sshbpodcast

[sshbpodcast]

Episode 398: Go See a Star War

DIS: "Such Sweet Sorrow, Part 2"

We've reached the end of S.2 of Discovery and...it's a LOT, guys. "Such Sweet Sorrow, Part II" is mostly action sequences all just strung together rapid-fire with only a few, regrettably-brief pauses for character work. Also one of the worst lines in the history of Star Trek is here. All we need is some Beastie Boys and we're at the crossroads of all off JJ Abrams's worst impulses.

Also this week: Bill & Ted, rocky ships, and wrapping season 2!

Timestamps: Sorrow2: 01:13; momentary rankings: 1:02:45

In summation: Discovery Season 2: Mystery boxes all the way down

[sshbpodcast]

Discovery Season 2: Mystery boxes all the way down

By Ames

I was so proud of myself for writing up a wrap-up post for Discovery season one in which I tried to keep as objective and unbiased as possible. You can barely tell I’m not a big Discovery fan! This season, I don’t know if I can pull it off. Sure, there’s a lot to like about the sophomore season of Discovery, but dang y’all. There’s also just a lot. Period. It’s an overwhelming season if you’re trying to follow all the tangled plot threads and new characters that mostly get dropped and twist after twist after twist until I’m catatonic, propped up in front of the sensory overload of a season finale, muttering to myself and drooling.

But I said I was going to try to be objective and unbiased, especially since not all the A Star to Steer Her By hosts share my distaste with this very convoluted time-traveling plot. So like last time, instead of our normal top and bottom episodes (there are only 14 in total this time!), we’re going to discuss some highlights and lowlights from this Red Angel season. You can read on below or listen to our impassioned debate on the podcast (blast to timestamp 1:02:45 for the season chatter) to see if you, unlike me, can make any sense of this plot before you’re sent 900 years into the future.

[Images © CBS/Paramount]

Highlights

More science, less war!

If last season’s overall plot felt dark and bleak, this season does more embracing of exploration and science. This is a show called Discovery, after all; it’s nice to see them discovering things. Setting things up by investigating a scientific phenomenon certainly helped. The whole sphere story in “An Obol for Charon” is a great example of using the show to tell stories that feel like the kind of optimistic science fiction that people were really looking for and not finding in season one.

It’s also a breath of fresh air to see Starfleet officers being more ethical this time around. They immediately jump to help May’s people in “Saints of Imperfection,” a far cry from torturing tardigrades and calling prisoners animals a year ago. We’ve also got to praise “New Eden” for giving us that episodic Trek nostalgia of going on an away mission and objectively investigating a new culture, even if Michael was condescending the whole time.

Sonequa acts her ass off

This series threw everything and the kitchen sink at Sonequa Martin-Green and she rolled with it! Especially in the emotional roller coaster “The Red Angel,” in which she battles with the idea that she’s going to turn out to be the titular Red Angel, learns the truth about Project Daedalus from Leland, has to go through some absolutely bananas torture and death scenes, and then gets reunited with her mother absolutely out of nowhere (or out of the future, I guess). Does Michael cry too much throughout the season? Yeah maybe, but she just does it so well!

Pike is instantly likeable

Considering that Anson Mount was given the herculean task of portraying the legacy character Captain Christopher Pike, we were onboard from the first introduction. Pike has climbed to the top of a lot of people’s Best Captain lists because he is so charismatic, he treats his crew like people, he’s always cool as a cucumber (who else can pull off taglines like “Hit it”?), and his compassion is off the charts. When we see in “Through the Valley of Shadows” that Pike accepts the distressing fate we all know awaits him per “The Menagerie,” we can rest assured that this is a leader who will do what’s right for the good of the many.

Ethan Peck had some big ears to fill

Our other legacy characters in Spock and Number One were also handled pretty dang well. Especially Spock, who had the added constraint of skirting elements of the canon, sometimes with success and sometimes less so, as you’ll see in our Season Lowlights section. But Ethan Peck still nails Spock’s curiosity, reserve, and dual nature. The way his relationship with Michael develops throughout the season, from contentious and cruel to supportive and loving, was actually one of the better-paced elements of the back half of the season. And how damn pretty was he with that beard? I just wish he could nail the eyebrow.

Saru is still the GOAT

Our collective fave from season one is even more interesting in season two! Doug Jones is always a treat, and his acting in Saru’s near-death scene in “An Obol for Charon” is stunning. Even if you know they’re not about to kill off a main character, you forget for a minute that he has plot armor. And after his threat ganglia have fallen off, Saru’s character journey begins its new chapter. What was a character who used to be afraid of everything all the time and advocate much safer plans (usually running away!) is now a character who is learning to become more impulsive with a new perspective on how to perform on a team.

Unbury your gays

Another character who is learning a lot about his new self is Hugh Culber, who is back from the dead. The manner in which he comes back in “Saints of Imperfection” is absolutely ludicrous (I didn’t follow a word of the technobabble surrounding the spore cocoon thing), but we must admit that it was nice of the writers to undo the bury your gays trope that left a lot of people with a sour taste in their mouths. This opens up a lot of substantial character work for this doctor who, admittedly, had almost nothing to do in season one except die. Witnessing the scenes in which Wilson Cruz beautifully portrays Culber’s struggle with identity was phenomenal.

An engineer with a side of sass

We loved Jett Reno! Whenever an episode didn’t have Jett Reno, we were definitely asking, “Where’s Jett Reno?” There was not enough of Tig Notaro’s sarcastic yet brilliant engineer this season, but what we did get was a whole lot of fun. Unlike some of the comedy that comes out of various other characters, her jokes have the greatest tendency to work. She’s also just plain brilliant, able to keep her Hiawatha crewmates alive with duct tape and gumption. And you just can’t turn down more representation of LGBT characters in Trek! Happy Pride, y’all!

Amanda isn’t just a trad wife

Though we’ve seen little bits and pieces of Amanda Grayson over the years, it’s almost always been in service to either her husband Sarek or her son Spock. Getting more dimensions to this human among Vulcans colors in more of her character. She’s not content to just sit idly by while Spock is in danger, as we learn in “Light and Shadows” when she has him holed up in some caves to keep out of the hands of Starfleet or Section 31. Plus look how well dressed this wife of an ambassador is. Desperate Housewife she is not, but fashion icon she definitely is.

More Kelpiens = more good

We meet Saru’s sister Siranna in “The Sound of Thunder” and she’s immediately really cool. The whole Kelpien race fascinates me, and their relationship with their predator species introduces some interesting elements to the show. It allows Saru and Pike to debate the Prime Directive a bit, something we always love doing on this podcast. What else is the Federation around for if not to help oppressed people? And the Ba’ul’s whole drama queen vibe proves just so fun to watch, from their boggy design to their guttural language to the way they always know how to make an entrance.

The other bridge characters get something to do!

Okay, this one was a low bar, but last season we didn’t even clear it. The rest of the bridge crew were practically interchangeable, and if they had names, no one knew them. But now Joann Owosekun gets another trait in “New Eden” when we learn that she hails from a community of luddites (which is so interesting we wish it got explored more!). The little montage of people, including Owo and Detmer, writing farewell messages in “Such Sweet Sorrow, Part 1” also gives them some much needed characterization. And Airiam having to upload her individual memories to the cloud in “Project Daedalus” was practically Black Mirror levels of sci-fi… but we’ll get back to her later.

We get to make googoo eyes at the Enterprise

We gushed last season over the aesthetics of the Discovery, but when the Enterprise rolls in, we realize that’s what we really want. The uniforms are way better than the Discovery uniforms, coming in the bright departmental colors we’re all accustomed to from The Original Series. You can tell what division/rank everyone is more easily with the colors and the bars on the sleeves (when they remember to CG them in) instead of on the combadge, which was a damn mistake.

The ship itself is a loving update to the familiar design. We’ve talked up this version of the Enterprise before when we covered Starfleet vessels, but this one is definitely a highlight. The bridge is definitely an improvement over the Discovery’s giant, dark cavern of a set. When we see it in “Such Sweet Sorrow, Part 1,” we definitely find it more intimate and bright, though the colors and lights do make it feel like you’re inside a pinball machine.

Back to the future!

The choice to end the season by going to the future is commendable. Some could argue that’s where they should have started this whole show from the onset, but that may just be me. Prequels are just inherently hamstringing. The established canon can really limit your options; and conversely, breaking canon always results in alienating fans. So we’re looking forward to what options for creativity have opened up for our heroes 900 years forward. Having more advanced technology will make more sense. We’ll be able to explore more alien cultures without wondering why we’ve never met them before. The galaxy is their oyster. Yum yum.

—

Lowlights

1+1+2+1…

While I just praised this season for sending us into the future at the end, I struggled the hardest of any Trek to follow the rest of the time-traveling plot arc. Some of the confusion can probably be blamed on the switcheroo of showrunners that happened in the middle of things, which sure didn’t help. And due to the usual pacing issues of a lot of streaming television (Surf Dracula, anyone?), the episodes careen headlong to an ultimately exhausting ending. Everything is explained at breakneck speed so that you can’t think about it because if you do, you’ll be three scenes behind. 

So… somehow seven red signals appear simultaneously despite being across many lightyears AND then again later for the Discovery to visit individually AND then again whenever the Red Angel appears? Somehow it’s all convenient and convoluted at the same time—which is the real magic of time travel! It’s both a bootstrap paradox and an alternate timeline at the same time!!

Who’s the biggest Mary Sue in Star Trek?

Michael Burnham gets a lot of flak for getting buffed into the Most Important Character in the Universe™, especially starting this season. One day we’ll have the debate on the podcast over who the biggest Mary Sue in Star Trek is (my money’s on Sisko or Spock), but the writers aren’t doing Burnham many favors when time and time again everyone gushes about how important she is. 

Regardless of if you think Burnham’s a Mary Sue or not, her crewmates sure act like she is! In “Project Daedalus” Airiam tells us Michael is at the center of all this; Spock and Michael decide she’s the lynchpin in “The Red Angel”; Control inexplicably lures Michael specifically to the derelict Section 31 ship because she’s so vital in “Through the Valley of Shadows”; and Spock basically praises Michael as the messiah all throughout the two parts of “Such Sweet Sorrow.” Even when we learn that the Red Angel is Gabrielle Burnham in “Perpetual Infinity,” somehow Michael is still the better Red Angel because she saves the day so miraculously that even the wormhole aliens would find it contrived.

“Make it look like a movie”

I said this last season too and I could pretty much cut and paste the same lesson here: less is more. The aspect ratio this season has even widened from 2:1 to 2.39:1 to make it look more like a movie. But why? Not only are all the camera tricks dizzying and distracting, but it seems like every piece of tech this season is a transformer. The floor corkscrews down to a lower level. The asteroid catcher unfolds like CGI origami. We see the unfathomable turbolift netherspace. The characters’ spacesuits just appear on them. All that’s in “Brother” alone! And where the hell did the Jacob’s Ladder’ing shaft, the thousands of shuttles and drones, and the DOT-7 repair droids we see in “Such Sweet Sorrow, Part 2” come from??? It’s all such overkill just to make the series look cinematic when Trekkies are usually perfectly fine accepting an obvious sound stage like in TOS’s “The Empath.”

Tilly regressed into a manic Sonia Gomez

Remember how last season we praised Tilly’s subtle character growth? Well, this season the writers forgot about that and decided they needed to establish in every single one of her appearances that she’s manic and awkward and babbling, even when she’s not even central to the scene! She ham-fistendly injects herself into conversations, disrupting the flow of scenes, and generally getting on our nerves. They had the perfect opportunity to help her character develop by being in the command training program, but then that idea went nowhere and seemed to get dropped in favor of her delivering goofy one-liners all the time.

Wakka wakka!

Tilly isn’t the only one delivering lots of dorky one-liners. There are so many cringey jokes this season! From Tilly’s “This is the power of math, people!” to Spock’s “I like science,” to Burnham and Spock’s “Hamlet, hell yeah,” the quippiness of the dialogue does not land. Possibly the absolute worst offender is Nhan’s “Yum yum” in “Such Sweet Sorrow, Part 2,” which sounds like something a novice writer would put in a YA novel with an entire lack of subtlety and nuance. Each line sticks out like so many sore thumbs.

Linus, for that matter, is introduced solely to be a joke. When we meet him in “Brother,” it really feels like Discovery’s reaction to The Orville getting more attention in some Star Trek circles at the time. This funny alien lizard sneezing on the Mean Guy™ could literally have been a joke from the Seth MacFarlane–driven comedy show; like, seriously, cover your mouth, asshole!

And then Georgiou turns up out of nowhere just to be a quip machine. Like Tilly, she’s required to have at least one sardonic retort in every scene she’s in to underline that she’s evil. Which reminds me…

The depraved bisexual trope

One of the most awkwardly acted scenes in the whole season is the one in which Emperor Georgiou is teasing Stamets and Culber mercilessly in “The Red Angel.” “Don’t be so binary,” she taunts. “In my universe, he was pansexual and we had DEFCON-level fun together. And you, too, Papi.” It's so cringey and the actors don’t seem to know how to deliver it. At this point, the only bisexual characters we’ve really established in Trek (other than the Trill, which are their own things) are villains from the mirror universe using their sexual orientation to depict how evil they are (there’s a whole tv trope about it), especially compared to their straight, respectable prime-universe counterparts. What a strangely regressive depiction for Trek to include in 2019.

The magical disabled person trope

You know what else comes across as kind of gross and unprogressive (and also has its own tv tropes page)? Using Spock’s disability as a magical power. Spock having l’tak terai is fine on its own, and can even serve as solid representation to include and accommodate characters with learning disabilities, but then we find out that his Vulcan dyslexia was established only to advance the plot. Making a disability into a magic power is pretty often looked upon disparagingly by the disabled community, who would rather just be allowed to exist as they are. We’ll never see Spock’s l’tak terai come up again; it only existed to get them out of a problem.

Did we really need the Talosians?

Here’s another element that only exists to get the crew out of a problem. The Talosians in “If Memory Serves” were only there for one reason: to magically advance the plot. Scratch that. Two reasons: to magically advance the plot AND to make the fans wank because they recognized a thing. And wank they did! This is a generally positively reviewed episode because people liked seeing the Talosians, but we really wondered why they were here other than as a reference. They magically solve the problem and advance the plot, but they don’t earn it. They aren’t characters; they’re member berries. 

Airiam, we hardly knew ye

Speaking of things that aren’t earned: Airiam’s whole sacrifice episode. Anyone familiar with television could tell once they started filling in her backstory in “Project Daedalus” that meant they were going to kill her off by the end (another tv trope!). And it’s such a crying shame because her backstory is so good! The idea of her surviving a horrible accident by being installed into a cyborg body is damn cool! Her uploading memories to the cloud, as mentioned above, is excellent sci-fi! And her death scene is fucking stunning! But when I should be feeling devastated at the loss of a beloved character, I only feel rage that we didn’t get ANYTHING before this episode to get to know her. How hard would that have been???

Everything’s a soap opera

So many decisions are for the sake of drama this season of Trek. The whole Klingon soap opera in “Point of Light” feels absolutely unnecessary to us. Excise that whole episode and you’re not missing anything because we’re absolutely done with Klingons after last season. Relatedly, there’s exactly no reason why Tenavik has to be L’Rell and Tyler’s kid in “Through the Valley of Shadows.” It doesn’t pay off in any way. Cut it.

The only consequence from the Klingon plot that has bearing on the rest of the season is that Ash Tyler leaves Qo’noS to join Section 31, which is all too convenient. And then he’s only stationed on the Discovery to add drama to any scenes with Stamets and Culber and to remind us that he and Michael like to smooch despite having no chemistry. Cut it.

And then the Klingons show up in “Such Sweet Sorrow, Part 2” with the Kelpiens somehow, just so Saru and Siranna can say goodbye? Contrived. Laughable. Cut it.

In non-Klingon drama, the reveal during “If Memory Serves” of what Burnham did to Spock as a child was a massive letdown. The show had been building up to this giant revelation all season because it takes forever to find Spock, and then when we finally find him, we learn that Michael just pulled a Harry and the Hendersons on him and then neither of them talked for, what, twenty-five years? Cut! It!

Optional materials aren’t optional

I really liked the Short Treks episodes that precluded this season. They were nice to exist as little stories in their own bubbles. And then they turned out to tie directly into this season, and I’ve got to be honest: I liked them a little less! “The Sound of Thunder” needed a whole recap of “The Brightest Star” to provide the context for the Kelpiens’ relationship with the Ba’ul. If you didn’t see or have access to that Short Trek, then at least the episode mostly filled you in, but you wouldn’t have the full picture.

Even more blatant was bringing in Queen Po in “Such Sweet Sorrow, Part 1.” They write away who she is in a rapidly spoken Tilly-babbling line, but there’s absolutely no context if you missed “Runaway.” People were asking online after the Discovery episode if they were supposed to know who this character was because her inclusion was reliant on you seeing the Short Trek AND they don’t explain it.

For that matter, I’m curious how much sense “If Memory Serves” makes for fans not familiar with “The Menagerie.” It makes me wonder who this show is for if it’s inaccessible to new viewers. Shrug.

Once more for the neckbeards in the back

Finally, there was just too much from this season that was obviously in response to fan rage from season one. I already mentioned that Linus is just a joke from The Orville. We also see hack writing like introducing Connolly in “Brother” specifically to kill him off as if it’s a statement to the fans about bad-faith criticism or something. Guys, never respond to internet trolls.

For some reason, the writers also decided to retcon some of things that fans complained about. Pike is adamantly anti-hologram because by the time we get to TOS there isn’t holocommunication anymore even though this show had it. The Klingons grow their hair back out with the pathetic cover line that they shave their heads during times of war—something we’ve never seen before—but people hated the Klingon redesign so much they fixed it. And finally, it’s just so ham-fisted that “Such Sweet Sorrow, Part 2” needs to spell out that we’ll never speak of the Discovery, the spore drive, and Michael Burnham again and that’s why none of the other series mention them! These writers buckled like the neck of the Klingon Sarcophagus ship and it shows.

—

Okay, I was definitely less charitable this time, but you can see where I got hung up quite a lot. We look forward to seeing if next season’s jump to the future fares any better for our Discovery watch through, which you can follow along with on SoundCloud (or wherever you like listening to podcasts), and make sure you’re following along with this blog for more Tilly babble. You can also share your Red Angel conspiracy theories with us on Facebook and Bluesky, and remember: if it’s got a page on tv tropes, you probably shouldn’t do it.

[sshbpodcast]

Episode 397: Letters Home and the Katraphone

DIS: "Such Sweet Sorrow"

We're coming to the end of Season 2 of Discovery, with the penultimate episode "Such Sweet Sorrow"! With the Sphere Data scuppering the Janeway Maneuver, the crew decides to recycle the time travel plan on a larger scale. But they're going to need some help from the Enterprise and a familiar face! Well, familiar if you watched the related "Short Trek", which was not possible in all regions...good job, Paramount.

Also this week: small space, tactical joke strike, and Enterprise aliens!

Timestamps: Sorrow: 00:32; The Blog: 52:10

Whole lotta prosthetics: Top 3 Star Trek Enterprise alien races

[sshbpodcast]

Top 3 Star Trek Enterprise alien races

By Ames

We’re concluding our spotlight series into Star Trek: Enterprise this week after previous forays discussing our favorite characters and villains. We’re rounding it out with the A Star to Steer Her By hosts’ favorite alien races from the show, some of whom we may even have discussed before in previous Trek shows. Cross reference our picks from TOS, TNG, DS9, and Voyager to see who else has come up before. It’s like an alien scavenger hunt!

Pretty much every time that we meet an alien race in Enterprise is a first contact situation because of the prequel nature of the show. Some of them are filling in backstory for what will become franchise staples later in the show chronology, and some are brand new and never call us back again (it was probably something Archer said). So grab your universal translator—or Hoshi if she’s available—and get ready to meet some new friends and enemies listed below and discussed in this week’s podcast episode (jump to 52:10). Please to meet ya!

[Images © CBS/Paramount]

Ames – Don your human costume

Symbiotic lifeform

Wraiths

Wisps

I really appreciate an alien lifeform that is truly alien in concept and design, and Enterprise is shockingly full of them. And even though none of my picks are humanoid in any way, they all end up communicating through human mouths at some point or other. The goopy lifeform from “Vox Sola” ends up mentally linked to whoever it touches; the sluggy being from “Rogue Planet” takes on the form of a woman from Archer’s memories; and the incorporeal entities from “The Crossing” possess the Enterprise crew and determine they really like bread! Can relate!

—

Chris – No monocultures here

Suliban

Xindi

Aenar

There’s some really interesting worldbuilding going on with some of the alien societies Chris wanted to highlight, and it’s a shame that we don’t get more of them. The Suliban as a species are frankly fascinating, especially when we see in “Detained” that not all of them are into genetic enhancements like those in the Cabal are. Perhaps the most interesting element that Enterprise introduces is the concept of the different Xindi races who all evolved together on a planet teeming with drama. And who wouldn’t love the Aenar, an offshoot of the much beloved Andorians, who existed secretly under the ice this whole time!

—

Jake – Get to know us better

Vulcans

Andorians

Loque’eque

Jake’s picks mostly deepen the lore behind alien races we’ve known from the very start. Vulcans and Andorians have been major players in Star Trek since The Original Series, but we get so much more of their backstories explored in Enterprise and we appreciate it. Learning about their different sects, their occasionally illogical politics, and their really bitter hatred of each other make them more interesting when you know how far they’ll come. And let’s also show some love to the Loque’eque from “Extinction” who, like the Kataan natives from “The Inner Light,” threw a real Hail Mary pass when their species was about to die out.

—

Caitlin – Star Trek says Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Xindi

Aenar

Denobulans

Happy Pride Month, y’all! Caitlin’s Enterprise alien picks put some of the foundational values of Star Trek on display by including some underrepresented minority groups. The Xindi are all about diversity in their society that is literally made up of all of their subsets but who all get representation on their council (even if they spend most of their time fighting). The show also introduces the Aenar, a race of blind, light blue Andorians, and brings them into the fold. And while we may not care for Phlox as a character all the time, the Denobulans’ matter-of-fact polygamy is so normalizing that Gene Roddenberry would be proud… and a little turned on.

—

That’s it from Enterprise for now! Let’s go back to pretending this series doesn’t exist until the next time we have a blog series that drags it back into the forefront. We’ve got more important things to do right now, like finish up the second season of Star Trek: Discovery on the podcast, where you’re no doubt following along on SoundCloud or wherever you listen. Keep an eye out here for our season wrap post, sit around the council table with us over on Facebook and Bluesky, and pass the bread!

[sshbpodcast]

Episode 396: Field Trips!

DIS: "Through the Valley of Shadows"

The Klingon Soap Opera returns and Michael takes a merry jaunt across space in "Through the Valley of Shadows". Pike is seeking the rather mystical-sounding Time Crystal from a Klingon monastery that looks like it was plucked straight from Earth, while Burnham has gone rogue yet again in search of information on Control. And along the way they both encounter familiar faces that aren't at all familiar and could literally have been ANYONE else.

Also this week: Arthur Denting Pike, the nature of Leland, and Enterprise villains!

Timestamps: "Shadows": 01:37; ENT Heavies: 50:03

We promise it's not just John 12 times: Top 3 Star Trek Enterprise villains

[sshbpodcast]

Top 3 Star Trek Enterprise villains

By Ames

Now that we’re back in the swing of doing these series spotlight posts again, you surely know what’s next! We’ve just covered our favorite minor or one-off characters from Star Trek: Enterprise, and now it’s time to turn our attention to our favorite villains from the series! You can also check out our favorite villain picks from TOS, TNG, DS9, and Voyager, because if there’s anything Star Trek excels at, it’s creating some really unique and interesting baddies.

And then there’s Enterprise, which the hosts here at A Star to Steer Her By have definitely found to be the weakest of the bunch, and that seems to extend to their villains as well. While we do have some pretty fun villains to highlight below, the bench was definitely not as deep as it was with other series. Many were badly written or were generic bad guys or had no motivation to speak of. As you’ll see, others were characters whom the writers probably didn’t intend to be so morally bankrupt but whom we found villainous anyway. So who’s left after all that? Scroll on below and listen to this week’s episode (jump to 50:03) in which we disagree a whole lot on what makes a villain good, bad, or at all interesting. Mwahahaha!

[Images © CBS/Paramount]

Caitlin – Villains of their own stories

Daniels

Phlox

Archer

Caitlin went a different way with her villains. We are supposed to side with these characters as the heroes of the show, but they do such an abysmal job at it that many episodes of Enterprise treat them like the villains of the week. We found ourselves enraged whenever that time-traveling pissant Daniels shows up to muck about for no reason. And we’ve written whole blog posts about how Phlox and Archer do horribly depraved things—torture, racism, more torture, and genocide to name a few—that the show really should punish them for but doesn’t.

—

Chris – Can’t we all just get along?

Tarah

Degra

The Vissians

Shockingly, Chris didn’t pick Silik this week, but he got to cover him last week in our minor/recurring characters post, so it’s all good. But like Silik, Chris’s other favorite villains are all folks the Enterprise crew could easily have been friends with. From the Andorian spitfire whom we’ve loved in all her other roles, to the Xindi primate who started off as the architect of a superweapon but came around to do the right thing, to the race of oppressors whom Archer befriends despite their horrible treatment of a subsection of their own people.

—

Jake – The abyss will gaze back into you

Colonel Grat

Arik Soong

Eska hunters

It was Nietze who said, “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster,” and these are Trek characters who definitely become monsters. Jake has a tendency to pick villains with some level of complexity to them, from the Tandaran colonel whose hatred of the Suliban Cabal ends up extending to innocent Suliban as well, to the geneticist whose pursuit of perfection leads to him create a race of superior assholes, to the literal monster hunters who turn out not be hunting monsters at all.

—

Ames – Trek alums turned bad

Arik Soong

Repair station

Trellium foreman

All of my villains are familiar faces (or voices) from other Trek series getting down with their bad selves. Brent Spiner is just a joy to watch as a hammy mad scientist… but ya know, a different hammy mad scientist than usual. Roxann Dawson, using only vocal work, makes the computer running the repair station in “Dead Stop” so creepy that it’s commendable. And Stephen McHattie, whom viewers might recognize as Vreenak from the DS9 episode “In the Pale Moonlight,” is the grossest, ickiest, most self-serving being we’ve seen in a while!

It also doesn’t hurt that two of these three featured in my Enterprise fanfic, which you can find here!

—

When the actual main characters of the show are worse people than the ones trying to destroy humanity, then something’s gone wrong. We’ve got one more Enterprise spotlight, so join us when we determine who our favorite alien races are from the show! We’re also nearly through season two of Discovery on the podcast, and you can make sure you’re watching along and listening to us on SoundCloud or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also practice your diabolic laugh with us over on Facebook and BlueSky, and stop gazing at that abyss!

[sshbpodcast]

Episode 395: Momchael in the Ducts

DIS: "Perpetual Infinity"

It's all happening now, finally getting into gear...kinda near the end of things. Oops. In "Perpetual Infinity", Control makes its big play as we find out what Ma Burnham has been up to since her apparent death!

Also this week: drone editing, Supercorn, and Enterprise minor characters!

Timestamps: Perpetual Infinity: 00:53; ENT Cadet Review: 57:53

Yes, Enterprise is back. Sorry. But here's some stuff we liked!: Top 3 Star Trek Enterprise characters

[sshbpodcast]

Top 3 Star Trek Enterprise characters

By Ames

We’ve finally circled this ship back around to continue our show spotlight blog series again! You remember these. The A Star to Steer Her By hosts pick our three favorite minor or one-off characters from a Star Trek series and slap them in this list. We’ve already covered The Original Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager, and it’s finally Enterprise’s time to shine!

We give Enterprise a lot of shit on the podcast and in this blog, but it does boast some decent guest characters in its ranks! Some of them we only see in one episode and some of them recur a handful of times, but they all make an impression that proves to be among the highlights of that show. Whether they are laying the groundwork for established lore (this is a prequel series after all) or telling their own stories, these characters almost make Enterprise worth a look. Almost. Check them out below and listen to our discussion on this week’s podcast (get from there to here at 57:53) as you reflect on this long road with us.

[Images © CBS/Paramount]

Chris – Give me an S!

Silik

Shran

Sim

Chris’s picks this time around are all performers that we are spellbound by. These actors give that je ne sais quoi to characters who are instantly intriguing, get your attention, effect an emotional response, and all begin with the letter S! There’s a new face with an exotic way of saying “John” who is just a delight to watch. There’s the familiar face of a Trek veteran doing his usual stand-up job under new and exciting makeup. And there’s literally the same face of an existing character in a role that goes deeper than ever. We like these faces a lot!

—

Caitlin – When you’re feeling blue

Sim

Shran

Jhamel

We’ve got the blues after watching these characters, sometimes emotionally and sometimes coloristically. And sometimes in that more suggestive definition of the word whenever Connor Trinneer is onscreen, hubba hubba. Caitlin usually shows her affinity for characters who play with her heartstrings a little in this exercises, so it’s no surprise to see Trinneer’s stunning performance as a slightly different doomed character here, as well as the most charismatic Andorian you’ll ever meet, and one of our first Aenar members who reveals a very interesting new dimension to our blue-skinned allies.

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Ames – Against every instinct

Mestral

Degra

Charles

My picks for this go-around are all individuals who subvert the expectations of their own cultures, for better or for worse. Usually for worse because that’s what makes for good television. Compelling storytelling puts characters into situations where they have to make a choice, and these are people who make strong choices. They will push against Vulcan logic to experience other cultures and maybe find love, will oppose their own people to do what’s right during the Xindi War, or will learn to come out of their own shell in a society that oppresses their gender. Resist, baby, resist!

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Jake – Experts in their fields

A.G. Robinson

Kollos

T’Les

Jake’s favorite characters bring some level of experience and authority to their scenes, making them magnets for the eyes whenever they’re on screen. Imagine how much more interesting this show would have been if we’d had a more nuanced captain character instead of nepobaby Archer; imagine how a Klingon lawyer doing the honorable thing would affect his society if he didn’t end up in prison for it; and imagine how Vulcan would react to one of its scientists advocating for a logical revolution if their corrupt leaders hadn’t gotten her killed. These are characters with meat!

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Will we have as fun a time next week when we continue on in this exercise and pick out our favorite Enterprise villains? Find out by following along to this blog to catch all our Star Trek chatter. Make sure you’re also watching along with our coverage of Discovery episodes over on SoundCloud or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also share with us who your faves are over on Facebook and BlueSky, and come down with a case of the blue-skin blues with us.

[sshbpodcast]

Episode 394: Red Angel in the Spacetime Fold

DIS: "The Red Angel"

We're running out of season so it's time to have a bunch of reveals at once! Turns out we know who the Red Angel is, and now we've got to capture them in their titular episode! Also Michael gets an in-person retcon courtesy of Section 31! Also also we moan about Picard for a bit and get a little spoilery, so maybe watch out for that (37:28 - 40:00).

Meanwhile this week: civilian clothes, the scale of destruction, and wrapping up melding!

Timestamps: The Red Angel: 00:49; farewell for now to melds: 49:34

Just...just touchin' faces all over the shop: I’ll Spock the world and meld with you, Pt 3

[sshbpodcast]

I’ll Spock the world and meld with you, Pt 3

By Ames

If in The Original Series, the mind meld was mostly used as a Vulcan superpower get-out-of-jail free card (sometimes literally), and in Voyager, it served as a tool in Tuvok’s security chief belt to aid in investigations quite a lot, then Enterprise goes an entirely different direction with it. The show uses its prequel nature to explore the troubling history of melding, retconning something that frankly didn’t need retconning, and then course correcting perhaps a little too hard. Like all of Enterprise, it’s pretty messy.

But that’s why your A Star to Steer Her By hosts are here to dissect these chronologically early instances of the Vulcan mind touch in Enterprise and in the Kelvin movies. Did the writers really need to make the practice taboo during this time period? We already know that by the following century, Spock is melding with a different entity nearly every other week, so what gives? And what does JJ Trek have to say about the practice? Follow along below and listen to this week’s episode of the podcast (wend your way to 49:34) to touch our minds and find out!

[Images © CBS/Paramount]

“Fusion” We’re already starting off on the wrong foot with an episode that we here all loathe. Whatever point the writers are trying to make gets lost in the extremely uncomfortable mind rape scenes and the wholly unnecessary retconning of the mind meld to be illegal in Vulcan society. Like, why? Watching Tolaris acting as a sexual predator the whole episode long is disgusting. I don’t want it in my Star Trek. It’s not even good social commentary because nothing comes out of it, except T’Pol getting Pa’Nar Syndrome as we learn later in “Stigma.” We still have no idea why the writers did this to us.

“The Forge” Interestingly, we don’t get any more mind melds until season four, when Enterprise had basically morphed into an entirely different kind of show. You could tell Manny Coto was trying to bridge that gap between Enterprise and The Original Series. First up was fixing that massive problem with mind melds being taboo. So in “The Forge,” we learn that Soval (of all people!) can mind meld when he probes the mind of a comatose Corporal Askwith to learn what happened during the bombing. Not only do we get the meld used as an exposition machine again like old times, but the added layer of the series’s most anal retentive Vulcan being a melder creates a new character dynamic.

We get another mind meld in “The Forge” later when that weirdo Syrran (whom Archer knows as “Arev”) is on the verge of death and dumps a katra into Archer. So we’re basically hearkening back to The Wrath of Khan when Spock downloaded his own katra into McCoy. It’s another moment of deliberately paralleling TOS in order to get the show more aligned with what fans know of what was to come. I do still find it a crappy idea to have Archer be the vessel for the katra over T’Pol, who would have had a more meaningful and introspective experience as someone who doesn’t initially believe in katras, but what are you gonna do?

“Awakening” In this Vulcan story arc, we get even more mind melds to make up for the several seasons free of them! After Syrran has passed a katra over the Archer last episode, T’Pau melds her way in to double check whose katra is in there, and determines that it is indeed Surak, their logic hero. It’s mostly one of those expository mind melds to get characters the information they need to fulfill their scene, but we’re also reminded that this band of Vulcans is perfectly okay doing mind melds all over the place, contrary to the rest of Vulcan society. This is why T’Pau is the bomb.

Later that episode, we also see T’Pau make an attempt to get Surak out of Archer. But apparently the father of Vulcan logic likes it in Archer’s noodle and opts to stay in there instead. Who knew that was an option? Why couldn’t Spock’s katra in McCoy have been a little more comfortable in there instead of driving the doctor insane in The Search for Spock? What’s with all the superfluous new Vulcan lore that retcons all our existing superfluous Vulcan lore, huh Enterprise? Does this count as yet another Vulcan superpower? Does a sehlat shit in the woods?

“Kir’Shara” While wrapping up this three-parter story arc, T’Pau also fixes a big problem Enterprise had saddled itself with when the writers gave T’Pol a neural disease in “Stigma.” What a terrible mistake that whole idea was. Lucky for us, they fix it now and save T’Pol’s life when T’Pau melds with her to remove the Pa’Nar Syndrome so easily it’s almost laughable. The Vulcan badass goes on to shit on those V’tosh ka’tur weirdos when she tells T’Pol that melding is safe if you’re properly trained, and also that the High Command has been perpetuating myths that there’s no cure to Pa’Nar Syndrome when there is. It’s a lot of retconning, but we’ll allow it because it fixes this stupid plot. Oh, and presumably T’Pau shares some memories of T’Les too, which is nice.

We also get a super quick denouement scene in which some unnamed Vulcan priest takes Surak’s katra out of Archer, just to tie up that loose end before we finish off this big three-part bonanza. It would have been much more interesting if it’d been T’Pau who gets the katra of the founder of Vulcan logic, since she’s an established character and everything, but whatever. We can close the book on this Vulcan nonsense for now knowing that we’ve paved the way for melders in the future, I guess.

“Affliction” You know how I just said that melding is safe if you’re an experienced melder who knows what you’re doing? Well, does it strike anyone else as counterintuitive when a few episodes later T’Pol is mind melding Hoshi to figure out who kidnapped Phlox? T’Pol has no idea what she’s doing (and knows that doing it wrong can have dangerous results), but don’t worry, Archer is apparently an expert on the subject and talks her through it. It all feels kind of cultural appropriationy to have the human white dude do this, which is why I maintain that putting Surak’s katra into T’Pol would have been a better idea from the get go.

“In a Mirror, Darkly (Part 1)” We have one final mind meld from Enterprise, and it’s another meld-as-a-weapon sort of moment. I forgot that we do get to see this meld because there’s a flashback scene in “In a Mirror, Darkly (Part 1)” that depicts Mirror T’Pol forcibly mind melding with a struggling Mirror Tucker to get him to do her bidding and then mindwipe him at the end. It all sounds very par for the course for Vulcan mirrorfolk to use their superpowers with such evil intentions, so this one works for us. Plus they’re just so hot together.

Star Trek (2009) Need to info dump a whole series of context onto a character in under a minute? Well the mind meld is perfect for that! Prime-timeline Spock needs to get Kelvin-timeline Kirk up to speed, and talking to this guy would be a) boring to watch and b) fruitless because he knows young, brash Kirk won’t listen anyway. So Spock mind melds the guy to give him all the exposition on the Romulan backstory, the time travel weirdness, their friendship from another timeline, all that stuff, all in one memory montage that he still has to narrate over for some reason. It makes for a pretty generic film device, but it’s better than a boardroom scene for sure.

Later in the 2009 film, we also see Quinto Spock mind meld some unconscious Romulan just to pry information from him about where everything is on the Narada. That ship does look like it’d be impossible to navigate even if you did know the layout already. So we’re basically back to using melds to get information to characters when they need it because looking it up on the computer would not make for a very dynamic scene, and torturing a random Romulan (as was apparently in the original script) wouldn’t be very in character. Yikes.

Star Trek Into Darkness Pike’s having yet another rough day when his conference is attacked and he’s dying all over the place, and for some reason Spock mind melds with him. The SSHB hosts haven’t settled on exactly why Spock does this. If it’s to alleviate some of Pike’s pain while he’s dying, that’s not clear in the scene. If it’s to gain any intel that Pike has on the situation, it never comes up. If it’s just to connect with his friend one final time, that seems a little invasive and non consensual. He does bring up during his fight with Uhura that Pike’s final emotions remind him of his emotions when Vulcan was destroyed, but that doesn’t really doesn’t get significantly explored aside from that one line. We’re just kinda uncertain why this was here…

We totally forgot to bring this one up in our discussion on the podcast! I didn’t even remember this happening until I was literally Control-F’ing around in the Into Darkness transcript. To get Khan to stop crushing his head for a hot second during their fight scene, Spock reaches over and tries to mind meld with that limey bastard. It’s a blink-and-you-miss-it moment, and it’s not even clear that that’s what Spock is doing unless you’re well versed on mind melds. Nothing comes of it because Khan fights it off anyway, but it’s there.

—

That’s gonna be it for mind melds for a while. One of these days, when we’re through some more of the streaming Trek, we may circle back to cover the mind melds we see in Discovery and Strange New Worlds and the rest. Which means you should not only keep your eyes on this blog for that, but also keep following along with our episode watch-through over on SoundCloud or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also probe our thoughts over on Facebook and BlueSky, and never meld on an empty stomach.

[sshbpodcast]

Episode 393: Bishop to Queen's Metaphor Five

DIS: "Project Daedalus"

The sum is somehow greater than its parts this week on Discovery, as an overwrought trope plays a sort-of central role and we get to know someone just in time to never see them again in "Project Daedalus". The plot doesn't so much ramp up as spiral off into a whole new direction as the real villain is finally/suddenly revealed. Meanwhile, Spock is in A MOOD.

Also this week: the Oilers, the relentless march of time, and the second part of our Mind Melds talk!

Timestamps: Daedalus: 04:36; more meldin': 49:12

Our blogs are one: I’ll Spock the world and meld with you, Pt 2

[sshbpodcast]

I’ll Spock the world and meld with you, Pt 2

By Ames

Last week, we probed our minds to recall all the times we saw mind melds in The Original Series, and we’re pretty sure we left our katras lying around somewhere. So the A Star to Steer Her By hosts are back this week to touch more temples, to make lots of O faces, and to see how the mind meld scenes from The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager compare to Spock’s original concepts.

It’s going to be a much shorter list than last week since two of these shows didn’t have a resident Vulcan on the roster, and Tuvok in Voyager didn’t get his touch on nearly as often as the OC Vulcan. So prepare your mind as we get ready to play detective at least as well as Tuvok so frequently does. Follow along with the list below and listen to our telepathic banter on this week’s episode of the podcast (jump to timestamp 49:12). Fascinating.

[Images © CBS/Paramount]

“Sarek” TNG makes use of mind meld scenes a couple of times when Vulcans are visiting the crew, and it’s always methodically used and poignant. Perhaps the best example comes in “Sarek” when the titular character needs to meld with Picard in order to stabilize his Bendii syndrome–laden brain and do his ambassadorial job. And the scene gives us some of the best acting we’ve seen on the show to date. Using the linking of minds to really explore what it means to be a Vulcan, suppressing emotion but experiencing it nonetheless, is powerful stuff.

“Unification II” Later, we get kind of a culmination of that meld between Sarek and Picard when Spock also melds with the Enterprise-D captain. He knows Jean-Luc holds the memories and insights of his just-passed father, and this is a truly sweet way for our favorite Vulcan-Human hybrid to perceive how his dad really felt about him. Sarek is a terrible dad, we’ve established this many times, but somewhere under his Vulcan demeanor, he does care about his son, and the pleased look on Picard’s face when he shares this with Spock says it all.

“The Maquis, Part II” Just the one mind meld scene in Deep Space Nine, and that’s when that Maquis member Sakonna attempts to forcibly pry information from Dukat. We established last week when Spock mind melded with Valeris that the mind meld can be weaponized, which is fairly horrifying. These Vulcans are way too overpowered. But Dukat has prepared for just this scenario and his mental fortitude is no match for this Vulcan interrogator. Even if Gul Dukat is a bad man, you’ve got to find some triumph in him fighting off a nonconsensual meld.

“Ex Post Facto” The rest of these are all going to be Tuvok moments from Voyager, but we promise the list is barely half as long as all the Spock moments from last week. Interestingly, Tuvok uses melds a ton when he’s in his role as ship detective, I mean, security chief. Melding is the perfect tool for determining the truth in a situation, and Tuvok does just that when he melds with Paris as part of his murder investigation. He gets Tom off the hook and saves him from the Baneans’ weird disciplinary action and their little dog too!

“Meld” If you’ve been following this space for a little while now, you’ll know that Lon Suder is among my favorite minor characters. The mind of a psychopath is just so interesting; why else would there be so many podcasts about them? Tuvok also finds Suder’s mind compelling and can’t help himself when he wants to determine his real motives for murdering Darwin. The rest of the episode, we’re treated to some extraordinary Tuvok acting as his logical mind can’t handle the chaos in the thoughts of a madman. What a ride.

“Flashback” Is it a little weird that Tuvok melds with Janeway of all people in order to plumb his mind when he starts experiencing unsettling visions? Yeah, a little. Some could argue that maybe he should have melded with Kes or with another Vulcan on the ship (this was before we knew anything about Vorik, mind you) instead of putting the captain in danger of losing her mind as well. But their relationship is nice and the scenes of them putting together the pieces of what happened back on the Excelsior make for a cute little riddle.

“Warlord” If we were lamenting not seeing Tuvok mind meld with Kes in “Flashback,” then we can feel appeased that we see them meld in “Warlord.” Kes is being possessed by that tyrant Tieran, and Tuvok sneaks in his consciousness long enough to see that the Ocampan is still in there, fighting back as hard as she can. It’s a nice moment between the two since we already know that they have bonded over their telepathic powers and Tuvok has taken her under his wing as her mentor.

“The Gift” All that makes the final appearance of Kes (we’re not counting “Fury”) that much more tragic. In “The Gift,” Kes’s mental powers are spinning out of control and it’s only a matter of time before she blows. There’s a quick moment when Kes is phasing wildly in and out of corporeality and Tuvok fights through with a mind meld to stabilize her just long enough to get to the end of the episode. Vulcans don’t show it a lot, but it’s clear that Kes means a lot to Tuvok and he grieves in his own way when she leaves the ship/show.

“Random Thoughts” Detective Tuvok is best Tuvok. Like he did with Tom in “Ex Post Facto,” he melds with Torres to understand what really happened when she spread her violent thoughts in “Random Thoughts.” He learns enough from her experience to distrust that guy Guill, who was bogarting her feelings of rage for his own disgusting use. But Tuvok is on the case!

So when our Vulcan investigator weasels his way into Guill’s company and learns he’s dealing in disturbing memories on the black market, it’s the perfect time to whip out the mind meld! This jerk Guill is really asking for it, so Tuvok shares so many disturbing memories with the guy that the Mari merchant will be lucky if he’s not catatonic for the rest of his life. It’s one of the more squicky uses of a mind meld, like the ones from The Undiscovered Country and DS9’s “The Maquis,” and they couldn’t have picked a more deserving victim.

“Infinite Regress” Arguably, Tuvok mind melds with the most beings at once when he melds with Seven in “Infinite Regress.” It’s like melding with dozens (if not hundreds? Thousands?) of personalities at once because Seven is inhabited by all the individuals whom she’s assimilated into the Borg. And what a trippy LSD trip of a scene. We do admit: it does go on for way too long. The camera trickery and lighting makes it look like Tuvok wandering through a claustrophobic rave to find Seven amidst the masses, something only a skilled Vulcan can stomach.

“Gravity” Okay, this one’s really sweet. When Noss falls in love with a reluctant Tuvok, all he can really do is tell her he’s not interested, and he’s got a wife to get home to, and why can’t you fall for Tom like everyone else? But this hardened Vulcan is quite the softy on the inside. At the end of the episode, he mind melds with her so that she can see in his mind how he thinks about her. There’s some real vulnerability and openness about the experience, and you can tell that he cherishes their time together in his own Tuvoky way.

“Unimatrix Zero” Most of the Tuvok mind melds have used the Vulcan superpower as a way to get to the insight needed in a scene for the episode to progress. Its lie-detector capability is long established, after all. So it feels like we’re getting back to the campy roots of the thing in “Unimatrix Zero” when we get yet another magical element layered on top of it. Tuvok essentially sets up a mental conference call between Seven and Janeway so they both can enter the Borg paradise. But not Tuvok for some reason? It’s hilariously inconsistent here.

“Repression” One final use of Detective Tuvok on this list, but in this instance it’s not that Tuvok is using his meld to investigate some kind of crime. The meld was the crime in the first place! It turns out Tuvok is investigating himself! The poor guy is being mind controlled by some Bajoran whacko a whole quadrant away, and he ends up forcibly mind melding a bunch of former Maquis members into comas. That’s right, it’s mind-meld-as-a-weapon time yet again, and this one is truly bizarre.

“Workforce” Finally, we make it to Quarra, our final use of the Vulcan mind meld in Voyager. The whole crew has been brainwashed into happily working 9-to-5 jobs, but Tuvok, being a Vulcan, comes out of his brain fog more quickly than anyone else. He comes to understand the situation enough to know that an even better superpower than mind melds is Borg nanotechnology, so he mind melds with the brainwashed Seven so that she can eventually save the day.

—

So what conclusions can we draw between Spock and Tuvok’s uses of the mind meld? Well, the Vulcan technique is still definitely so overpowered as to be laughable when it can get you out of nearly every problem, but Tuvok’s melds mostly seem to be in service to his role as Security Chief, so they seem remarkably more consistent. How about next week then, when we have more mind melds to compare? Keep following us here to detect our thoughts, catch up on the podcast over on SoundCloud (or wherever you podcast), touch our minds over on Facebook and BlueSky, and don’t mind meld within two hours of eating.

[sshbpodcast]

Episode 392: Serving Spock

DIS: "If Memory Serves"

Brace yourself for the earliest possible Trek nostalgia as we return to Talos IV to check in with some oddly beefy Talosians and a somewhat less messed-up Vina in "If Memory Serves"! The first ever Trek antagonists return to help unscramble Spock's eggs, but at a price! Will the big reveal of the source of Michael and Spock's rift feel worth the buildup?! Meanwhile, back on the ship, Culber continues to deal with being alive again, and sharing a ship with his killer.

Also this week: big ratings, big beard opinions, and big melding!

Timetamps: If Memory Serves: 00:43; Mind Melds, pt 1: 45:43

My tumbl to your tumbl: I’ll Spock the world and meld with you, Pt 1

[sshbpodcast]

I’ll Spock the world and meld with you, Pt 1

By Ames

My mind to your mind. My thoughts to your thoughts. Your dirty, dirty thoughts. Sometimes a mind meld in Star Trek is a clever technique to advance the plot in a sci-fi way. Sometimes, it’s just a way to cop out of a scene when the writers have written themselves into a corner. And other times it’s straight up intrusive and horrifying because no one should have the power to read another person’s mind without their consent!

The A Star to Steer Her By hosts are going through all the mind meld scenes and collecting our thoughts on each one. First up: all the mind melds from The Original Series through the TOS films. So brace yourself for mostly seeing Spock (but somehow not entirely Spock!) touching a lot of people’s faces, random walls, and sometimes just the air around him to cognitively connect with whatever he damn well pleases. The list is longer than I intended since Spock is a bit of a meld slut, so check them all out below and telepathically listen to our chatter (jump to 45:43) over on the podcast. Back to those dirty, dirty thoughts…

[Images © CBS/Paramount]

“Dagger of the Mind” The very first mind meld we see comes pretty early in the release of season one of The Original Series, and it was all a way for the Enterprise crew to figure out what the hell was going on with that lunatic Simon Van Gelder without resorting to bunkum science like hypnosis. Cue Spock pulling some crazy faces throughout an agonizingly long scene to determine that Dr. Adams used the neural neutralizer on Van Gelder and is not to be trusted. Good job advancing the plot and introducing a Vulcan superpower we’ll use over and over and over again!

“A Taste of Armageddon” The next use we see later in the season already makes the whole idea of the mind meld so laughable as to be worthy of ridicule. The crew has been locked up by Eminiarians, as is their wont, and Spock uses a sort of long-distance, touch-free variant of the mind meld on one of the guards on the other side of a wall. Wow, it didn’t take the writers long to buff Spock’s magic powers to allow him to save the day by essentially mind controlling some bloke.

“The Devil in the Dark” We’ve got to commend Leonard Nimoy for some mesmerizing acting when Spock mind melds with the Horta in “The Devil in the Dark.” It’s over-the-top in all the right ways. Watching him feeling the pain of the silicon-based lifeform is haunting. What a great way to humanize a being that is probably among the furthest biologically from humans in the show. This is what science fiction is really for. Plus it opens up Spock’s magic powers to even more different lifeforms!

“The Changeling” Speaking of Spock using his powers on lifeforms that are further and further from the humanoids we’re accustomed to: we’ve got Spock mind melding with Nomad in “The Changeling.” So now Spock can mind meld with people he’s touching, people on the other sides of walls, aliens that look like a big afghan blanket, and even random robots whose sentience is questionable from the start. What can’t this man mind meld with? Things are getting out of control.

“Mirror, Mirror” Finally, our first instance of someone other than Spock melding with a person. It’s… Mirror Spock! Which still counts! This time, that pointy-eared hobgoblin is intruding on McCoy’s thoughts in order to learn the truth behind the origins of the prime-universe crew. And it just makes us wonder why we don’t use the Vulcan mind meld in courtroom scenes or any time we need to learn if someone is lying or not. This superpower is so overpowered that it could solve most TOS plots lickety-split!

“Patterns of Force” That’s just how they use it in “Patterns of Force” when Spock mind melds a mostly catatonic John Gill to learn why the actual hell he would bring Nazism to the Ekosians in the first place. And it introduced an actual limitation to the mind meld for a change! Apparently this power isn’t limitless. Gill has been tranqed so hard that the best Spock can do is allow Gill to answer direct questions asked of him. So play 20 Questions with this guy, and you’ll be all set.

“By Any Other Name” Remember how Spock once mind melded a guy through a wall? We just talked about it a moment ago. Well the writers remembered too because it comes up again when the Kelvins have the crew confined to some cave or other, and it’s almost the exact same scene we got in “At Taste of Armageddon.” Spock tries to mentally influence Kelinda through the rock wall; it’s unclear if she takes the bait or just wants to punish them for trying, but the result is the same.

��The Paradise Syndrome” It’s overacting all around in this use of the mind meld on Kirok, the persona that Kirk has taken on while on Amerind. Spock needs to restore Kirk’s memory and decides the quickest way to do that is go in there and defrag it himself. This meld thing really is a Swiss Army knife, and is probably used way more often than most people even open one of those tools. Are we at the point at which the whole concept of the mind meld is just an escape button from an episode? Guys, we’re not even halfway through this list…

“Is There in Truth No Beauty?” We’ve got a twofer of mind melds in one of my personal faves, “Is There in Truth No Beauty?” and our very first example of someone other than Nimoy performing it. So first we get Spock mind melding with the Medusan, Kollos, in order to merge consciousnesses, I guess? It’s close to a body possession, but Spock is still in there. It’s just that now he and Kollos together have the navigation capabilities to save the ship from doom.

And then Miranda Jones proves to us that humans can master the discipline as well if they are well trained. Sure, Vulcans get a new superpower every week it seems, but this is one that Dr. Jones picked up through years of schooling on Vulcan, and she uses it to save Spock from madness. And then presumably she lives happily ever after with Kollos, my biggest ship of the franchise.

“Spectre of the Gun” Get ready for the rarely seen triple mind meld, courtesy of the absurd western episode “Spectre of the Gun.” Considering at the beginning of TOS, Spock claims he’s never mind melded a human before (something Discovery blatantly retconned), by this point in season three, he’s melding Kirk, McCoy, and Scott in rapid succession to make their minds more pliant so that they’ll believe the bullets from the gunfight at the OK Corral will go through them. It’s a weird one, y’all.

“Requiem for Methuselah” Almost through the live action show now, and we’ve reached what we’ve called both one of Spock’s worst moments and one of the worst uses of a memory wipe on the show. It’s just plain messed up that Spock would remove Kirk’s memories of Rayna, the robot he fell in love with, because he does it without Kirk’s consent. Bones joshes that Spock will never understand love and comments that he wishes the captain could forget… and Spock makes the captain forget! Because Bones was razzing him! Not cool!

“Turnabout Intruder” Our last instance from the run of The Original Series comes from the last episode from the run of The Original Series. That’s when Spock mind melds with Kirk, who happens to be in Janice Lester’s body, to confirm that the two have body swapped. So it’s another lie detector use—further proof that this technique really can solve most conflicts in episodes. That is, if people trust the Vulcan performing it, which Janice Lester, who happens to be in Kirk’s body, emphatically does not.

“One of Our Planets Is Missing” We’ve made it to The Animated Series, and there are more Spock mind melds to cover! Do I have a soft spot for “One of Our Planets Is Missing” because it’s similar to some unrelated fanfic I wrote for the podcast? You bet I do! Both feature Spock mind melding with a sentient cloud while the ship is inside of it, which I’d say is stretching the capacity for mind melds except for the fact that he’s already done much weirder things, so whatever. 

“The Infinite Vulcan” The other instance of a mind meld we get in The Animated Series is the rare Spock-on-Spock meld in “The Infinite Vulcan.” For absolutely no reason except that it would look funny animated (which was shockingly something Filmation had the capacity to do in their very cheap box of tricks), the clone of Spock is fifty feet tall. Spock 2 needs to save original Spock from something or other, and a mind meld via just a massive fingertip to the noggin does the trick.

The Motion Picture Whatever the hell V’Ger is by the time the crew enters it in The Motion Picture, you can bet your ass Spock can mind meld with it. It’s somewhere between cloud, robot, and giant floating Ilia, and Spock is fully committed to putting his hands all over that puppy and figuring out its deal. He doesn’t even have permission to go investigate this thing. My dude just wanders in unannounced to get into that delicious brain, that’s how nuts Spock is at this point.

The Wrath of Khan This afterthought of a scene ended up being so consequential going forward. To pave the way for bringing Spock back to life after his beautiful sacrifice, a scene of Spock using a mind meld to dump his katra into McCoy was added. We at the podcast are still mixed about how necessary this was since we’re also very mixed on the ensuing movie as a whole, but it’s also nice to have Spock back. And it allows for some excellent DeForest Kelley acting in the third film. But it undoes a poignant death scene. So torn!

The Search for Spock Speaking of the movie we’re so torn on, The Search for Spock has some mind melds of its own. We get our first mind meld from Sarek when he comes looking for Spock’s katra and assumes it’s in Kirk. Why he didn’t ask what he was looking for first, we can’t say, but it is totally in Sarek’s character to just stride in and do whatever without explaining himself.

Toward the end of the movie, after we’ve done all the prerequisite searching for Spock, we get a scene at Mount Seleya where the Vulcan priestess T’Lar performs the fal-tor-pan ceremony on McCoy and the newly resurrected Spock, which includes something akin to a mind meld to move the katra over like cut-pasting a file from your My Documents folder.

The Voyage Home The movies really do have a good selection of mind melds to go around, with almost all of the TOS films having the Vulcan power represented. The Voyage Home’s mind meld of choice is on the humpback whales, George and Gracie, when Spock is trying to communicate the plan to the massive Cetacea. It’s absolutely batshit that Spock claims he’s succeeded in conveying to the whales what the plan is and that they’re onboard. Somehow the thing that makes the most sense is Spock learning that Gracie is pregnant.

The Undiscovered Country Our final mind meld for this week is also the most horrifying. Like the squicky mind wipe in “Requiem for Methuselah,” it’s another of Spock’s real low points as a character. Using the mind meld as a weapon to force information from Valeris in The Undiscovered Country really feels like the antithesis of what the practice was contrived for originally. We’ve come a long way since “Dagger of the Mind,” when melding was established so they wouldn’t have to show Spock doing something problematic, like hypnotizing Van Gelder, and now at the end of the movies, it’s even more problematic than that. Heckin’ yikes.

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When I snap my fingers, you’ll subscribe to this space for more blogtiviities! We’ve got more mind melds to discuss from the other Trek series, and you don’t want to miss those! You also don’t want to miss more Star Trek: Discovery coverage as we watch through the whole thing over on SoundCloud or wherever you get your podcasts. You also don’t want to skip out on friending us on Facebook and BlueSky. Snap!

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Episode 391: Between a Spock and a Hard Place

DIS: "Light and Shadows"

Bit of a double-filler show this week, as Michael drops in on the folks and Pike decides to chill with Tyler in "Light and Shadows". Just kind of spinning our wheels here until we FINALLY see Spock, tho he's not really in a state to do much more than be there. Back with the ship, we're laying some groundwork for later payoff, maybe? Also we remember Stamets has a weird relationship with time.

Also this week: time prefixing, evil tech squids, and familiar faces!

Timestamps: Light and Shadows: 01:29; It's Full of Guest Stars: 48:19

Hey, it's you!: He’s from that other Star Trek!

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He’s from that other Star Trek!

By Ames

Over on the A Star to Steer Her By podcast, Discovery has finally met up with Ethan Peck’s Spock after weeks of teasing us with the cross-series cameo we’d been promised. And it got the SSHB hosts thinking: When are guest appearances of characters from other Trek series worth it, and when are they strictly for the audience's recognition? And when are they inexplicably simultaneously both?

Gene Roddenberry spent all of The Next Generation insisting that it be kept separate from The Original Series, but once the Great Bird was no longer with us, that door was unceremoniously kicked down! Every series after TOS has its moments of “I know this character from the other thing!” for the audience to do the Leonardo DiCaprio point at their screen and feel immediately good about themselves. We’re going to go through all the instances of main characters showing up in other series from TNG through the Kelvin films. Follow along with us on this week’s podcast episode (jump to 48:19). You’ll never believe who shows up!

[Images © CBS/Paramount]

TNG: “Encounter at Farpoint” Every series premiere after The Original Series has some sort of baton-handoff scene between one of the preexisting characters and our new folks, and in The Next Generation, that came as a lovely moment between McCoy and Data. The scene obviously evokes an amicable succession while also promising to the audience that the franchise will be in good hands. But we’re just such fans of Bones here that we’re fine being catered to.

TNG: “Unification” It’s not until season five that we see another TOS alumnus, and that’s when Spock drops by to work things out between the Vulcans and the Romulans. It’s something we can emphatically see being relevant to his character, especially after the steamy events of “The Enterprise Incident,” so it’s a pretty seamless plot in that regard. Even if we know that behind the scenes, this was a marketing tie-in with Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country, we’re here for it.

TNG: “Relics” We have one more classic Trek appearance in TNG, and that’s a temporally-displaced Scotty popping out of a transporter buffer—which is the most Scotty way of showing up somewhere that we can think of. The episode is also more than just a “I know that guy” bell and whistle. Seeing Montgomery Scott, a genius of his time, struggling with obsolescence is more impactful than it would have been if they’d written the episode for some rando we don’t care about.

TNG: “Birthright” I may have said that was the last TOS main who shows up in TNG, but we still have more crossover cameos! When Julian Bashir shows up to be an eccentric weirdo in “Birthright,” it’s definitely more wanky. Clearly, they’re just trying to promote Deep Space Nine, and not even all that well because the scene would have made more sense with a different character. There’s no reason a medical officer would be involved in this engineering plot!

TNG: “Firstborn” There’s just one final TNG cameo that we could think of, and it’s the wankiest one. When Quark appears on a screen to talk to Riker in “Firstborn,” it is only to advance the plot. Strike that, anyone could have done that. It was only so viewers could get that sense of righteousness when they recognize a thing they know and get to feel smart. At least they probably just filmed Armin Shimerman between scenes on the DS9 set.

Generations Let’s move on to the TNG films, which also feature cameos from the other shows, some more blatant than others. Generations is super obvious about this because the whole film is a “what if Kirk and Picard had an adventure together?” fanfic that, frankly, glosses right over a perfectly serviceable Kirk character arc. But we also get clear the fan service inclusion of Chekov and Scott at the beginning, complete with tongue-in-cheek press. Clearly Nimoy, Kelly, and Nichols all said no, and it’s all so obvious the two who showed up just inherited their lines.

Nemesis One more quick wank and then we’ll move on. Admiral Janeway pops up in Nemesis just to help Picard advance the plot. It’s a fairly throwaway scene that could have gone to anyone, but fans of Voyager would feel rewarded to see that their favorite captain has gotten promoted and is safe and secure in the quadrant where she belongs. Shockingly, there’s no dog yapping in the background of her Zoom window.

DS9: “Emissary” Onward to Deep Space Nine! We’ve got a much bigger baton handoff for the series premiere this time, with the captain of the previous show showing up to give our new hero his mission. Having Sisko immediately loathe Picard was a daring move to kick off a show, but that animosity propels the whole series forward. DS9 promises not to be the cuddle-factory crew that TNG boasted, and contrasting the two leads in front of your very eyes highlights that for you.

DS9: “Defiant” This cameo has a one-two punch! Just when you think it’s just going to be a William Riker appearance for the fans to wank about, it’s revealed that this is actually Tom Riker! Who’s technically the same person, so we’ll count it. After his introduction in “Second Chances,” it’s nice to see Tom’s character get a little arc that makes sense for him, that brings peril to the station’s characters, and that’s a genuinely solid story on its own.

DS9: “Through the Looking Glass” If we counted Tom Riker in this little exercise, we might as well count Mirror Universe characters too. For the most part, including Mirror Tuvok in the Terran Resistance feels like it’s mostly one of those “Look, it’s a guy to wank about!” instances. But the more you think about it, the more interesting it gets. On the podcast, we give the Mirror Universe more scrutiny than it merits, but here’s an example of things not always being 1:1 because this Tuvok isn’t in the Delta Quadrant! Fascinating!

DS9: “Trials and Tribble-ations” Here’s an episode that is expressly fankwank! And we wanked! Almost all the DS9 crew gets to meet all of the TOS crew, so this episode is much more than allowing a character from another series to appear for a story. It’s forming the whole story around that and making it so self conscious and impressive that “Trials and Tribble-ations” is really its own kind of animal. The references are the entire point, and seeing the two crews together feels earned.

VOY: “Caretaker” Before the plunge into the Delta Quadrant, the Voyager has time for one of the franchise’s typical baton handoffs at Deep Space Nine, and it’s a fairly good one! Not only do we get the prescribed cameo from a previous show’s main character when we see Quark trying to rip off Harry at the bar, but the whole scene sets up the Tom-Harry dynamic that will become emblematic of the whole series. It’s a Ferengi two-for-one special!

VOY: “Death Wish” You’re going to see Riker turn up in other series the most, and this is the second of three times we’re going to see him in this list (and we’re not even getting to streaming Trek this week!). In Voyager, his appearance just seems kinda dumb. It being Riker of all people whom Q manifests during Quinn’s trial doesn’t add anything specific to the plot. He’s just there because the audience will recognize him. At least Frakes doesn’t play his ancestor in the photo.

VOY: “Flashback” Coming out at about the same time as DS9’s “Trials and Tribble-ations,” Voyager’s recognition of the 30th anniversary also brings some familiar faces to the screen. This time, it’s Sulu and Rand (whom I’d argue is a main character, underappreciated though she was) appearing in flashbacks on the Excelsior during the time of The Undiscovered Country. It all makes sense in the context of the episode while still being distinct as an episode of Voyager.

VOY: “Timeless” I’d put the Captain La Forge cameo in “Timeless” about on par with the Janeway cameo in Nemesis on the wankiness scale. There’s no good reason for him to be the one chasing down Chakotay and Kim except that the audience knows who he is. And frankly, we don’t think his career journey would lead to captaincy anyway. Maybe this is where Riker should have turned up? Or better yet, have it be Captain Data and establish in this timeline he never died in Nemesis!

VOY: “Pathfinder,” “Lifeline,” and “Inside Man” What’s much more conducive for a guest cameo is utilizing Troi’s role as a counselor usefully for a change! We probably see her do her job more in her three appearances on Voyager than in all of The Next Generation, and it’s so nice to see! She influences the plot! She shows competence at her job! She has a very believable rapport with Barclay! And Marina Sirtis gets to actually show her humor in her scenes. This is one of few times when we’re glad we got more of a character. Until...

ENT: “These Are the Voyages…” Riker continues his pattern of popping up somewhere in each of the subsequent Trek series with our final broadcast-era show, Enterprise. The 2000s series did have a sort-of handoff scene in the premiere, “Broken Bow,” with the Zephram Cochrane footage, but he wasn’t a main character, so it doesn’t count for this exercise! The finale, on the other hand, just plain shouldn’t exist. The SSHB hosts find forcing Riker and Troi into this prequel series to be in poor taste, as we’ve discussed many times before. Fuck this episode.

Star Trek (2009), Into Darkness, and Beyond It’s appropriate that we end with more Spocks! We just met him on Discovery, and we wouldn’t have gotten here without the Kelvin films. Making Nimoy’s Spock integral to the plot was a smart inclusion and we have to commend these films for doing it tastefully, cleverly, and most important: logically. It’s much more than sating the crowd with things they’ll recognize. Nimoy’s inclusion was pivotal to making the universe make sense in the most Star Trek–y way.

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One of these days, we’ll come back to this assignment after we’ve seen more of the streaming series and see what the differences and similarities are there. Will it be more fanwank? Will the proportions of cameo appearances be overwhelmingly represented in Lower Decks? Keep following along to find out! Until then, you can keep listening to our watchthrough of Discovery over on SoundCloud, YouTube, or wherever you podcast. You can also make a cameo appearance to us by finding us on Facebook and BlueSky, especially if you’re William Riker. That guy shows up everywhere!

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Ten Forward 46: USS Callister: Into Infinity

Slight change of plans this week! The latest season of Black Mirror recently dropped, bringing with it the new "USS Callister: Into Infinity". Since we loved and covered the original a surprisingly long time ago, we knew we had to check out the new one. The crew may be free of Daly but the stakes are higher, as prohibitive monetization makes survival almost impossible. And they don't have infinite lives anymore…

Also this week: strike-scrapped plans, whale or Smurf, and the comedy stylings of Charlie Brooker!

Note: spoilers for Being John Malkovich from 1:19:56 - 1:20:28

Throwback to our coverage of the first "USS Callister" episode: Ten Forward 7: Black Mirror - USS Callister