Out of Contreks

Ep. 100: ”Star Trek V: The Final Frontier”

Hi everyone! In celebration of our 100th regular episode, we have turned our random number generator to the pantheon of Star Trek movies to discuss William Shatner's infamous directorial opus. Will we have a The Motion Picture-style realization that this is good, actually, or is the movie as bad as we remember? One thing's for sure: We both have nothing but good things to say about Laurence Luckinbill.

OOC Special 8: Prodigy, Season 1 + The World Cup of Star Trek (featuring Ryan’s kids)

Our first episode of the year is a special episode recorded the day before (with minimal editing in order to get it out in a timely fashion) about the first, elongated season of Star Trek: Prodigy! In the first half of the episode, Ryan's kids, Reggie and Ben, weigh in on the first Star Trek show explicitly marketed toward them. In the second half, Ryan and Brady talk about what Prodigy can tell us about the direction Trek (and the aging millennial pop culture market in general) is headed, before capping the show with a lengthy discussion of the World Cup of Star Trek's recently-completed best season bracket.

Ep. 99: ”Who Mourns For Morn?” (DS9 S6E12)

Ask not for whom the Morn mourns, he mourns for thee (and for us, who didn't realize this episode was going to come out on Christmas). On Ryan and Brady's 99th episode, they talk about DS9's excellently silly side-character, Ferengi economics, and dad jokes we love.

Ep. 98: ”Masks” (TNG S7E17)

Ryan and Brady spend a while attempting to dissect this odd Season 7 TNG episode, which feels like it should work for us and just... doesn't. We talk Brent Spiner acting, anti-climactic endings and why this feels like it takes the show back to Season 1.

Ep. 97: ”Elementary, Dear Data” (TNG S2E3)

Ryan and Brady tackle a strange early episode of TNG in which everyone is mean to Data for no reason and the holodeck almost destroys the entire ship on a technicality.

Ep. 96: ”Critical Care” (VOY S7E05)

In a rare "Ryan and Brady disagree" podcast, we go deep on Critical Care, a dark, thoughtful, late-period Voyager episode about income-gated health care and the ethics of political violence.

 

Here's a link to The Joe Manchin Trolley Problem, an article we discuss in the episode.

OOC Special 7: Lower Decks, Season 3

Join Brady and Ryan as they return for another discussion of Star Trek: Lower Decks, this time the newly-completed third season. A lot of this podcast is them trying to put their finger on just what it was about this season that made it not quite as good as the last two... and then remembering a lot of things that still worked pretty well!

Ep. 95: ”Improbable Cause, Part 1” (DS9 S3E20)

In this DS9 two-hander, we get into the psyche of Elim Garak, one of the best recurring characters in Trek history. We also talk about cool caves, plot twists, and which Muppet it was who sells Scrooge's clothes at the end of Muppet Christmas Carol (apparently, it was not Uncle Deadly, although that's probably who Ryan was thinking of).

Ep. 94: ”Daedelus” (ENT S4E10)

An episode where "something is going on" and you wait until the end until you find out what it is. Not gonna lie, this one has really fallen out of the brain in the two months since we watched it. Even Brady  couldn't remember which episode this was until about halfway through the editing process.

Ep. 93: ”Coda” (VOY S3E15)

Ryan has been dreading this episode for a while, but it wasn't that bad! Well, I mean, it wasn't great. It's kind of annoying, but only because it starts pretty strong and then sort of wastes away to nothing... the Star Trek episode, I mean, not the episode of the podcast. Hopefully that's still pretty entertaining.