Out of Contreks

OOC Special 4: Discovery, Season 4

Ryan and Brady kick off what is shaping up to be quite the year of specials with a long conversation about the recently-completed Star Trek Discovery Season 4. Buckle in for lengthy discussions of tighter plotting, sentient computers, and, most of all, the show's increased reliance on trauma as its primary form of character development.

Here's a link to the article we talked about on the show, The Case Against the Trauma Plot.

Ep. 79: ”Skin of Evil” (TNG S1E23)

It's time for, qualitatively, what is probably one of the worst Star Trek episodes ever made. Ryan and Brady dive into a cool-looking villain, a dumb-looking funeral, and the unreal amount of standing around in a small patch of sand that is Skin of Evil, TNG's farewell to Tasha Yar.

Ep. 78: ”Bound” (ENT S4E17)

Ryan here to offer up a mea culpa: I accidentally identify this episode as the final episode of Enterprise before the series finale. I correct myself by the end, but we do talk about it under my incorrect assumption for a while.

Anyway, once we get past that, we discuss Enterprise's weird relationship with sex, the crew's weird relationship with... slavery, I guess?, and we also talk about the original series movies for a while because Bound is not a very good episode.

Ep. 77: ”The Aenar” (ENT S4E14)

Ryan and Brady watch a pretty good episode of Enterprise, bolstered by the first appearance (on our show, not on Enterprise itself) of Jeffrey Combs's Thy'lek Shran. We talk about how much we like Combs, cool antenna creature effects, and we say the phrase "Hot Worms" a lot. It makes sense in the episode, we promise.

Ep. 76: ”Into the Forest I Go” (DIS S1E09)

In this episode of Discovery, Ryan and Brady try to focus on the positive, including Jason Isaacs' performance, the cool sci-fi element of the episode's main plot and how, even though we don't recommend it, watching Discovery Season 1 is actually more enjoyable if you do it a second time.

Ep. 75: ”Sacred Ground” (VOY S3E07)

Ryan and Brady discuss an important canonical revelation in this otherwise pretty dismal Season 3 Voyager episode: the discovery of a heretofore undocumented tribble in the Voyager sickbay. Listen in for details, and also hear us compare this episode to Contact and talk about how patronizing irreligious people can be when they're trying to describe the value of faith.

Ep. 74: ”Canamar” (ENT S2E17) and World Cup of Star Trek talk

This episode of Enterprise is pretty nondescript, if we're being honest, so instead, Ryan and Brady talk for a while about the very fun World Cup of Star Trek Twitter poll, bounce around the episode for a while and get into a discussion about why Enterprise is available on Blu-Ray and Voyager and DS9 aren't. It's fun and loose, baby! (and check out those links for more details on what we talked about!)

 

Ep. 73: ”North Star” (ENT S3E09)

Why is this Enterprise episode so boring? Why do most of the Enterprise episodes we watch seem so toothless? Brady has a theory: Because the show was made during the George W. Bush era. He and Ryan dig into this theory and talk about this show's version of the Star Trek cowboy episode on the day after Christmas.

Ep. 72: ”Cold Front” (ENT S1E11)

Ryan and Brady go... deep? on the Temporal Cold War in this early Enterprise episode, or at least they go deep on how they wish they could go deep on it. Along the way, they discuss celebrities who do podcasts about their own TV shows and discuss whether preparing someone's eggs just right should be a vote of confidence in their character.

Ep. 71: ”Explorers” (DS9 S3E22)

Ryan and Brady journey into Star Trek: Dad Edition with Explorers, one of Ryan's favorite episodes of DS9. We talk a little about why this episode works and why the show as a whole works, and we bask in the beloved presence of Benjamin Sisko.