Casual Trek – Nerd & Tie Podcast Network: Recent Episodes
Casual Trek – Nerd & Tie Podcast Network
All Hail Computer Overlord! Our casual adventurers have been tasked by the benevolent Computer Overlord to watch three episodes of Star Trek featuring societies run by computers to make sure Computer Overlord isn’t offended.
In ‘Return of the Archons’, Kirk and the Gang are here for the Festival and for the first time, we get to see Captain Kirk talk a computer to death, then we return YET AGAIN to season One of TNG as Wesley and some of the Enterprise kids get kidnapped by an ancient civilisation led by Deep Throat from The X-Files to be given some new parents in ‘When the Bough Breaks,’ and finally Boimler discovers if he’s going to be a good boss or a bad boss when he’s tasked to lead a repair team ‘In the Cradle of Vexilon.’ All Hail Computer Overlord, the cake is a lie!
EPISODES DISCUSSED:
‘Return of the Archons’ (12:17)
‘When the Bough Breaks’ (42:53)
‘In the Cradle of Vexilon’ (1:11:58)
Talking Points Include: The Princess Bride, the Evercade Superpocket, Jeff Minter, classic computer games, creepy vibes right from the get-go, what is Festival actuallY for? These guys are the crappiest resistance movement, Lindstrom- the hot new Star Trek character find of 1966, Kirk being the most Internet Guy here in talking a computer to death, that one guy wants to use Festival to jump through windows, I think we’re going to run out of S1 episodes of TNG before anything else, Kylie Minogue, TNG needed more freeze-frame endings, we hate AI, you might have guessed, we really needed an episode of TNG which was basically Chopping Mall on the Enterprise, the whole ‘families on the Enterprise’ thing sometimes just feels weird, Wesley has definitely called Captain Picard ‘dad’ by accident, nice to see Jerry Hardin here pre-X-Files, koala, we just have a soft spot for ‘Move Along Home,’ have you ever been a Boimler? T’lyn is here to eff with Boimler, would people in the 24th Century haze others?
[ Additional Show Notes ]
Music by Alfred Etheridge-Nunn. Read Miles’s blog or Charlie’s blog.
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Apple PodcastsSpotifyAndroidRSSThe post 99. I Have No Archons and I Must Scream first appeared on Nerd & Tie Network.
Abracadabra!
Prepare your magical runes and put on your pointiest hat because we’re going to be talking about Magic (without a ‘k’) and three different episodes where Magic is believed to be involved. Of course, unlike ‘The Magicks of Magus-Tu,’ we’re not delving into ‘so magic is actually real’ territory and instead, magic is more inferred.
In ‘Spirit Folk,’ Tom Paris’ weird obsession with making Harry kiss a cow gets the crew of the Voyager into trouble on the holodeck while in New Eden, Pike, Michael Burnham discover a planet of people descended from survivors from World War III who have renounced all technology and Owosekun was there as well and then, in ‘The Elysian Kingdom’, M’Benga gets to play out his daughter’s favourite fantasy novel while in the real world, Anson Mount has way too much fun playing a cowardly cad! Are we sure this nebula isn’t evil? Alakazam!
Time Codes:
What Non-Star Trek thing have we enjoyed? (02:14)
Spirit Folk (10:45)
New Eden (38:40)
The Elysian Kingdom (01:04:35)
[ Additional Show Notes ]
Music by Alfred Etheridge-Nunn. Read Miles’s blog or Charlie’s blog.
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Right, everyone quit Oo-moxing for two minutes because we’ve got another episode talking about those hyper-capitalist scamps, the Ferengi; literally one of the few times here on the show where we can say without doubt that it’s a metaphor for capitalism!
Our brave casual explorers watch three Ferengi-based episodes of Star Trek without any Quark-based antics, first up is probably TNG’s most successful attempt to try and sell these guys as the Big Bad as Captain Picard is forced to face his past as a revenge attempt leads him to relieve ‘The Battle,’ after that, Trip gets to do a Home Alone/Die Hard as the worst trio of Ferengi try to pull an ‘Acquisition’ on the Enterprise NX-01 and finally, the Lower Decks get to see what Ferengi TV and Miles’ AO3 account is like as ‘Parth Ferengi’s Heartplace’ makes us ask… do Rutherford and Tendi like each other… in a sexy way? Please send us two strips of Gold-Pressed Latinum for reading the show notes. Wait, you wanted to know the price up-front? THIS IS WHY YOU READ THE TERMS AND CONDITIONS, GUYS!!!
Episodes discussed:
THE BATTLE (12:09)
ACQUISITION (41:31)
PARTH FERENGI’S HEARTPLACE (01:11:36)
TALKING POINTS INCLUDE: Bioshock, Saturday Night Live UK, US Advert Breaks are the devil, the Ferengi did just as well as being the Next Klingons as the Voord did as being the next Daleks, it must be a World Cup year because Miles makes a football joke, TNG Season 1 has a naff charm, some great prop-acting from Patrick Stewart, its no surprise why Denise Crosby quit, Miles also wants to wear the Wesley-sweater and the male miniskirt from S1, Miles should not travel back in time to meet his 14 year old self, one day, we will cover the episode where Wesley Crusher nearly pulls. Why DO British people find the name ‘Jeff’ funny? Ethan Phillips clearly relishes playing Evil Season One Neelix, we’re right back to the TNG Season One idiot Ferengi, is this meant to be a comedy? Miles and Charlie discuss their Home Alone-style traps and just how badly they’d go, for an episode with a Darkplace homage title, there are very few Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace references, Miles misses binging television, Lower Decks shipping, even the best writers have done naff work, Mariner’s depressingly relatable character development backslide and what Ferengi TV show would Charlie get addicted to?
[Charlie’s note: Miles kept spelling Ferengi wrong in this recap, as he’s just that casual, but I’ve changed it for your sanity and my own]
[Trae from the network’s note: Charlie missed a couple of “Ferengi” misspellings, and apparently neither know how to spell “Tendi.”]
[ Additional Show Notes ]
Music by Alfred Etheridge-Nunn. Read Miles’s blog or Charlie’s blog.
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Apple PodcastsSpotifyAndroidRSSThe post 97. Ferengi: I Apologise for the Amount of Times I Say “Capering” in this Episode first appeared on Nerd & Tie Network.
It’s time for another tangent cut out of the main show. Here we talk about the Absolute DC books and Charlie getting back into Hitman!
[ Additional Show Notes ]
Music by Alfred Etheridge-Nunn. Read Miles’s blog or Charlie’s blog.
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Happy Monday, everyone! To celebrate the start of the working week, we’re looking at Star Trek episodes where people mess with the memories of our cast and put them through menial, awful work.
O’Brien must continue to suffer in Hard Time, where he’s lived through decades of prison time just for being a bit nosey. Can he deal with the mind-shattering prison sentence, or will he still be traumatised and we’ll never speak of this after the episode’s end?
Then our main feature is a two-parter where the crew of Voyager are brainwashed into factory jobs (apart from Paris who couldn’t even manage that). Watch the rivalry between the Emergency Command Hologram and Harry Kim! Janeway has a romance plot and there’s some bad CGI!
Timecodes:
03:30 What Non-Star Trek Thing We’ve Been Enjoying
09:02 Star Trek: Deep Space Nine “Hard Time”
41:43 Star Trek: Voyager “Workforce”
Talking points include: Poirot’s facial hair, talking Miles down from reading Ayn Rand, Mark Morrison, No Gods No Mayors, a harsh burn from Miles, DS9 has a counsellor? What is Miles’ middle name anyway? A bee gets loose in Charlie’s room. Buffy. Farscape. Tek War. Isn’t it good that prisons aren’t run for profit in the real world? Prestige TV ghosts of the mind. David Cage wishes he could get this emotional. Bryan Fuller doesn’t get weird with it. Tom can’t even hack being a brainwashed labourer. Just be Janeway’s consort, Jaffen! Charlie’s upsetting second Voyager: Across the Universe playthrough. Anything can pull rank on Harry. Charlie got contacted by Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Oh, and occasionally Star Trek.
[ Additional Show Notes ]
Music by Alfred Etheridge-Nunn. Read Miles’s blog or Charlie’s blog.
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Miles and Charlie have come down with a case of the ‘too British for Star Trek’ and are coping with it the only way they know how, by once more becoming Space Scamps and hopping over to Moonbase Alpha for three more episodes of Space 1999!
We’ve an unintentional theme of guest stars here as ‘Force of Life’ gives us a young Ian McShane coming down with a bad case of heat vamperism, while ‘Alpha Child’ gives us evil children, weird cosmic space incest with Julian Glover (he’s been in a lot of stuff). Finally, ‘Missing Link‘ gives us a guest turn by Peter Cushing in a costume choice slightly more dignified than Christopher Lee back in Space Scamps II, and Charlie asks us a terrifying question: why have we not watched any season 2 yet…
EPISODES MENTIONED:
Force of Life (09:14)
Alpha Child (28:58)
Missing Link (50:53)
TALKING POINTS: The Abominable Dr. Phibes, New Classic Doctor Who, The Employees, The House on the Borderland, Sailing, Rhinestone Cowboy, a very young Ian McShane who to Miles’ surprise is NOT playing a scumbag, coworkers coming into work while sick, Space 1999’s production values ALWAYS impress, Sunshine is a great movie, is this incest? Maybe. Avengers Issue 200 style shennanigans, Julian Glover, the Man the Myth the Legend, Alpha Child does TNG’s The Child CORRECTLY, what the hell was TV Show ‘Swat?’ also… who is second in command on Moonbase Alpha? Space-Rationalists are the worst. Space 1999 is the wrong show to be doing Logic vs. Emotion, this is why we have a stunt crew, Space 1999 would have made a great season of The Terror, we feel sorry for Moonbase Alpha’s catering department
[ Additional Show Notes ]
Music by Alfred Etheridge-Nunn. Read Miles’s blog or Charlie’s blog.
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A conversation cut from an earlier episode. See, we do some edits!
[ Additional Show Notes ]
Music by Alfred Etheridge-Nunn. Read Miles’s blog or Charlie’s blog.
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Casual Trek’s month celebrating Red Shirts continues as we have a look at Star Trek episodes which have thrown away the lives of extras in order to raise the stakes.
In “The Apple”, we get the highest red shirt body count as a planet wants people to die which is sad, as they won’t get to live long enough to see the most D&D cartoon-looking cave mouth ever!
In “The Bonding” one extra dies, which hits everyone really hard, especially her son and The Boy, who went through this before.
Finally “Now the Battle to the Strong” gives Miles another opportunity to sing the M.A.S.H. theme tune as Bashir and Jake Sisko encounter the horrors of war!
Timecodes:
00:01:26 What Non-Star Trek Thing We’ve Been Enjoying: Disney’s Pixar’s Hoppers & Pokopia
00:12:40 Star Trek: The Original Series “The Apple”
00:47:12 Star Trek: The Next Generation “The Bonding”
01:20:25 Star Trek: Deep Space Nine “Now the Battle to the Strong”
Talking points include: Miles is not a fan of imperialist colonialism, Disney’s Pixar’s Hoppers is NOT Avatar, the Watership Down experience, traumatic cartoons, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory where it’s all Saw Traps, Charlie does NOT have a Pokopia problem, Professor Tangrowth is a clueless busybody, the first time Charlie shaved his hair, the hot new character finds of 1967, Chekhov’s whole Russia bit, the most Dungeons & Dragons-ass prop ever, watching Star Trek for educational purposes, The Apple is really colonialist even for early Star Trek, Dr Who, Space: 1999, Chekhov was just on the away team to pull, JL’s your dad now, Worf only just now realises what Troi’s job is, some good acting from a young Wil Wheaton, Alexander has a new uncle?, Tony Todd is Worf’s more interesting brother, the Macarena, M.A.S.H. references & the futility of war, a grim Wonder Years, Stargate: The Militarism Star Trek, Charlie does a reading from Bible… oh, and occasionally Star Trek.
[ Additional Show Notes ]
Music by Alfred Etheridge-Nunn. Read Miles’s blog or Charlie’s blog.
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Red shirts might be one of the biggest pop-cultural tropes given to us by Star Trek, but what does it mean, in-universe and out, the first of our two part look actually gives us both as Miles describes the IDW miniseries ‘Star Trek: Red Shirts’ to Charlie and neither can hide their dissatisfaction while following up with a brief discussion of the John Scalzi novel ‘Redshirts.’ Next episode, we’ll actually be talking about episodes of Star Trek which feature examples of Red Shirts themselves.
DISCLAIMER: NO RED SHIRTS WERE WORN DURING THE RECORDING OF THIS PODCAST!
Time Codes:
‘Star Trek: Red Shirts’ (16:25)
John Scalzi’s ‘Redshirts’ (01:02:26)
TALKING POINTS: Miles has to carry nitroglycerin in case his heart stops and he finds that metal, The Legend of Luther Arkwright, Star Trek Voyager: Across the Universe, it makes a weird sense that Spock and Worf would be mates, Star Trek: Defiant is a much better comic, Lower Decks’ potential cynicism is canceled out by Tendi being a goddamn delight, Strikeforce Moritori, Avengers Arena and the Battle Royale manga, this might be the one Star Trek ‘thing’ that convinces Miles that Section 31 should exist, making meta-jokes and parodies canonical to the universe is not always a good idea, why send these losers on a covert mission? Miles uses the term ‘Cronenberged’ and hates himself for it, uncertain tonal shifts, Miles and Charlie try and thrash out what they think would be a better treatment of the same material, John Scalzi’s types of novels, the differences and similarities between Red Shirts and Redshirts (aside from the space), Charlie is very happy John Scalzi didn’t appear in his own novel, what happens to Redshirts after the episode is over? A Doctor Who reference to please Miles, that very 2012 feeling of the book, how post-modern self-awareness can sometimes get irritiating, if you approach every situation like you’re actually in a horror movie- get help, Stargate Universe was underrated, Space Scamps III is inevitable.
[ Additional Show Notes ]
Music by Alfred Etheridge-Nunn. Read Miles’s blog or Charlie’s blog.
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Miles and Charlie are climbing a mountain, why are they climbing a mountain? Is it to meet God? The Devil? Their approaching mid-life crises? Whichever, we have now approached the 199th and 200th episodes of Trek on Our Big List and we are celebrating, if not in style, then with a movie – Star Trek V: The Final Frontier to be exact. But before that, we have a little animated amuse-bouche with ‘The Magicks of Megas-Tu’ where the Enterprise meets the Devil and Miles realizes that for him, his adventure with Trek has brought him back to the beginning. Will he confront his pain or does he need his pain? Row Row Row your Boat.
Episodes Discussed:
TAS: Mystics of Megas-Tu (17:50)
Star Trek V-The Final Frontier (44:52)
TALKING POINTS INCLUDE: The Scrubs reboot, Spider-Man 2, the issues with Marvel’s use of Ultraman, why did Miles’ mum have a crush on David Cassidy? Ed Bishop, the weird mystical stuff of Star Trek, Spock’s nerdy use of magick, Bones’ probably would go Matthew Hopkins in this situation, Miles’ early memories of Star Trek was weird, how did this get past the US censors? The Shatnerverse starts here, Klaa looks like a Klingon Bill Bailey, a criminal waste of David Warner, when the comedy does and doesn’t work, Shatner just having a nice little run around, do Vulcans have goths? Sybok is too pathetic to be played by Connery, you sometimes need to tell your audience if you’re doing a subtext, was Uhura brought along specifically for naked fan dance? Charlie talks about his root canal, Why did the audience not like this film? Thankfully Sybok was not made the next Khan, familial cannibalism, is our 200th episode of Trek covered better or worse than our 1st, The Cage? How has John Lithgow not been in Star Trek? (Especially instead of that wizard show)
Featured in this Episode:
[ Additional Show Notes ]
Music by Alfred Etheridge-Nunn. Read Miles’s blog or Charlie’s blog.
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Apple PodcastsSpotifyAndroidRSSThe post 93. Star Trek V: What Does God Need With a Podcast? first appeared on Nerd & Tie Network.
Hark, what podcast through yonder window breaks? It’s Casual Trek! We have a fun topic today with Star Trek episodes with titles which are Shakespeare quotes! Listen to Charlie’s terrible attempt at acting, followed by our James Van Der Beek memorial and three fun episodes of Star Trek!
Dagger of the Mind has Kirk and a doctor arrive in a mind-fixing bunker which would feel at home in Space: 1999 and somehow, Kirk willingly gets in the machine that messes with your brain. Thine Own Self has a crumpled Data show up in a Ren Faire village with amnesia and a deadly package. Mortal Coil lets us see Neelix die AND Ethan Phillips act up a storm as he has to confront the lack of a bit Avatar tree.
Then in writing the show notes, Charlie realises we never actually confronted how Shakespearean the plots were, so you’ll have to do that yourself after you listen to the show!
00:05:02 What Non-Star Trek Things We’ve Been Enjoying: The Dead Zone (book), Wuthering Heights (2026)
00:13:46 James Van Der Beek Memorial Segment
00:17:29 Star Trek: The Original Series: Dagger of the Mind
00:46:55 Star Trek: The Next Generation: Thine Own Self
01:13:33 Star Trek: Voyager: Mortal Coil (CW: suicidal ideation)
Talking points include: The time that Miles ‘trod the boards’, the various incarnations of The Dead Zone, various old SyFy shows, Wuthering Heights, James Van Der Beek, Charlie poorly tries to quote Shakespeare, Talur would believe in QAnon, jobbing actors, Miles is off on another one about Doctor Who, the cosmic horror of the Teletubbies, Neelix is a man about town, Chakotay ‘helps’ Neelix, Silicon Heaven, you can hear when Charlie finds out that Neelix leaves Voyager right near the end, . Oh, and occasionally Star Trek.
[ Additional Show Notes ]
Music by Alfred Etheridge-Nunn. Read Miles’s blog or Charlie’s blog.
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Grab your Bat’leth and prepare to experience bij as our Casual Heroes once more find themselves dealing with the Shakespearean Shouty Men of Space, the Klingons!
In their first episode ‘A Little Private War,’ we get very little Klingons and a lot more allegories for the Vietnam war as Kirk and McCoy get involved in shennanigans which have little to no purpose and then in ‘Sins of the Father,’ Picard and Worf get to do Space Opera intrigue on the Klingon homeworld while Wesley Crusher gets bullied by Tony Todd and we see the start of Worf’s ever continuing dissolusionment with the Klingon people and then finally, in ‘wej Duj,’ Boimler’s attempts to get a bridge buddy escalate into a web of lies while we see what Klingon and Vulcan Lower Deckers do on their own ships. Hey, is that T’Lynn? It doesn’t matter because you know how I told you to prepare to experience bij? EXPERIENCE BIJ!
EPISODES DISCUSSED: A Private Little War (10:31), Sins of the Father (42:37) and wej Duj (01:06:22)
TALKING POINTS INCLUDE: We’ve never done Hirogen episodes, Iron Lung, Kill James Bond, Miles goes on a rant about James Bond, it’s a metaphor for Vietnam, Gene Roddenberry and Chris Claremont’s fetish journals, it’s been a while since we’ve had an episode be both racist AND sexist, Kirk doesn’t do a Starfleet, Miles realises that in SF… you can just make shit up, Miles tries to summon the Candyman and we legitimately get to talk about Brighton, an appropriate Mighty Boosh reference, proper Space opera with cloaks and knives, Kurn bullies Wesley in a weird form of prison rules, Patrick Stewart glad to do some proper theatre shouty acting, Worf’s long life of moral compromises begins, Miles and Charlie are probably too British to watch ‘For All Mankind,’ we finally crack why we hate Ed Sheeran, Miles would rather be watching Cronernberg-pervefest Shivvers than listen to Sheeran at work Miles is definately the Garrett of his place of work, Rowan Atkinson would make an amazing Romulan and so much of space travel must just be allieviating boredom, even for Star Trek.
[ Additional Show Notes ]
Music by Alfred Etheridge-Nunn. Read Miles’s blog or Charlie’s blog.
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We tend to run long, so this tangent from our Starfleet Academy episode was cut out. If you want to hear a little chatter about comics and RPGs, then it’s here.
[ Full Show Notes ]
The post Casual Tangent: Akira and Game Design first appeared on Nerd & Tie Network.
Welcome to Starfleet Academy, students, we hope you survive the experience!
It’s the grimdark future of the 32nd century and a bunch of weird, traumatised kids are stuck together having to learn and grow into Starfleet officers! Will the main character be too annoying a main character? How many The O.C. references will Charlie make? How much will Miles lust after an espresso machine? And how delightful are those teachers?
Kids These Days brings Holly Hunter and her wayward ward into the orbit of Starfleet Academy, along with Paul Giamatti who Paul Giamattis the hell out of his role. Beta Test gets into some proper Star Trek content: Meetings! Peace talks! Also some teen drama and shonky CGI whales.
Timecodes:
00:01:56 What Non-Star Trek Thing We’ve Been Enjoying: Detectorists, Plur1bus
00:08:29 Starfleet Academy “Kids These Days”
00:52:31 Starfleet Academy “Beta Test”
Talking points include: The OC, Blake’s 7, Detectorists, Toby Jones would have made a good MODOK, Plur1bus (which is not Polybius), Charlie’s lawn is no longer Area X, credit to rexedge.bsky.social for pointing out that Fate of Ophelia would work great in Simlish, The Stranger Things, 80’s nostalgia, Rimmer-ness, the wall of references, Paris Gellar, the secret other member of the Gellar family in Friends, Brit Marling’s science fiction oeuvre, teen drama ball cancer plots, Charlie would never make it as a barista, psychics who psychic a bit too much, bros, Miles lusts after an espresso machine, the works of Brian David Gilbert, Heated Rivalry, . Oh, and occasionally Star Trek.
[ Additional Show Notes ]
Music by Alfred Etheridge-Nunn. Read Miles’s blog or Charlie’s blog.
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Do you hear the siren song of synergy?
That means we’ve got a brand new Star Trek show on the horizon and Miles and Charlie want in. With Star Trek: Starfleet Academy on the horizon, our brave lads are going to squeeze back into their school uniforms and try to remember how school works as they approach three episodes of Star Trek which deal with students at SFA.
In The First Duty, Wesley “THE BOY” Crusher gets in with a guy who looks nothing like Tom Paris and is really too invested in being with the cool kids for someone who helped saved the galaxy at least three times. Then, Jake and Nog end up on a ship with a bunch of cadets forced to grow up too fast in The Valiant and Nog drinks the kool-aid of a wanna be Kurtz just out of short trousers. Then we head into the 32nd Century as Tilly and Adira have to debate what’s worse, dealing with energy absorbing creatures on an ice-planet or dealing with a bunch of angsty kids with emotional baggage? Oh, and Michael Burnham helps save the Federation.
Again. Don’t forget to do your homework!
EPISODES DISCUSSED: The First Duty (6:50), The Valiant (35:42) and All is Possible (01:01:08)
TALKING POINTS: Grange Hill, the novels of John Darnielle, Mario Galaxy, Frollo from Disney’s Hunchback never gets invited to Villain hangouts, Wesley Crusher never pulled, Nick Locarno vs. Tom Paris, the two types of Starfleet Academy students, the absence of Wesley’s Mum, ‘The First Duty’ being the inverse of the typical Wesley Crusher plot, Worf’s son Alex isn’t allowed on the bridge, Nog and Worf are incredibly very similar characters, Miles gets to talk about both one of his favourite anime Mobile Suit Gundam AND his favourite novel Slaughterhouse 5, the illusion of glory in war, bye-bye Tilly, damn covid-lockdown-inspired emotional baggage, our honest feelings about the upcoming Starfleet Academy show, Michael Burnham has to do something every episode, why is David Cronenberg NOT the villain?
PEDANTS CORNER: Charlie has started playing Mario 2: The Lost Levels, the Genesis music video Miles can’t remember is ‘I Can’t Dance’ by Genesis.
[ Additional Show Notes ]
Music by Alfred Etheridge-Nunn. Read Miles’s blog or Charlie’s blog.
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Due to various medical emergencies, our Starfleet Academy episodes are going to have to wait a little while. Instead, here’s an old favourite episode: “They Exploded Odo!”
We experience the original Mirror Universe episode and try to understand a system of government entirely based around betrayal (that isn’t the Romulans’), also a fantastic episode of DS9 with some shock as there’s a pretty brutal explosion of one cast member!
Timecodes:
00:13:58 TOS: Mirror, Mirror
00:33:15 DS9: Crossover
01:02:02 DIS: Despite Yourself
[ Additional Show Notes ]
Music by Alfred Etheridge-Nunn. Read Miles’s blog or Charlie’s blog.
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Casual Trek’s still in recovery mode from life and the festive period and we’ve wanted to fix the “Gamers” episode (episode 17) which was cursed with bad attempts to compress the file.
Now, you can listen to the splendour of gaming in Star Trek!
In Star Trek: The Next Generation’s “The Game”, everyone gets addicted to Candy Crush except for Wesley Crusher, the big nerd!
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’s incredible “Move Along Home” puts the cast in a board game escape room.
Star Trek: Lower Decks’ “Least Dangerous Game” shows where TTRPGs are in the future, also Boimler gets hunted, which is kind of a game!
Talking points include: Experiencing BiJ, Rock Band, Portal 2, The Gamers, Sean’s Zelda II playthrough, Fire Emblem Engage, Oath, Battlestar Galactica/Unfathomable, Reaganomics, video game addiction, Wesley Crusher-themed emo band names, an easy 2 Unlimited dunk, Metal Gear Solid, the cube from the film The Cube, Dread, Cluedon’t, the Norwegian LARP scene, The Mountain Goats, I Only Listen To The Mountain Goats, Charlie Goes Off On One About OneD&D, Fucking Drizzt. Oh, and occasionally Star Trek.
[ Additional Show Notes ]
Music by Alfred Etheridge-Nunn. Read Miles’s blog or Charlie’s blog.
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Charlie and Miles have ‘gifted’ each other episodes of Star Trek to talk about, both good and bad. The problem with being casual about Star Trek is you just don’t know all of what’s out there. That’s what the Casual Trek mission is for, after all.
This year the gang are doing something different, talking about a film that’s adjacent to Star Trek, and even some Trek actors say is the best Star Trek movie: Galaxy Quest. They’ve even got guest stars Reanna Reid-Lobatto and Sean Corse from off of the Famicom Dojo joining the festivities.
So sit by the fire, get a nice drink and listen to some nerds getting rabid about a fun film, even if it has Tim Allen in it.
Timecodes:
0:03:47 – What Non-Star Trek/non-Galaxy Quest Thing We’ve Been Enjoying: Pokémon Legends ZA, Taskmaster,
0:21:49 – Galaxy Quest Preamble
0:33:12 – Galaxy Quest Recap
0:54:51 – Thoughts on the movie
Talking points include: The Mojoverse, the Junkions, chilli, needing to cuddle a Pokémon, Detective Pikachu, Pokémon Legends ZA, John Pertwee’s Doctor Who episodes, conventions, Thought Bubble, Sean learning about names from the UK, Westlife, Santana, Chat Out of Hell’s Westlife episode, Charlie’s musical knowledge comes from Rock Band, Miles’ anecdote about how he saw Galaxy Quest (funny, charming), Charlie’s anecdote about watching Pokémon: The Movie (thankfully short, of questionable legal status). Charlie pitching 2000 AD, “some of the old tentacle action”, Sam Rockwell, Susan from Seinfeld, fandom in media, “Duct Tape Boy”, what is wrong with Monk from Monk, convicted felon & narc Tim Allen actually being okay in this, Airplane, The Shining, Three Amigos, favourite non-Christmas Christmas movies. Oh, and occasionally Galaxy Quest.
[ Additional Show Notes ]
Music by Alfred Etheridge-Nunn. Read Miles’s blog or Charlie’s blog.
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Welcome to an emergency bonus episode!
Miles is off, but the fortnightly schedule continues. Charlie’s played a solo roleplaying game based on Star Trek. No, not the official one, but “We Saved This Vessel Once.” After that, there’s the unhinged pitches from our Section 31 episode, which includes Sean Corse of Famicom Dojo, and Celeste Startwin of Stormwood & Associates!
01:16 – Solo Actual Play
07:38 – Section 31 Pitch Session
Pedant’s Corner and Pluggable: Reanna Reid-Lobatto’s got a GoFundMe (not a Just Giving like I said in the episode… although I don’t remember if that’s a thing or not). If you can, please help the Reid-Lobattos deal with the expense of her surgery: https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-reannas-breast-reconstruction-recovery.
We Saved this Vessel Once can be found here: https://citykey.itch.io/we-saved-this-vessel-once
[ Additional Show Notes ]
Music by Alfred Etheridge-Nunn. Read Miles’s blog or Charlie’s blog.
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We’re still concerned with the Delta Quadrant as this episode of Casual Trek covers episodes from Modern Trek’s animated series concerning the Voyager, the Delta Quadrant and all those assorted antics. First up is the Prodigy Season One mid-season two-parter ‘A Moral Star’ where Dal and the Protostar gang plan to actually do a Starfleet with a little bit of heist antics as they try to break out the prisoners of their old home and then in Lower Decks’s ‘Twovix’ as Boimler grapples with the possibility of promotion, the crew of the Cerritos discover that when there’s an outbreak of Tuvixes, Janeway was 100% right!
Episodes Discussed – PRD: A Moral Star (06:36) and LDS: Twovix (35:35)
Talking points: Dan Dare (SPACE HYPER HERO), Hades II, the dark history of the Mushroom Kingdom, more of the Dark History of Charlie’s time with Dave’s, the one time the Holodeck safeties breaking was a good thing, Janeway is definitely cottagecore, 80s cartoons were great nostalgia, but modern cartoons do have some superior moments, Mantzoukis in Taskmaster has coloured our heroes opinion of Jakim Pog, many many references to Katamari Damacy, Janeway was right killing Tuvix, does Riker regret not having sex with his transporter clone? we make Tuvix a verb, an Americano is a Tuvix of Espresso and Water, what happens when coffee reaches Warp 10? Miles sings two seperate theme tunes.
PEDANTS CORNER: The TOS episode Miles refers to is ‘Is There In Truth No Beauty.’ Miles and his wife DO have the Katamari Damacy soundtrack on vinyl, important to know.
[ Additional Show Notes ]
Music by Alfred Etheridge-Nunn. Read Miles’s blog or Charlie’s blog.
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INTERLOPER! We have an interloper in the podcast! It’s Sean Corse of Famicom Dojo and Two Boobs Watch the Tube fame, here in the spirit of Nerd & Tie unification.
This episode we’re looking at the Unification trilogy, a multi-part story that spans multiple Star Trek series and over 800 years! First up, Picard and Data go to Romulus to hunt down Spock, who might have turned traitor! We also have Riker chatting up a multi-armed widow and a junkyard guy who has way too many face-folds.
Then, we fast forward to Discovery in their grimdark future era and while unifying the Romulans and Vulcans is a good thing, this is actually still all about Michael. Oh, and Tilly, take the damn job already!
Timecodes:
00:05:43 What non-Star Trek things we’ve been enjoying
00:21:30 TNG: Unification I & II
01:13:26 DIS: Unification III
Talking points include: Three Kingdoms, Third Doctor, Farscape, Sean paying for Twitter, Famicom Dojo, Two Boobs Watch the Tube, Quantum Leap (old and new), A World of Ice & Fire, the old Indiana Jones video game, Tom Bombadil, lengthy definitions of “Twee”, Ted Lasso, Kate Fox’s Watching the English, Taskmaster New Zealand, Americans understanding Vic Reeves, Adam Adamant, Bono’s Vertigo Comics look, Miles is coming for David Tennant, Actually liking a U2 track, our threat of a Lost podcast, the guy played by Cameron from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (also from Bunheads), some X-Men level convoluted BS, Come On Eileen, Romulan retirement plans, sleazy space bars, Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Riker deepfakes, are Bones and Spock married? Golden Landis Von Jones, Jimmy from Degrassi, Marion Morrison, Todd in the Shadows, two Brits out-awkwarding an American, Brexit, heists, Space: 1999, we’re all about the cheese, Blake’s 7, Fringe Season Five, Will Section 31 be Guardians of the Galaxy or will it be Borderlands the Movie? Oh, and occasionally Star Trek.
Pedant’s Corner:
- Vic Reeves was not on Taskmaster, but Bob Mortimer was
- We all butchered the name of U2’s Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me
- The Enterprise switches the lights OFF, not on, when they pretend to be a wreck
- I have no idea where Sean got the thing about plant-based Vulcans
- Carbon Creek took place in 1957
[ Additional Show Notes ]
Music by Alfred Etheridge-Nunn. Read Miles’s blog or Charlie’s blog.
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Show Notes: Despite what Americans may think, moral panics about TV exist everywhere and today, we begin the exploration of a doozy. The start of a two-part look into four episodes of Star Trek that came a cropper at the hands of Auntie Beeb (a not-so affectionate term for the BBC) that of course allows Miles to indulge in one of his favourite talking points about British movie culture – Video Nasties!
Because of this, we’re only looking at two episodes per part. In ‘Miri,’ we see some very familiar style backlots and some very 1960s ways of talking to young women which definately makes our casual explorers think Auntie may have a point! Then, we jump straight to the third season of The Original Trek as our heroes endure ten minutes of plot and forty minutes of bloody nonsence in ‘Plato’s Stepchildren,’ possibly one of the most famous episodes of Star Trek (unless you’re from the Deep South) but is consent more important than controversy? Whatever we decide, the Big List will change forever!
TIMECODES:
10:39 TOS: Miri
38:17 TOS: Plato’s Stepchildren
Talking Points: Video Nasties, why were these episodes banned from broadcast until the 90s, Miles’s first choice for his Non-Trek thing indicates some wider issues, Alien Romulus, Miles misses Stupid Drunk British Lads smashing stuff with pipes, Astro’s Playroom, Miles and Charlie have different views towards achieving Platinum on games, Miri, Miles only wants to talk about lists, not get put on one himself, the always creepy ‘she looks 14 but she’s actually 300 trope,’ Kirk’s charm here does not read well in 2024, exact replicas of Earth are a little silly, how many SF societies wipe themselves out looking for immortality (and Miles pulls out a bit of ‘meanwhile in the UK, Doctor Who was doing this’ coincidence), we briefly touch on the rather triggering experiences of Grace Whitney (Yeoman Rand) shortly after this episode and her leaving the series, the oddly faced Steven Jay Pollard, Droogs in waiting, Shatner clearly trying not to punch a child, did the BBC have a point with Miri? Violence from children, inferred child-death, Hey Jude, the majesty of the theme for ‘The Good, The Bad and the Ugly,’ whenever people bring up eugenics, just turn around and run, we’ve started to incorporate our experiences with Space 1999 into watching Star Trek, nonsense starts and just generally never stops, Charlie gets slap-happy, Mary Whitehouse would not approve which is fine because we don’t approve of Mary Whitehouse. The nonsense gets creepy when Spock starts singing and it gets REALLY creepy when Kirk and Uhura is made to smooch, Charlie really wants to make a Dragonball Z joke here, when it’s done, Miles is pulling off the band-aid, some real shame on our heroes her, is this our first mention of slash-fics? This episode doesn’t go full-Hellraiser, No Gods No Philosopher Kings, sorry Parmon, one day Miles will go on a long tirade on how people misuse the term ‘Lynchian,’how much truth is there in the legend, would you show this to your partner and we can’t escape Shatner’s disturbingly pointy nipple, Miles has watched some wank in his life and that definately reflects his opinion of the episode, Miles poses Charlie a very important question.
[ Additional Show Notes ]
Music by Alfred Etheridge-Nunn. Read Miles’s blog or Charlie’s blog.
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It’s the fiftieth numbered episode (Network note: We’d numbered it as 55, but Miles and Charlie don’t always tell us ahead of time when an episode is getting a number or not), but! Do our brave and casual explorers want to do something special? Do they want to drastically alter the podcast’s format and mission statement (Miles is still holding out for #blakesboys), not particually, but they’re interested in when Star Trek’s done it! Join them as they finally talk about Star Trek The Original Series’ second attempt at securing a series as we meet Captain James “R.” Kirk as he goes ‘Where No Man Has Gone Before’ and proceeds to meet our first Godlike being who needs a swift beating. Then, in Discovery’s ‘That Hope is You Part 1’ we heard into the 32nd Century, but discover that Star Wars-style wretched hives of scum and villainy still exist, but we finally get a chance to make the Ship’s Cat actually pull his weight around here. Finally to round it all off, we watch ‘Star Trek: Picard’s’ second season opener ‘The Stargazer’, and even technical problems with the call can’t stop us from realising that the show has some problems with repeating itself. Will there be drastic podcast changes in the future? If Miles doesn’t stop trying to make #blakesboys a thing, possibly!
TIMECODES:
13:10 TOS: Where No Man Has Gone Before
41:11 DSC: That Hope is You- Part 1
??:?? PIC: The Stargazer
TECHNICAL NOTES: We have a escalating series of technical issues during both the ‘Discovery’ and ‘Picard’ portions of the episode, we did our best to put together what we could and we apologize for the inconvenience.
TALKING POINTS INCLUDE: The New-52, the UNIT era of Doctor Who, first world aspiring writer problems, The Dark Knight Returns, Miles feels like he makes a point and Charlie utterly proves him wrong (this is Miles writing the notes), Severance, Miles getting two entirely different shows mixed up, Miles does NOT want the Confederacy marching up his road, Gary Mitchell and Kelso, we hardly knew ya, where ‘The Cage’ and ‘No-Man’ are different and where does one work over the other, Kirk’s stunt-double, defeating gods with a humble f*g boulder to their entire body, the different uniforms, Roddenberry’s horny casting premises, Spock’s shouting again, Big Kirk Nerd, we go on a pretty lengthy digression about Star Wars… for some reason that’s totally unrelated to the episode of Discovery, never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem, Miles makes a reference to ‘Blake’s 7’ that he feels is utterly valid, Michael Burnham getting to change and evolve, Book, Grudge and the Ship’s Cat list, Covid-era SFX, the moment that makes both Miles and Charlie tear up, how Discovery advances the technology of Star Trek and how difficult it is on SF TV to make the far-future believable while not being silly, We Don’t Talk About Bruno and a quick digression into Disney films, people wanting to ride Admiral Picard’s Sexy Bald Head, Picard really shouldn’t be having a midlife crisis in his 90s, Star Trek Captains just don’t do personal lives, where Season 2 and Season 3 of Picard really have some noticeable similarities, Charlie still doesn’t care for Elnor, John DeLancie is always a delight, there’s a lot of smoking weirdness in Picard, we do actually like stuff about Picard honest, honest, honest, awkward personal drama on the Bridge, would Picard smoke a pipe? Secret +2!
PEDANT’S CORNER: Eastenders isn’t a sitcom, it’s a soap opera that makes Game of Thrones look like the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon. Severance and Succession are two different shows MILES
[ Additional Show Notes ]
Music by Alfred Etheridge-Nunn. Read Miles’s blog or Charlie’s blog.
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It’s Casual Trek’s third anniversary! Can we still call ourselves casuals after all this time? Probably. (Note from Trae at the network: Do the British count anniversaries differently? It’s the second anniversary of the show. It started in 2022. Did the boys time travel?)
In this episode we have a look at what exciting things we’ve discovered in the past year, such as: tolerating Neelix, hating Peanut Hamper, not knowing who all the bridge crew on Discovery are and more! We set each other some questions, and even had some questions from the audience!
Enjoy, and next episode we’ll be celebrating 50 episodes by talking about the times that Star Trek repiloted itself!
Timecodes:
00:01:12 What non-Star Trek thing have we been enjoying? Doom 2016 & Thank Goodness You’re Here
00:12:00 Our past year of Trek
00:27:36 Our discoveries in each Star Trek show
00:54:31 Future Topics
00:56:27 Questions!
Talking points include: Doom 2016 RIP AND TEAR! One of Charlie’s few fleeting moments of teenage popularity, Space Marine, Charlie did not edit the Lance Henriksen gaffe as it became lode-bearing, Put Lance Henriksen in Star Trek you cowards! And Robert Englund! V (original and remake), twee English miserablism, Paddington, Peter Capaldi, upcoming X-Men and Gilmore Girls tangents, There is already a Gilmore Guys, Miles’ attempts at singing, Radio Reverb, The French, where we watch Trek, binging long videos about internet plagiarism (H Bomberguy & Todd in the Shadows) and DashCon (Strange Aeons), ways not to watch Star Trek, which Suicide Squad movie will Section 31 end up like? “Babylon 5’s a piece of shit”, fictional sports more popular than baseball in Star Trek’s future, Miles watch The Wire you don’t need to take notes, Ryan North is great on Lower Decks and Fantastic Four, Charlie loathes 90’s cartoon Wolverine, Forehead from Vampire Diaries, How many times will we mention editing these episodes out of order? Space is still terrifying, H from Steps, Dennis the Menace (both versions), the terrible anecdotes of Wesley Crusher, the most horrible fact about Borg Cubes, Big Trouble in Little China, Zaphod Beeblebrox, Breakfast in the Ruins. Oh, and occasionally Star Trek.
Pedant’s Corner:
The baddie in Doom 2016 is actually Darin De Paul
That said, Lance Henriksen was in Alone in the Dark II and Gun
I meant to say my grandad, not my uncle. Sorry Uncle Peter!
Hemmer is not Andorian, he’s Aenar (Trae from the network’s Pedants Corner: Aenar are a subspecies of Andorian, so it’s not inaccurate to call him an Andorian)
The bottom of the list is Lift Us Where Suffering Cannot Reach
Dennis the Menace & Dennis the Menace both debuted on the same day
The post 54. Still Casual After All These Years first appeared on Nerd & Tie Network.
Those wacky Soongs are at it again, proving that Data’s the only good one of the lineage as Eugenics criminal Dr Arik Soong has some genetically engineered children who are out causing diplomatic incidents.
That’s right, we’ve got not one, not two but three Enterprise episodes as we watch all of the Augment trilogy in one go. Should they be ranked as one episode or three? How much does this want to be Wrath of Khan? Have they stopped with the whole ‘Space War on Terror’ and does Earth look less like a poor Xbox game background?
In Borderland, the mission’s off to a bad start as Orion slavers abduct a lot of the crew. Then in Cold Station 12 we get one of those TOS-style space stations dedicated to science and a ton of deadly viruses. Finally in The Augments, the CW version of Wrath of Khan plays out as petulant augments try to incite a war between the Federation and Klingons!
Timecodes:
00:02:42 What Non-Star Trek things have we been enjoying?
00:16:53 ENT: Borderland
00:46:26 ENT: Cold Station 12
01:02:05 ENT: The Augments
Talking points include: The 100, Doug Ramsey, Friday the 13th, We salute our anteater overlord, Nature Trail to Hell, A Hyrule Historia of Halloween films, Apocalypse War, Nemesis: The Warlock, The Goonies, Borderlands (video game), Keep on the Borderlands (adventure), Little Keep on the Borderlands (parody adventure), The WB & The CW dramas, Charlie’s worrying WB & CW knowledge, WWF on the SNES, Big Show, wrestling is basically weird amdram, World Wide Wrestling, Brainiac Cosplay, seagulls (including special guest star: a seagull, Nicholas Nickleby, Andromeda Strain, The career of Richard Rhiele, Charlie has been banned from starting a cult, X-Files flashlights, calling out Alec Newman for not shaving his eyebrows, some very 2004 music, Ewan McGregor, Wrath of Khan (of course), Chris Claremont (of course), Wing Commander III: Wrath of the Tiger, UK TV censorship, Back to the Future and then we mock a royal’s hair loss, despite Charlie’s lack of hair. Oh, and occasionally Star Trek.
[ Additional Show Notes ]
Music by Alfred Etheridge-Nunn. Read Miles’s blog or Charlie’s blog.
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Pull out two strips of Gold-Pressed Latinum and submit them in the little box to listen to our episode on the Ferengi, Star Trek The Next Generation’s first attempt at a recurring villain race which went incredibly poorly for everyone concerned. From their first appearance in the show when they act like incredibly hyperactive gerbils in the The Last Outpost, to their most recent focus in Star Trek Prodigy where we find out more about Dal’s past and the conflict between his old life and his new life in First Con-tact. to one of Deep Space Nine’s many attempts to bring nuance to the species in Family Business when Quark and Rom have to deal with their mother Ishka’s becoming involved in what passes for First Stage Feminism in a culture where women can’t wear clothes.
What a perfect alien race to talk about the day before the British Election gets the money grabbing Tory’s out of power after 14 years! Who says Star Trek isn’t political? If they do, make them put three strips of latinum in the appropriate hole!
Timecodes:
0:13:39 TNG: The Last Outpost
0:43:35 PRD: First Con-tact
1:03:43 DS9: Family Business
Talking Points Include: They Live and Ironic 4th July movies (we didn’t watch ‘They Live,’ but instead we watched ‘Slap Shot’), we briefly touch on the inevitable rousting of the Torys, the unfortunate antisemitic coding of the Ferengi, BE INTIMIDATED BY MILES’ ARMS! The Robocop vs. The Terminator crossover by Dark Horse Comics, (CORRECTION: Frank Miller HAD started writing and drawing ‘Sin City’ the year before) the Monster of the Week RPG, back to the Season One well of Star Trek: The Next Generation, The Bee-Gees, Lisa-Lisa and Cult Jam, where IS the Enterprise’s Engineer? Geordi’s weird ‘oooooh-wee!’ could the Ferengi ever have been a threat? Doctor Who’s own Ferengi the Slitheen and how they killed Charlie’s interest in Doctor Who back in 2005, the Ferengi design and how it’s immediately undercut, Armin Shimmerman giving some great vibes this early on, how this remakes ‘Errand of Mercy,’ Captain Picard does a swear, that one episode of ‘The X-Files’ what Stephen King wrote contained a swear, Transformers: The Movie dropping a ‘S-Bomb,’ Are we actually watching ‘The Mighty Boosh? We want Matt Berry to be a Star Trek Alien, Adele (sound goblins ate anything we had to say further on Adele, apologies for the weird edit) WHY IS ‘ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS’ the US Number One in January? Kid Kapici, Sea Power is a Hometown Band, Dal has a Yondu. Charlie is a freak, Charlie also likes to equate Dal from ‘Prodigy’ to Poochie, Prodigy excelling at non-humanoid aliens, cartoons for kids these days don’t have as much as a reset button as they used to, Prodigy finally does a Starfleet, Warren Ellis and Brian Michael Bendis style decompression in relation to Picard, eventually Charlie will learn how to pronounce René Auberjonois’ surname, Living Joy, Montell Jordan and THIS IS HOW WE DO IT, Charlie’s love of KINECT Dance Games, Jake Sisko is disturbingly obsessed with his dad’s love life, Quark is the lone conservative in a strangely progressive Ferengi family, THE RETURN OF JEFFREY COMBS, Ferenginar is the future tech-bros want, (CULTURAL NOTE: Rounders is the British equivalent of ‘Baseball,’) how old is Jake Sisko? At this point during the episode, the weekly Madison Tornado siren test starts going off, Charlie deals with his own FCA in real life, Ferengi culture and their home world is almost set up to be a Gilliam-esque nightmare, once more a reminder that Miles didn’t watch ‘Rejoined’ for the Trill episode, this isn’t a Ferengi Comedy Episode.
[ Additional Show Notes ]
Music by Alfred Etheridge-Nunn. Read Miles’s blog or Charlie’s blog.
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After watching some times Star Trek delved into Cosmic Horror, Miles might have told Charlie ‘Oh, this stuff is tame, let’s watch Space 1999’ instead. So, for this episode, we are now rebranding as #spacescamps as we talk about the greatest collection of space adventuring office workers Moonbase Alpha has to offer in Gerry Anderson’s Space 1999.
After we briefly gloss over the opening episode ‘Breakaway,’ we discuss Brian Blessed being out-hammed by the amazingly named JOHN SHRAPNEL in ‘Death’s Other Dominion’ (27:36), things get a bit tentacle monster in ‘Dragon’s Domain’ (40:26), watch some amazing class politics and screams of ‘MUUUUUUUTANT’ in ‘Mission of the Darians,’ (51:57) and bring it all to a close in ‘End of Eternity’ (01:01:09) as we meet a crazed immortal psychopath, which, if you watch the previous episode just come to the conclusion that this happens a lot in Space 1999. It’s not Star Trek, but it’s a hell of a lot of fun! Launch All Eagles! Stop being weird!
Talking Points Include: A FUCKING NUCLEAR EXPLOSION ON THE MOON. Balataro, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, the 2016 Ghostbusters film is fun, The Mad Max movies, Date Movies, Miles ruining ‘The Day After Tomorrow’ for the person in front of him (EDITOR NOTE: While Ian Holm is the British actor in question, he doesn’t deliver the final toast to Manchester United in the scene, that’s actually Richard McMillan) What is Space 1999? Supermarionation, Gerry Anderson, The Elevator Pitch, the Earth is fucked, Christopher Lee in an episode we did not watch, Space 1999’s budget is akin to bullying 1970s Doctor Who for it’s lunch money, the cast of Space 1999 are not qualified space heroes, Koenig is far more Office Boss than Space Cowboy, it’s nice to have our characters called Nick and Paul and Adamn, but it does make it hard to distinguish, Charlie’s notes are sometimes as complex as ‘man wearing neck-tie… evil?’, Peter Wyngarde, BRIAN BLESSED, JOHN SHRAPNEL, Grant Morrison comics we wouldn’t reread, asbestos everywhere, Brian’s fate in this episode, Michael Sheard (Who actually plays Ozzel in Empire Strikes Back) some good horror beats that devolve straight into Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace-esque shenanigans, they’ll never meet anyone nice, Charlie has started watching ‘Sapphire and Steel,’ ‘it’s a metaphor for capitalism,’ Barbaria Bain’s leg envy re: Joan Collins, Koenig’s ever continual frustration at the inability of people to simply be normal in space, more on Dave, Charlie’s former (and sketchy) employer, Immortal Hellraiser BS, Victory through OSHA violations, Long Recapping of DC’ Comics Legion Lost, is this the first time Miles has done his Werner Herzog impression? Charlie mentions the roleplaying game ‘Mothership’ about ten times throughout the episode, did Charlie like it? Would Star Trek Phase II have been like this? UFO, Miles recorded the second part of the Breakfast in the Ruins episode of ‘The Coming of the Terraphiles’ and GUESS WHAT It’s going to be a Three Parter!
[ Additional Show Notes ]
Music by Alfred Etheridge-Nunn. Read Miles’s blog or Charlie’s blog.
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Star Trek’s universe is bizarre and horrifying at times. Cosmic beings summon orcs to stab you in the back, alternate versions of your flagship get stuck in a wormhole, nonlinear entities get taught about time through memories of baseball, love and death. It’s all a bit weird and we’re going to revel in it today by talking about cosmic horror.
Ships full of Vulcans get a rough time today, starting with The Immunity Syndrome where a space amoeba kills them and the rest of a solar system. Can the crew discover a solution when their energy and the ship’s are rapidly dwindling?
The next cosmic entity is Nagilum, who is self-aware, godlike and a real jerk! The Enterprise has to work out a solution to get this bastard off their back, but it might mean their own deaths! Wesley picks the best time to take a break from the Conn and we get some camera experiments to distract from this being a bottle episode.
Finally we’re back to tormenting a ship of Vulcans in Impulse, where they’re driven into a mad, zombie-like rage! Not only are these T’Pol’s old colleagues, but she’s also infected. Can the crew survive until help comes? Also Trip & Mayweather get their fanciest gold spacesuits on to go all Minecraft on some asteroids.
Timecodes:
00:01:33 What Non-Star Trek Thing We’ve Been Enjoying
00:15:02 Talking about Cosmic Horror
00:17:58 TOS “The Immunity Syndrome”
00:43:15 TNG “Where Silence Has Lease”
01:11:03 ENT “Impulse”
If anyone could do a cover of the Enterprise theme tune based on either the Donnie Darko “Mad World” or “Cotton Eye Joe” that would be amazing and we would give you a shout out for performing such madness.
Talking points include: We literally only mention him once at the start, but of course Howie P Lovecraft gets a mention, Event Horizon, Space Battleship Yamato, Miles’ guest appearance on Breakfast in the Ruins, The Coming of the Terraphiles, Star Wars The Acolyte, making The Force weird, the disappointment of The Book of Boba Fett, Hold the Front Page, Taskmaster, getting a bit political, Charlie tries to explain cosmic horror in 30 words and loses count, Bobby Davros, Bobby Davro, The Beatles, a redshirt who looks like a young Hugh Dennis, stuntmen called Dick, Babylon 5, Time Lord reproduction, Star Wars Expanded Universe, The Langoliers, power ballads, Rock Band (RIP), The Backrooms, Portal, Earl Boen, Terminator, anime references in Star Trek: TNG, Dirty Pair, Chris Claremont, Buffy, Ernest Kline deserves a kicking, Knightmare, Quentin Quire & Damian Wayne, a thematic trilogy, Impulse (the comic), the descent of the Black Eyed Peas, the most 2003 guest star on a track of music, Mad World, Annihilation, the Space War on Terror, Battlestar Galactica, Alias, 24, Lost, Eastenders, PUT JEFFREY COMBS IN DOCTOR WHO YOU COWARDS, Space: 1999, Star Maidens. Oh, and occasionally Star Trek.
Pedant’s Corner: Miles left the country two years into the 14 years of Tory rule. Charlie’s summary of cosmic horror was 22 words, so we both lost count. Miles’ “reverse logic” bit was 12 seconds, the spreadsheet has been adjusted accordingly,
[ Additional Show Notes ]
Music by Alfred Etheridge-Nunn. Read Miles’s blog or Charlie’s blog.
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Check your software and make-sure to update your anti-viral software because our Casual Explorers are looking at times when Artifical Intelligence went ‘Wibbly.’ In the first episode, Voyager’s ‘Dreadnought,’ Torres deals with a super-intelligent missile from her past. Then in Discovery’s ‘Stormy Weather,’ we do some exploration in a dark abyss while the Discovery’s sentient computer struggles with self-doubt about her own skills and talents (and gurl, same). And then, Miles has to endure ‘A Mathmatically Perfect Redemption’ and has to deal with his most hated Lower Decks character and consistently get their name wrong. On a completely seperate tangent, Peanut Hamper is the damn worst. No connection. Honest. We didn’t use AI to write these show notes.
Timecodes:
00:09:15 – VOY: Dreadnought
00:37:51 – DIS: Stormy Weather
01:04:17 – LDS: A Mathmatically Perfect Redemption
Talking Points Include: Paranoia, Iain M. Banks’ Culture spaceship names, the movies of Roger Corman, CabinCon, the Infamous Starbucks Gary, early Voyager forgetting The Doctor matters, making fun of British Prime Ministers, Kes getting stuff to do, Voyager’s juggling subplots, Voyager’s bad reputation in the Delta Quadrant, Delta Quadrant being wasted world-building, war-crimes, Dark Star, more 2000 AD talk with Rogue Trooper, British Beavis and Butthead, large gentlemen struggling to put on jeans Miles and Charlie’s utter resignation with Ed Sheeran, big expanses of nothing, Miles is very behind on Discovery even though he does a Star Trek Podcast, Discovery’s honest earnestness, New Battlestar Galactica, Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy doing things several decades earlier than Discoery, the Short Trek- Calypso, Miles and Charlie talk about never truly growing up and how that can be toxic, Rick and Morty’s lineage in Star Trek Lower Decks, robot/owl Rule 34, Peanut Hamper being the damn worse and why Arnold Judas Rimmer might be one of the greatest characters in all of Science-Fiction TV.
[ Additional Show Notes ]
Music by Alfred Etheridge-Nunn. Read Miles’s blog or Charlie’s blog.
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He’s not the Messiah, he’s a very naughty cosmic entity! Our casual travellers decided to let themselves in for a time and experiment with cosmic god-like powers (powered by subtle audio cues and sound effects) while they watch three episodes featuring John de Lancie’s cosmic japester ‘Q’ (Miles is surprised at no point do they make a reference to a similar role de Lancie plays in My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic’). At first they watch Baby-Faced Season 1 Riker do his own experimenting with Q-Flash Noises in Hide and Q, see Q get brought down to human size sans pants in Deja Q and make a final pop over to the Delta Quadrant to see Q’s first meeting with the Voyager crew in Death Wish. BYOMB – Bring Your Own Mariachi Band!
CONTENT WARNING: Death Wish talks about suicidal ideation and euthanasia, we do discuss this during our post-synopsis discussion and if you wish to skip, the time codes are the following – 1:27:50 to 1:34:03
Timecodes:
00:12:21 – TNG: Hide and Q
00:44:52 – TNG: Deja Q
01:09:00 – VOY: Death Wish
Talking Points Include: Quisling, Quinn from Sliders, Doctor Who, Mondasian Cybermen, Charlie reading JoJo’s Bizarre Adventures, Season 1 TNG Weirdness, how one of Charlie’s teachers got fired, Worf has the zoomies, child death, more Star Trek Band Names, Jack Quaid’s voice work, Nudity dreams, the original plot for the episode Moonfall, Q-Ban Cigars, Data and Q buddy pairing, Casual Trek ASMR, More Bald Jokes at Charlie’s expense, the visualisation of the Q Continuum, Miles talking about Order and Chaos in the work of Michael Moorcock, Evolve or Die, The Good Place, surprisingly lots of different Doctor Who references this week, Terry Pratchett, suicidal ideation, medical euthanasia, Q’s benevolance through maloevelance, Riker’s Beard is the gift that keeps on giving, Star Trek actually having events stick, and the Youtube Video of Footloose with no music.
[ Additional Show Notes ]
Music by Alfred Etheridge-Nunn. Read Miles’s blog or Charlie’s blog.
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It’s time to draw some dots all over yourselves as Casual Trek’s discussing Dax! This one’s a Ko-Fi donor episode, so thanks Ben for the opportunity to talk about some more Trill shenanigans. We normally talk about three different shows but here we’re looking at three different Dax hosts. There’s also a weird sub-theme of muuuurder.
In “Dax”, Jadzia’s on trial for a murder that one of Dax’s previous hosts may have done. We’ve got Odo in detective mode, a trial in Quark’s bar and a gloriously disinterested judge. In “Equilibrium”, we delve into the dark past of Dax as Jadzia starts remembering things which none of her hosts have done. Oh no, she’s got a Dark Passenger! It’s Joran Dax! In “Field of Fire”, Ezri Dax investigates a murderer on DS9 and has to enlist Joran Dax to help her hunt them down. Joran takes the opportunity to oversell how much of a murderer he was, but we all have a fun time. Unless you’re a murder victim, I guess.
Just as a warning, there’s some beeping on the audio as there was some building work going on. We also go on way too long about Davy Crockett and how little we know or care about him. It’ll make sense when you get there.
Timecodes:
00:02:48 Non-Star Trek Things: Fallout, Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon
00:11:47 DS9: Dax
00:43:20 DS9: Equilibrium
01:07:47 DS9: Field of Fire
Talking points include: Venom, Spider-Man 3, Fallout (TV show & game), GTA, Rings of Power, Person of Interest, The 3DS, Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon, Hyrule Warriors, Planet of the Bass explains later Mobile Suit Gundam series, the Mortal Kombat theme, Julian Bashir has creepy Xander Harris energy, Robbie Williams’ career, X-Files style cover-ups, of all people MILES compares something to Lynch, all of the Wolverine revelations, X-Men: Deadly Genesis, all the Professor X mindwipes, Britney-mania, Phoenix Wright, Invader Zim, Hannibal, Joran Dax is the crypto bro of murders, BSG, Farscape, The Dark Half starring Anthony Michael Hall from The Breakfast Club, Kira’s Karen Haircut, Odo’s reading habits, Rear Window, Starfleet Poirot, No one British gives a crap about Davy Crockett. Oh, and occasionally Star Trek.
[ Additional Show Notes ]
Music by Alfred Etheridge-Nunn. Read Miles’s blog or Charlie’s blog.
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Grab your popcorn, take a sledgehammer to your 80s pan and scan VHS (Disclaimer: Casual Trek endorses Physical Media, just, just not pan and scan) and climb into your favourite beep-chair as Casual Trek goes to the movies In Search of Spock for Star Trek III: The Search for Spock! But, we have a little B-Feature before we hit our A-Picture and so we’re also covering the other time a member of the Enterprise stole the Enterprise because the needs of the one, outweighed the needs of the many: The Menagerie. Was it a clever way to reuse the unaired pilot of Star Trek- ‘The Cage’ (See Episode 1 of this show) or a clever way to scrimp on some gold-pressed latinum for a series that was more expensive than it looked.
Then, we go all in on The Search for Spock, as the Casual Trek crew won’t stop raving about Christopher Lloyd’s turn as a baddie. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, but sometimes, the needs of the few is to be rated and reviewed on all good podcatchers and apps!
CONTENT WARNING: We talk about some very ableist tropes from a piece of 60s television.
Timecodes:
12:22 TOS: The Menagerie
49:03 Star Trek III: The Search for Spock
Talking Points Include: Miles pimps his latest appearance on ‘Breakfast in the Ruins,’ Taskmaster, DragonBall, 2000ad and the Judge Dredd movies, Miles talks about Dan Dare, The Rolling Stones, Zager & Evans, our crew talk about attending our first gigs, Did Spock just kill a guy? How The Menagerie completely rewrites the message and meaning of The Cage, 60s ableism, Pike’s gloopy make-up job, how Star Trek: Strange New Worlds has made The Cage REALLY weird, Tendi from Lower Decks would not be happy with the portrayal of Orions, Duran Duran (Wild Boys) Some of the many, many, many classic Genre Films of 1984 (and Miles didn’t even mention the film adaptation of 1984 which came out that same year), oh, and also Repo Man. Despite his love of Buckaroo Banzai, you see Miles remember in real time that Christopher Lloyd also appears in that film. Casual Trek does not advocate underage drinking, but at least try for better than white wine. PAN AND SCAN IS THE DEVIL. Ponn Farr, David’s death, Shatner CAN act, Utopia still needs dive bars, Bones has a Top-Five Dive Bar list, the Bones/Spock fusion, Mr. Adventure is dead now, he died in the cupboard, words Miles never thought he would ever say on this show “Pallette-Swapped Adric,” Kruge is a great villain, we’re just going to talk about him a lot, better Magnificent Seven in Space films than Rebel Moon. James Horner, Does Spock’s Return cheapen death? Miles confuses lighting with colour, and what do Christopher Lloyd and Patrick Troughton have in common?
[ Additional Show Notes ]
Music by Alfred Etheridge-Nunn. Read Miles’s blog or Charlie’s blog.
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Casual Trek has ranked 97 episodes and two movies, so we decided to do something special for when we ranked our hundredth item on our big list. It would finally be time to rank the most infamous episode of Star Trek: Voyager! That’s right, it’s Threshold! While we could fill an hour and a forty minutes talking about one episode, but rather than doing that we’ve decided to have some Trekxtra Curricular studies. As well as being the bestselling author of TekWars, William Shatner also released multiple albums. We decided to put ourselves through his first album, The Transformed Man. It was… quite an experience. You’ll also get to hear how many comic-reading quests Charlie is taking and listen to two men with almost no experience of drugs try to figure out the best Star Trek episode to watch while under the influence. We also say “Flesh” too many times early on in the show in unpleasant ways.
Timecodes:
02:00 What non-Trek thing we’ve been enjoying: X-Men ‘97, Flesh
15:42 Star Trek: Voyager “Threshold”
56:22 William Shatner “The Transformed Man”
Talking points include: Godzilla is for everyone, X-Men ‘97, X-Men: The Animated Series, Put Dire Wraiths and Rom in X-Men ‘97 You Cowards!, X-Men: The Motion Picture, Flesh (I am so sorry for the moment of Flesh), 2000AD, Charlie’s Comic Marathons, Charlie posing like Jeff Goldblum from that photo, Shako: The Only Bear on the CIA Death List, Miles’ cunning trap, Neelix was assistant to the engineer, Dunking on Lovecraft, Cronenberging, HG Wells’ The Time Machine, Miles could say pretty much anything about what happens on Blake’s 7 and Charlie will believe it, Legion of Super-Heroes’ Evolvo Lad, The Outer Limits, David McCallum, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, The Fly, naming your child Khaleesi, Only Fools & Horses, everything better that debuted at the same time as Shatner’s album, Snoopy music, Leslie Nielsen, SNL skits, Andrew Ryan, Shatner trying to be a playful scamp, Shit my dad says, who would be a better Cyrano? The Free Design, Miles’ record collection, The Simpsons, Ranma ½, She Lies With Angels, Miles’ choice of song to sing in the style of William Shatner, The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins, casting Alan Moore in Lord of the Rings, Charlie’s funny ears, Poirot facial hair (again). Oh, and occasionally Star Trek.
[ Additional Show Notes ]
Music by Alfred Etheridge-Nunn. Read Miles’s blog or Charlie’s blog.
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Great Scott! We’ve a new season of Discovery starting this week and Miles and Charlie want in on all the possible synergy and sponsorship deals talking about BRAND NEW STAR TREK should entail. But we weren’t invited to the premier and Miles has just discovered ‘Taskmaster’ so he has no time to fly anywhere, but what they do have is the Trailer on YouTube and they spend a lot of time on YouTube. So our brave explorers have picked three episodes which might have a connection to what might happen in the show.
In ‘Captain’s Holiday,’ we see Picard take the right holiday on the wrong planet, in ‘Reflections,’ Boimler and Mariner attend a Job’s Fair while Rutherford discovers he’s not the man he used to be, or thought he used to be and in ‘Minefield,’ we see Reed be THE MOST BRITISH MAN in Star Trek as we finally tackle the prequel episode to ‘Dead Stop’ (See our 2023 Halloween Episode- Holodeck of Horror’) as we prepare to hit our 100th episode episode of Star Trek next episode!
Timecodes:
00:16:45 TNG: Captain’s Holiday
00:43:23 LDS: Reflections
01:05:22 ENT: Minefield
TALKING POINTS INCLUDE: Professor Benny Summerfield, Dune Part 2, how we sometimes don’t look at the knock-on effects of flops on art, Dune 2’s white saviour narrative, Christopher Walken giving no fucks, Miles’ Walken impression if lackluster, changes to Dune, Miles can’t tell what will or will not scare his wife anymore, ‘I Love Rock ‘N Roll’ WASN’T by Aerosmith? That’s news to Miles! DRINKING GAME: Take a shot every time Miles says the phrase ‘Such and Such wants to ride Picard’s Sexy Bald Head.’ Patrick Stewart has, by this point in the show, become a damn maniac, Patrick Stewart’s infidelities, less complext Farenghi, the Bill and Ted school of Time-Travelling Archeology, Patrick Stewart’s ego, Gene is complicated sexually, Miles needs to cut Twitter out, Lewis Capaldi might be the next Ed Sheeran. One more ALLAMARAINE. Jerky Tech-Bro Rutherford, Miles is very eagle-eyed when it comes to the show dropping hints, AM= After Moopsy. Fantastic Store was a Brighton-based comic shop in the 90s that sadly closed by decade’s end. Miles has made another Starbucks think they’re cursed. How the uniforms have some character to them. Charlie has played GURPS, Bowie and Waites, not great shop music, the episode stops dead as Miles and Charlie count how many episodes of Star Trek: Enterprise they’ve each recapped, Miles sings a little song, no, it’s not the theme tune to Blake’s 7. Shadey Romulan Tech (not Tek), Reed is a self-sacrificing smeghead, he’s also too British, Charlie started reading 2000ad, chunky tech and props, one of our mission statements was to find GOOD episodes of Enterprise and we have.
We’ve now almost seen ONE EIGHTH of Star Trek, for better or worse.
[ Additional Show Notes ]
Music by Alfred Etheridge-Nunn. Read Miles’s blog or Charlie’s blog.
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Look out, the Holodeck’s malfunctioning and we’re all trapped inside! And the safety protocols have been disabled! And the holograms are self aware! Today we’re looking at the Holodeck in three different shows and all the horrors it can cause.
First up is The Big Sleep, which introduces Picard as the private dick, Dixon Hill and his entourage can’t stop touching things. We also both attempt to re-create Picard’s epic speech from the end of the episode. Then we’ve got Kobayashi, where Dal tries to get through a Holodeck Kobayashi Maru with some of the best people in Starfleet (and Odo who’s not technically part of Starfleet). Finally, Bashir and a very sassy Garak play at spies in Our Man Bashir, facing death traps and their comrades who think they’re characters in a campy spy film! We also get into some musical acts who gave us psychic damage, a nemesis of the pod and use this as an excuse to talk about a rare musical track that’s featured in an episode.
Timecodes:
00:09:54 TNG: The Big Sleep
00:40:29 PRO: Kobayashi
01:03:12 DS9: Our Man Bashir
Talking points include: Visionaries: Knights of the Magical Light, Arnold Judas Rimmer, Dune (1984), Dune (the SyFy movie), Sting’s movie career, Lil Gator, the Pokemon Fuecoco, Dead Ringers, The Maltese Falcon, Miles’ patronising clapping, Charlie’s egg-shaped head, the facial hair of all the different Poirots, D&D novels, Macross, Reboot, Ba Weep Granna Weep Ninny Bong, LA Confidential, Blob Detective, Red Harvest, Brad Dourif, Thunderstruck, Rock Band, Maximum Overdrive, Star Wars: Rebels, Pandemic, Will Self & Gareth Gates’ musical career, Explaining The Wombles & Britpop to Americans, James Bond movies, The Man from UNCLE, Alien, LeCarre, GoldenEye. Oh, and occasionally Star Trek.
[ Additional Show Notes ]
Music by Alfred Etheridge-Nunn. Read Miles’s blog or Charlie’s blog.
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Because Miles’ schedule sometimes means he has to prioritise other shows, even shows that aren’t ours, we decide to do something quick and off the cuff and we end up with one of our longest episodes, go figure. Of course, we got Miles to talk about Doctor Who, what did we think would happen because that boy goes feral pretty quickly! Mainly talking about the four recent Doctor Who specials put on in the last few months, the boys talk toot about Star Beast’s, body horror and Ncuti Gatwa’s energy before Charlie asks Miles a lot of strange and stupid questions about Doctor Who and we lose the plot and our remaining sanity really damn quickly!
Timecodes:
0:08:19 The Star Beast
0:25:57 Wild Blue Yonder
0:45:00 The Giggle
0:53:10 The Church on Ruby Road
1:15:11 Silly and Insane Questions
The music for the opening and closing is ‘Who is the Doctor’ by Jon Pertwee. Yes. Him.
TALKING POINTS INCLUDE: Why Miles doesn’t want to host a Doctor Who podcast. Miles’ application of ‘Get it done and go to the pub’ theory of how to deal with any job as applied to TV Production. The struggle of ongoing media to maintain a schedule. The theatrical camp charm of Classic Who. The number of actors from the era of Television we’re talking about whose Wiki articles usually end with ‘Death from complications due to Alcoholism’ is incredibly large and no joke. The curse of Doctor Who being that Modern Doctor Who can never look cheap ever again.Drinking Game Rules for this episode: Take a shot every time Charlie says Disney Money. Two shots if he sounds vaguely contemptuous. Watching the BBC have to learn how to do effects heavy shows. Red Dwarf. Differences between ‘Doctor Who and the Star Beast’ (Doctor Who Weekly) and ‘The Star Beast’ the TV Special. The different looks about the Meep, Miles’ wife’s massive Pokemon Plushie collection (which Miles doesn’t have a problem with). Traditional 2005-2009 Who. Miles doesn’t like the 10th Doctor (SHOCK), the alien-ness of the Doctor, Capaldi and the guitar, Charlie’s inability to watch the 90s X-Men cartoon, Miles’ issues with the Whittaker-era and what they could have done, Wild Blue Yonder, Event Horizon, Sunshine, Honestly, another drinking game rule at this point, if we mention Video Box and the 90s, take a shot, what parts of Doctor Who Miles finds scary, Silent Hill 2 (a game Miles wants to play) Body Horror for Kids. Miles compliments David Tennant’s acting. Mean Monsters, Neil Gaiman-y ways of looking at the world. Miles admits Logopolis’ hard SF and entropy is silly to him. Is magic real in Doctor Who? Magic being turned into a skill tree, Brandon Sanderson, Miles goes on FAR TOO LONG about Dragonball Z Power Levels. The Giggle and how Neil Patrick Harris has ruined the name AH-MEE POND for Miles and Reanna. The Bi-Generation as a way of tying up all our baggage before new baggage, Ncuti Gatwa’s incredible energy from the word GO, The Church on Ruby Road, the Doctor’s mental health, RTD taking notes from Moffat’s beats, Charlie always has time for The Leftovers, Christopher Eccleston’s American accent game is strong both here and in Night Country, Miles’ generally aparthy towards Star Wars: Ahsoka made him start crawling back to Doctor Who, Planet of the Daleks isn’t great, but it’s fun, Charlie’s old rewatch and Morris Men ARE Evil, Miles’ own rewatch and where he’s at (FUTURE MILES here, The Myth Makers… not great) Miles and Charlie will never escape Blackface, Series 3 follies and the shows stumbling blocks that’ll never really go away until Troughton, the show’s changes for better and worse, Charlie was asked to provide insane, stupid questions and HE DOES NOT DISAPPOINT. Miles loves ‘The Mutants’ (although it turns out Charlie was actually going to be watching ‘The Sea Devils.’ Biggs Darklighter sans Porn Stache.
PEDANT CORNER: The video Miles mentions that posits 50 years of American Doctor Who is here. Watch it, it’s great.
[ Additional Show Notes ]
Music by Alfred Etheridge-Nunn. Read Miles’s blog or Charlie’s blog.
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We’ve been Borged! Oh no! Specifically, we’ve been I, Borged as each of today’s Borg-themed episodes are based in some way around Hugh Borg. I don’t think Borg’s his surname, but I don’t recall hearing any other name for him. First up is I, Borg from Star Trek: The Next Generation. Crusher and LaForge have a new pet and it’s a deadly Borg! A traumatised Picard’s eager to use him to do a genocide and Guinan’s with him. Oh no! Second we have Star Trek: Lower Decks’s I, Excretus where attempts to perfect a Holodeck trial lead to Boimler getting a bit too close to the Borg and some fun, awful scenarios which happen when Upper and Lower Decks have to swap. Finally there’s Picard’s Impossible Box, which turns out to be both a Borg Cube used for rehab and a puzzle box that a weird hot Romulan uses for meditation when he’s not getting way too close to his sister. Picard has a nice reunion with Hugh and there’s a Lord of the Rings Elf who’s there for some reason.
Timecodes:
09:28 TNG “I, Borg”
37:38 LDS “I, Excretus”
59:44 PIC “The Impossible Box”
Pedant’s Corner: Charlie is going to have to recap Star Trek: Nemesis, Alice Krige’s surname is pronounced “Kree-Guh”
Talking points include: Battle Angel Alita, Tetsuo: The Iron Man, Reanna being cancer free, Berserk, Joe Abercrombie, James Barclay, Elric, Picard would make a great Number Two in The Prisoner, Visionaries, X-Men: Fatal Attraction, Batman hologram trading cards, Matlock Bath’s Hologram Museum, Star Wars: Dark Droids, Whoopi Goldberg would make a great Doctor Who, a poop joke, Nemesis of the Pod Ed Sheeran, Funny Games, James VanDerBeek, not forgiving people for reminding us that Young Sheldon exists, mocking Geoff Johns’ career again, crowbarring The Legion of Super-Heroes into a recap, pesto, Grant Morrison, The X-Men’s Sentient Danger Room, being tired old men, Bond themes, Miles’ issues with James Bond, Alan Partridge, Orbital’s The Box, Evil Goth Merlin from the TV Show Merlin, Elnor is an elf ranger, Elnor has taken a level in rogue, Elnor has only seen the Lord of the Rings movies (probably not even the extended versions), Elnor saw the 90’s Three Musketeers or the Paul Anderson one, Rifts (Charlie will never run Rifts), JJ Abrams naming, weird incest siblings, Penny Dreadful, a weird The Cube room. Oh, and occasionally Star Trek.
[ Additional Show Notes ]
Music by Alfred Etheridge-Nunn. Read Miles’s blog or Charlie’s blog.
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We’ve got a guest star! Celeste of the Nerd & Tie Podcast and Celeste is Best joins the casual crew this episode to talk about the Trill. The species has always been a fascinating one and science fiction stand-in for conversations about gender and identity, so the three of us are going to delve into that in three different shows.
Star Trek: The Nest Generation’s “The Host” is the introduction to the Trill who look a little strange compared to what we’re used to. There’s a romance, a death, and Riker volunteers to get a slug put in him. We also spend time in the Enterprise salon with our hands in some green goo.
In Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’s “Rejoined” Jazdia Dax meets her wife from a former life and the pair hit it off, even though they’re not supposed to in Trill lore. Kira’s a good comrade, Bashir’s a fifth wheel and we get a touching love story in this episode.
Finally in Star Trek: Discovery’s “Forget Me Not”, new arrival Adira is having problems being a human host to a Trill symbiont, so we journey through memories and buck traditions while Saru’s having to learn how to get his crew of overachieving nerds to chill out a bit.
This was a really fun episode to make, even though there are some audio issues we’ve hopefully ironed out and one of us didn’t do the right homework.
Timecodes:
00:05:30 Trill
00:07:55 Celeste’s history with Star Trek
00:10:29 What Non-Star Trek Thing Have People Been Enjoying?
00:21:51 TNG: The Host
00:52:30 DS9: Rejoined
01:22:05 DSC: Forget Me Not
Pedant’s Corner: The governor was Leka Trion, not Leka Tyrion. Damn you, autocorrect! Eastenders had a brief flash-forward to build suspense for their Christmas 2023 episode. Burnham’s Captain Catchphrase is, “Let’s Fly”
Talking points include: Venom, Maggott, Mr Mind, 52, Doctor Who, apparently Americans don’t know when an American’s putting on an English accent, Transformers/Star Trek crossovers, yuri anime, I’m in Love with the Villainess, Reincarnated Princess and the Genius Young Lady, The Executioner and Her Way of Life, Gundam, Dark Shadows, Degrassi’s zombie and Terminator webseries which genuinely happened, Grange Hill, EastEnders, Arthurian Mythology, Fantastic Four, The Curse, Nathan Fielder in general, Lynch, Wandavision, The Bear, Miles watches Zardos so much he was probably watching it while we were recording, Meatloaf, The Enterprise has a salon(?), Game of Thrones’ approach to siblings, what sad loser YouTube channels would have been doing in the 80’s, Avatar, homosexuality in the very early 90’s, Northstar, Pasíon de las Pasiones, slightly less psychic damage from Mariah Carey, the Tom Tom Club, Weird Al, Weird Science, Revenge of the Nerds, untrustworthy practitioners of close-up magic, New BSG, Helix, Dawson’s Creek is better in the original Klingon, Michael Scott is so devoted to profit, appropriating ‘not my cup of tea,’ Quinton Reviews also giving us psychic damage, The Orville, Jessie Gender, X-Men, pointed sticks, Buster Keaton. Oh, and occasionally Star Trek.
[ Additional Show Notes ]
Music by Alfred Etheridge-Nunn. Read Miles’s blog or Charlie’s blog.
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We’re throwing ourselves through The Time Tunnel as Casual Trek decides to travel back to the past and to the future in a discussion about Time Travel. Kirk, Spock and Erickson (who is THE worst) break history and Spock have to fix it in “Yesteryear,” Janeway and Paris have to dress up in Burger King Uniforms when they travel back in time a day in “Time and Again,” and La’an and A Kirk try out poutine and Chess hustle in Toronto in “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow.”
Timecodes:
0:14:38 – TAS: Yesteryear
0:37:17 – VOY: Time and Again
1:07:10 – SNW: Tomorrow And Tomorrow And Tomorrow
Talking Points include: We never know anything about The Time Tunnel, David McCallum’s The Invisible Man Fleshsuit, Roger Corman’s ‘The Terror,’ The Monkees’ movie- Head, 90s Direct to Video Movies, Shin Kamen Rider and all the excitement that entailed, Miles’ Mum’s past as a teeny bopper, Stevem Segal, Sarek is still the worst father in all of Trek, He-Man fashion and Godzilla’s sound effects, the cavalier use of the Guardian of Forever, no-one cares about Erickson, how the shorter run time of The Animated Series means we have to rush through some pacing issues, the Grandfather Paradox, what to do when you meet your younger self, Charlie tried to make both Long Hair and Fetch happen, giving our younger self some good music, Miles thought Cotton Eyed Joe was a meme only, 4Chan, the podcast Inform, Educate, Entertain, the terrible outfits that look like Burger King uniforms, the Prime Directive, does traveling back a day count as time travel? How protesters are seen in pop culture in the 90s, child death and endangerment, why isn’t time travel a course in Starfleet Academy, how double-dating with siblings is weird and neither of us like the idea, how Voyager completely didn’t go in a way Miles found potentially interest way back in episode 1 of the show. Tom Paris, Leave that Child Bride Alone! Time travel episodes of Red Dwarf. How Mornington Crescent made one of Miles’ university tutors unfriend him on Facebook. The best Shakespeare quotes for future episodes of Star Trek, how Canada has been used for everything, sliding timescales both in Star Trek and the Marvel Comics and how the Time War in Doctor Who ended up causing it’s own problem, how Strange New Worlds reacts to Time Travel much differently from TOS.
PEDANTS CORNER: Nothing to be Pedantic about this week, if you see something we missed, let us know!
NEXT TIME: We get a Guest-Star in Celeste as we talk about the Trills.
[ Additional Show Notes ]
Music by Alfred Etheridge-Nunn. Read Miles’s blog or Charlie’s blog.
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It’s the wicki wicki wild Wild West! We’re putting on our worst cowboy voices and donning some coconuts so it sounds like we’re on horseback as we go into the Holodeck or to worlds where things are suspiciously like The Ancient West. A Fistful of Datas has Worf resentfully taking his son to the Holodeck during downtime only for things to go awry after Data gets plugged into the ship. We also get Troi living her best life as a Western LARPer. The Spectre of the Gun puts the away team into a weird half-built Wild West set where they’re the villains in a no-win scenario and Chekhov gets to romance an alien dream construct that looks like a woman. North Star is a good episode of Enterprise, where Archer, T’Pol and Trip have to deal with the descendants of Ancient West folks who were abducted by aliens centuries ago and are now oppressing the descendants of their captors.
Timecodes:
00:06:32 – Westerns
00:16:28 – TNG: “A Fistful of Datas”
00:37:16 – TOS: “The Spectre of the Gun”
01:00:54 – ENT: “North Star”
Somehow Charlie forgot to mention that instead of playing “Cowboys and Indians” as a kid, his father made him play “Christians and Heathens.” Also there was a moment where Charlie spent too long talking about the Legion of Super-Heroes and we cut that. If you want Charlie to annoy Miles with pointless Legion of Super-Heroes trivia, tell us and we’ll do an episode on the Star Trek/Legion comic!
Talking points include: Deadwood, Westworld, Red Dead Redemption, The Between: Ghosts of El Paso, the Quick and the Dead, Star Wars, Firefly, Blake’s 7, The Prisoner, Red Dwarf, Worf doesn’t get Worfed, Crisis on Infinite Earths, Doomlord, Dogville, Gunfight at the OK Corral, The Hayes Code, specifically NOT the Legion of Super-Heroes after Charlie explained Ultra Boy’s origin to Miles, Unforgiven, 24, Quantum Leap, Gilmore Girls, Doctor Who. Oh, and occasionally Star Trek.
Pedant’s Corner: Emily Bergl who played the teacher here and Francie in Gilmore Girls played the roles about 10 months apart.
[ Additional Show Notes ]
Music by Alfred Etheridge-Nunn. Read Miles’s blog or Charlie’s blog.
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Welcome to Casual Tek, a podcast all about the prose of William Shatner! Is that not what we’re doing here? Well, if only because we could use the name “Casual Tek” it is this time! After months of Charlie trying and failing to get a copy of TekWar he finally has one, so it’s time for he and Miles to delve into William Shatner’s attempt at a cyberpunk noir tale. We do some reading from the book and try to explain what TekWar’s about, what the technology’s like and then desperately want to take some Tek in order to forget this reading experience! Normal service will be resumed shortly as we’ll be returning to Star Trek to ‘gift’ each other an episode in time for Christmas.
Timecodes:
0:00 – A Dramatic reading from the introduction of the book
23:32 – We actually start talking about TekWar
34:51 – Miles tries to explain TekWar. From there we kind of go all over the place.
Talking points include: NaNoWriMo, Blade Runner, Film Noir, Cyberpunk, Johnny Mnemonic, CyberPunk 2020, ShadowRun, that neon clubwear shop in Sydney Street in Brighton, The Big Lebowski, Gerry Anderson’s UFO, Geek Syndicate, Monarch, Transformers, Garth Marenghi, Breakfast in the Ruins, Tarnsmen of Gor, James Herbert, Just King Things, I Don’t Even Own a Television (RIP), Ed Brubaker, Agatha Christie, World of Darkness 1 point Disadvantages, Lost, Red Dwarf, Judge Dredd, faxes, the times Charlie threw his Kindle, Fifty Shades of Grey. Oh, and of course TekWar!
Pedant’s Corner: The cover image is not what Ron Goulart looks like.
[ Additional Show Notes ]
Music by Alfred Etheridge-Nunn. Read Miles’s blog or Charlie’s blog.
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November will come and go as does our two-part look into Season 2 of Short Treks. Miles is trying to make sure we keep to time, but in attempting to sound high energy and keep things moving, he sounds like he’s about to try and throttle Charlie through the Zencastr feed. The first few minutes are a little scratchy in places, but it improves.
Spock is a little shouty on his first day on the job as Una makes him engage in Q&A while Edward’s attempts at being THAT coworker ends in Tribble-y horror in ‘The Trouble with Edward.’ Captain Pike tries out some interesting headware in ‘Ask Not’ and after that, things get animated with ‘Ephraim and Dot’ and ‘The Girl Who Made the Stars’ — although one of these feels more Trek In Name Only than the other. Then, to round it all off, Charlie’s struggles for completion end with a look at the ‘Children of Mars’ and it all gets a bit sad.
Next Episode finally sees us do something we’ve been threatening for a while as we look at William Shatner’s first attempt at a novel as we make the audience finally learn about Tek War!!!
TIMECODES:
ST: Q&A (2:46)
ST: The Trouble with Edward (9:09)
ST: Ask Not (18:17)
ST: Ephraim and Dot (24:47)
ST: The Girl Who Made the Stars (30:23)
ST: Children of Mars (35:46)
Talking points include: We still don’t like Ed Sheeran and we never will. Why is America obsessed with Gilbert and Sullivan? Goodness Gracious Me. Miles totally refers to women as females while complaining about men who call women females. As they say in Wisconsin, Ope. Miles once again makes working at Starbucks sound like the bloody Borgias. British Opinions on American Gun Control. How Starfleet Academy decides to do secret tests of character is utterly batshit. The Utopian Federation has NO Human Resources Department. Miles had his phone on and got texted, naughty naughty. Kirk Thatcher is the only Thatcher we stan. Stormzy sounds like someone we would know in Brighton. A song we refuse to listen to, even more than anything from Shearan. Miles’ opinion on what is THE WORST Christmas Pop Song and despite their vitriolic reaction to Mariah Carey, it’s not her. Live Aid. Children of Men, Dune, Earth, whatever… Yes, Miles has actually been in a fight at school. Better slowed down Bowie songs to use instead of ‘Heroes.’ The ‘Believe’ advertising campaign for Halo 3. Fortnite… Oh, and a little thing called ‘Star Trek.’
Pedant’s Corner- ‘Goodness Gracious Me’ was a 90s BBC sketch show with an entirely English Asian cast and writers and highlighted the culture clashes of Indian’s living in Englad. It would probably be seen as ‘Woke Pandering’ by certain people today.
[ Additional Show Notes ]
Music by Alfred Etheridge-Nunn. Read Miles’s blog or Charlie’s blog.
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It’s November, so our Casual Explorers have novels to write, but we also want to bring you the innovative Casual Content you crave, so we’re going to go through all of Short Trek in a two part binge. We’ve make some new friends alongside Tilly as we discover that Ice Cream isn’t a universal constant like Sweedish Meatballs (Babylon 5 fans will get that one) in Runaway while in the far-future, things feel a bit like the opener to most RPGs with FPS mechanics in Calypso. After that, things go a little bit folk horror for the Kelpians as we get Saru’s secret origin in The Brightest Star while Miles becomes disturbingly obsessed with saying ‘Jippers on a Beach’ like he’s Harry Mudd in The Escape Artists. Next episode will see us wrap up the Short Excursion with the second season of Short Treks!
Timecodes:
8:01 ST: Runaway
19:21 ST: Calypso
29:21 ST: The Brightest Star
39:17 ST: The Escape Artists
Talking points include: Harlan Ellison’s aggressive tendencies, The Exorcist II: The Heretic, Wes Anderson and The Wonderful World of Henry Sugar, Charlie hates Maroon 5 (But when pressed on this, he simply replied ‘Who Doesn’t?’), we had a LOT of music on this one, Asteroid City, folk horror, Bioshock and RPGS with First Person Shooter Tendencies, Classic Doctor Who fans having very obsessive tendencies, every time Charlie talks about Delgrassi Junior High, he paints an ever more disturbing image of a Canadian Teen Drama written and directed by Sam Peckinpah, Quinton Review’s Long YouTube Videos about Carly 101 and VicTORIous, Rick and Morty and apparantly the British being unable to pronounce anyone’s names correctly.
Pedants Corner: Miles is editing the two Short Trek episodes and that has inspired him to take some of the editing load off Charlie giving them both one episode a month to edit, there may be a few spotty edits, but there we go. The Quinton Review discussion went in a few tangents dealing with personal stuff that both Miles and Charlie decided were best left out of the episode itself.
[ Additional Show Notes ]
Music by Alfred Etheridge-Nunn. Read Miles’s blog or Charlie’s blog.
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It’s Halloween, so it’s time for spooky episodes of Star Trek! There are some ominous cucumber sandwiches, some salt and a lot of air vents this year!
The Man Trap gives us the classic TOS villain of the Salt Vampire and some shapeshifting shenanigans. There’s also an amazing glove puppet plant.
Dead Stop has a brightly-lit rest stop with offers that are too good to be true. Including why it was on ‘spookiest Star Trek episode’ listicles.
Persistence of Vision brings us some horror in the Delta Quadrant as it looks like Janeway’s losing her mind. The characters and sandwiches from her Gothic novel holodeck program are appearing in the real world!
Timecodes:
10:22 TOS: The Man Trap
37:58 ENT: Dead Stop
1:05:02 VOY: Persistence of Vision
Miles guested on Breakfast in the Ruins where he talked about some more of James Herbert’s rat books!
Talking points include: James Herbert, Classic Dr Who, Talking Heads: Stop Making Sense, Rupert & The Frog Song, The Wicked + The Divine, Yellow Submarine, paintballing, Werewolf, Doctor Zachary Smith, Seth MacFarlane, Logan’s Run, The Mountain Goats, Lost, Robson & Jerome, PJ & Duncan, Todd in the Shadows’ review of From Justin to Kelly, Cube, The OC, Miami Vice, some Cube 2: Hypercube action, space in Star Trek is Warhammer terrifying, Stargate Universe, Dead Space, Mariah Carey has traumatised us both, Bothans, Mass Effect 2 Relationship Choices and a budget Colin Firth. Oh, and occasionally Star Trek.
Pedants Corner: Miles should have said Series One, not Season One of Dr Who, but he was having fun and that level of pedantry is more Charlie’s thing, Miles was right that Sunshine Superman is indeed a DC Comics character, Charlie means that Seth MacFarlane might have gone back in time in a Trials and Tribble-ations way (not a Trouble with Tribbles way), and apparently Harry Kim’s girlfriend Libby is actually real. Who knew?
Charlie has now seen Taylor Swift: Eras and it was very good.
[ Additional Show Notes ]
Music by Alfred Etheridge-Nunn. Read Miles’s blog or Charlie’s blog.
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In today’s episode we’re having a look at Worf, a character who’s a rare series regular between two whole Star Trek shows. We wanted to have a look at some early stories of him in both TNG and DS9 and they both ended up being about bad actors wanting to ‘Make Qo’NoS Great Again’ in their own ways. First we’ve got some rebellious Klingons making trouble in the Neutral Zone and Worf’s first time being torn between his new friends and his work friends in “Heart of Glory”. Then we’re over to some rash decisions from the Klingon Empire as they decide to invade Cardassia right after it’s had a rebellion against its own government in “Way of the Warrior Parts 1 & 2”. This is a big, status quo changing episode with a lot of fun guest stars like friend of the pod Gul Dukat, Martok and the glorious eyes of Gowron.
Timecodes:
0:19:39 TNG: Heart of Glory
0:49:49 DS9: Way of the Warrior Part 1 & 2
Just so you know Miles was beeping a little as the batteries on his explosive collar were running low. I edited around the beeps a lot, but there are a few still in there. – C
Talking points include: our reasons for covering this episode, manifesting a god by having enough people scream at a road, The Exorcist, Brad Dourif being a moist serial killer, Brad Dourif being a good egg in Deadwood, Goodfellas (apparently that is Ray Liotta’s real laugh), the works of M-Scoz, Kylie Minogue, Rick Astley, Bill Bailey’s Klingonness, Blake’s 7, Classic Doctor Who, The Simpsons, ValSpeak, Shenmue, Wing Commander, The Young Ones, Babylon 5, Red Dwarf, Brian K Vaughan, Mystique, Star Wars and space battles, event comics, and Gengar. Oh, and occasionally Star Trek.
Pedant’s Corner: Sweeps weeks are when people like Nielsen do their ratings calculations, so channels often pulled big stunts to try and get people watching. We didn’t know AGIMUS was going to come back when this was recorded. The decision and placement of Way of the Warrior was quick, even if it was sidetracked by several tangents.
[ Additional Show Notes ]
Music by Alfred Etheridge-Nunn. Read Miles’s blog or Charlie’s blog.
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It’s time for Casual Trek and oh no… Earth’s been infiltrated by aliens! Thanks to the generosity of Ko-Fi donor Cheryl, we’re talking about aliens on Earth. We’ve got a Chakotay episode of DS9 where he might well bone down with a Species 8472. Also what the fuck is Pon’Far night? Then we’ve got the story of the real First Contact in Enterprise, with a cozy story about Vulcans living among us. Then we get decidedly un-cozy as Enterprise embraces the War on Terror era derangements of America and suffers from a bit of the old xenophobia just in time for our ship to get home. We also get some manpain from Captain Archer and Trip being encouraged to disrupt a Vulcan wedding.
Timecodes:
13:53 VOY “In the Flesh”
43:40 ENT “Carbon Creek”
1:13:45 ENT “Home”
Talking points include: X-Files, They Live, Jaws, Yahoo Serious, Rabbit Proof Fence, Are Australian filmmakers alright?, Waking Fright, Muriel’s Wedding, the Australian Ultraman Show, knifey spoony, Wanderhome, Holly by Stephen King, Classic Dr Who, Pink Floyd, Battlestar Galactica (2004), My Favourite Martian, X-Treme X-Men, Space: Above and Beyond, Lost, Quantum Leap, a horrific hypothetical Only Fools & Horses: The Nest Generation, The Truman Show, Dan O’Bannon, Coldplay, buskers, Fresh Prince of Bel Air, Riverdale, Twilight Zone, 52, Quantum Leap, Lord of the Rings, whatever happened to Robbie Williams?, that time Dr Samuel Beckett never returned home, Halo, Anakin Skywalker at a good event, a case of the Jack Bauers, quiet issues of X-Men, The Graduate, Manpain in Modern Dr Who. Oh, and occasionally Star Trek.
Pedant’s Corner: Dan O’Bannon wrote Dark Star & Alien, but Rockne O’Bannon made Farscape The Thanksgiving issue of Uncanny X-Men was 308 Yes I know T’Pol’s mum is T’Les, but in the moment T’Mum sounded better.
[ Additional Show Notes ]
Music by Alfred Etheridge-Nunn. Read Miles’s blog or Charlie’s blog.
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We’ve got our first guest star in today’s episode as we get the nonstop machine of comics crowdfunding Matthew Hardy to join us in talking about the First Lady of Star Trek: Majel Barrett! Majel’s been in so many episodes, hell, so many SERIES of Star Trek over the years, so there’s a lot to work with here. We’ve got shockingly little Majel in the TOS episode that ostensibly is a spotlight focus on her. Then we’re in to the wild world of Lwaxana Troi as she gets kidnapped by Ferengi in TNG — and that version of the Ferengi are the absolute worst. Like Internet Guy worst. Finally we get a surprisingly nice pairing of Lwaxana and Odo stuck in a lift together as a weird life form from the Gamma Quadrant has got into the computers.
Time Codes:
20:13 TOS: What Are Little Girls Made of?
48:37 TNG: Ménage a Troi
1:11:18 DS9: The Forsaken
Talking points include: Westworld (both flavours), Babylon 5, Only Murders in the Building, Righteous Gemstones, Adam X the X-Treme, Ahsoka, Classic Dr Who, FMV PC games, Charlie’s back on his Lost bullshit, From, Amnesiac City, Two time GLAAD award winner Peter Allan David, The Matrix, Terminator, I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, The UK Office amount of awkwardness, Shoggoths, Tiny Clangers, The Prisoner, Legion of Super-Heroes fashion, Mario Kart-based declarations of love, Vampire: The Masquerade, The Mos Eisley Cantina Band, Lucille Bluth, Lwaxana Troi going full Mrs Bennet, Picard giving it all Shakespeare, More Classic Dr Who, Lord of the Rings for the SNES, Gilmore Girls, Tamagochi, War of the Worlds. Oh, and occasionally Star Trek. A surprising amount of Star Trek this time…
You can find Matt’s Kickstarter for Thunder Child here.
[ Additional Show Notes ]
Music by Alfred Etheridge-Nunn. Read Miles’s blog or Charlie’s blog.
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We’re feeling a bit musical in today’s episode of Casual Trek. Charlie’s been eager to crowbar in a musical episode after realising it’ll get another episode of Picard ticked off our list, then Strange New Worlds provided us with the perfect opportunity to talk music! We’ve got three episodes all about music. First up is Voyager with a classic Hubris of The Doctor episode where some Space Karens get fascinated with his singing, but do they love him for him, or just his programming? We also end up talking about AI art and the content slurry of it all Then we’re over to Picard in heist mode as the gang need to get JL to give an inspirational speech to his ancestor to save all of time. What’s the best distraction? Music! Finally we’ve got the main event of the episode, Strange New Worlds doing a dedicated musical episode. We’ve got singing, dancing, a fairly thin plot but who cares when you can belt it out like these actors!
Timecodes:
12:01 VOY: Virtuoso
34:54 PIC: Two of One
53:32 SNW: Subspace Rhapsody
Talking points include: Hawkwind, the Eurovision Song Contest, Subwoolfer, the new Babylon 5 cartoon, The Poseidon Adventure, The Silt Verses (podcast & RPG), The Manics covering the MASH theme tune, Britpop, Miles’ poor taste Burroughs joke, Bono’s smugness, The Doctor being the third Crane brother, AI art, Paul Williams’ oeuvre, Neelix being a Phil Spector and/or a Del Boy of space, Only Fools & Horses, using Coldplay as white noise, The Borg Queen rips off Scorpius’ bit, an alternate casting choice for Professor X from the TNG cast, that time Professor X enslaved a sentient Danger Room, the Metropolis remake, Scott Pilgrim, Buffy, The Magicians, Riverdale, Dr Who’s musical audio episode, Macross, modern musicals, Across the Spider-Verse, Rocky Horror Picture Show, the Chuck Austen run of Charlie’s X-Men marathon. Oh, and occasionally Star Trek.
Pedants Corner: James Newman was the “just some bloke” who the UK sent to Eurovision in 2021. Miles is not a Eurovision expert so he doesn’t know Wales don’t compete (although it’d be good if they did) and we’d gone on about Eurovision for long enough I didn’t want to go back and correct him. Where’s all the Taylor Swift in episodes we’ve covered? Literally episode two when we covered Discovery’s pilot and also episode twelve in the Borg episode Pelia suggests the idea of beaming in a song to Uhura
[ Additional Show Notes ]
Music by Alfred Etheridge-Nunn. Read Miles’s blog or Charlie’s blog.
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It’s time for another Star Trek movie! We’re looking at Wrath of Khan, the supposed best Star Trek movie, which
The post 28. Casual Khan! first appeared on Nerd & Tie Podcast Network.
Oh my god it’s been a year already! We decided after a self-indulgent episode celebrating our birthdays that we should
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It’s Miles’ birthday and we’re here to celebrate it with a thematic episode of Casual Trek. And you know what?
The post 26. How Much Brien? first appeared on Nerd & Tie Podcast Network.
Did you know that some planets in Star Trek might not have the best laws? Especially utopian ones which are
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SYNERGY! Yes, it’s time to try and coordinate an episode of Casual Trek with the start of one of the
The post 24. Strange New Synergy first appeared on Nerd & Tie Podcast Network.
It’s time to call out some Bad Admirals! Why do admirals go bad in Starfleet? Oddly enough one of these
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It’s time to get assimilated into the new episode of Casual Trek! We’ve got some great episodes all about the ominous Borg. We’ve also got John DeLancie lounging on things and seeing a young Q here, wouldn’t Andy Samburg be a perfect Q? I’d love to see if he could be as ominous as John DeLancie, and we know he’d be good at the capering lunacy. We get some Frankenstein vibes from Drone which was not the episode I thought it would be, and then Let Sleeping Borg Lie gives us an excuse to check out Prodigy again and the Borg are scary in an episode made for kids. Good work, Prodigy!
Timecodes:
8:52 TNG “Q Who?”
43:27 VOY “Drone”
1:08:59 PRO “Let Sleeping Borg Lie”
Talking points include: Paranoia, Watchmen, Before Watchmen, Doomsday Clock, Early Versions of The Boys, Into the Archives with Peter Fleming, Doctor Who (A LOT), Charlie being extremely slow to realise what ‘firing power’ meant although he’s talking to a man in America so it’s somewhat justified, Marvel’s post-Comics Code Teenage Years, Bryan Fuller, our first song mentioned with a Weird Al parody, hologram trading cards, Spaced, Terminator 2: Judgement Day, a passing mention of Babylon 5 & Blake’s 7, a game of ‘who has the worse fans online?’, the Star Wars film you don’t mention online, Charlie can’t think of “Whirlipede” from Pokémon, a rhino man borg!, Avatar (guess which one), Transformers Earthspark… and occasionally Star Trek.
[ Additional Show Notes ]
Music by Alfred Etheridge-Nunn. Read Miles’s blog or Charlie’s blog.
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What’s less casual than the Maquis? This episode we’re watching our first non-pilot two-parter with “The Maquis” which introduces some Federation rebels, something you didn’t often see apart from in the occasional colony as a one-off problem. Well, these folks are going to be a bit tricky both as a problem and an existential threat to the concept of the Federation. At least, that’s the potential of them. We watch a couple of episodes which aired around a fortnight apart and had different levels of effectiveness at showing the Maquis.
Timecodes:
06:48 DS9 “The Maquis”
43:21 TNG “Pre-Emptive Strike”
Talking points include: WM Akers’ roleplaying game “Comrades” which Charlie ran in the Age of Apocalypse one time, Blake’s 7 (a lot), doing a Starfleet irl, BBC’s Ghosts, The French Resistance, Falcon & The Winter Soldier, The Krakoan Age of X-Men, Boris Johnson’s undisclosed amount of children, Succession but with Gul Dukat, Phantom Menace Trade Route Chat, Babylon 5, ruining your 90’s pop childhood by looking into Ace of Base, Mandalorian Season Three, Farscape, the ‘five years later’ Legion of Super-Heroes, Lovely Bryan Fuller, oh, and occasionally Star Trek.
[ Additional Show Notes ]
Music by Alfred Etheridge-Nunn. Read Miles’s blog or Charlie’s blog.
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After having to sit through Tuvix, Miles and Charlie are feeling a little burnt out on Star Trek, so decided to talk about a book beloved to both of them- Lord of the Rings and they don’t care how much they offend Tom Bombadil to do it! An attempt to talk about the book seriously briefly occurs before it devolves into the pleasures of saying the name ‘Fatty Bolger,’ Miles’ school having a Tolkien Society (although as he’s older, Miles is starting to think that was a ploy by his parents so he didn’t want to go to the ‘Common’ school all his friends were going to), Charlie’s adventures in both boardgame and RPG games in the Tolkien world and Miles revisiting childhood trauma with the SNES Attempt to translate the books.
Warning: Episode does not contain Star Trek!
[ Additional Show Notes ]
Music by Alfred Etheridge-Nunn. Read Miles’s blog or Charlie’s blog.
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Welcome to this inaugural meeting of the Brad Dourif Appreciation Society. Today we’re… wait, wait, that’s a different podcast. A private podcast. We will be talking about Brad Dourif here, but we’ll also be talking about a number of other things including war criminals and Tuvix! Yes, we’re ripping that plaster off and talking about the merging of a good and awful character into a somehow worse character and what to do with him! We’ve got it all though, a Neelix episode which might actually make you like Neelix, a Tuvok episode starring Brad Dourif and then finally we merge together into Tuvix!
Timecodes:
13:39 VOY – Jetrel
40:26 VOY – Meld
1:09:34 VOY – Tuvix
Talking points include: Space 1999, Lost in Space (all versions), You, Dexter, Resident Evil VII, The Dungeons & Dragons Movie, Charlie plugging his comic Kickstarter, Neelix is not anything like Captain Britain but Kes is like a bad Meggan, Alan Davis’ wonderful hair art, Oppenheimer, Disney’s ABC’s Marvel’s The Inhumans, Babylon 5 (a couple of times), Blake’s 7 but only in passing, the oeuvre of Bradford Claude Dourif, Chuck Austen (who I realise now is also a big humanist like JM Straczynski), Hannibal, Naoki Urasawa’s Monster, ugh the trolley problem, Sliders, Madelyne Pryor, Miles brings up the time he went off on one about Moriarty. Oh, and occasionally Star Trek.
Charlie’s Kickstarter for Explosion High issue two can be found here.
[ Additional Show Notes ]
Music by Alfred Etheridge-Nunn. Read Miles’s blog or Charlie’s blog.
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Hello and welcome to a very special episode of Casual Trek! We talked about games in Star Trek last episode, now we’re playing a Star Trek choose your own adventure style game! Voyage to Adventure is an old book and quite a weird one, being not one adventure but several short ones in different duty stations on the Enterprise. Revel in my bad choices and Miles’ bad accents in this episode!
Timecodes:
08:57 – The start of the book
11:28 – The first playthrough – Charlie on the bridge!
21:53 – The second playthrough – Charlie in science!
32:33 – The third playthrough – Charlie in engineering!
41:31 – The third and a halfth playthrough – Charlie in engineering!
42:51 – The fourth playthrough – Charlie in science again!
Talking points include: a Star Wars Choose Your Own Adventure, Metal Showcase 11pm by Jason Morningstar, Cheat Your Own Adventure, dry heaving at unironically using the word ‘content’, Fighting Fantasy books, The Author Kim Newman, the 23rd century Monkees revival, skutters, Mo Howard, Slaughterhouse Five… Oh, and occasionally Star Trek.
Charlie’s Kickstarter for Explosion High issue two is found here, and his review and playthrough of Metal Showcase 11pm as the band Death Hammerdeath is here.
[ Additional Show Notes ]
Music by Alfred Etheridge-Nunn. Read Miles’s blog or Charlie’s blog.
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It’s games night here at Casual Trek! Crack open a steaming tin of gamer fuel and stretch those controller-twiddling thumbs! We’ve got three episodes all about games today. The Ktarian Game – A free to play puzzle game which looks very simple but is worryingly addictive. Chula – We get so annoying about this one and I can only apologise. Allamaraine! Bat’leths & BiHnuchs was probably sold as an RPG but is more of a board game with purchasable DLC Springball – Space Squash We get into all of those games and some wacky nonsense of the first degree with DS9 going through teething problems and our first Wesley Crusher focused episode.
Timecodes:
11:06 TNG – The Game
33:14 DS9 – Move Along Home
58:11 LDS – The Least Dangerous Game
Talking points include: Experiencing BiJ, Rock Band, Portal 2, The Gamers, Sean’s Zelda II playthrough, Fire Emblem Engage, Oath, Battlestar Galactica/Unfathomable, Reaganomics, video game addiction, Wesley Crusher-themed emo band names, an easy 2 Unlimited dunk, Metal Gear Solid, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Exorcist, the cube from the film The Cube, Dread, Cluedon’t, the Norwegian LARP scene, The Mountain Goats, I Only Listen To The Mountain Goats, Charlie Goes Off On One About OneD&D, Fucking Drizzt. Oh, and occasionally Star Trek.
[ Additional Show Notes ]
Music by Alfred Etheridge-Nunn. Read Miles’s blog or Charlie’s blog.
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Whether played by Leonard Nimoy, Ethan Peck or even Zachary Quinto, The fantastic Mr Spock is one of the most popular characters in all of Star Trek. This episode we’re celebrating Spock by showing all manner of shenanigans; Angrily Horny Spock, Giant Spock and Freaky Friday Spock!
A quick note for the pedants: we forgot Jack Harlow’s song and talked about Harry Styles’ one again at the start of the SNW conversation which is probably all the statement you need on Jack Harlow’s song. Yes, this is a Star Trek podcast.
Timecodes:
12:30 TOS – Amok Time
38:09 TAS – The Infinite Vulcan
1:00:49 SNW – Spock Amok
Talking points include: The Great Tolkien/Moorcock Fan Fight, The Blade Runner Roleplaying Game, Starship Troopers RPG, GURPS, Rifts (you can tell Charlie went on a tear about RPGS), Poker Face, I am The Law, Thatcher’s still dead (woo!), T’Pau, Last Unicorn Games’ Star Trek: The Next Generation: The Roleplaying Game, Futurama, Walter Koenig from the Babylon 5, Billiam Shatner from TekWar, Stephen Universe, The Day The Earth Stood Still, Giant Vulcan from the X-Men, Freaky Friday, Farscape’s body swap episode. Oh, and occasionally Star Trek.
[ Additional Show Notes ]
Music by Alfred Etheridge-Nunn. Read Miles’s blog or Charlie’s blog. Follow Charlie’s Kickstarter notification page.
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Synergy! It’s what got me to force Miles to finally watch and rank the pilot episode of Picard! We recorded this episode before watching the first episode of Picard season three, so we’ve picked the other two episodes based on guessing what’s going to happen thanks to the trailer. That means we’re covering the first appearance of Lore and of Evil Hologram Moriarty!
Timecodes:
00:00:00 Opening
00:14:21 TNG – Datalore
00:45:50 TNG – Elementary, Dear Data
00:58:46 Miles enters ‘Sherlock Holmes pedant mode’
01:11:55 PIC – Remembrance
Talking points include: Dune (specifically the 1984 classic film version), Vampire Survivors, Treebeard, James Herbert, Elden Ring, Doki-Doki Literature Club, Portal 2, Adric in Dr Who, Robby the Robot style droids in Star Trek, Dr Hank Philip McCoy and his many war crimes, Data is an AI artist, Miles gets to be a big nerd about Sherlock Holmes, getting erased Reboot-style, Professor X’s ability to get over pretty much anything, prestige television fatigue, Logan, the works of Michael Chabon, Alias, Eternal Law. Oh, and occasionally we talk about Star Trek.
(Also: Miles is on the Breakfast In The Ruins podcast talking about some Marenghi-ish horror! He also wrote a review of Picard season three, episode one. Oh, and that Tor article Miles mentioned.)
[ Additional Show Notes ]
Music by Alfred Etheridge-Nunn. Read Miles’s blog or Charlie’s blog.
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We’ve got our first Ko-Fi donor request today! It’s time for time loops! How annoying can we make this for everyone including each other? We’ve got three very good episodes from different Star Treks, and even better, we’ve got our first Ko-Fi donor request today! It’s time for time loops!
Timecodes:
11:29 VOY – Coda
31:03 TNG – Cause & Effect
54:34 DIS – Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad
Talking points include: Happy Death Day, Dr Who (specifically Eve of the Daleks), Immortal X-Men issue nine (the time loop one where Sinister keeps trying to kill the Quiet Council), Red Dwarf (specifically White Hole), The Invisibles, Poker Face, The Menu, Pig, The oeuvre of Nicholas Cage, Gorillaz, Todd in the Shadows, Stephen Fry on ‘don’t you die on me’ cliches, Stargate SG-1’s time loop episode, Frasier Crane, Groundhog Day, Dr Who Adventures in Time and Space RPG, Supernatural’s time loop episode, Fiasco, The Iliad, Wycleff Jean’s 1997 classic, “We Trying to Stay Alive”, Fallout 3 killsprees, (sigh…) Blake’s 7. Oh, and occasionally Star Trek.
See Also:
- The Overthinking It write-up on the Discovery episode
- The GTA 5 playlist from D+Pad.
[ Additional Show Notes ]
Music by Alfred Etheridge-Nunn. Read Miles’s blog or Charlie’s blog. Also check out Charlie’s Kickstarter for Explosion High 2.
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Apple PodcastsGoogle PodcastsSpotifyAndroidRSSThe post 14. Whatever Happens in the Timestream Stays in the Timestream first appeared on Nerd & Tie Podcast Network.
It’s time to go to the movies! Yes, we’re covering Star Trek: The Motion Picture! We’re also watching The Changeling which is a very comparable episode to the movie. It’s an episode where a giant floating electric toothbrush threatens the ship, Earth and causes the first redshirt deaths we’ve seen on the podcast so far!
Timecodes:
00:00 Opening
07:12 The Original Series: The Changeling
35:58 Star Trek: The Motion Picture
1:30:36 Miles singing when we got separated on the call
Talking points include: Alien, Flash Gordon, presenting the podcast in widescreen or pan & scan depending on your podcatcher, the Eccleston Doctor Who, The Invisibles, Everything Everywhere All At Once, GI Joe Origins: Snake Eyes Origins (which I stress was NOT a recommendation), maths (ugh), whether Nomad is Doctor Who cheap or Tomorrow People cheap, Professor X’s callous disregard for human life, the Clangers reboot, Guillermo Del Toro’s Raggydolls, a gritty Bill & Ben reboot, Pinky & Perky, Alien franchise novelisation writer Alan Dean Foster, Charlie was (and is) a big nerd, West Side Story, Blake’s 7, Yacht Captain Kirk, that time Chris Claremont came back to the X-Men, a casual appreciation of Star Wars, Interstellar, 2001: A Space Odyssey, comparisons to Green Lantern and Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, and occasionally Star Trek.
[ Additional Show Notes ]
Music by Alfred Etheridge-Nunn. Read Miles’s blog or Charlie’s blog
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We’ve got a slightly different episode today and a callback to our very first episode of Casual Trek! We discovered Chris Claremont had written a Star Trek comic and HAD to check it out. So here, in lieu of our normal episodes, we’ve got a bonus episode where we review and talk about Debt of Honour. I know that’s not how honour is spelled on the book but I kept writing it that way and with Claremont as an anglophile, I figure he wouldn’t mind.
We open by talking about the man himself and a few other things. The actual talk about Debt of Honour starts at 13:41 Ha ha, just kidding, we talk about the credits and get side-tracked, the actual talk about Debt of Honour is 23:03.
Talking points include: Sovereign Seven, why is Chris Claremont, a LOT of X-Men talk, The Image Exodus, the Death of Superman, Miles doesn’t know how to say ‘kayfabe’ understandable fawning over the Simonsons, Legion of Super-Heroes & JLI, Marvel’s Star Trek comics, X-Files, Chris Claremont’s anglophilia (which is not a shield from bad takes), Samuel Delaney, Diane Duane, RPG novelisations, Kitty Pryde’s unfortunate use of slurs to make a point, Cats Laughing, the many kinks of Christopher S Claremont, Psylocke, two time GLAAD award winner Peter Alan David, and occasionally Star Trek.
[ Additional Show Notes ]
Music by Alfred Etheridge-Nunn. Read Miles’s blog or Charlie’s blog
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I hope you all had a nice festive time! This episode should be airing on Boxing Day here in the UK, so enjoy your time off work and listen to a couple of chaps as the ‘gift’ each other a Star Trek episode. Will we be overjoyed with festive cheer, or will we hope desperately that the other person kept the receipt? Also this one’s a bit low energy, as Charlie was thick with a cold and there was quite a bit of lag on the line, so to counter this, maybe have a Lucozade or run about a bit as you listen.
Timecodes:
00:00 Opening
05:45 TOS – The Conscience of the King
37:39 ENT – Future Tense
(There’s a little nosebleed chat around 1:05 for about a minute if anyone’s got issues with that and wants to skip forwards. Also a little throw up chat around 1:06:00 so maybe just skip to 1:06:50)
Talking points include: Elric, Garth Marenghi, Macbeth Macbeth (like Mario Mario?), various calculations about Kirk’s age, The Wire, Glass Onion, Lost, Tyler Dayspring, Avengers Vs X-Men, Battlestar Galactica (TV show & board game), Avengers (UK), Charles’ terrible TaTu anecdote, Quatermass and the Pit, Red Dwarf, House of Leaves, roadkill laws, battles in Babylon 5, Charlie gets on his art wanker story game RPG high horse again, Starship Eternia, The Super Mario Bros Movie. Oh, and occasionally Star Trek.
[ Additional Show Notes ]
Music by Alfred Etheridge-Nunn. Read Miles’s blog or Charlie’s blog
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It’s Jeff time! Jeffrey Combs has played roles in several different Trek shows, so when I first started putting together theme lists, a Jeffrey Combs Appreciation Episode was on the docket. Here we have him as a mad robot, an angry Andorian and a pair of cloned zealots of varying levels of faith.
Timecodes:
00:00 Opening
14:48 LDS: Where Pleasant Fountains Lie
36.40 ENT: The Andorian Incident
57:51 DS9: Treachery, Faith and The Great River
Talking points include: favourite Jeffs, ranking of Jeff names, Jeff Minter, Babylon 5, Justice League Unlimited, HP Hatecraft and Harlan Ellison, System Mastery, Questionable Content, The Three Jokers (ugh), The Young Ones, #iHunt, How Did This Get Made, Charlie’s personal role model Skeletor, Portal, Evil Computers in Mass Effect, Roxann Dawson director of “The Long Con” for Lost, Charlie describing a dalek but failing to describe an Andorian, X-Men (the 2000’s movie), GoldenEye & Half-Life levels, “what if The Empire was the good guys” people, Miles being a 1990’s nerd hipster, X-Files, Catch-22, The Del Boy Trotter of Space, Alan Rickman in Galaxy Quest, The Dead Zone TV show with Anthony Michael Hall from The Breakfast Club in it, Deepwater Black, Australian science fiction shows (not Deepwater Black), the Australian Ultraman show, alternative social media and becoming a fan of something obscure enough it can’t generate flamewars. Oh, and occasionally Star Trek. Miles mentioned about acts of arson in the Moulsescoomb council estate. While I never new anyone who did that, my brother was friends with a kid who set light to a newsagents in Whitehawk.
A clarification: Ed Sheeran was alive in 2001, he’d only have been ten years old
The rankings: Jeff Jef Jeph Geoff
Also, Miles has a blog.
[ Additional Show Notes ]
Music by Alfred Etheridge-Nunn
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Once more we throw ourselves into very un-Casual waters as Miles tries to tell Charlie whether or not it’s worth Charlie’s time to watch Jodie Whittaker’s final episode of her tenure as Doctor Who. Will Charlie watch and have an opinion of his own? Jump to timecode 53:00 to find out for yourself.
It’s Miles’ first time in the editing chair, so the machine isn’t as smoothly run as possible.
Talking points include Doctor Who, our histories of watching Doctor Who, Age Inappropriate Doctor Who novels in Miles’ Primary School Library, Doctor Who Actors, Doctor Who Companions, The Master, Ra-Ra-Rasputin, Jeph Loeb, Doctor Who, Doctor Who, and possibly if we’re lucky, Doctor Who, Guess What, Blake’s 7 gets a mention as Charlie’s utter refusal to watch the show draws a stark boundary. Little does he know that Miles got to choose an episode title that references an infamous line from the show. Maximum Power!
[ Additional Show Notes ]
Music by Alfred Etheridge-Nunn
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