The Final Frontier Season 1 Episode 19: Back To The Future

[00:00:00] This podcast is brought to you by Casa de la Zissa and by Vizard.ai. The Final Frontier Podcast. These are the voyages of Jake Boger and Justin Spur.

[00:00:19] Our weekly mission to explore memories of Star Trek's strange new worlds, to recall the search for new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has had the spare time to go before.

[00:00:33] Well, who's ready for some Star Trek action?

[00:01:24] I am so... I have... Okay, I need you to know that before the opening credits, I had a page and a half of notes. That's... Well, okay, so it's a long opener. It's a long opening scene. This episode was delightful and complicated in all the ways that an episode involving time travel should be. It was, and yet again, this is becoming a recurring theme going through this rewatch is I hated this episode when I was a kid. I found this episode... Really?

[00:01:54] I found it dreadfully boring. I was not interested in going back to the 1960s. Okay, fair enough. And as an adult, this is great. But I have so many questions. It's so interesting that you say that because if I were watching this as a kid, it really reminds me of all of like... It reminds me of an episode of Futurama where they go back to like... Like, there's just a bunch of television shows from my childhood that did this that I'm like... I would have been into this. That probably did it because of this.

[00:02:24] Because of this, yeah. We are, of course, talking about the super fun, super funny, super groovy... Because yeah, it's... So weird. We're being weird. Time travel romp. Tomorrow is yesterday, which I have an issue with the title. I feel like it should be yesterday is tomorrow, but I'll admit it doesn't roll off the tongue. No, it's not rolling as nicely.

[00:02:50] Well, but also, none of the time travel in this episode makes sense anyway. So the title not making sense is kind of right in mind. No. They can't decide on what version of time travel they want to do. But I've just got a few brief notes on that Paramount Plus description, which is very short, which basically just says that Kirk and the Enterprise are going back in time. I was very excited because I love a time travel story, no matter how little they make sense. I'm always loving a time travel story. And this felt like a really stupid question.

[00:03:18] We're currently, as of today's date, in the 21st century, right? That is correct. So they went back to the 20th century, which is the... Okay, okay. When did it become the 21st century? This feels really dumb. In the year 2000. That makes sense. Right, right, right, right. Okay, okay. So how I always... How this always helps me is because when people throw around things like 18th century, 19th century... Yeah. Whatever century it is, so you go basically the number before.

[00:03:48] So from 1800 to 1900 or 1899 is the 19th century. Gotcha. Okay, okay. Oh my God, that's so much... I never knew how to understand that. That makes sense. Oh, that's so easy to remember. So that's why they're talking about, you know, back in 18th century, 1865, it was very much a... Which this'll mess with your mind a little bit.

[00:04:12] Victorian England is to a point the same time as the American Civil War, even though Victorian England lasts longer. But so someone in a Victorian English court would have been somewhat of a peer to a Confederate soldier fighting in the American Civil War. So... Interesting. This episode takes place during Stardates 31-13.2 and 31-14.1. Don't worry about it, Stardates still don't make sense.

[00:04:41] But the in-universe date is 2266, and this episode aired on January 26th, 1967. So we're moving right along. We haven't missed a day, a week yet. Nope, not yet. I mean, we have. We missed one, sue me. We missed... The show has not missed any. Yeah, Star Trek has a better record than us thus far, so give me a break.

[00:05:08] But this particular episode is written by DC Fontana and directed by Michael O'Herlihy. I'm guessing it's O'Herlihy. Michael O'Herlihy. He loves... He loves time travel, he does. He loves the wicked time travel. But it won't make sense. No. No. No. Because the same method they use to go to the past, they'll use to go to the future. But they'll go further in the past first. On the same trip.

[00:05:37] I don't know if you... Have you seen that SNL skit when Justin Timberlake posted? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh. What about you, Cornelius Timberlake? What do you hope your great-great-grandson will be like? Well, I know he'll be very handsome. Oh! And he'll be a millionaire. A millionaire? From fur trapping? From coal? No, from popular songs. That is so funny. He's so... He'll be bringing sexy back.

[00:06:07] No, on him it will work. On him it will work. And he'll join a band of boys. I watched that and that skit gave me faith in SNL. SNL's been coming out with some pretty decent stuff lately. I don't know if there was a shake-up in the writers' room or something, but it's been pretty solid. I hit a point. I was a big sketch comedy guy when I was a kid, like old kid sketch comedy, like all that, Amanda Shaw, all that stuff.

[00:06:33] But I never really got into SNL, but there's just certain sketches that just make me laugh. My, like, David S. Pumpkins is like one of my all-time favorite sketches. What's up with that? I love what's up with that. The sketch is so good. So I'm gonna recommend for you, I don't know if this will be in the show, but actually yes it will, because the audience, you're gonna wanna see this. Especially if you're a Jonah Hill fan. But if you just... I'm a big fan when... So, okay, a bit of a rant.

[00:07:02] This doesn't make any sense. But, so, when regular cast members can't hold it together and break character, it usually annoys me. Fair enough, yeah. But some, it's somebody like Jimmy Fallon who can never seem to keep it together. Yeah. There are times, there are times when people are normally like, like there's a, there's an infamous Chris Farley skit, Now by the river! When David Spade just, he, but David Spade just can't keep it together, but David Spade is normally like... Yeah.

[00:07:32] So when that happens, it's, it's fine. But it's, so, um, they did a running skit on SNL, I don't remember what year, but you can find it on YouTube. It's available, but it's... Hmm. What is it? So, it's basically parodying like college access TV. And it's, is it, is it, it's not Japan America Funtime now, but it's something America Funtime now. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's the one with, um, it's the one with, uh, Mike Myers, where he's, where he's in the way, not that one.

[00:08:01] Oh, the one where you just whacking Chris Farley in the groin. No, it's newer. It's much newer. Oh, okay. J-Pop, it's J-Pop America Funtime now. And the premise is that there's two white college students that host a public access show at Michigan State University, where they showcase Japanese culture. The problem is, is their only exposure to, you know, Japanese culture is anime. Of course they do. And they're obnoxious. And the reason I find it so funny is because I went to high school with people like this.

[00:08:30] So, to me, this is not parody. These are people that I have met. I mean... And, and, and now with the sort of, with the sort of popularization of anime, they're not as prevalent anymore. No, I know that. I was always in a club with people like that. Trust me. If you went, if you were in high school, any time between probably 1998 to 2010. Yeah. That's yeah. That's yeah. That's yeah. High school. Yeah. You probably know people exactly like this.

[00:09:00] But anyway, there's one, they do a few of them and all the episodes are funny, but the funniest one is Jonah Hill is hosting SNL. And the, the gag is he is also a, a Jewish college student because the fact that he's Jewish is brought up in the skit. Who is a, and I'm not, this is how he says it in the skit. This is not me making fun of a Japanese accent, but he is a samurai sold a master. Oh no.

[00:09:30] No. And there's this moment where he's asked to demonstrate, he's asked to demonstrate his swordmanship and they do it to music. And he stands up with an obviously like fake toy sword. Right. And he's supposed to be doing this like epic monologue, but Jonah Hill can't keep together. So he's like, he's literally talking. He's like, Oh, but the other two people are steel traps.

[00:09:59] They're not breaking at all. Oh, those are my favorite. I mean, my, my, my current favorite of one of those is the one where it's sketches where you don't understand what this was supposed to be before. So my current favorite one is the one where it's Ryan Gosling is Beavis and butthead and the poor girl just breaks. She just can't. And I'm like, what was the sketch? It just seems like it's just constructed to break the poor person who has to do it. So that's all it seems there to do.

[00:10:28] So you'll be excited on down the middle. I've been well, I've uploaded one. There will be another one. But eventually in season two of weekly wrestling wrap up on one week, honestly, we were just bored with wrestling. So we did a sketch comedy show instead. Of course, of course. I mean, my, I, we used to, we did an internet sketch comedy show. Internet sketch comedy is always funny. It's always funny. Oh, it was so stupid. We decided that we were going to start another show. We never did. There's only one episode. There's only one episode of down home punch.

[00:10:58] This it's, it's one pilot for the good of our own sanity. We decided to not go forward with. Oh, the thing is we could have done it. We absolutely could have done it. But I was like, Hey guys, I'm already editing this show. So. Oh yeah. I don't have time to do this, but anyway, Star Trek, we're going to go back in time to Star Trek.

[00:11:18] This episode, unfortunately premiered on Thursday, January 26, 1967, just one day before the Apollo 11 fire on the 27th. Oh, the death of three astronauts. Oh yeah. Oh, obviously start. Like they could know nobody could have known. Right. But it's just one of those. It's kind of like, it's kind of like for you. Well, actually, no, this was a W's fault.

[00:11:47] Um, for all you wrestling fans out there. I forget what year this would have been. I think this was 2021. Uh, but you can go back. Cause I talk about it on down the middle is there's a wrestler by the name of Nick Gage, who is, and I quote a death match specialist. I know who Nick ages. Okay. So, you know, his deal with the pizza cutter. Uh, not in time. Just isn't he the one who's just a straight up psycho psychopath? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm watching the, I mean all of my wrestling, I watched a Ducks out of the ring.

[00:12:17] I watched the episode about. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There he was in the death matches episode. So yeah, his, his whole deal is he uses a pizza cutter on people. Now you may think to yourself, oh, okay. It's a prop. And then somehow these, no, he actually cuts people with a pizza cutter. That being said, someone in a W Tony Khan decided that it would be a good idea to have this person appear on a television program during Friday time on cable. Oh no. And not, and not alter the things he does.

[00:12:46] And the loveliest part of this is as he's using the pizza cutter on Chris Jericho's face, it cuts to picture and picture to a Domino's pizza commercial. Oh no. Domino's was understandably upset. Yeah, no kidding. And Jim Cornette has a great rant about this, but so yeah, Domino's was understandably upset.

[00:13:12] And this is a case of where, okay, I'm going to go out on a limb and say maybe Tony Khan didn't know that that commercial was getting teed up exactly at that time. But if you know that one of your advertisers, which you would know this, he would know that. Yeah, for sure. Is a pizza place. First of all, don't have the guy on. Yeah, don't have the death match guy on your primetime television program.

[00:13:41] But if you're going to tell him to nix the pizza cutter. But here's the thing. You can't do that because that's kind of his thing. So just don't have him on. From what I recall from that, from that episode, wasn't he completely psychotic? Yeah, but honestly, that was no, I wouldn't even say that. I mean, obviously, that's him toned down a bit, but I don't think so much because it was on TV.

[00:14:03] I think it was because it was Chris Jericho and he probably said, hey, if you like if you cut me more than we agree upon, you will never work here again. Well, yeah, that was my that's my memory of that guy is like he I remember his talking head parts were being like everyone thinks that this is a character. It's not a character. I'm really this crazy. Yeah, that's also where they show him having to get airlifted to a hospital. Right. Yeah.

[00:14:28] I learned a lot about the existence of what is it called? The extreme wrestling like whatever, whatever. Yeah. Yeah. The one that was created by. Oh, not Vince Russo. But yeah, Paul Heyman. Yeah, that oh ECW. Yeah, ECW. Yeah, I learned a ton about ECW from that show. Yeah.

[00:14:53] ECW is one of those programs where I didn't watch ECW when it was on because I couldn't have it wouldn't have been where I was. But even if I could actually know I take that back. It was on but I wasn't watching wrestling then because they did eventually get on TNN. But that being said, I didn't watch them live.

[00:15:12] So everything I've seen of ECW is after the fact and I have a suspicion that ECW is one of those shows that you can look back on with rose colored glasses, especially if you didn't watch it initially. But I bet you it was kind of. I bet it was kind of. Yeah. Oh, there's there's some definitely gnarly parts to it, especially early ECW. But a lot of that stuff wasn't really like put out for the masses until much later anyway.

[00:15:38] But I digress for our viewers in Germany. Fun fact for you. This is also the first Star Trek episode shown on German television in 1962 1972. I'm sorry. Interesting. Yeah. So this is the first time we see the Captain Kirk and this Mr. Spock and this is a. This is a. This is a. This is a. This is a. This is a doctor McCoy. Oh, I love the. Oh, I love the. Oh, I love your hair. She keeps her workstation so tidy. She's so tidy.

[00:16:08] We love. We love the Sulu with his fencing. He's. He's a. He's a. He's a lovely gentleman. That's on. And his hair. And his hair. It's wonder bar. It's wonder bar. But the one accent I can do kind of believably. Yeah. Sorry, Germany. I'm sorry for that. The reason I can do that is because when I was. It's unrelated, but sort of quasi related. It's when I was in high school, I took Japanese and my Japanese teacher would go Vin shield vipers, whatever he was.

[00:16:38] He would tell a story about his German, his German neighbors or whatever. And this he'd say they would always be like Vin shield vipers. And that was how he got to your and this that's just from then on Vin shield vipers. That's how I get that. Sure. That's your. That's your. What do they call it? That's your transition phrase when you're trying to. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's about creativity or if I'm trying to imitate Flula Borg, if you know who Flula Borg is random German celebrity. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:17:04] Anyway, the USS Enterprise is sent back in time to Earth during the 1960s by the effects of a high gravity, quote black star. Don't worry. We'll touch on that terminology in a moment. The Enterprise appears in Earth's upper atmosphere and is detected by military radar. So there's this there's this wonderful moment that was totally unintentional, but it's like Kirk and Spock are talking about like, oh, maybe, you know, like hopefully engineering still with us. Hopefully Scotty's alive.

[00:17:32] And then the lights come on and they're like, OK, Scotty still with us. Oh, Scott is still with us. Oh, yeah. I've got I've got a note about that. Yeah. But Spock be like if if if if Scott made it like, whoa, kind of cold there, Spock. And then the lights come on. They're like, oh, he's OK. As if there's only one there's only one person in engineering that can turn the lights on. And it's Mr. Scott. The opening this opening scene, I thought was very interesting, which is the opening shot is very on Star Trek.

[00:18:01] Like I can imagine turning on the television to watch and being like, what? What am I? What is this? I was thinking that I was totally thinking that because, yeah, it starts out there. I mean, granted, we see the Enterprise eventually, but compared to other episodes, you would not. You could be forgiven for thinking that you accidentally were on the wrong channel. Right. Those are some old ass looking planes. Yeah. And was was the real Air Force involved in this? Like, are those are those actual Air Force planes that they that they borrowed or managed to get access to?

[00:18:31] I'm guessing this was stock footage. Interesting. And OK, because I guess we do never see that. But we do see. Do we not see him in? And I guess they could have. Yeah, we see. Yeah, we see him in a cockpit, but it would have been. I'm guessing here because I actually couldn't find anything definitive on this. But normally, well, I can say with a lot of confidence, unless the law changed somewhere down the road.

[00:18:57] But normally, if you're using like if you're going to shoot military aircraft or ships or anything like that, you usually have the cooperation of the of the military. Yeah. Yeah. And in this case, I didn't see anything in the credits. Not saying that they didn't have it, but it to me, it would have seemed like a tremendous waste of money on a show that was kind of budget conscious to the first season. Yeah. Yeah. To kind of just not use stock footage. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:19:26] I it's just it's funny all the times we compared. We've compared the Enterprise to the Navy or to Starfleet to the Navy never really considered comparing it to the Air Force. Well, no, because it is very much the Navy. It is very amalgamous. I was just like, oh, yeah, the Air Force is also a thing that shot of the Enterprise against the blue sky look just look real funny. I will say, though, at least it wasn't CGI. At least they know the original shot.

[00:19:51] They did. But also that that became an issue for me, because there's a lot of mixture switching back from CGI to what the clearly is very distracting later on. And you had the scene of them getting sucked into the past that it seemed odd to cut that out. It feels like we were like we were coming into the action like midway, like we missed the scene almost. There's actually a reason for that. So they in the original script, there was a scene showing what happened.

[00:20:15] It was cut for budget reasons, because and I get where they're coming from, because it makes sense because one, you're saving on time for the episode. True. And the other thing is you tell you tell the audience exactly. I know this breaks the cardinal rule of showing not telling. But in this case, I'm I'll allow it because you're brought up to speed with Kirk's captain's log. So, you know, you know what's going on. I agree. It would have been.

[00:20:45] If they'd had a bigger budget, they probably would have shot the scene. Probably it just I know it's just the way that scene is staged. Yeah, it's just but also a lot of the early I'm going to get. I'm going to get to a lot of this early setup is not really told from the enterprises perspective so much as told more from the people in the 60s. At least it seems to be. Yeah. And I'll be honest, I'm not because I'm with you. I don't love the intro to this episode.

[00:21:12] I think it should be, you know, focused on the enterprise and then the the the captain of the captain of the plane gets brought into it. Yeah, it wants to establish this captain as a character. So he's getting too much main character energy and I didn't like it. I didn't like his his his flagrant disregard for not being a main character. Yeah, he's he's acting. He's he's he's very presumptuous. He's acting. Yeah, you're right. He's giving main character energy the whole episode.

[00:21:41] And it's like, hey, minor sit down. Like Kirk Kirk needs to be like, hey. I'm reminded. I'm reminded of the DBZ a bridge special plot to destroy the Saiyans where Goku identifies everyone as minors, but he means minor characters. Yeah, be careful, Gohan. You're a minor. I'm surprised you knew that. So it's Piccolo and Bulma. Oh, you make character and Vegeta. I am.

[00:22:11] But Gohan, you're a minor. Let's address that giant gaping black hole in the room. When I was watching the episode, my first note was black star. Black hole. Like because I literally thought was somebody just did somebody just actually screw up and not. Turns out the reason they refer to it as a black star is because the term black hole had yet to be popularized. Oh, really? I would have been like they went through a wormhole. Same difference. But well, no, because wormholes don't travel through time.

[00:22:40] They travel through space, theoretically, at least. Fair enough. But so later in that same year of 1967, physicist John Archibald Wheeler would popularize the term black hole to refer to the phenomenon that Kirk describes as a black star. The term did exist in scientific literature as early as 1963, but it wasn't going to be popularized until Wheeler sort of he didn't coin the term himself.

[00:23:05] It was actually a student that sort of said, yeah, you should totally call it a black hole, but referring to something else and referring to someplace in Calcutta. Oh, yeah. So that's how that's how we it became popularized. How we came up with the term black hole. She seems so obvious in retrospect. That's what I said. And that's what I had such a nerd moment when I was reading that because I was like, you know what?

[00:23:28] I said, this is great, because another thing that happens to us a lot during this series is things that we take for granted get thrown in our face. And we have to think about like we have to think about the fact that we knew these phenomena existed, theoretically, at least I don't think they've been observed yet. Well, OK, I'm going to take that back. They've probably been observed, but not like we have that picture. Right. Yeah. So it was basically confirmed that the theoretical black hole actually looks like what they thought the theoretical black hole was.

[00:23:57] But there was at least an idea that this thing existed. And I mean, black holes are fairly difficult thing to study because anything that gets close to one gets sucked into one. Correct. Yeah. So it's. And it's amazing that they were able to actually come up with this mathematically at first in a theoretical way. Right. And then it's real. Like, it's a thing that exists almost exactly the way you described it. So I mean, this it is called science fiction for a reason.

[00:24:26] There is always an element of some science to it. The reason it's not fantasy. This is true. It's not like that other franchise with laser swords and that its creator tries to insist it isn't science fiction and it's fantasy. I agree with that statement, actually. I tend to agree with that statement, but I've had people argue with me about no, it's got space lasers science fiction. Not according to the creator. That's going to go. That's going to get into a semantic argument that we both agree with, ironically. So we're not we're not going to go down there.

[00:24:57] If you want to go down that rabbit hole, you know, come join our live stream on our season finale and we can argue about it all you want. Exactly. But until then, another fun thing that they did was calling the shot with the moon landing. This episode aired two years before the moon landings actually happened. No, wait, wait, wait. No. It did. OK, so when that when they were like, they're like, we're here during the moon landing. I'm like, no way this takes place during the moon landing.

[00:25:26] I forgot that this predates the moon landing. It does. They predicted the moon landing. But what's funny is in universe. So I've read things that say this takes place in 1969. The episode doesn't actually say that, but it would make sense because it would have to be after the year 1967. So this episode has to take place in 1968 or nine. And the radio broadcast is talking about the moon landings happening. So they got the year right, man.

[00:25:55] They totally got the year right. So I have a bunch of follow up questions. So historically, was it just understood that those moon landings are the moon? The rocket was going to take off from Cape Canaveral. Like, was that always understood? I don't know that. Yeah, I don't know that the general public would have. But well, actually, no, I take that back. Yes, they would have known that. OK, that's that's that's where they were launching Apollo missions. OK, because he says he says they're at Cape Canaveral. Yeah. Would they have known about that? That's a known fact.

[00:26:24] OK, as far as as far as I know, they all took off from Cape Canaveral. But if I'm wrong. But I mean, like, had they had they done missions from Cape Canaveral? Oh, yeah. Yeah. That's what I say. Even if it even if they didn't only launch Apollo missions from Cape Canaveral, I think the only other. Oh, no, I'm wrong. The Apollo 11 wasn't Cape Canaveral. OK. Oh, wait. Hang on. Hang on. Hang on. Oh, I'm going to back up. Let's go back in time.

[00:26:53] OK, I believe that they launched missions from Cape Canaveral. Yeah. Or what's Houston? It's it's Houston something or other. Oh, right. Because Houston, we have a problem. But that's my 13. That's Apollo 13. Right. In my brain, Houston was always a guy. Right. No. So it would have been one of the two places unless I'm mistaken. Yeah. I always see my culturally. I understand that the rocket should take off from Cape Canaveral.

[00:27:22] Like that's always where they take off in movies and television is Cape Canaveral. Maybe the only reason I've ever heard of Cape Canaveral. By the way, fun fact, just recently I was able to see Cape Canaveral at a distance and I saw the launch pad. Oh, there wasn't there wasn't a rocket there, obviously, but I saw I saw where they do it. And I was like, that's cool. You got to admit that's cool. Yeah. Hey, man, I think going to the moon is an incredible feat of human technology that we have never pushed beyond. It is a truly upsetting feat. Fact for me.

[00:27:53] Yeah, it's on. Elon get those colonies on Mars. Well, you know what's funny? I think it was actually Neil deGrasse Tyson who talks about I don't remember what the catalyst for the conversation was, but he was like, here's the thing, though. If you're going to colonize Mars, you would have to terraform it. And if you can terraform Mars, why would you not just terraform Earth? And I'm like, you know what? Solid logic. Dang, dang, Neil deGrasse Tyson. You are you out there ruining movies for everyone. Get out of here. Well, technically, he's ruining SpaceX for everyone.

[00:28:23] I mean, he is. He's ruined. It's a classic ruiner. Neil deGrasse Tyson. He is. Ruining everything. He is. Yeah. I love him, though. I don't. I sometimes I disagree with him, but. Yeah, it's like who has the Ph.D. Right. I mean, I mean, my one of my favorite clips is I know. I know. I know you're you're Ben Shapiro fan, but one of my favorite clips of him is when Ben Shapiro was trying to bait him into saying something like controversial and he was like, but what is your what is your intention with that?

[00:28:52] And he was like, oh, I don't have a response to this. I wasn't. OK, so I'm going to actually. So that's from the Sunday special. That's not quite how it happens. I'm assuming you saw the clip, not the whole thing. No, I didn't watch the whole thing. Yeah, the clip was funny, though. That's not that's not quite how it happens in real time. But yes, it's sure. Ben is trying to bait him into saying something. And Neil is basically like he's not frustrated. He's kind of amused by it because he's like, you're trying to get me to say something

[00:29:21] political, but I'm not a political guy. I just follow. I just follow the science now. Now, I do think that's not true. I think Neil deGrasse Tyson is probably a little bit more left leaning, but I wouldn't call him like a I wouldn't call him a leftist per se. I've seen too many clips of him doing takedowns of people, but usually his takedowns are like I'm asking this question and you're asking this question. Right. I think it's OK to ask both questions. And that's kind of my philosophy. Well, that's science. Yeah, exactly. Science is a neutral party.

[00:29:51] It cannot be. It cannot be. I mean, it can be swayed in. And but it doesn't it doesn't judge. It's just there to observe, at least in its purest theoretical form anyway. Well, I often have to argue with people and remind them, no, no, no, no, no. See, science. Both sides are miscategorizing what science actually is. Science is you take a question, an idea, an established thought, and you apply the scientific

[00:30:20] method to it to test whether or not it is true to test whether or not your or someone else's hypothesis is true. Now, sometimes people do tests that aren't very scientific and it is your job to do a better test. That's all. That's the peer review process. That's the whole point of it. Yeah, that's that's all it is. And the thing of it is, is if your results don't show what you thought would happen, you

[00:30:46] usually go, oh, that's interesting, as opposed to why didn't it work? But we've gotten to a point culturally where when an experiment goes awry, we go, why didn't it work? Well, it didn't work because you were either you did the experiment wrong or you were just wrong. Right. Either way, sometimes that's the point of the experiment is to find out that it didn't work. How do you know it's not going to work if you don't do the experiment? Well, my favorite is the flat earthers testing their theories and then finding. Oh, no. Oh, those are those guys.

[00:31:16] Those are always wait. There's a curvature of the earth. My favorite is the ice wall. Well, my favorite with that, though, is I whenever somebody comes to me with flat Earth, I'm like, OK, let's forget all the pictures and literal video and the fact that they have a camera on the International Space Station. Let's just say they faked all that. Right. Have you ever been in a plane? Right. At a certain altitude, you start to see the curvature of the earth. I mean, it's there like you can see it. It's right.

[00:31:47] It's there. I can't make it any. Or like, have you ever seen a boat disappear over the horizon? Right. My favorite. There's a meme I saw once where it was a flat Earth. They're going all around the world. It was. That's true. I've seen that. Oh, anyway, back to our plot. Oh, but actually, so going back to the moon landings, though, this was apparently the first successful prediction of the correct decade of a scientific future accomplishment in a major science fiction work that I did.

[00:32:16] I didn't realize it was predictive. I just I was like, man, all of our all of our questions about being like, is this before the moon landing? It was kind of incredible to have an episode like this takes place during the moon landing. I was like, wow, this takes this episode aired two years before the now granted this was something that they knew they were working on. This was culturally known is in the space race. But since I wasn't alive during that time, I don't know how I don't know that by this point, because I know in the 50s, it was kind of up in the air as to who was going to get there first.

[00:32:46] I don't know how sure of a thing it was. There is a lot of moments in this episode. I've got a lot of notes that are basically amount to. Oh, yeah, right. This takes place in the 1960s. Cold War. The Cold War is happening. Right. Cold War. So the Enterprise is labeled as a UFO. A U.S. Air Force F-104 interceptor piloted by Captain John Christopher is scrambled to identify the craft, fearing that the fighter may be carrying a nuclear weapon.

[00:33:13] Captain Kirk orders a tractor beam to be used on the jet, which causes it to break apart to save the life of the pilot. They beam Christopher or the Enterprise. Yeah. OK, so the scene of him seeing the UFO, as we have found out with the release of government footage, that is a very, very common experience amongst fighter planes. Apparently. Just seeing random UFOs is a way more common occurrence than probably the people in the 1960s would have realized.

[00:33:41] And ironically follows like this episode is actually pretty accurate. Right. Is this pre-Roswell? No, this is after Roswell. This is after Roswell. Well, I discovered that later in the episode because he brings up, Kirk brings up weather balloons. Right. He's like they most most of them just chalk it up to it being weather balloons. I'm like, oh, OK, yeah, that's a clear reference to Roswell. So for the for all of you aeronautical nerds out there, the type of jet which you probably

[00:34:07] know this already, but the type of jet flown by Christopher is appropriately enough, the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter. No kidding. And that's an that's an actual plane because again, stock footage. So, yeah, that's an actual plane. But when I was watching this, I said, would an Air Force interceptor have nuclear weapons, especially if it was just going to scout a UFO? No, absolutely not. I don't think it would. But my my note was just I feel like the Enterprise could easily decimated 20th century fighter jet with minimal effort. Oh, for sure.

[00:34:38] But they're worried about it. See, notice that they say they're worried that it would damage the ship, not destroy it. So and this makes sense. We've touched on this in the past in Balance of Terror. It makes sense that the Enterprise would be able to withstand a nuclear explosion. Oh, for sure. I mean, I mean, the thing they said it was a is a crew of 450 people. That to me sort of just gives you an indication of how large like the Enterprise is supposed to be, because I don't think we ever get to see it. I know that's a big deal with the first movies.

[00:35:05] That's the first time you really get to luxuriate and how big the Enterprise is. So you don't really appreciate how big it is. So, yeah, I but also they do make the point in the was it the Balance of Terror that they used to have a real problem with fighting each other with nuclear weapons. Yeah. So, yeah. And that's another reason it would stand to reason that ships would be able to withstand at least one nuclear blast. Perhaps they're more concerned about the collateral damage it would cause. Well, I mean, it will damage the ship and they're stranded in the 20th century,

[00:35:35] so it's not like they can limp to a star base. So, yeah, legitimate concern. I meant like like collateral damage for like the planet underneath. No, at that at that altitude in 1967 or 1969. No, I mean, maybe a little. That's that's the thing. A lot of people don't understand it. I'm probably it's it's probably not the case anymore with the newer ones. But the reason that, you know, the the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki recovered

[00:36:01] as fast as they did is because those bombs actually detonated pretty far above the ground. Oh, and apparently with every kilometer above ground, it's it's it's the residual effects are lessened considerably. Oh, interesting. If they if they had hit the ground, this is Neil deGrasse Tyson again. So I think I'm remembering this right. If they'd actually hit the ground, they probably would still be uninhabitable. Oh, interesting.

[00:36:31] Well, I mean, look at look at Chernobyl. That explosion happened at ground level. And yeah, they're still yeah. And a fair. Yeah. And granted, it was later and it was a different kind of yield. But that so, yeah, that high above ground, probably not. I would guess if it did, it would be considerably less than a potential attacking alien would do. So. Hmm.

[00:36:53] But actually, the answer to that question is yes, no, because Spock reports that the computer possibly identified the aircraft as a jet fighter. And he says that the fighters armed with missiles, possibly with nuclear warheads. This would technically possibly be correct for other fighters. But the F one of four starfighter only carried wingtip aim nine sidewinder missiles.

[00:37:18] And an externally mounted gun pod, neither of which was shown on this particular plane, probably because most of the time when you're recording planes like that, they're not armed. Yeah, no, no, you know, although it could carry a nuclear armed rocket. It never was operationally deployed in that configuration. So it's theoretically possible. So I'm not going to say they got it wrong. Yeah, but he also seems to be out there just observing.

[00:37:48] So I don't know. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, I don't I don't I don't think that you would take that risk. But I mean, they did a lot that his job was to just report back. Yeah. But I mean, they did put nuclear arms and submarines. So also true. So once again, Kirk uses the he's used it once before. He identifies their governing body as the United Earth Space Probe Agency. This is great. So I found a tidbit that actually creates an in-universe reason for this and Star Trek. So concordance.

[00:38:17] So like ancillary novels and whatnot. Author. And I apologize if I'm mispronouncing. I think it's the O Trimble suggests that in this episode, Kirk uses a fictional name designed to keep Captain Christopher in the dark about the true nature of the Enterprise and her crew. And yeah, I don't know. And not labeling the Federation. The thing of it is, though, is they've shared plenty of details with like, OK, yeah, we want to keep him in the dark about the Federation.

[00:38:45] But yeah, let's just go ahead and show him everything on the ship. But this episode seems he doesn't seem to realize it was not really until like midway when it's either Spock or Bones. He was a Spock who's like, yeah, we shouldn't around the past that Kirk's like, why not, though? I'm having so much fun showing my new buddy all the cool shit he gets to look forward to. Well, Kirk, they flat out all of them flat out break this rule later in one of the movies. But we'll get there. We'll touch on it.

[00:39:11] OK, when he first gets transported onto the ship, the scene is weirdly sinister. Like it's oddly sinister. Like there's shadows on Kirk's face. Kirk's face. They do the they do the Charlie X thing again where it's so weird. And the music is so sinister. Like it's being and I gave me that's where I got the thought. Oh, maybe this episode is supposed to be from the perspective of the captain, where I guess, yeah, from his perspective, this is all very frightening and strange, I guess.

[00:39:39] My actual favorite solution for the problem of the United Earth Space Probe Agency is actually remedied in canon because the name would be established canonically as being the agency under which the authority of Earth Starfleet operated in Star Trek Enterprise. So it's the it's the group that exists prior to the big group, which doesn't explain why it doesn't explain why. So maybe I'm guessing that Starfleet is just that governing body probably disappear. That's just the Earth.

[00:40:09] And Starfleet is an Earth thing. Yeah. Yeah, maybe there's changed the name to be more like the Federation sounds better. Yeah, it sounds better. The branding exercise totally just a branding exercise. When Mr. Spock says that the aircraft has completely broken up, an incident very similar to this actually did occur on January 7th, 1948. It was known as the Mantell UFO incident.

[00:40:35] Sadly, the cap, the pilot Captain Thomas F. Mantell died during the crash of his aircraft. Huh? Um, oh, yeah. The musicals when when Kirk is showing around the ship, the little musical sting it plays when they walk past the lady, the the other sacks. Good morning, Captain. Good morning. Captain. A woman? Crew. I thought that was funny. Uh, and yeah, I did.

[00:41:03] I thought it was interesting that the captain he makes it. He also makes a naval comparison. He compares the ship to a naval ship. We're like, oh, I see the Navy has evolved to this. And he's like, no, no, we're like a multi, a multi, uh, I don't remember what they, multi group thing. We're more, we're more than one group of people. I thought that was interesting. Multi branch. What I mean, that's, that's true though, because if you have a space. It's fairing.

[00:41:26] But funnily enough, Star Trek Enterprise actually establishes that there is still, at least at the time of Enterprise, there is still an Earth, like a terrestrial Navy. Oh, interesting. Because Malcolm talks about deciding whether to follow down his family's path and joining like the terrestrial Earth Navy or joining Starfleet. Or joining Space Navy. Space Navy is way better. Space Navy is obviously way better. That's what, okay. I have to, I have to say this because to this day, some people still give him a lot of grief for this.

[00:41:56] And I think it was one of the best decisions, which we won't see this until much later. So many people give Donald Trump flack for creating, for making the space force its own branch of the military, because prior to that, it was part of the Air Force. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I'm just saying, I didn't know that. And I'm just like, no, you guys don't get it. That's really, it all has to do with funding, but like, yeah, that's wonderful. I mean, absolutely wonderful.

[00:42:24] I thought it was funny that the logo looked exactly the same as the Enterprise logo. Oh, they had to, well, even NASA's logo. Like, yeah, I mean, I love it. And the best thing is though, is because there's an earlier version of that. It's not identical to what the space forces, they did it on purpose. They had to have done it on purpose. Probably. I'm sure they probably did. Well, but the, the early Starfleet logo that you see in enterprise is close. It's like a bridge between space force and the Starfleet logo that we, so this guy. That's funny.

[00:42:52] It's kind of a, we're in an in-between stage in enterprise. We're going to, we're going to get here. We're going to get here. It's coming. It's coming. That's, that's funny. Well, no, the, the reason they named the space shuttle enterprise enterprise was a letter writing campaign from Star Trek fans. Oh, interesting. So yeah, there's a Star Trek's cultural impact is still being felt today. I mean, oh yeah. So Paramount, please, please stop making bad Star Trek's.

[00:43:21] Stop making bad Star Trek and just start making, stop making bad Star Trek and start making good Star Trek. I mean, we already gave you an idea. If you need something to coast by enterprise night crew, get the original sets, get the original sets, get some actors that look like Shatner and them from the back. And that can be the running gag, you know? And yeah, just enterprise night crew, that thing. Do it where you always see him from the back of the head, but you never actually see his face. They're always leaving. Yeah. They're always get them from the back.

[00:43:49] Also United earth space probe agency. I mean, first off, it sounds oddly sexual. Just, I'm just saying. We're out there probing. UESPA? The USPA, the probe agency. They're out there probing the universe. Well, I mean, that's what a probe does. You're exploring. You're just closing your eyes and taking a deep breath and just... Just probing. Just going. Just probing. Just making a go of it. Sticking your probe out there, putting in whatever will take it, you know? It sounds dirty.

[00:44:19] Another Easter egg. This is one of the rare occasions in which... So I actually, I didn't air this in the last episode, but I had expressed concern that maybe showcasing every time that Jimmy Doohan's missing finger is shown is somehow makes me kind of a jerk. But no, he kind of did it for the funsies. He was hiding it for the fun of it, according to him. So I believe him. So we're going to keep doing it. So this is another episode where we see the missing finger.

[00:44:48] And it happens when Scotty is informing Captain Kirk that the engines can be repaired, but that there is nowhere for them to go in the 20th century. They got nowhere to be. Fearing that Christopher could disrupt the timeline if returned to Earth, Kirk at first decides that the pilot must stay on the Enterprise. Well, not for nothing. I have something very important to talk to you about here.

[00:45:10] So I've been informed by you from the future that you didn't go with the sponsor and it had a strip of consequences. So you need to just listen. You don't need to know everything that happens. It's not important. We're just going to prevent it. You need to just watch the ad and click the link. Go do it now. Now save the world. Save the world.

[00:45:39] CDZ Collegium Musica is a 501c3 nonprofit organization. It is a kind of school of music, a concert series and an agency that promotes the musicians, dedicated artists and educators who we feature as our performers. The goal of the Collegium is to bring community together through music performance.

[00:46:10] These performances vary in musical style from classical to jazz and music from different parts of the world, from India to the Middle East, that'd be like Persia and Japan and China.

[00:46:24] The goal is to also educate us to how music functions, not so much as a musical universal language, because there are differences in the way that these languages of music are expressed. But to educate us to be able to be more appreciative, not only of the music, but the culture it represents.

[00:46:53] And by doing this, it brings community together. So yeah, Captain Kirk just decides to ruin this poor man's life by telling him he has to stay.

[00:47:19] Okay, so I've got so many notes about this initial and his initial entrance to the bridge. All right. Because, okay, he's in a spaceship, right? In space, speaking to a future man from the future. His line is, a man with slightly pointier ears than him. Right. A illness, incidentally, and this is the one time I'm going to Google anything on this show. A illness, incidentally, that very much exists in the real world on Earth.

[00:47:49] Hold on, hold on. It's called Stahl's disease. Hold on, time out. Okay, so there's a disease in which people's ears become pointy naturally? Yes, yes, like half pointy. It's called half Spock ears. It's called Stahl's disease. I actually Googled it. It's a real thing that real people get. Well, okay, I'm going to give him a pass because I didn't know about that until just now. And it's the year 2025. I almost said 2024.

[00:48:13] I mean, all right, but he's still like slightly less looking and his, the way he constantly stares at him. It's like, dude, he looks more or less like you get over it. That's true. He does get over it pretty quickly. Also, I have a section of this show. I've lovingly dubbed the Star Trek sitcom. Because in another timeline, the show is a sitcom, Jake, because that scene with the computer and it getting a personality is so weird.

[00:48:42] Like they do this whole interaction. The guy's like, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. And the character is like, by the way, we're kidnapping you. Computed and recorded, dear. Computer, you will not address me in that manner. Computer. And it's like, whoa, that's a weird tone shift. That's a, that's another running gag on the series. We've got a few now. I'm very proud of our, I'm very proud of our running gag.

[00:49:12] The laugh track, the Star Trek laugh track. The Star Trek laugh track, because there's so many moments in this and it is a subplot that goes on through the episode. It comes back more than once. This, this computer that is talking to him like it's his girlfriend. It's so bizarre. So I actually, I like the gag. It's funny, but I just, I can't understand where it came from. I don't know where it came from. It feels like weirdly, weirdly placed again.

[00:49:38] It, the tone for that scene, because within the next few minutes, Kirk is like, and yeah, by the way, you're never going home and we're kidnapping you. We can't send you back. Oh, can't. You suck. So I can't be the only one though, who sees the parallels between this and yet another episode of the Orville ironically flipped. Yes. Yes, it did.

[00:50:00] Well, it reminded me of the one where it's not the one where they go to the planet with the feed, but it's the girl from the planet with the feed. She comes back and she's on. Oh, okay. So that's not the one I was thinking about, but yeah, sure. So that's not so much time travel as it is. Um, I would start a cultural cultural time travels. Yeah. Which that's, that's another really good episode. And what's funny is something that's such a blatant reference to social media should feel like it could easily be dated, but it's, it's not right.

[00:50:30] It's not, but I mean, anything involving social media is because they don't, because they don't rip it off completely. They rip it off as we understand it today, but it could easily be able to because there was actually they did a dark mirror episode that was somewhat similar. And I'm sure that ever since the computer's been invented, I'm sure there have been several instances of that sort of idea of voting and down voting. Oh yeah, for sure.

[00:50:57] I mean, the Jetsons had, had an idea of social, a very, I mean, I watched the movie recently and yeah, they had their own idea of social media. Yeah. Humans are social creatures, right? So it's just, you know, the episode I'm referring to is where Gordon gets stuck in the past. Oh, that episode is so good. So it takes this idea, but flips it around a bit. I saw comments that said about in regards to that episode. Sorry.

[00:51:22] So just real quick is that them telling him is the most monstrous thing you could possibly do. They have no reason to do so. They didn't have to do that. They did that just to hurt him because they could have easily left and not said anything gone back in time retrieved him from the past. Let him believe that they were just going to leave him and he would have just faded from existence, not having known anything. See, I disagree. I actually think that because the thing is, even though Gordon didn't perceive it because it technically didn't happen to that Gordon. I think he had a right to know.

[00:51:52] And could you could you imagine, though, if he found out after the fact somehow? Yeah, I mean, that's one of my criticisms of that episode is his reaction to them telling him is he's but I might. But this is, you know, a side tangent. But I firmly believe when they do season four, I've seen so many comments say this and I agree with it. He should come back as a villain. Oh, yeah, that would be so good. That would be so good. I mean, theoretically, he's erased from existence, but that's only if you believe a linear version of time. Right. It could be a thing where he somehow managed to skirt. It's science fiction.

[00:52:22] You can you can flub it where he's sitting on the outskirts of time and he's he somehow manages his way into a door timeline because then you can bring back the other timeline where where they didn't get married or where. Yeah, you can have multiple alternate timeline. I've got one for you. That could be the through arc because that Gordon could just replace. Our Gordon, and then that's the big twist at the end, you know, because he's sabotaging the whole whatever bit they're doing. Right.

[00:52:51] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, he was just bitter and angry and desperate enough. And I think it's a real good nuance. I get it. So here's the thing. Like if you haven't watched Band of Brothers, you might not know what good how good of an actor Scott Grimes actually is because he normally does comedy stuff. He's really good. And that episode you get to see like it's written and it's so jarring because Gordon's kind of been the goofball up to that point. And then you get to see Scott Grimes like actually act.

[00:53:20] Scott Grimes is so funny because I've never realized how much I appreciate him until like recently where I'm like, man, there's so many things he did that I love that I didn't realize it was Scott Grimes. So like, um, obviously American dad, uh, Steve Smith, he's phenomenal. But my, one of my favorite Scott Grimes things is not the movie itself, but the promotional campaign they did for it. The, the Ridley Scott, uh, Robin Hood movie. Um, right.

[00:53:47] Cause he plays Will Scarlet doesn't he plays Will Scarlet him Russell Crowe, um, Alan Doyle. And, oh, I forget his name. Kevin something. They had such a fun time promoting that movie. Like they just had a blast. Like they, there was one, one point where they just played beautiful girls by Sean Kingston. Like they did like a, a 30 minute concert just on the steps of the Vatican. Just randomly. There's clips of it. It's like, yeah, it's on, it's online. There's clips of it. It's super funny. No.

[00:54:15] And I, gosh, when I first put together that, cause I didn't know him by name when I first watched band of brothers. Right. And then, and I'd seen his name in the credits of American dad. Once I clicked that Scott Grimes was that guy, I was like, oh wow. So no, he's actually a good actor. Like, right. Right. Oh yeah. He's, he's very, I mean, anyone who could scream and sing like, yeah, scream like he does. It's Steve is automatically gets my, uh, Steve. I mean, my favorite Steve's favorite episodes of horrible involve him.

[00:54:44] Like just hands down. Generally. Yeah. Although Orville has a really, in the best way possible, they have a, they have a knack for having like two or three, just really fun episodes. And then just dropping the bottom out from under you and everyone else. Yeah. Yeah. So good. Like one episode, you've got the whole crux of the episode is bored us going home to pee. Right. Well, that's, that's, that's one of my favorite episodes because that is, that is a Seth McFarlane family guy joke.

[00:55:14] Like the, the single gendered species that only pees once a year is a family guy joke that they turned it one of the most meaningful and poignant episodes of television. I have ever seen. It is truly all of the Mocklin episodes are like some of the most poignant stuff ever. And it all stems from like, from like the stupidest joke. And that's kind of why I love the Orville. I mean, it did. Cause I knew when I first saw the promo for the Orville, I was like, I'm either going to love the show or hate it. There's going to be no in between.

[00:55:42] And thankfully, because I knew what was going to happen. I was intrigued by a comedic take on Star Trek, as long as they don't take it too far. If it has no sincerity, which honestly, that's kind of why I think a lot of people don't really care for lower decks, even though I've not watched a lot of it. So I think I've been told that later seasons actually do a better job of keeping the sincerity up a bit, but it, it looks like, um, star, Star Trek by way of Rick and Marty.

[00:56:10] That's yeah, that's very much what it looks and feels like to me, but. Or, or, um, maybe a better comparison is, um, Star Trek by way of solar opposites. I don't know if you've ever seen solar opposites. I have not. It's Rick and Marty, but worse. Yeah. I think it's Rick and Marty, but worse. But my point being is that I was pretty well hooked within the first 10 minutes because the first episode of the Orville is actually a really, really good pilot. It's, it's a very, really, it really is. Yeah. I was really into it by the end of it.

[00:56:39] Well, it's also got both there's jokes, but there's also, you get it. You get the sense, like the weight of command. Like again, within the first 10 minutes, you, you kind of get how important this is to add, but at the same time, how he's not quite sure if he can do it. I mean, with that pilot, my, there's a lot of, I, I think Seth MacFarlane is a better actor than, than he gives himself or that people give him credit for. But like, there's so many. Oh, totally. Totally. Season three, he gets some real bangers.

[00:57:06] But in that pilot, the moment where he walks in on, on her cheating on him and he's just like, Hmm, Nope. These walks. It's just such a good, it's such a good reaction. Nope. Nope. And then when he realizes that Kelly's his XO and he's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not doing this. I'm not dealing with this. I'm not, I'm not having this. Oh no, no, no, no, no, no. Well, yeah, no, it's a good show. And Hey, season four, hopefully they do season four.

[00:57:35] Fingers crossed. We're going to have a lot of fun. We're going to have a lot of fun when we get to the Orville. Oh, for sure. I like Ted. Don't get me wrong, but I would, I would set up for not the season two of Ted for season four of the Orville. Yeah. So the only bad thing about getting the Orville is if somehow some way Paramount plus sponsors us prior to that happening, that's going to be awkward. I mean, it's going to be awkward, but then we've got to push for that. Oh no. In your case, it's Hulu. See, for me, it's on Disney plus. It's on Disney plus here too. Oh, is it on Disney plus?

[00:58:05] It's on, it's on, it's on both. Oh, see, I don't have Hulu. So it's just on Disney plus. I mean, they're the same. They're the same platform really. But anyway, back to star Trek. When science officer Spock later discovers that the pilots as yet unborn son will play an important role in a future mission to Saturn. Kirk realizes he must return Christopher to earth after all. You got to love that instant 180 that happens. That was really funny where he's the early race.

[00:58:31] Like you are not remotely important and your death and disappearance on the planet will ultimately be meaningless. It's like, Oh, that, that hurts more than I thought it would. Well, that's also, that's also, that's also hugely hubristic on Spock's part because, okay. I mean, yeah, just because his name doesn't appear in history books doesn't mean like, again, the butterfly effect. Like let's not even say his son, maybe his great, great, great, great grandson. Yep. Or great, great, great, great granddaughter, or maybe his great, great, great, great granddaughter

[00:59:02] gives birth to a future president in the United States that votes to create Starfleet. Like you just also, also by telling him about the son that in and of itself interferes. So that, that always, that brings up an interesting sort of predicament of time travel that I've thought about constantly is because, okay, let's go with the back to the future logic that if you go back in time and you change something, it'll change the future.

[00:59:29] But if you causality time based time travel, but here's the thing. If you believe in fate, then you were fated to go back in time and change the thing. So it doesn't matter anyway, because everything's predetermined this, that, and the other. Yeah. Probably not true, but I'm just saying there's different modes of thinking about this. That's what you're describing as a bootstrap paradox. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. That you're, you're meant to go back in time or which, which inevitably creates a time loop, which then, yeah, the question becomes there.

[00:59:57] There's actually, again, I would time travel. It always goes back to Dr. Who for me, but there's a really good clip of Dr. Who with the 12th doctor, Peter Capaldi, where he explains what a bootstrap paradox is like kind of beautifully. Yeah. There's a, there's a moment in the deep space nine episode trials and triple Asians where Dr. Brashear doesn't call it a bootstrap paradox, but he describes it. Cause he's like, cause of course he sees a woman and Dr.

[01:00:23] Brashear's super horny, but he's like, maybe I'm supposed to go back. I, maybe I'm meant to go back in time and, and become my own great grandfather. No one ever met my great grandfather. This could be a predestination paradox. Oh chief. Surely you took elementary temporal mechanics of the academy. I could be destined to fall in love with that woman and become my own great grandfather.

[01:00:54] But again, there's also the, like this, this, yeah, this episode seems to operate on the causality. Well, at least it tries to appear to operate on the causality of time of time travel. But then there was also the version of time travel introduced to us by, and I don't know what the name of it is, but it's the version of it introduced to us by the Avengers end game, which is multiverse theory. That's multiverse where you go back in time and you don't, it doesn't affect the future, but it affects the future of the time that you've gone back to. Well, because the same. Yeah.

[01:01:20] And technically I, I was going to say that's the same as they don't call it multiverse theory because okay. Dragon ball is really bad with time travel because they seem to operate under the assumption of linear time, but then realize that it's wrong, but also have their own version of multiverse theory intertwined with time travel, which is just.

[01:01:41] So they kind of do parallel universes along with multiverse theory, which I guess is that show is confusing because you had trunks could go back in time to not the past of his, but to the alternate to another separate past with his time machine. But also that show implies that that and I realized that on my last watch watch through that there is in fact another additional version of trunks that you don't see.

[01:02:08] So there's the version of trunks that goes back the first time that gets the, it's implied that he goes back, gets the plans for them without anybody seeing him or being aware. He doesn't affect the future. He goes back to his future uses the plan. And that's the version of trunks that gets murdered by cell who then he's the one who goes back and causes the, uh, the cause the causality. So I think it's super that goes, no, no, no. Causality did does actually exist in dragon ball. It's not because here's my, here's my conspiracy theory.

[01:02:37] The trunks from dragon ball super is not the same trunks that we saw in dragon ball Z. He's a different trunks, but he followed a similar trajectory as Z future trunks did. And how do I know that makes sense? Well, cause he's different color hair. Yeah. Yeah. And well, and not to mention, not to mention, not to mention the fact that that future trunks. So if we're assuming it's Z trunks for a moment, he just so happens to fall in love with my, like, that's a little. Coincidental. Right. That's a, it's an odd coincidence. Yeah. That's a weird thing.

[01:03:07] Considering like, if you're an OG dragon ball fan, you know how old my is really. And it's, it's, it's, it's, it's weird. It's weird. It's, it's weird. I never liked that. It's weird. But yeah, yeah. That day. Yeah. So this episode seems to want to, it seems to be operating on causality based time travel. Yes. We're going to get to why it doesn't make any sense as we get into this. Spock says that Captain Christopher's son headed the first earth Saturn probe in the year 2004. The Cassini Huygens?

[01:03:38] Huygens? I'm going to say Cassini Huygens. I don't know why I put phlegm in there. Cassini Huygens spacecraft reached Saturn and its moons. There, the spacecraft began orbiting the system, sending back information and the Huygens probe entered the murky atmosphere of Titan, Saturn's largest moon. Huygens descended via parachute onto its surface and reported its findings. While there was no Colonel Sean Jeffrey Christopher on the Cassini project, they get the timing just about right. Oh, interesting.

[01:04:07] Again, making those, making those predictions. The other thing is by telling him, I mean, this episode resolves it by the end, but by telling him that he's going to have a son, he might not have a son. That seems really contrived how they solve it. Well, it's just, it's just more just like now, now he'll constantly be thinking of, oh, I'm going to have a son. What then happens if he doesn't have a son and by, by telling him, he now has a daughter

[01:04:34] instead, you know, it's by, by, or he doesn't have, he doesn't conceive. Let's do this to the PG version of this. He doesn't conceive with the wife on the date that he was supposed to, because now he's thinking about, you know what I mean? Because he has that. Now he has that future knowledge that that in and of itself could impact the future. Or maybe the whole thing was fated to happen anyway. And maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe they'd given up trying to have more children. And this motivates him to true.

[01:05:03] It's like, I must, I must have this son because it's, it's, it's written in the stars. It is, or at least in Mr. Spock's computer. Have we, have we gotten, I mean, it's technically written in the stars. They're on a spaceship, which is in the stars. Just saying, um, wait, did we, did we get to the part where he tries to escape? Not yet, but because I've got, I've got something to say as someone who's wearing a Star Trek uniform. So my initial note, and actually this question gets answered for me, but you'll notice when

[01:05:31] he's given the clothes, my note was, why does Christopher get an officer's uniform? I mean, yeah, I, I have questions about the uniforms. There's a, there's a reason. So you'll notice he's given a uniform with the single stripe, which makes it a Lieutenant. And now I did not know this, but apparently a Naval Lieutenant is sort of like the equal rank to an air force captain. Oh, interesting. Okay. So now this was kind of neat. This was not a random choice.

[01:06:00] And I went from hating it to loving it because of that. I did. I did appreciate how, how like they both respected each other professionally. Like he instantly was, okay, this is a, this is a military style vessel. I appreciate there's ranks. I understand that he's the captain and like, I appreciated that level, that level of detail. Like that's neat. That's I went from hating that detail to loving it. Once I read that, cause I was like, there's some elements in early Star Trek that are just

[01:06:29] kind of thrown in and be like, ah, nobody will notice, but there's a lot where they seem to have actually, which makes sense. A lot of the people in the cast and crew served in the military. So this is something they would know. So the fact that there's definitely thought being paid to it for sure. Yeah. So now I love that. So yes, he's given an officer's uniform because he is an officer. I'll be it in the United States air force. He is in fact an officer. And that is why, which makes me now I'm like, oh, I kind of wish he had just joined Starfleet. I mean, yeah.

[01:06:58] Just enter as a Lieutenant, get a battlefield, a space, a space field commission. I mean, I just thought he was like, he, he, he couldn't be trained to live in our time. He'd be feeble and useless. I'm sitting right here. Well, and I think that's actually demonstrably not true because technology gets easier to use as time goes by. So with, with adequate training, because I know people point is like, yeah, well, boomers. I'm like, yes, but ask yourself this in defense of the boomers.

[01:07:27] Has anyone actually like with training or teaching experience, has anyone actually sat down with them and brought them up to speed instead of just shoving this brand new thing in their face and being like, okay, do this, this, this, and this. It's like, no, maybe he meant like culturally. He's like, he's a guy from the 1960s. He's going to have a touch of the racism. Well, no, apparently not. He's, he's getting along well enough with a horror. That's fair. That's fair. He could have fit right in then they could have kidnapped him easy. Well, and okay. I do have a, I meant to say the server.

[01:07:56] And I'm forgot. I did your bit with the saxophone while funny. I do have a bit of an issue with that because women had been in the armed forces granted in a mostly support role, but it's not like a woman in uniform is something he would have never seen. Oh, is that how that scene is supposed to be interpreted? Oh, I totally didn't pick up on that at all. Okay. Fair enough. Yeah. He's a, so seeing a woman in uniform would not have been strange to someone in the year 1969, even in the, even in the 1940s, it wouldn't have been.

[01:08:25] I feel like I've seen movies from that era where they have women in the army or the name or whatever capacity. I know this, so I know. And I think it was earlier than this, but like Netflix just put out a new series about like a whole battalion of women that were granted. They were doing the postal work and stuff, but I mean, you know, they, they were in the army. They were enlisted and officers and they had rank. I was going to say in an administrative capacity at the very least, maybe not in combat, but

[01:08:54] well, but John Bass alone married a Lieutenant in the Marine Corps. Now I forget what actual job she had, but I mean, she was a Lieutenant in the Marine Corps. That makes sense. Yeah. So, and that was in reaction to being like, what's that a woman? Yeah. It's like that, that actually would be, especially in the air force and in, in, in a non-combat capacity. Like, yeah. I mean, I get, he's a combat pilot, but I mean, he would interact with non-combat personnel

[01:09:22] fairly regularly because it's not like he's on a deployment. He's in, where are they? Oklahoma or Wyoming somewhere. Some like Nevada somewhere. They're in the United States. My, so my, my thing, I just thought the scene was like, Hey, look, it's a pretty girl. I didn't, I didn't consider that. Maybe that's how I'm supposed to read, but he's a married man, Justin. Hey, sometimes you can, you can go to the art gallery and look at the paintings so long as you never touched them. That's true. They do frown on touching.

[01:09:49] So we've already touched on the computer personality and what's really funny is until very recently, this was funny. Now it's real. It is. Yeah. Yeah. It's true. Yeah. With AI. Oh, absolutely. That's absolutely a thing that can and will happen. You can, you can get an AI voice assistant to sound like yourself. You can. It's weird and it's creepy. You can. So you could definitely train one to respond to it.

[01:10:17] Like, um, they've, they've got the chat bots. You know what I'm talking about. For sure. They do. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, I mean, I mean the, the chat bots. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They absolutely do. Those kind. Yeah. I mean, you can make the president, you can make Donald Trump sound like he's playing Call of Duty with Joe Biden. You can do just about anything. This is true. I just don't believe that Donald Trump and Joe Biden would sit down and play Call of Duty. They feel like more like Mario Party people to me.

[01:10:44] After learning of the existence of film taken by, of the Enterprise by Christopher's wing cameras, Kirk and Lieutenant Sulu beam down to the airbase to recover the film and any other evidence of their visit. They're caught by a security guard who accidentally activates an emergency signal on Kirk's communicator and is beamed aboard the Enterprise. Kirk and Sulu continue their search. Afterwards, Kirk is captured again and Sulu escapes. Thanks in no small part to Kirk's distraction. Okay. So, okay.

[01:11:13] So when the guy tries to escape, he, he Kirk, Kirk foos that red shirt. Oh, there's even better. Kirk cross bodies. Three of them. I mean, my favorite, my favorite part is where he's trying to escape. He, he Kirk, Kirk foos the red shirt and then Kirk sneaks up behind him and Kirk foos him right back. He's like, Oh, you think you can call Kirk foo? The man who invented Kirk foo? No such luck, son. Ka-cha. It takes three. It takes three men to subdue Captain James T. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Okay.

[01:11:42] So it's just, just, just, just, there's so many scenes in this episode of just unbelievable leaps in logic. So do they not have like civilian clothes or like any clothes that would have been like a less conspicuous in any way for infiltration or sneaking into a, to a military beat, no military base? Well, the point is they're not supposed to be seen at all, but yeah, but surely like they're like, Oh, we can't bring Christopher cause it's too dangerous. I'm just saying maybe bringing him in the, Hey, we're with Christopher.

[01:12:12] You remember Christopher? We're with him. It just seems like it would be much easier to sneak in that way. And, uh, Sulu and Kirk attempt to gaslight this man ultimately fail. What was that? Oh, it was what? That noise. I didn't hear anything. That's good. That's good. And, uh, yeah, their, their, their expressions, when he gets teleported away, they like straight look into the camera and they're like, son of a. Yeah.

[01:12:43] And it's very, it's a very, it's a very Steve Smith line. Right. Right. Um, and then, uh, yeah, they could probably once, once he's in the teleporter room, they could probably gaslight him into thinking that he's dreaming. There's just so many questions with times where I'm like, don't, couldn't they not came unconscious and then just drop them off in a room somewhere and be like, you dreamt the whole thing. Well, if you're going to do that, you'd have to drop them off in a field with no clothes. That's what I can, but how hard would that have been? Not at all hard. That's what I'm saying. Actually, here's, here's what they should have done.

[01:13:12] They should have said, no, both of you, both of you are going back and then again, knock them out, nerve pinch them, but then like beam them down naked and put them like right next to each other. And then when they wake up, they'll be just look at each other and be like, we will never speak of this again. Yeah. Well, that note, I'm kind of joking, but that note comes up a lot where I'm like, don't they have like, like, cause like, I know we just talked about the Orville a bunch, but

[01:13:40] in the Orville, they have the technology to wipe people's memories. Like that's, that's an integral part of multiple episodes. Do they not have this technology on the enterprise? Did you feel like memory wipe? Technically they do. They use it at the end of this episode. It's just so convoluted and stupid that I just don't. They drop them off. They drop them off back where they found him. But I'm just saying like, do they not have just straight, like men in black? You would think you would think you would think, right. Or stun him and knock them out. Like leave them naked in a field.

[01:14:09] Like you said, you'd be like, see, the key is though. You have to leave them together side by side is so that they have that moment of like, listen, I don't know what happened. I don't want to talk about it. One of them has to be wearing like missing their pants. Just there. Oh, they're no, they're naked. They're naked. Oh, they're fully naked. They're just straight up naked. You're right. The full nakedness sells it a bit. In the middle. But ironically, you drop them off in Iowa, Kirk's hometown. And then, yes. Then I've got a bunch of notes, but you already mentioned it.

[01:14:39] The fight scene where it takes three guys. It made me question the Air Force's military instruction because I was like, it takes three of them to take one guy. Well, you see, Captain Kirk knows Kirk Fu. So, you know, it's Kirk Fu. I think it took those men way too long to overpower a single man. When he throws his whole body at them. Well, Kirk is scrappy. And my other favorite bit is when mid-flight sequence, he sizes up the door and he's like, can I? I can't.

[01:15:09] Wham! There's another funny, and this points to, again, it being early Star Trek. When the colonel's interrogating Captain Kirk at the base, he tells him that he'll, quote, lock him up for 200 years. To which Kirk replies, that ought to be just about right. Yeah, that's another Star Trek sitcom moment where he looks right to the camera. He's like, that sounds about right. However, the math is off. Since the 23rd century timeline for Star Trek was not yet established at this point, which

[01:15:38] actually, the fact that it's the 23rd century apparently isn't actually defined until the second movie. Kirk's response could be taken as an implication that the timeline in the series, so the Enterprise crew takes place in the 2160s instead of the 2260s. Gene Roddenberry himself stated the series was designed so that it could easily be taken place any time in the late 21st or 22nd centuries. So, but it takes place in the 23rd century, so.

[01:16:06] So his math, he, I mean, he'd be fair, he's not doing, he's too busy. He's not, he's not, you don't have the time to do math. Well, but it hadn't been established yet. And I mean, in the scheme of things, what's 100 years? Right, what's 100 years? In the scope of a human lifetime, what's 100 years? Right. He's from the future. That's all these past people need to know. Yeah, that's just it. I do love Kirk's like smugness. He's like, I'm a little green man from outer space. And you're like, oh, he's not joking.

[01:16:35] I mean, he's not green, but he's also not joking. And there are green men from outer space, just not on the Enterprise right now. I think, how did you get here? I appeared out of thin air. I love how Kirk's actually just not lying to them. That's always great when, when people in Star Trek are being interrogated. And at best, they're like, you wouldn't believe me if I told you, which I think Kirk says. Oh, he does. Yeah, you wouldn't believe me if I told you. And then they proceed to tell the absolute truth of the matter. Right? Yeah, there's another, there's another show that did that once.

[01:17:05] Yeah, where he just told them the exact truth. And he's like, ah, you're messing with me. Well, Kirk does that a few times in the series. And actually, there's an episode coming up where he just, great up, tells, it's a time travel episode too. I, well, I, I, it's funny because I did, I had the note where I'm like, okay, why aren't they like wearing like, like regular modern day Earth Day? Or at the very least, why didn't Christopher give him his jumpsuit? So he blends in a little better. And then when the guy was interrogating him, I was like, oh yeah, I guess to these past

[01:17:34] morons, it just kind of looks like a shirt. Like, it doesn't really look like a uniform. It just kind of looks like a shirt. That's a colored shirt. But ironically, now, if we showed up to an Air Force base in these uniforms, we'd be arrested in short orders for sure. But, you know, they would be just like, why are you reenacting the episode tomorrow is yesterday? Right. I feel like, especially you Canadian. Right. What are you doing here enacting an episode of Star Trek?

[01:18:03] I like Star Trek. I really like Star Trek. Frankly, we just wanted to see if we could do it. Right. I just want to see if I could get away with it. I didn't get a chance to cross body three of you, though. So can you guys line up for me? I'm going to need to just throw my body at three of you at once. Spock, Sulu, and Christopher, who knows the base's layout, beam down to recover Kirk. After Kirk's guards is subdued, Christopher takes one of their guns and demands to be left behind.

[01:18:28] And Spock, having anticipated Christopher would make such an attempt, appears behind him and disables him with the Vulcan nerve pinch. Vulcan nerve pinch. I enjoyed when they went to beam down. I enjoyed that Spock had to show him how to use the transporter. I like that's such a nice, nice little touch. Yeah, when he pushes him to the pad. Yeah. Like, no, you got to get. Which, again, makes no sense because it's established that you can use the transporter virtually anywhere.

[01:18:54] What I what I keep maintaining, though, is I guess it's it's probably easier to hone in on them or maybe they don't need to lock on if you're standing on the pad. That's probably it. Oh, yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. If you're standing like they could transport you anywhere. But to be more specific, it's just easier if you're standing in the correct spot. Yeah, for sure. That makes sense. The other really fun part about that fight is when they knock that officer out when they rescue Kirk. That's he has like the most overdramatic knockout. Is he like?

[01:19:21] Yeah, he gets hit and then he just kind of rolls to the door and then rolls on the door some more looks at them as like it's like a real A2 Brute moment. But he doesn't know who these people are, right? After they return to the ship, Spock and Chief Engineer Scott inform Kirk of a possible escape method by slingshotting around the sun to break away and return to their time. The maneuver is risky since even a small miscalculation could destroy the ship or make them miss their own era.

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[01:20:49] Kirk approves of the maneuver to go back to the future. That was a complete accident. That was not on purpose. I love it when it's not on purpose. That's why that movie title is perfect. The Enterprise begins the maneuver and time on board begins to move backwards. Christopher is beamed back to his fighter jet at the instant he first encountered the Enterprise, preventing any film evidence of the ship being produced and erasing his memory of his time on the Enterprise.

[01:21:16] The same is done with the Air Force Security Guard. The Enterprise then successfully returns to the 23rd century. All right, this time travel logic makes zero sense because they're traveling back in time and then forward in time, but it just doesn't. I'm not. To be fair, it might be like stuff stealing from this, but that's not the first time I've heard the notion of slingshotting around the planet to go to the... Like, I've heard that might have been in the Orville and the Orville might have been using it from this.

[01:21:44] But I will say, not to be pedantic, but if this is indeed causality-based time travel, when he got... Sorry, not to be pedantic, but that wasn't when that guy beamed out from. He got beamed out when he was talking to Kirk and Sula. It wasn't when he walked into the door.

[01:22:08] Number two, if this is indeed causality-based time travel, then theoretically, he should have just disappeared when they returned the captain. Yes, he would have. Because they didn't... Because they never took him in the first place, they wouldn't have had to go to that base to get the... Because there's no pictures, he wouldn't have gotten beamed in the first place, so they shouldn't have had to. It's the classic example me and Jordan use.

[01:22:35] Me and Jordan have had this argument a thousand times, but I believe it's in Back to the Future 3. Yes, it's in Back to the Future 3. You've obviously been Back to the Future. You know the picture of Marty's grave? The tombstone, yes. Yeah, you know how it disappears from the picture, right? Well, theoretically, if causality-based time travel exists, the picture should also disappear as well. The physical picture itself, because they would have never taken that picture to begin with. Because his name is not on the tombstone, they would have never taken the picture.

[01:23:05] So the actual physical picture itself should have also disappeared. It should have not existed. You are correct. That makes sense. Boom. Plot hole. Although... 30-year-old movie. I will defend it for Back to the Future Part 3, because they're going with the photo bit from the first one, which that photo would not disappear. That photo would not disappear. The whole point... Now, if Marty didn't fix the past, the photo would disappear. Not just the people in it. Exactly. Oh, well, crap.

[01:23:36] Thanks, Justin. I just cinema-sinned all over Back to the Future 2. I now have an issue with Back to the Future. But that's only if you subscribe to the notion of causality-based time travel. But that movie does. That movie does. So you kind of... At least in the context of Back to the Future, you kind of have to. Yeah. But that's one of the things that made... I will admit, like... Again, my whole thing with this episode is it just seems like it would have been easier

[01:24:02] to knock him unconscious using a phaser and convince him he got too drunk. I'm just a fan of the two dudes dropped off naked in a cornfield left to put the pieces together. It just... It's the most... I mean, they kind of go with that in this anyway where they're like, we'll just leave you to make it sound like you saw aliens and nobody believes you. Like, that was their plan anyway. That's all I'm saying. It must have been a weather balloon. Right? Must have been a weather balloon.

[01:24:30] This episode marks the only time two individuals have been transported into themselves. In this case, their past selves. So my question is... It goes back to the whole transporter dilemma. Are those past people now dead or did they merge together? Right? Theoretically, they will... The Christopher, his... The version that got teleported away just ceased to exist. Or the one that got beamed into the... Old...

[01:24:59] Is the one who... And it's now a third, all new version of Christopher. Would that cure cancer? I mean, does the transporter cause cancer? That's the question we have... That's the mystery we have to solve. It's not an issue though because, like we've established, radioactive perfume is a thing. So you just... It is a thing. If you just go to Dr. McCoy on a random Tuesday and be like, Doctor, I think I have cancer. He's like, really?

[01:25:28] This is the third time this month I've told you. Button that beekeeper suit up. You gotta... You gotta button that loose thing. You know that loose skin? Cover that loose skin. Here. Here's a topical ointment for your cancer. Oh, if only. There's another moment that really... As somebody who... I'm probably neurodivergent somehow because little things like this, just I can't let them go. There's a point where Christopher talks about how he always wanted to, you know, go to space.

[01:25:58] He always wanted to, you know, be in space. And Kirk says to him, well, you've beaten them all now. And I'm like, wait, no. This takes place in 1969. You absolutely did not beat them all. The first man in space went into space in 1961. You are... And that was at least six years prior to the event of this episode. Now, if it takes place in 1969, it would be eight years prior.

[01:26:24] Assuming that they come back to 1967, which the episode never actually says for sure what year it is. But it's assumed to be 1969. So eight years prior. And that was the first man in space. There were other people in space. Right? There were absolutely other people in space. I guess it depends on what you qualify as going. Do you qualify as going to space and coming right back as like not actually going to space? Like, do you have to actually be in space for an extended period of time? No, because John Glenn orbited the Earth.

[01:26:55] Oh, I mean, I would say that like... Or does he consider like going to the moon as the benchmark for quote going... Or do you just have to go into space for it to count as going into space? What is his metric for going into space? The Enterprise is orbiting the Earth. So that would be the metric I would use. Okay, then yeah, other people have gone to space then. Other people have absolutely gone to space. So Kirk, as a nerd, you should know better. You should know better. So yeah, that bothered me. And see, the thing is, you can't even say...

[01:27:24] This is one of the few times where you can't say, well, it was the 60s. Because they would have known that. They would have known that. Yeah, they would have known that. Somebody didn't do their research. Somebody didn't care. This episode, which you'll appreciate this factoid, Justin. Which when I read this, this made so much sense. And actually would have been better. So the original idea of this episode was conceived to be a part two to the naked time. Um... That makes sense. That does make sense.

[01:27:51] But when the ending of that episode was revised, this script is reworked as a standalone story. But I'm thinking, I'm like, wow. How great would that have been? That, yeah, that makes sense. Because that would have led into the beginning of this episode of them going back in time. And they would have been stuck. I also didn't have that thought that this could have been a two-parter. So this is the second part to what would have been that first part. Interesting. So this method of time travel is used again in Star Trek.

[01:28:19] It's used in the episode of Simon Earth to send the Enterprise back a year earlier to 1968. And it's presumed that the same technique was used to return the ship to the proper time after that episode. It's also what would become known as the Slingshot Maneuver is employed by a third time by the Enterprise crew in the episode Star Trek. I'm sorry, not the episode. The movie Star Trek 4 The Voyage Home.

[01:28:43] And what's really funny is in that movie, Spock, you know, says like, I have a theory. And Kirk is like, do you think it'll work? It's like, you've used it twice already. Of course it'll work. You've done this before. It's like, yeah, you've literally done this twice before with the same crew. And McCoy, they're talking about it like it's a theory. McCoy knows what they're talking about. He's like, sure, you slingshot around the sun. You get time travel. But if you get too close, you're fried. It's like, you have all done this before.

[01:29:12] You did this before. I mean, I mean, it didn't go super well. I mean, it wasn't like a smooth thing. But when you did it, I mean, it worked. And see, that's the thing is I remember I clearly didn't recall this from because I've seen this episode before. But I know about how they time travel back to in Star Trek four because it's my mom's favorite Star Trek movie. So we watched it a lot. But I even said when they said slingshot around the sun, I'm like, oh, just like they did in Star Trek four. So I'm like, wait a minute.

[01:29:40] They speak about it like it's theoretical in that movie, but they've done it before. I mean, I guess I guess if you want to get technical, anything is still technically theoretical. Like, just you just know the theory is correct, I suppose. Well, but then it's no longer a theory. Then it's fact. I mean, that is true. But you know that theoretically that that fact is true. No, you know, verifiably that that fact is true. I got nothing. I got nothing. I'm trying. Stop trying to flat earth me.

[01:30:09] I will round you. So the next episode we're going to look at is court martial. So, Justin, would you like to take a stab at what will happen in next week's episode? Oh, boy. I'm going to guess someone's getting court martialed. Now, who's going to get court martialed? I mean, it's got to be it's got to be Kirk, right? Kirk is getting court martialed. He's being framed for something. So it's about we've got to prove Kirk's innocence. I mean, yeah, pretty much. That's that's a that's a sensibly what what happens.

[01:30:38] I was going to be like Spock, but we already did the Spock court martial thing. And I don't feel like Bones is doing it. Bones or Scotty or O'Hara. They're not doing anything. They're not they're not they're not. What's the word I'm looking for? Mischievous impish characters getting into trouble. They're not mischievous. What I can't remember is if Kirk is framed for something or if somebody just court marshals him and he if he just did. I mean, I can't remember. He hasn't done anything. That's not true. He did speak to that high commissioner with with them, that pencil pushing nerd.

[01:31:08] That's that's not that's not a court martial offense, though. Every so that's that's an issue of where, like, if the commissioner tried to court martial him, the admiral would look at what happened and be like, absolutely not. He'd be like, no, no, no. Go sit back at your desk, pencil pusher. All right. So this is the bit and we have to end on this. So any other thoughts on. She said it was yesterday. It's a totally weird episode.

[01:31:34] Like I mentioned, I mentioned Star Trek, the sitcom, but there's so many Star Trek, the sitcom moments in this episode and it undercuts the drama of it quite a bit. But we've established firmly. I love my silly and I love a good time travel story. And that does a lot of heavy lifting for me. So I enjoyed it overall. I had a good time. Also, just a just a bunch of Kirk food. More Kirk food, the better. There's no. So now here's you're going to love this and you're going to love the edit more.

[01:32:03] So this episode is unique. And that is the only episode to end on a close up of George to K who does not even have the final line in this episode. So therefore, actually. Yeah. So therefore, we are going to end this episode. On that close up shot of George to K. Oh, funny. That's amazing. I didn't even I think I might I might have turned away when it was just it was just Kirk being like, we're home.

[01:32:32] So funny. Yes, we have to. It is necessary. Oh, it's see. That's what's funny is for the audience. It's happening right now. There's just this contextless less shot of Sulu not talking, but they're hearing us. I mean, Sulu is the star of the show and all the others are along for the ride. I feel like it's a good decision to end this. Hopefully this goes long enough to where I have to loop the shot. And we just ended on a series of George to K.

[01:33:00] I mean, that's how everything should end. Just a series of images of George to K. It's it absolutely should. Good. Maybe we will start the the outro music by now. I'm just still on that shot of George to K. Just look at him doing his helmsman thing. He's doing he's doing the helmsman. He's a very talented helmsman. He's a very talented individual with lots of hobbies and interests. He's got lots of hobbies and interests. This is a very this is very Sulu heavy episode.

[01:33:30] He got to do all sorts of stuff. He did. I was waiting for a new hobby, though, and we didn't we never definitively because like I was like, oh, are we going to get to add one? He seems to know his way around a dark room. So I thought we might add photography, but he never comes out and says. I mean, I would say I would say that that his love of of old computers and knowledgeable computers demonstrates a hobby of perhaps old, old antique computers. He never comes out and says it, though. But he implies it.

[01:34:00] All I'm saying. The implication and the implication. Yeah, the implication is there, but I felt that it wasn't enough. But anyway, we've exhausted this joke. So thank you, everyone, for watching this episode of the final frontier. Please like, share and subscribe. And remember, watch long and prosper. He really didn't seem all that torn up about the previous crew he had lost.

[01:34:29] Neither of the attorneys should be attorneys. This is a farce. Also, I don't understand. So why why the threat of crashing the ship? Why was that part of it necessary?