven.

13:20

And one last shout out to seeing season one Tilly again.

13:24

Um, she was magnificent. Rob: Good stuff.

13:29

Kevin: So let's jump into the, uh, the time waves and talk about, uh, past

13:33

times our crews have been stuck in time.

13:36

Rob: Stuck in time, problems with time, puzzles with time.

13:39

Kevin: Yeah. I've got a TNG.

13:43

I don't know if you have anything before Rob: I do not have anything before that.

13:46

Let's go T N G. Kevin: I brought a few TNGs because especially, uh, I think Brannon Braga

13:53

is, you know, well known for writing these sort of time puzzle episodes

13:59

and he started his great work in the pages of Star Trek The Next Generation,

14:04

so we'll look at some of that. Uh, when I did go back and look at the original series, I think Wink of an

14:09

Eye, which we've talked about before, where the crew gets slowed down or

14:15

sped up, well, Kirk gets sped up.

14:19

Uh, to the speed of these aliens that have boarded the ship, and the rest

14:22

of the crew is slow by comparison, and there is a difficulty working together

14:27

across that threshold of speed, but, uh, but not really what I had in mind.

14:33

There was also All Our Yesterdays in season three, where, um, they

14:37

visit a planet whose sun is going nova, and all of the populace has

14:41

escaped through a time portal into other times in the planet's history.

14:46

And Kirk gets, accidentally, falls through the portal into one part of the planet's

14:52

history, and Bones and Spock go to the planet's ice age and they have to figure

14:58

out how to escape together as well. But it's not really the twisty, timey, wimey that I wanted to bring

15:04

to you, a Doctor Who fan, Rob.

15:07

Rob: I do appreciate a good bit of that. Kevin: So I'm gonna start us in Season 2, Episode 13 of The Next Generation,

15:13

which is an episode called Time Squared.

15:16

And, to me, this is the prototype for this kind of episode.

15:21

Like so many other things, TNG did it first, but they hadn't

15:25

fully figured it out yet. Rob: They come back and do it again.

15:28

Kevin: Yes, they, again again and and again again.

15:33

Rob: Keep on doing it until you get it right. Kevin: That's right. In Time Squared, uh, the Enterprise is on its way somewhere.

15:39

It's a routine day at the office for the Enterprise, uh, in an

15:42

unexplored sector of space, when they detect a Starfleet shuttlecraft

15:47

tumbling through space without power. And they're like, what?

15:49

Where did that come from? There's no other ships out this far.

15:52

They tractor beam it aboard in a prolonged effects sequence that there

15:57

were plenty of in early season TNG.

16:00

But once they get it into the shuttle bay, they open doors and who is inside

16:05

but an unconscious Captain Picard.

16:07

And so we have Picard finding Picard.

16:11

Pulaski is there doing the medical scans and the technobabble is unrefined

16:16

this early in TNG, so there's a bit of his life signs are out of phase.

16:21

And while they are diagnosing this unconscious Picard in sickbay, Data and

16:26

Geordi are combing through the memory banks of this dead shuttlecraft, and

16:32

there's a lot made of the fact that they try to plug it into Enterprise

16:35

power, and it's incompatible until they reverse the polarity, and they figure

16:39

out that basically everything they do with the power has the opposite effect

16:43

it normally would on this shuttlecraft.

16:45

And meanwhile in sick bay, every time Pulaski puts a stimulant

16:49

into Picard, all of his life signs drop, but they figure out that

16:52

doing the opposite has the opposite So there's a bunch of this opposite stuff going on, but that all ends up

16:59

being a red herring or it goes nowhere.

17:01

They don't really use it. They, there's a lot of thrashing, plot thrashing in this episode, a

17:06

lot of just stringing it out stuff that doesn't really go anywhere.

17:11

In the end, they manage to extract some logs from the computer of

17:14

the shuttle that shows footage of the Enterprise being destroyed.

17:20

And when they check the time codes, they're like, this

17:22

is five hours in our future. Somehow, five hours in our future, Captain Picard leaves the Enterprise

17:29

and the Enterprise is destroyed.

17:31

And, and how do we avoid this?

17:34

So they have the conversation they've had several times.

17:37

We've talked about Cause and Effect once before, uh, one of my favorite episodes

17:42

of TNG, which is definitely a time puzzle and a time loop, but I'll, I'll refer you

17:47

to our episode zero of Subspace Radio, if you want to hear my thoughts on Cause and

17:51

Effect, cause we have covered it before. But they have that same conversation here where they're like, well, we know

17:56

something's bad is going to happen, so why don't we just fly in another direction?

18:01

And the, the thing, you know, the, the, Well, maybe flying in the

18:05

other direction is the thing that causes the bad thing to happen!

18:09

We can't start second guessing ourselves. Let's just do what we normally would do.

18:13

And that never makes sense to me,

18:16

Rob: Ha, ha, ha. Kevin: So this is another one of those.

18:21

Knowing, knowing the doom ahead of us, let's fly straight into it and hopefully

18:25

we'll figure out a way out of it.

18:29

As they get closer and closer to the, you know, eventually there is a

18:33

space anomaly that appears underneath the Enterprise and it threatens

18:37

to suck them in and they're trying everything they can, but nothing works.

18:42

But as they get closer and closer to this moment, this recovered Picard becomes more

18:48

and more cogent, and Pulaski is saying that basically, you know, our physiologies

18:54

aren't designed to exist out of their native time, and so the closer we get

18:58

to the native time of this Picard, the more his body is, is kind of readjusting

19:04

and he's, he's starting to be able to think clearly and understand clearly.

19:09

And at the climax of this episode, we have full on split screen Picard, two

19:13

Picards walking down the corridor, debating what to do, but the, the

19:18

recovered Picard is still kind of, trapped in the loop of his previous actions.

19:23

He knows for certain that he must leave the Enterprise in order to save the

19:28

Enterprise, whereas our Captain Picard is trying to figure out, okay, but if

19:33

you didn't do that, What would you do?

19:35

And that's what this whole episode comes down to.

19:38

It's trying to get this other Picard to share his plan B so that they can try it.

19:44

And once he gets the plan B, for some reason, Picard shoots

19:48

the other Picard in the chest. Not on stun, mind you.

19:52

He leaves a big black mark and calls Pulaski and Pulaski comes and

19:56

takes his life signs and he's dead. Picard shoots himself dead once he's done with himself.

20:03

It's all a little, you know, arbitrary and, and all of the kind of vibe is

20:10

there of a cool time loop episode, but none of the logic is there.

20:14

And I feel like satisfying logic, is part of the formula here.

20:20

Rob: It sounds very much Season 2, uh, next TNG where they're still working

20:25

out the, the, the wrinkles within their characters and their plots.

20:29

So yeah, in Season 1 and 2, Picard is, is very bristly around

20:33

the edges to say the least. So of course he's going

20:36

Kevin: It's fun watching them work the problem together.

20:39

There's some good character work from Picard who's not used to doubting himself,

20:43

but the fact that he is confronted by a version of himself who failed, whose plan

20:48

failed, makes him second guess himself in a way that, like, Troi is very aware of.

20:53

And, and Troi is following him around trying to give him useful advice,

20:58

uh, and he is not listening to her.

21:00

In fact, he gets quite, um, upset at her for, for trying to do her job.

21:05

And all of that is kind of interesting. But, yeah, just the, the logic of the time loop thing isn't there.

21:12

Um, and it culminates in a, in a scene in the ready room once it's all over.

21:16

Riker comes into the observation lounge and he kind of walks in and Picard's,

21:22

you know, standing in the dark by the window and he just says, a lot of

21:26

questions, number one, damned few answers.

21:30

And Riker says, maybe none of it was real.

21:33

Perhaps we were all part of a shared illusion.

21:36

They end on a point of, maybe it was all a dream.

21:40

Rob: Was all a dream. Yep, yep, yep, yep, that's a early developing of a show where they

21:46

just go, um, do we really want to try and justify it scientifically?

21:51

No, let's just say it's a shared hallucination.

21:53

Kevin: I've got a later TNG, but let's hear one of yours first.

21:56

Rob: Well this is the one I only just remembered, and how could I forget it?

21:59

I don't think we've talked about it specifically, we have talked about it

22:03

in passing, but, uh, And for me, the ultimate in a time puzzle that isn't

22:08

time travel but is kind of time travel, uh, The Visitor from Deep Space Nine.

22:13

Kevin: Yeah, we haven't talked about it, Rob: Yeah, so, it is Deep Space Nine, Season 4, Episode 2.

22:20

Uh, Michael Taylor wrote this one, directed by David Livingston.

22:24

And they really lean into the advantage of our captain of the ship being,

22:30

um, or Commander Sisko, still at this point, um, having a son on board.

22:35

So it know, that is one of the many things that, uh, distinguishes

22:39

Sisko as a captain, as a character, is the fact that he is a father.

22:43

He is a father with his son while he works.

22:45

A lot has been made of the, you know, the color of his skin, which is an

22:49

important step within the franchise, but his relationship with his son is

22:54

an important part of him and using,

22:58

Kevin: it's the, it's the lesser cited second way that Benjamin Sisko is a

23:02

very unique lead for a Star Trek show.

23:04

Rob: Exactly. And so this is in its usual Star Trek y fashion, let's deal with how a son

23:10

and a father, you know, relate to each other, with a wacky time hijinks!

23:14

So of course, uh, the Defiant is near the wormhole, involved in the

23:19

wormhole, there's some sort of, uh, breach within the, uh, warp core,

23:23

and it sends Sisko, uh, out of time.

23:26

They believe he's dead. They believe he's dead, gone.

23:29

They mourn him, they have a funeral service.

23:31

And then, uh, one evening, he appears to Jake, and so begins a life long, uh,

23:38

journey, connection, where Sisko does not age at all, but he comes in at irregular

23:44

times over the years into Jake's life.

23:47

And Jake can never fully move on because he, he can never really live

23:52

a fulfilling life because he is always waiting for his father to return.

23:56

Um, it's so heartbreaking.

23:58

They bring in, um, the brilliant Tony Todd, um, uh, playing, um,

24:04

the grown up version of Jake, um, through his adult stages and

24:09

even through his old man stages. Um, so it starts with older Jake and they do a flashback to it all.

24:16

It's just Remarkable. It's a remarkable story about the bond between a father and a son, lost

24:21

opportunities, lost moments, um, living a life trapped in the past, um, and how

24:28

this freak accident that only would happen in a sci fi show but how it connects on a

24:34

real emotional level is, um, is powerful and to have that early on in season

24:39

four just shows how, um, you know, how hard they were hitting in season four.

24:45

They'd got their three years of, you know, um, their sophomore era of getting

24:49

themselves ready, and now, season four, they are firing on all cylinders.

24:54

It's a powerful, beautiful, um, uh, heartbreaking story that, again, is the

25:00

reset button at the end where everything goes back to how it is, but, um, But that,

25:05

that ghost of the past is still there.

25:08

That ghost the experience is still there for Sisko, at least.

25:12

Kevin: It puts me in the mind of the Voyager episode we talked about, uh,

25:17

was it last week or the week before when we were, you know, uh, visiting

25:24

these older versions of Harry Kim and Chakotay trying to prevent the crash

25:29

of Voyager and when they succeed, everything goes back to normal, but

25:33

there's still this echo of these, these versions of our characters who would

25:37

no longer exist, but who are sacrificed themselves to put things back to rights.

25:44

Rob: Yeah. Kevin: This is especially poignant given how Deep Space Nine ends for Sisko,

25:49

that Sisko goes into the wormhole and becomes, you know, the, the Emissary,

25:54

uh, to the wormhole aliens and, and Jake ends up losing his father after all.

25:59

Rob: The final shot, man. The final shot. Jake looking out the window of the Promenade, waiting

26:04

for his father to return. You're going, get, get stuffed, Deep Space Nine.

26:09

How dare you? How the very well dare you?

26:14

Kevin: get some nice glimpses of like this alternate future

26:17

of Deep Space Nine as well. I remember us seeing kind of an aged up Jadzia Dax, which is another, you

26:23

know, character who will never be. Rob: exactly.

26:25

Kevin: will never grow to be Rob: Never to be that old.

26:28

You see, uh, Nog's future, um, within the Federation, so there's little hints

26:32

of it there, and you see, you know, Jake is a writer, um, and he, you know,

26:37

has disciples, really, people who are fans of his work and stuff like that,

26:42

but he's never really lived the life that he wanted to live or the life

26:47

that he should have lived because he is tied to this moment when he was a boy.

26:52

Um, yeah, it's beautiful. Tony Todd is incredible.

26:54

What a wonderful actor. I love him in all that I see him in.

26:57

Particularly, um, Man on Earth is, uh, he's particularly good in that.

27:02

Um, but he's just, yeah, wonderful as a, uh, an aged up, old,

27:08

and then grey, uh, Jake Sisko.

27:12

Kevin: Part of what makes this one so poignant is that this future that is

27:16

portrayed, mean, despite the fact that Benjamin Sisko isn't there to help win

27:22

the Dominion War, somehow there is a sense that the world is at peace or that

27:27

this, this future is not a awful one?

27:31

It is not a, it is not a dark future to be avoided.

27:35

The only thing that's really wrong with it, Rob: Sisko isn't there.

27:38

Kevin: Yeah, Sisko isn't there for his son and, but somehow that is enough

27:42

for Jake to want to change things.

27:44

I'm not sure that would pass muster in, the Starfleet, uh, temporal

27:48

Prime Directive but, uh, so be it.

27:51

You know, if you manage to change time, no one will know you ever did

27:55

it, so Jake gets to have his outcome.

27:58

Rob: definitely not a dystopian version of the, of the future's future.

28:02

It's not like where, know, it's just a case of everything seems to be going along

28:06

and everyone seems to be moving along in a, in a, at a nice, happy, leisurely

28:11

pace, it's just that, you know, the one

28:14

Kevin: Is there, and there's something about that that makes it more poignant that Jake is nevertheless willing to sacrifice that

28:20

Rob: sacrificed it all because he just wants to see his dad, so.

28:24

Kevin: Yeah. Rob: Um, and those moments, uh, Avery Brooks and Tony Todd do incredibly well,

28:29

where he, Tony Todd has to come in for 45 minutes, less than that, and make you

28:35

feel as if this bond is, you know, is so strong, and Avery Brooks and Tony Todd

28:41

just knock it out of the park, they're just beautiful moments when, like, Sisko's

28:44

watching his son age in just flickers.

28:48

Is, um, just Kevin: Jake Sisko's most emotional scenes not played by the main actor Jake Sisko.

28:56

Rob: So, um, so yeah, that's mine. What's your, uh, what's your other time

28:59

Kevin: gonna spiral us back to, uh, season six, episode 25 of the

29:04

Next Generation with Timescape.

29:08

What reminded me of this one was Rayner putting his hand into the

29:14

bubble of that time bug and, you know, having a grizzled old hand.

29:18

Not the first time that has happened in Star Trek.

29:21

And in, in Timescape, um, Picard, Geordi, and Troi are coming back

29:28

from a conference on a Runabout.

29:30

And so, you know, they're, they're on a road trip.

29:33

And they're hanging out. Um, bantering about the lectures they attended, and it's actually really, you

29:39

know, charming writing, uh, but they're basically in the little rec room of the

29:44

Runabout, um, sitting around a table, and in the middle of the conversation,

29:48

out of nowhere, oh, Data's there as well, Geordi, Data, Picard, and Troi.

29:53

Just out of nowhere, the three men, including Data, freeze in front of

29:59

Troi, and like, Geordi's in the middle of describing something, and he just

30:04

freezes there, and Troi's confused.

30:07

It only lasts three, four seconds, and so she just has a moment to take in the

30:13

horror of what has happened, and then like they resume, they keep moving.

30:17

And, uh, it turns out that these bubbles of or shards of

30:21

time are moving through space.

30:23

And so this bubble passed through the Runabout and apparently

30:26

froze them before her eyes.

30:29

And as they're trying to troubleshoot this problem, Troi gets frozen.

30:33

And so she's in the middle of explaining what she had experienced, and then

30:36

it's a, it's like a smash cut to Geordi scanning her face with tricorder and

30:44

she's, she pulls back and is shocked.

30:46

And so there's this really kind of tantalizing mystery

30:50

of why are people freezing? Why are different people freezing at different times?

30:54

And just as they're starting to get their head around the problem, Picard

30:58

notices a bowl of fruit in the middle of the room has gone all moldy.

31:03

And he reaches out to it and screams and pulls his hand back

31:07

and all his fingernails are long. Because he put his hand into the bubble fast moving time and it

31:13

accelerated the growth of his hand.

31:16

Um, and so the, the episode progresses from there, but that initial mystery,

31:20

it won't surprise you that this is a Brannon Braga written episode.

31:24

Um, one of my favorites. Also directed by Adam Nimoy, the son of Leonard Nimoy.

31:30

Um, so yeah, a good pedigree this episode.

31:33

They, once they chart all of these bubbles of time fragments, they find that they

31:38

follow a path back towards the Enterprise, and when they get there, they find, frozen

31:43

in space, the Enterprise and a Romulan Warbird apparently trading fire with like

31:50

frozen in space laser beams and photon torpedoes and stuff and, uh, the entire

31:57

scene is frozen and most of this episode is them wearing these subspace bubbles

32:04

to shield them from the time difference, beaming onto each of these ships and

32:08

in this frozen moment of time trying to unravel the mystery of what happened by

32:14

observing a frozen instant across two starships apparently locked in battle,

32:20

but turns out to not be so simple, uh, you know, figuring out what happened.

32:26

It's, it's really a really enjoyable mystery.

32:29

Rob: Well, it sounds quite intriguing.

32:31

It's amazing how much time travel has become, like, is a major component

32:36

of, say, Doctor Who or something like that, but for Star Trek they

32:40

just use it as a means to an end, or like a week to week episode.

32:43

So, like, let's do a cool, let's cool, do a little time puzzle.

32:47

And there's quite a lot more than I originally thought.

32:49

So when we came up with the idea, I went, oh, these are going to be few and far between.

32:52

We're going, no, they're scattered out through the entire, you

32:56

know, history of the show. Kevin: I'm, uh, I'm ceaselessly amazed at how they keep finding a new formula

33:02

to play with this, this element of time, or, or frozen time, or being

33:08

lost in time, or trapped in time. Yeah, it's really fun.

33:11

There's a, there's an especially creepy scene in this episode where

33:14

they make it look like, their way to, uh, main engineering of the

33:17

Enterprise and find this cloud of vapor shooting out of the, um, engine core.

33:23

And Data casually explains that this is a core breach in progress.

33:27

And there is no stopping it. It has already happened.

33:30

It is just happening in ultra slow speed and so it appears to be frozen in

33:36

time but it is a event that has already occurred and so there is no stopping

33:41

the destruction of the Enterprise. And they, as I mentioned, they're all wearing these field emitters on their

33:48

arms that keep them shielded from it. But it turns out they are still kind of, they're like deep sea divers who

33:54

suffer a bit of the bends after a while.

33:57

And so Picard, as they're talking, kind of wanders over to the cloud of vapor in

34:02

the background and starts laughing off camera and when we cut to him, with his

34:07

finger he's drawn a smiley face in the cloud of vapor and finds it hilarious and

34:13

they have to beam him out of there right away because his mind's going a little.

34:17

Yeah just that that, uh, contrast of, um, this deadly discovery with

34:25

Captain Picard laughing at a smiley face that he's just drawn with

34:28

his finger in the cloud of vapor. Um, yeah, really creepy, enjoyable, and, uh, I think a satisfying resolution

34:37

to the episode that I will not spoil.

34:39

Rob: Oh, well, uh, if you, if you haven't already, you can be like

34:43

me, go out and chase it down and enjoy that tantalizing morsel.

34:47

Kevin: Yeah. Rob: Well, let's go towards an episode that I'd almost forgotten about,

34:51

but when I started watching I went, Oh, I know this one from Voyager.

34:54

We're going to look at Shattered.

34:58

Kevin: I'm looking forward to revisiting this through your viewing, because

35:01

I have not seen this one recently. I barely remember that it exists.

35:06

Rob: like we were talking about with a Discovery episode for this week.

35:09

It is a typical final season episode.

35:12

It's season 7, episode 11. Let's go, let's go back over the entire history of this show.

35:17

Kevin: It's very much the formula of Face the Strange this week,

35:21

Rob: Very much so, yeah, and it's a perfect companion piece, so watching

35:25

Faces of Strange and then Shattered, you can just see a lot of similarities there.

35:29

So, Voyager comes across an anomaly in space, with temporal dilations

35:36

and all that type of stuff in it. We are introduced, well reintroduced into the wonderful, glorious Naomi Wildman.

35:43

Uh, cannot say that without, uh, thinking of how Jeri Ryan says it, Naomi

35:48

Wildman, and of course, um, one of the Borg children that Seven of Nine had

35:54

saved as well, who unfortunately meets,

35:56

Kevin: Icheb. Icheb, who dies in Picard Season 2, if

35:59

Rob: who meets, uh, meets a sticky ending at the start of, uh, Season

36:03

2, yeah, of, uh, Is it season two or season one of Picard?

36:08

Kevin: I remember it as Season 2, I'll double check my facts while you continue.

36:13

Rob: Um, so, yes, um, so Chakotay is on his way down to the, uh, to the storage

36:19

bay where they are playing card games and, uh, and puzzles and stuff like that.

36:23

He's taking one of these, uh, uh, very rare bottles of liquor for

36:29

this, uh, regular standing dinner between Chakotay and Janeway.

36:33

Uh, he is hit by this, uh, by energy pulse from the time dilation that's approaching

36:39

Voyager, and he is then, uh, connected to all different periods of time.

36:45

Um, he wakes up and he is, uh, healed by the Doctor, who then he

36:51

finds out that, uh, it's not the doctor that he knows, it's a doctor

36:54

before he has the mobile uh, emitter.

36:57

So, uh, the Doctor's just you've got a temporal problem?

37:00

Here, here's a, here, here's a, here's a shot for it.

37:03

I can just give you a shot, it's fine. And he does, he

37:07

Kevin: Time problems cause headaches. Here's a, here's an analgesic.

37:10

Rob: Yeah, take two, take two before bed and call me in the morning.

37:13

Um, Kevin: By the way, Icheb died in season one, episode five, Stardust City Rag of

37:19

Rob: Yes, it was the first, like, first, when Seven of Nine appears in Picard.

37:24

It's her first appearance of, um, of, yeah, Icheb is killed

37:28

in the most horrifying of ways. Um, yeah.

37:32

More than, more than one reason why to dislike season one and two of Picard.

37:36

Anyway, um, uh, each to their own.

37:39

It's a credit to Robert Picardo to be able to, um, throw off just such a ridiculous

37:45

justification of why Chakotay can just go through all periods of time on Voyager,

37:50

um, and not make it seem ridiculous.

37:52

You almost believe him for a second, that's how good Robert Picardo is.

37:55

Chakotay is slipping through Voyager and as he enters certain rooms he's

38:00

going onto the bridge even before they've gone into the Delta Quadrant.

38:04

He goes down to uh, Engineering and Seska's there with um, with

38:09

uh, the revolutionary crew. So great to see Seska back there.

38:13

Going to another section where there's the Maquis, you know,

38:16

still in their civvy outfit.

38:18

He goes in and then he decides to bring Janeway into this.

38:23

So typical 90s Star Trek fashion.

38:26

He holds her hostage and guides her through with the syringe

38:30

at her neck going, I'll use it! I'll use it, put down your phaser.

38:34

And they go through the time dilation and, and um, and they go through this

38:38

journey together of realization because she doesn't obviously trust him at first.

38:42

Um, and it's all about, it's really about the relationship between Chakotay

38:47

and Janeway and not for the first time in the series, there are hints and

38:54

nods and winks about do they, did they, will they, won't they, and which makes

39:00

it even more ridiculous that at the end of the season they go, Oh yeah,

39:03

Chakotay and Seven of Nine are a thing. And we all nah, get fucked.

39:07

Um, if they, yeah, they put so much groundwork into will they, won't

39:12

they, between Chakotay and, um, Janeway, which is a kind of a letdown.

39:17

You're there going, the first female captain and you're going to do a

39:19

romance thing scattered throughout the seasons with her male first mate.

39:24

Um, that kind of shat me a bit. Kevin: The more ambiguous it was, the better it worked.

39:29

Like there was this sense that these two people who worked so closely together

39:33

leading this ship would inevitably form a bond that transcends friendship.

39:39

But does it need to be romantic?

39:42

Does it need to be even explicit to the audience?

39:45

I think the more we feel it rather than see it, the more satisfying it was.

39:50

time they walked up to that line, we kind of went, Look, we don't

39:54

need to see what's past that Rob: It is a weird moment though, where she goes, have we ever?

40:00

We've spent all our time together, we've kept things professional, and the look

40:03

on Mulgrew's face is, oh, it's almost a case of, I know you can't see my

40:08

face, listeners, but she has a look on her face of, oh, what could have been.

40:13

And for, like, I, you know, uh, in my past life it was always referred to as

40:18

Chakotay was the dogue, Chakotay was always the dogue of Voyager, he was

40:23

always, You know, had some sort of, uh, uh, uh, tail that he was chasing,

40:28

if you, sorry for the terminology. Um, but in this one, it's very much a case of, Janeway is the dogue there

40:34

going, oh, oh, could I tap that?

40:40

Kevin: Well, good on At least it was empowering.

40:43

Rob: Yes, so it's, it's very much a, uh, uh, uh, greatest hits of Voyager.

40:48

We see the giant disease germ cloud, uh, parasites coming through.

40:53

We've got the Borg coming through. We've got Seven of Nine fully Borg'd up.

40:57

We've got old age, uh, Naomi Wildman when she's grown up.

41:01

Well, not old age. She's a grown up Naomi Wildman.

41:04

Kevin: Yeah, adult Naomi Weilman. Rob: So it's all

41:07

Kevin: It feels to me like, I haven't seen this lately, as I mentioned, but

41:11

just hearing you describe it, it sounds to me like logically it holds even more

41:17

tenuously together than what we saw with Face the Strange this week, but the fact

41:22

that it is supported by and driven by rewarding character beats enables us

41:28

to look past the fact that how would it actually work that walking through a

41:32

doorway on a otherwise intact Starship takes you to a completely different time

41:37

in its history, like, what is the science of Um, it's, it's nice when a show, you

41:45

know, when the characters are so enjoyable that you forget to ask those questions.

41:49

Rob: Exactly. Exactly. And it is that very much a case of like with this week's episode of Discovery

41:54

where you have, when you see B'Elanna Torres from, you know, in her Maquis you

42:01

know, days, they're going, there is no way in hell that we would ever, you know,

42:06

you tie ourselves to the Federation. And you go, well, in a couple of years time, um, and yeah, and the time with

42:12

Seska as well and her connection with Chakotay, all that type of stuff of how

42:17

each of these characters have grown and just, you know, the Doctor tied to just

42:21

one room and going, oh, how much we, you know, we do not miss the time when

42:26

the Doctor could only stay in one place. We love him being able to travel around.

42:31

Kevin: I'm seeing we even got a Dr. Chaotica appearance

42:34

Rob: is a Chaotica moment and, uh, and begrudgingly Janeway has to pretend

42:39

to go full Queen of the Spiders.

42:42

Heheheheh. But yeah, yeah, the actor, think it's the same actor, does return

42:47

and is very hammy and And it's all black and white, obviously, so

42:52

Kevin: Obviously. Rob: Does the whole remind me to delete this program

42:57

Kevin: It's interesting to me just how similar the formula is to Face

43:02

the Strange week on Discovery. And yet, to me, like, it, you this feels a very, like it is the final season of

43:09

Discovery, but I don't think the show runners knew that when they were writing

43:13

Face the Strange, like season five had yet to be declared the show's final season.

43:20

And so, whereas here in Shattered, they were very deliberately looking back on

43:26

the series behind them, knowing they were, they were wrapping all up this season.

43:31

In Discovery, it feels more like they are reaching back to pay off these things

43:38

that they failed to pay off at the time.

43:41

Like that, again, that bridge crew that we never really got to meet at that

43:45

time in their history, visiting them now feels like righting a wrong, uh,

43:50

or, or connecting something that had been failed to, to be connected before,

43:56

uh, and it almost feels like tidying up the show, uh, to strengthen it for

44:02

the future rather than nostalgically looking back to wrap things up.

44:07

So in a way, I am very much as I was feeling last week.

44:12

This deepens my regret that we are working our way to the end of Discovery

44:17

here because with each episode this season, I am more and more in the

44:21

mood for more Discovery, surprisingly. Rob: Yeah, it's, it's, it's a shame of just how the show has been structured,

44:27

that they need to do these, in some ways, not retcons really, but corrections about

44:32

what they have not developed in the past, that they could have developed, and even

44:36

with less episodes than they used to have in the 90s, you need to hit all your

44:40

ensemble really early on, um, and that's

44:44

Kevin: Better late than never, I guess. Rob: I guess, yeah, and it shows in Shattered just how much history is

44:50

there over seven seasons, 24 episodes a season, that we see just a little

44:54

moment where all we have of Tuvok is his death scene, uh, potential death

44:59

scene, and you, you only feel that for that little moment just because you go,

45:04

yeah, we haven't seen Tim Russ at all this episode, but, you know, we, we know

45:08

him from every other episode beforehand. Kevin: Well, I, I feel like I've been through a time loop of my

45:14

own this, uh, this episode, Rob. Rob: Well look, we've all come back around and here we are, out at the

45:20

end, what a time travelling cone of interwarping temporal flux it has been.

45:27

Kevin: Oh, we didn't even mention All Good Things.

45:29

That's another kind of series ender that takes the opportunity

45:33

to look back by literally visiting other time periods in the show.

45:37

Rob: Exactly. It's very Back to the Future 2. That's very much a case of going, let's go look at that important moment back