Wagon Train to the Stars: Recent Episodes
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Before the announcement that CBS would be bringing Star Trek back as part of its CBS All Access digital subscription, Gus and I sat down to discuss possible futures for the show. A lot of what we talk about relies on what kind of content CBS plans to provide online; we will wait and see, and hope for the best!
Thanks everyone for listening along with us through these episodes. We really enjoyed it. Perhaps we’ll come back in the future to talk about more Star Trek.
Episode Twenty Two: Star Trek to the Future
We talk about Star Trek fan films that look to pay homage to and continue the work of various Star Trek television shows. These productions have strengths and weaknesses, but all come from a place of love; they also point to interesting directions for Star Trek as a fictional universe.
We discussed (among others):
Star Trek Continues, Episode One: “Pilgrim of Eternity”
Prelude to Axanar
Star Trek: Renegades
Podcast Episode:
Wagon Trek to the Stars Episode Twenty One: The Fan Frontier
We talk cultural contexts this week, from The Original Series with its Cold War and Civil Rights Era allusions and miniskirts to The Next Generation and its blatantly wide-eyed optimism for the future. Was Deep Space Nine ahead of its time? And was Voyager’s big problem that it just couldn’t get past the fact it was a Star Trek show?
Wagon Train to the Stars Episode Twenty: Cultural Contexts
We talk characters this episode: Kirk, Picard, Anderson Archer, sure, but there’s a bit more to it than that. Did the characters degrade as each show went on? Does The Original Series yet again benefit from charting its own course as following series found themselves limited by the establishment of canon?
Wagon Train to the Stars Episode Nineteen: Characters
We talk more about Star Trek design this week, and John may or may not linger on complaints about Star Trek: Enterprise for a while. Still, it was the odd one out in many ways and that makes it pretty interesting… We talk some more about uniforms and the relationships between the time period in which the series were set and the time period in which they were produced.
Wagon Train to the Stars Episode Eighteen: Design and Time
John returns from grievous injury to join Gus in talking about design in Star Trek, particularly the various iterations of the USS Enterprise and other starships. Nacelles, crew side, nomenclature of alien vessels; we’ve got you covered.
Wagon Train to the Stars Episode Seventeen: Design
We have some fun with Enterprise this week and marvel at how much the show improved in its final season. Did the show fail because of over-saturation or were there bigger problems? Also included: a remarkably strong two-parter episode based on a nerdy in-joke and some all too brief respite from that shocking theme song.
Episode Sixteen: Vulcans, Klingons and a Mirror Universe
There has been some sad news for Star Trek fans since we last recorded, and we take a few minutes to talk about some important figures that are no longer with us. After that, it is time to finally brave Star Trek: Enterprise and all the Time Wars and sexy Vulcans that entails. This episode focuses on Captain Archer, that roughly hewn go-getter, leader of men and all-in-all a pretty accurate representation of what that guy from Quantum Leap would look like if he spent more time in the gym.
Episode Fifteen: Captain Archer
We recorded the podcast before the passing of Leonard Nimoy on February 27th, 2015. Needless to say, we have very nice things to say about the man and those will be said on the next podcast.
We wave farewell to Voyager with a discussion that brings us back to the harsh reality that, you know: this show really wasn’t very good. Even our admiration for Kate Mulgrew’s Janeway can hide the rising tide of disgust for bizarre retrograde devolution to procreating salamanders, the fusing of the show’s most annoying character with the show’s miraculously simultaneous frustrating and boring relationship, and shameless tie-ins with professional wrestling. See also: shameless under-use of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. Yes, Voyager is damned if it does and damned if it doesn’t, but most of all it’s just damned.
Episode Fourteen: Goodbye, Voyager
We talk about good Voyager episodes this week, with time travel being a fairly common theme. Our admiration for Janeway only continues to grow, and we say lots (and lots) of nice things about the series as a whole.
Episode Thirteen: We Say Nice Things About Voyager
We talk Star Trek: Voyager this week with a special guest to defend the series’ honour. Actually, John and Gus end up tempering their disdain for Voyager somewhat, at least now in the early running. Perhaps there are horrors yet to come.
Episode Twelve: Voyager
John and Gus are briefly joined by ten month old Star Trek fan Ryan Harney this week before delving into a few of Deep Space Nine’s more emotional episodes. Avery Brooks comes into his own, or out of it depending on your taste, and we finish up our chat on the series with a look at one of the more fun moments in Star Trek’s run: the crew of Deep Space Nine running around the original Enterprise between tribbles.
Episode Eleven: Emotional Times
We talk more Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Gus gets a great chance to continue the argument that DS9 is the most consistently written Star Trek show. We look at episodes focusing heavily on individual characterization. The show dealt with tough issues such as the fallout of decades of terrorism and oppression, quandaries of ethnic and social identity, and clashes between individual identity and socio-cultural behavioral expectations.
Episodes discussed:
“Indiscretion” (4x05)
“Sons of Mogh” (4x15)
“The Darkness and the Light” (5x11)
Episode Ten: Ghosts from the Past
We get started on Deep Space Nine this week and immediately look into the shows fondness for taking the audience into moral grey areas. Was this a conflict with the ideals of the show, or should we see it more as a type of continuity from the kind of social commentary seen throughout The Original Series?
Episode Nine: Dark Times
We say our goodbyes to The Next Generation, but not before talking about some of the series’ key villains, specifically Lore, the Borg and Q. In many ways, the villains of this series emphasize the strengths of our protagonists, the crew of the Enterprise. All in all, we talk about the thematic consistency throughout the show, and take some time to point out the obvious: John De Lancie is amazing.
Episode Eight: Villains and Farewell
We talk about some of the main characters in Star Trek: The Next Generation this week with episodes focused on Data, Worf and Picard with the input of plenty more. Trials, tribulations and life experiences. The Next Generation definitely goes places with its storytelling that The Original Series did not, but it took a while for the show to find its stride.
Wagon Train to the Stars Episode Seven: Characters
We move on to our first love in Trek this week, Star Trek: The Next Generation, and it quickly becomes apparent that such now canonical concepts as the Prime Directive are adhered to rather more strictly than in the original series. We also talk about the contrasts between The Original Series and The Next Generation, not least in its use of its cast, and the ways in which the writers of the later show began to move the Star Trek universe (or at least methods of storytelling in that universe) forward.
Episodes discussed:
“Who watches the watchers?”
“First Contact”
“Ethics”
Wagon Train to the Stars Episode Six: Do No Harm
In this episode we talk a little bit about Star Trek: The Animated Series, Phase Two and that awkward period when Paramount realized that Star Trek was a big deal but couldn’t quite figure out how to capitalize upon it. Yes indeed, this was the time immediately before Khan or even V’Ger, when replacing Commander Spock with… a different Vulcan seemed like a good idea.
Episode Five: Interregnum
We say goodbye to The Original Series this week with a look at some of the more culturally-focused episodes, with topics including racism, the Vietnam War and the death of God by reason. There may be a bit of a cop out in there somewhere. It is sad to say goodbye to Kirk’s duality as both a rampant militarist lunatic AND a lover boy, and John will (predictably) miss Bones most of all. So join us and we’ll say our goodbyes together.
Episodes discussed:
“A Taste of Armageddon”
“Who Mourns for Adonais?”
“A Private Little War”
“Let That Be Your Last Battlefield”
Episode Four: Culturally Sensitive
This week we talk about the relationship that came to define Star Trek: The Original Series, that of the friendship between Kirk and Spock (with a little McCoy thrown in). We talk about “City on the Edge of Forever” featuring Joan Collins as a social worker and apple of Jim Tiberius Kirk’s eye, at least on that particular week. We look at “Amok Time” and the importance of Spock’s violent puberty in defining his role on the show. Of course, no podcast episode focusing on old Star Trek episodes talking about how much Kirk and Spock love each other could ignore “Mirror, Mirror”, an episode featuring evil bearded Spock, who it turns out isn’t all that different from clean-shaven Spock.
Episode Three: Best Friends Forever