Podcast Recommendation
Trek edition
If you are one who likes pop culture podcasts, especially in the recap and criticism genre and one is into Star Trek, I highly recommend The Greatest Discovery.
The Greatest Discovery is a spin-off of The Greatest Generation, which was a TNG (and is now a DS9) recap podcast. The Discovery version covers all things new Trek, to include Discovery, Picard, Short Treks, and the other upcoming new shows.
The hosts are knowledgable and irreverent and provide an entertaining weekly look at all the new Trekkin’ going on.
Other decent Trek podcasts include The Post Atomic Horror, This Week in Trek, and Mission Log (although I will admit I got tired of Mission Log after a while–the other two are not must-listens, but make for worthy backups to the Greatest Discovery).
At a minimum, I will also add that I have been loving Star Trek: Picard, so feel free to treat this as at Trek open forum as well as a post about Trek podcasts.
(I will note that listening to the first several episodes of Greatest Generation reminds me how generally lousy the first season of TNG was. Woof.).
You didn’t like the thinly veiled after-school special on drugs?
I have fond memories of Lt. Yar in season 1.
But if it is all Trek, then on to something I mentioned in the open thread. I referenced a book, “Winners Take All” with the thesis that the plutocrats trying to “do good” also try not to change the paradigm that lets them do well. This reminded me of a decent two-part episode of Voyager, “The Year of Hell.”
Spoilers follow.
Aside from the misadventures of the little, lost Federation Starship, oh so far from home, this episode deals with one man’s obsession, which he intends to achieve with a techno-babble tool that, suspend your disbelief please, erases objects from time. If you aim it at an asteroid, not only will it vanish, ti will never have existed. His ship, and large crew, exist outside and don’t grow old.
In the end, through the machinations of Paris and Chakotay, with assistance from a crippled Voyager, the funky ship is erased from time, and then the man’s obsession is not just ended, but satisfied, as he restores what he strove to restore all along.
So the ship’s existence was the problem.
We should get every rich would-be benefactor of humanity to see this episode and really think about the implications.
On the other hand, many of them likely have seen it.
I’ve enjoyed the Random Trek and Rachel Watches Star Trek podcasts.
@Kathy:
Oops. Sorry. that should read “… exist outside of time…”
I just suspended Netflix for a few months, until I have time to watch TV again. I’d intended to revisit DS9, as I remember it as having had really good writing in many episodes.
Another pretty good Voyager episode is “Muse.” It portrays a primitive civilization with something very much like Greek theater. B’Elanna’s shuttle crash lands, and a local poet gets to play back the logs, and writes a play about the “Voyager Eternals.”
The episode deals with B’Elanna’s attempt to repair the shuttle enough to contact Voyager, and the poet’s duty to write another play on command, also about the “Voyager Eternals.” Thus a planet with primitive civilization gets to have a play with characters like the Borg Queen and Captain Janeway.
I like to watch the crazy right-wing YouTube reviews of ST:Picard.
It’s people who loved Star Trek when they were growing up, and apparently never recognized how political it was. Those two people who were black on one side and white on the other, and who hated each other because it was the different side, and who returned to their planet to fight to the death in the ruins? Yeah, that wasn’t a metaphor for anything.
So, now we have a show that centers of diversity, tolerance and refugees. And they’re very angry. And I love watching their feelings of betrayal and their impotent rage. I laugh at them.
Does that make me a bad person?
(The same people review Doctor Who, but that’s less fun since the show kind of sucks right now… bad show runner, not a bad Doctor, but it’s still not good… if anyone here loves it, well, good for you, I got lots of good years of the series, I loved Capaldi’s last season, and maybe it’s your turn now)
(I wish the first female Doctor got a more traditional run of the show — now if it’s a failure, the powers that be may assume it was a female Doctor that was the problem)
I listen to the Trek podcasts at Post-Show Recaps.
Star Trek question for y’all: which was worse, the Voyager episode where Paris and Janeway became salamanders, or the TNG episode where Picard became a lemur?
@Gustopher:
Yes–this pretty amazing to behold (they are even angrier about Disovery).
Yes, the criticisms there are similar.
I have, overall, liked the current Doctor, but have a number of criticisms as well. There have been several quite good episodes this season (4 specifically, including this week’s).
But Capaldi/Moffat was far more my speed–Capaldi is up there with my favorites all-time (which includes Tom Baker and Matt Smith).
I understand that viewership for the show is strong last series and this.
If you want politics, or political allegory, DS9 is the Trek to watch. Case in point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVHR0UPHERQ
@Steven L. Taylor: You may be enjoying the current season more than I am. I’m not hate-watching it, but I’m not really engaged, and I’m finding a lot of it groan-worthy.
Jodie Whittaker has lots of good moments, but no great stories. And the best story of the past two years, Demons of Penjab, is undercut by being way too similar to Twice Upon A Time* which was just a few episodes before it — how many different groups are now hiding around in the background when someone dies?
If the kids like it, and little girls get to dress up as the Doctor… good. We’ll get back to the old, cranky, aloof Doctor that I want in a few years, or a few years after that. And in the meantime, I can finally get around to the Troughton stories.
——
*: I did not like the portrayal of the first Doctor as amazingly sexist in that episode (they packed many seasons of casual 1960s sexism into a short performance), but Capaldi’s final speech was excellent, so… overall fine.
Another incredible moment from DS9, in which Sisko has to live with his choices:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-YyL7X4CWw
Probably the best summary of Weber’s argument in “Politics As A Vocation” I’ve ever seen.
@Gustopher: I would definitely like to see Thirteen with a different showrunner.
I enjoyed Spyfall I &II, Fugitive of the Judoon, and the one this week very much. The others were a mixed bag. Orphan 55 was a hot mess.
@Kingdaddy: This all reminds me that I need to get back to DS9. I missed much of the last two seasons (the combo of infants and having to use a VCR).
@Steven L. Taylor: Better watch it before grandchildren become an obstacle.
@Kingdaddy: Streaming means having no excuse save the need for time.
@Steven L. Taylor: You really need to watch the last two seasons in their entirety. Great writing, particularly in sustaining and concluding the story arc of the Dominion War. Some of the best acting of the series. Some of the best Trek ever.
1. Deep Space Nine is the 1990s series that has held up the best, in my opinion. I watched it through from start to finish in 2017 and 2018 and it feels far more timely than probably any of its creators hoped it would.
2. A meme that was floating around during Season 1 of Discovery:
Right-winger: “When did Trek get so SJW and political?”
Answer: “September 8, 1966.”
3. I really want a DISCO t-shirt.