Primitive Culture: A Star Trek History and Culture Podcast
129 episodes - English - Latest episode: about 1 year ago - ★★★★★ - 20 ratingsPrimitive Culture is a Trek.fm podcast dedicated to a deep examination of the connections between Star Trek and our own history and culture. In each episode, Duncan Barrett and his guests take you on a fascinating exploration of how our world inspires the franchise we love—and how that franchise inspires us.
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Episodes
77: Matters of Perspective?
February 21, 2020 04:44 - 1 hour - 58.4 MBStar Trek and Sexual Assault, Part 2. Over its long history, Star Trek has not shied away from dealing with the impact of sexual assault. In its many incarnations, the franchise has offered a number of storylines—some more successful than others—that shine a light on this important issue. And it has always done so through the lens of the current moment. Sometimes the shows have employed classic Trek allegory, with violations of the mind by aliens as a clear stand-in for real-world assault....
76: Me Too
February 12, 2020 12:01 - 1 hour - 64.3 MBStar Trek and Sexual Assault, Part 1. In 2017, the #MeToo movement brought stories of sexual assault and harassment to the forefront of public consciousness. Some of the key figures in the campaign are part of the Star Trek family—most notably Ashley Judd and Anthony Rapp. Their willingness to share their stories played a major role in bringing many uncomfortable truths to light, particularly in relation to appalling behavior in the entertainment industry. But Star Trek is not itself immun...
75: Things Are Only Impossible Until They’re Not
January 30, 2020 11:28 - 57 minutes - 39.9 MBTalking Treknology with Ethan Siegel. At times, life in 2020 can feel very much like the future we see in Star Trek. We read the latest news on portable tablets and ask our digital assistants to play music or dim the lights. We have instant access to a vast library of collected knowledge and can track our friends and family through their devices. With 3D printing, we can replicate complex designs at the touch of a button. Painless hyposprays have even replaced needles, a relief for those ...
74: A 1990s Time Capsule
January 16, 2020 14:20 - 2 hours - 83.7 MBLooking back on 25 years of Star Trek: Voyager. On January 16, 1995, Star Trek got lost in space. The premiere of the fourth live-action Star Trek series offered not just the franchise’s much-anticipated first female captain (something explicitly ruled out in the final episode of The Original Series) but a strong science fiction premise: a ship stranded on the far side of the galaxy and crewed by a mixture of by-the-book Starfleet officers and reckless Maquis renegades. It was a bold new a...
73: In a Dark Wood
December 28, 2019 13:49 - 1 hour - 75.3 MBDante in the Delta Quadrant. Far away from home, everyone could do with a guide. That’s true whether you’re a 14th-century Italian poet embarking on an ultramundane journey through the afterlife or a Starfleet captain stranded on the far side of the galaxy. While Dante is lucky enough to be aided by the ancient Roman poet Virgil, Kathryn Janeway—who received a copy of Dante’s Divine Comedy as an engagement gift from her fiancé, Mark—must turn to Neelix to guide her through her own dark wo...
72: The Human Adventure
December 10, 2019 12:20 - 38 minutes - 26.9 MBStar Trek: The Motion Picture on the big screen. Forty years ago, Star Trek boldly went where it had never gone before: the cinema. A commercial hit—thanks in large part to feverish anticipation by fans whose dedication to The Original Series that had grown steadily since the show left the airwaves 10 years earlier—The Motion Picture proved less successful with critics. Over the years, its reputation with fans sunk lower and lower. Compared with the ballsy action and emotional drama of Th...
71: A Sandbox that We Can All Play In
December 04, 2019 14:37 - 32 minutes - 23 MBRick Sternbach on designing Star Trek’s future. As senior illustrator on The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager, Rick Sternbach shaped the look of Star Trek’s 24th century. He contributed to the design of the titular Cardassian space station, was responsible for the USS Voyager’s smooth cetacean styling, and worked on alien vessels such as the Borg Cube. With his iconic design for the PADD, he helped inspire real-world devices such as Apple’s iPad, which owes a lot to the futur...
70: All the World’s a Bridge
November 24, 2019 12:53 - 49 minutes - 34 MBStar Trek and Theatre. As Q told Picard, all the galaxy’s a stage. Both the Bard-bothering captain and his real-world alter ego, Patrick Stewart, who was famously dubbed “unknown British Shakespearean actor” by the Los Angeles Times when he first took on the role—are better placed than most to appreciate the wisdom of these words. And Star Trek has always had one foot in the old-school theatrical tradition as much as it has been defined by the almost magical possibilities of television. N...
69: Styling It Out
November 09, 2019 14:00 - 40 minutes - 28.2 MBFan encounters in Star Trek and beyond. For Star Trek fans, conventions offer a rare chance to get up close and personal with their heroes—whether that means snapping a selfie, getting an autograph, or buying them a drink at the bar. But Star Trek’s characters aren’t immune to the power of celebrity themselves. Many, in fact, find themselves distinctly star-struck in the presence of their own role models. Sometimes the experience can be disillusioning, as in the case of Zefram Cochrane in ...
68: Feeling the Fear and Doing It Anyway
October 30, 2019 06:06 - 1 hour - 67.7 MBPhobias in Star Trek. Killer clowns! Crashing planes! Confined spaces! Crumpets? When our most deep-seated fears hold us hostage, our ability to make rational decisions flies out the airlock. What hope, then, for the transporter-phobic officer serving on a Federation starship, or the claustrophobic Cardassian living in exile on an overcrowded space station? In this episode of Primitive Culture, host Duncan Barrett is joined by Brandi Jackola of Live from The Edge to discuss the phobias ...
67: Everyone’s a Captain!
October 11, 2019 15:38 - 1 hour - 62.1 MBStar Trek’s Revivals. By the summer of ’69, Star Trek was dead. The half-century that followed has seen the franchise resurrected more times than the Borg Queen, but before all the spin-offs and reboots, Star Trek pioneered a much more straightforward approach to bringing back an old property—one that, in 2019, seems to have become almost ubiquitous: the original cast revival. In 1979, getting the old gang back together for The Motion Picture was truly a bold endeavor (although perhaps th...
66: Kirk + Picard = ?
September 26, 2019 13:50 - 2 hours - 84.3 MBStar Trek: Generations. When the cast of the original Star Trek series returned to the screen in 1979’s Star Trek: The Motion Picture, it marked the culmination of 10 years of fan-ticipation that started with the untimely cancellation of the series. This was not the case when it came time for the cast of The Next Generation to leap to the silver screen. They began filming their own freshman movie immediately after wrapping their final TV episode. Using the same sets—albeit spruced up a bit...
REISSUE: 65: Bigger on the Inside
September 13, 2019 01:58 - 1 hour - 62.2 MBStar Trek and Dr. Who, with Una McCormack. Not many TV shows have had a lifespan stretching beyond half a century. This is especially in the genre of science fiction, which is notorious for abrupt cancellations. Yet, when Star Trek celebrated its golden anniversary in 2016, it did so in the shadow of another long-running sci-fi behemoth from the other side of the pond: Dr. Who. Premiering on the BBC three years before Star Trek hit US airwaves, the quirky British show has, in many ways, ha...
64: Would I Lie To You?
August 28, 2019 14:50 - 1 hour - 62.4 MBThe Rashomon Effect in Star Trek and Beyond. Two podcasters meet on the internet. They watch a classic film that one has seen and the other hasn’t. They compare it to an episode of Star Trek—or maybe two, or even three or four. They consider the broader cultural implications of the film’s central themes of uncertainty, subjectivity, and the unknowability of truth. Or perhaps they don’t. Listening at home, you wonder: Did any of these things really happen? Can you trust your ears? Are you s...
63: A Whole Society
August 19, 2019 14:31 - 45 minutes - 31.4 MBLife on a nuclear submarine vs. a Federation starship. In this special edition of Primitive Culture, meant to complement the previous episode’s discussion of The Hunt for Red October, host Duncan Barrett is joined by former US Navy submariner John Krikorian—better known for his popular Trek Profiles podcast—to discuss the parallels between Star Trek’s imagined life in space and his own experiences living and working underwater. Join us on this not-so-deep dive as they tackle questions of n...
62: Silent Running
August 11, 2019 03:03 - 1 hour - 57.1 MBThe Hunt for Red October and Face of the Enemy. In space, all warriors are cold warriors. And none are colder, perhaps, than the steely Romulans who crew those imposingly green warbirds. In the sixth-season TNG episode “Face of the Enemy,” the normally warm-hearted Counselor Deanna Troi must join their ranks as she impersonates Major Rakal, a ruthless operative in the Tal Shiar, the Romulan intelligence service. This popular story was inspired, in part, by Tom Clancy’s thriller The Hunt fo...
61: Checkmate!
July 27, 2019 06:01 - 1 hour - 69.1 MBDeadly Games, from *The Prisoner* to “Move Along Home.” A product of the same era as the original Star Trek, the short-lived British drama The Prisoner was, in many ways, more in touch with the psychedelic spirit of the age. Now considered a cult classic, this bizarre blend of spy thriller and existential science fiction remains as puzzling half a century on as when it was first broadcast. It has also been hugely influential, not least on Star Trek itself. One episode in particular, Deep S...
60: Musical Chairs
July 10, 2019 14:59 - 51 minutes - 35.6 MBCast Changes in Star Trek. When Star Trek’s original pilot, “The Cage,” was rejected by NBC, Gene Roddenberry was forced to rethink the acting lineup for his new show. Jeffrey Hunter’s Christopher Pike was out, replaced by the more charismatic William Shatner as James T. Kirk. Gone, too, was Roddenberry’s partner, Majel Barrett, leaving Leonard Nimoy as the only cast member to survive the recasting process. It was the first in a series of periodic reshuffles that have marked the franchise ...
59: A Safe Pair of Hands?
June 26, 2019 12:58 - 1 hour - 59.1 MBStuart Baird and Star Trek: Nemesis. The lowest-grossing of the Star Trek films, 2002’s outing by The Next Generation crew—Star Trek: Nemesis—was the first installment to open below number one at the box office. Losing out on the top spot to the Jennifer Lopez rom-com Maid in Manhattan may seem bad, the fourth TNG trip to the cinema performed so poorly that it proved to be their last. In fact, it killed off Star Trek’s silver screen prospects for more than half a decade. For years, many ...
58: Eating Our Own Tail
June 14, 2019 15:30 - 1 hour - 69.3 MBStar Trek and Fan Service. When Brannon Braga and Rick Berman wrote the final episode of Star Trek: Enterprise in 2005, they intended it as a “valentine” for the fans who had stuck with the franchise since The Next Generation debuted in 1987. Surely, they reasoned, the inclusion of TNG favorites Will Riker and Deanna Troi would be the perfect way to close the book on 18 years of continuous TV production. Sadly, “These Are The Voyages” fell flat. The gesture proved far from successful, inte...
57: Eyes Open
May 30, 2019 06:18 - 1 hour - 66.4 MBGalileo and “Distant Origin.” That Galileo Galilei, the man who Albert Einstein called “the father of modern science,” turned up on Star Trek: Voyager should come as no surprise. The series was, after all, the first in the franchise to feature a captain with a scientific background. The story of the legendary Renaissance figure was retooled as a classic Trek allegory in the third-season episode “Distant Origin.” In its 24th-century rendition, the story features a society of hyper-evolved h...
56: Alternative Treks
May 17, 2019 00:57 - 1 hour - 72.7 MBAn International Approach to Star Trek. Is the final frontier of Star Trek’s imagined future as quintessentially American as its nineteenth-century forbear, the Wild West? For more than 50 years, Star Trek has presented a decidedly internationalist vision of humanity’s future, while at the same time leaning very heavily on ideals and rhetoric specific to the United States. In this episode of Primitive Culture, hosts Clara Cook and Duncan Barrett discuss Star Trek in an international cont...
55: Who Am I?
May 01, 2019 13:20 - 1 hour - 67.3 MBMichael Eddington, Jean Valjean, and Les Misérables. Star Trek’s heroes have always been avid readers. From The Complete Works of Shakespeare on display in Picard’s ready room to Janeway’s treasured volumes of Dante to Michael Burnham’s well-thumbed copy of Alice’s in Adventures in Wonderland, Starfleet’s finest have shown us that—even in humanity’s far future—great works of literature will continue to resonate and inspire. Less frequently, however, Trek’s villains have proved themselves e...
54: Star Trek Sold Me a Lie
April 15, 2019 14:22 - 1 hour - 60.7 MBThe Human Frontier in Guernsey. In this episode of Primitive Culture, recorded live at the Guille-Allès Library in Guernsey, regular host Duncan Barrett is interviewed by Laura Perkins about his book Star Trek: The Human Frontier. Duncan discusses his own history with Star Trek and looks at some of the cultural influences that have inspired the franchise’s writers over more than half a century. In a wide-ranging discussion, that looks at the mid-1960s onwards, Duncan and Laura discuss the ...
53: Catfishing with Quark
March 28, 2019 03:04 - 1 hour - 65 MBCyrano de Bergerac on Deep Space Nine. From seventeenth-century France to mid-1980s Washington State to a twenty-fourth-century space station, Edmond Rostard’s classic play Cyrano de Bergerac has proved eminently adaptable to new settings. Its timeless theme of unrequited love has resonated with fresh audiences with each interpretation, while the central tragicomic set piece—in which a man woos his beloved on behalf of a friend—never fails to hit the dramatic high notes. In this episode ...
52: Reader, I Reprogrammed Him
March 12, 2019 05:32 - 1 hour - 56.1 MBGothic Fiction in Star Trek: Voyager. Even starship captains, with the whole galaxy to explore, need a bit of mindless escapism from time to time. While Jean-Luc Picard donned his fedora and trench coat to live out a holographic fantasy life as the surly gumshoe Dixon Hill, Kathryn Janeway’s choice of entertainment might seem—at least on the surface—even less in keeping with her “real” personality. In three early episodes of Star Trek: Voyager—“Cathexis,” “Learning Curve,” and “Persistence...
51: Getting from Here to There
February 22, 2019 10:16 - 1 hour - 63.5 MBStar Trek’s Dark Ages. Sanctuary districts. Eugenics Wars. World War III and the post-atomic horror. It seems clear that the period between our own time and the founding of Starfleet is not one of humanity’s finest chapters. In fact, for a franchise built on an optimistic view of tomorrow, Star Trek offers more than a few glimpses of a catastrophic future. In this episode of Primitive Culture, host Duncan Barrett is joined by Tony Black to look at these Dark Ages in the imagined history ...
50: Size Does Matter
February 08, 2019 14:46 - 1 hour - 70.5 MBShort Treks and bite-sized content. Between 1966 and 2001, Star Trek seemed to be the incredible shrinking franchise. The 50-minute running time of The Original Series gave way to the 44 minutes for episodes of The Next Generation, 43 minutes for Deep Space Nine and Voyager, and a lean 42 minutes by the time of Enterprise. But when Trek made the leap to a streaming service with Discovery, all bets were off. The length of an episode began to vary from week to week, depending on the needs of...
49: Forbidden Planets
January 24, 2019 14:46 - 1 hour - 63.4 MBFrom Altair IV to Talos IV. Star Trek’s original unaired pilot, “The Cage,” established the template for much of what was to come. But that episode was, itself, heavily influenced by an earlier work of science fiction, the 1956 film Forbidden Planet. Stylistic similarities between the two works abound, but there is a deeper link as well: both stories concern a highly advanced alien race whose incredible mental abilities have brought about societal collapse. In this episode of Primitive C...
48: The Captain Kirk of the Ancient World
January 03, 2019 03:17 - 1 hour - 63.4 MBOdysseus, Craft, and Calypso. When Pulitzer-Prize-winning novelist Michael Chabon was announced as the writer the Star Trek: Short Treks episode “Calypso,” fans knew they would be in for something special. But the poignant, wry, and bold story he came up with was full of surprises. Chabon chose to set his episode a thousand years in Discovery’s future, further than any Star Trek episode had gone before. Far from reveling in the high-tech futurism of the barely glimpsed world beyond the shi...
47: The Forty-Sevens
December 23, 2018 13:44 - 1 hour - 56.4 MBIn-Jokes and Easter Eggs in Star Trek. When Joe Menosky began writing for Star Trek in 1990, he brought with him a peculiar relic from his university days: an obsession with the number 47. This unassuming digit soon found its way into unofficial Trek lore, popping up with increasing frequency and creativity. Before long, Star Trek scripts were replete with the references to 47. Even the art department got in on the act, dotting PADDs, corridors, and weapons lockers with the designation. As...
46: A Lesson in Empathy
December 04, 2018 11:47 - 1 hour - 66.7 MBThe Attica Prison Uprising and DS9’s Past Tense. Typically, Star Trek’s two-parters have skewed toward the action-adventure formula rather than hard-hitting social commentary. But in Deep Space Nine’s third season, the writers decided to use the longer ninety-minute running time to delve into a weighty contemporary subject: the homeless crisis in the United States. The resulting story, “Past Tense,” took Trek in a surprisingly dark direction and offered a future that was distinctly dystopi...
45: Weekly Trek
November 22, 2018 14:36 - 46 minutes - 32.4 MBStar Trek and Repertory Theatre. Compared with other science fiction shows, Star Trek has always been remarkably versatile, capable of rapidly switching genres, from romantic comedy one week to courtroom drama the next. For the actors hired to play given roles—sometimes for seven years or more—a similar versatility is required. This is perhaps most striking when they are called on to portray a character who other than the one to which their name is tied in the credits. This could be an anc...
44: From Space Nazis to the Starry Sea
November 15, 2018 15:17 - 1 hour - 48.7 MBLive from Destination Star Trek. Star Trek has always been influenced by real-world history. But, over the course of more than half a century, certain topics have recurred again and again, suffusing the imaginary world of the future with the legacies of our own, often troubled past. Two key influences in particular—World War II and the literature and culture of the sea—have been a pervasive influence on Star Trek’s storytelling, from the earliest episodes of The Original Series right up to...
43: Diversity Is Survival
November 09, 2018 15:22 - 2 hours - 95.1 MBLooking back on DS9 at Destination Star Trek 2018. Perhaps more than any other Star Trek series, Deep Space Nine has seen its reputation continue to rise in the years since it went off the air. Once considered the black sheep of the Trek family, it is now recognized as a groundbreaking work in its own right, pioneering a new form of serialized storytelling that led directly to the so-called golden age of television. Thanks to streaming services such as Netflix, the show has continued to fin...
42: It’s Not Alright
November 03, 2018 14:52 - 1 hour - 61.1 MBMental Health, Part II: From The Next Generation to Enterprise. When Star Trek: The Next Generation debuted in 1987, there were two striking additions to the traditional bridge crew: Worf, an emblem of the newfound peace between the Federation and the Klingon Empire, and Deanna Troi, a professional psychotherapist. A sign of the times, perhaps, Troi’s role was given symbolic significance by the fact that she even had her own chair next to the captain’s. Yet, in practice, the TNG writers of...
41: Star Trek Saved My Life
October 26, 2018 15:45 - 1 hour - 50.9 MBMental Health, Part I: Discovery and TOS. In space, no-one can hear you scream—whether out of terror or sheer misery. But while Federation doctors seem to hold the cure for virtually any ailment in the barrel of a hypospray, looking after their crews’ mental health can be more challenging. Like the members of any military organization, Starfleet officers experience trauma and loss on a regular basis—not to mention the whole gamut of more everyday psychological trouble: anxiety, depression, ...
40: On Screen!
October 11, 2018 12:27 - 1 hour - 65 MB2001: A Space Odyssey and Star Trek: The Motion Picture. When Captain Kirk and the crew of the USS Enterprise boldly went into cinemas in 1979, languid art-house pacing, an elegant orchestral score, and an encounter with things unfashionably alien led to a transformative, almost religious experience. Star Trek: The Motion Picture took its cue not so much from the colorful action extravaganza of Star Wars, which premiered two years earlier, but from 2001: A Space Odyssey, a film dating back...
39: Tit for Tat
September 26, 2018 15:32 - 1 hour - 56.8 MBHawkeye Pierce, Milo Minderbinder, and Nog. In a series celebrated for its long-form serialized storytelling, Deep Space Nine’s young Ferengi Nog enjoyed one of Star Trek’s most satisfying character arcs, going from illiterate juvenile delinquent to Starfleet officer on the fast track to command. But as much as the character transcended the venal, self-serving qualities which typically characterized the Ferengi, he never lost his natural business acumen. Two episodes in particular, “In the...
38: Bad to the Bone?
September 12, 2018 13:26 - 1 hour - 46.6 MBJohn Carpenter’s Christine and Voyager’s “Alice.” In 1983, horror maestro Stephen King was such a hot property that a movie adaptation of Christine, his story about a haunted 1958 Plymouth Fury that goes on a killing spree to protect its owner, was well underway before the novel had even left the presses. The resulting film, directed by John Carpenter, has become something of a cult classic. Many fans believe that it outstrips King’s original for thrills and adventure. Less successful was S...
37: Death by Alien Badgers
August 29, 2018 12:09 - 1 hour - 49.4 MBUntimely Ends for Star Trek’s Redshirts. Set phasers to stun, use thrusters only while in spacedock, and—whatever you do—avoid the narrative! The last of these—taken from John Scalzi’s parodic novel Redshirts—might apply equally to Starfleet’s young supernumeraries and the ensigns of the novel’s Starship Intrepid. In this episode of Primitive Culture, hosts Duncan Barrett and Clara Cook look at how the redshirt trope has played out over the course of Star Trek’s half-century mission, usi...
36: You Can’t Break a Stick in a Bundle
August 22, 2018 12:21 - 51 minutes - 35.5 MBStar Trek Beyond in Concert at the Royal Albert Hall. In this episode of Primitive Culture, Duncan Barrett and Clara Cook host a network roundtable during a screening of Star Trek Beyond, accompanied by live orchestra, at the Royal Albert Hall in London. Joining them are Amy Nelson of Earl Grey, Tony Robinson of Continuing Mission, and former hosts Lee Hutchison and Tony Black, as well as family and friends. Together, we discuss our personal responses to the Kelvin Timeline films, the impa...
35: Gaming Turned Up to Eleven
August 16, 2018 12:38 - 1 hour - 73.6 MBThe Holodeck and Video Games. For Starfleet’s avid gamers, the holodeck offers a seemingly endless repertoire of thrills. You can battle the Spartans at Thermopylae one minute and knock back a martini—shaken, not stirred—the next. And, you can do it all without leaving the safety (mortality subroutines permitting) of a single room. Since Captain Picard first donned his fedora and trench coat in the role of pulpy noir sleuth Dixon Hill in 1988’s “The Big Goodbye,” Star Trek’s holographic...
34: Hippocrates Wasn’t Denobulan
August 02, 2018 15:03 - 1 hour - 45.1 MBPandemics in Star Trek. At times, the medical technology of the Federation seems almost miraculous, offering cures for pretty much everything short of the common cold (and, of course, baldness). But a sudden outbreak of an unfamiliar disease can leave Starfleet’s doctors racing to find a remedy before mass death ensues. Sometimes, they even must bend the Prime Directive to save lives. In this episode of Primitive Culture, hosts Clara Cook and Duncan Barrett take a look at Star Trek’s cas...
33: Playing the God Card
July 18, 2018 13:34 - 1 hour - 56 MBReligion in Star Trek. “Nothing more than a substitute brain” was the characteristically dismissive phrase Gene Roddenberry once used to describe religion. This perspective found its way on screen in various episodes of The Original Series and The Next Generation that presented religious practice as misguided, primitive, or worse. It wasn’t until after Roddenberry’s death in 1991 that Star Trek began engaging with religion—frequently rebranded as faith—in more positive ways. Deep Space Nin...
32: Klingons Don’t Listen to Teachers
July 04, 2018 13:38 - 1 hour - 49.3 MBSchooling in Star Trek. On a Federation starship or space station, every day is an opportunity for learning. But for Starfleet officers whose families have joined them in space, providing a well-rounded education can be a challenge. Aboard the USS Enterprise-D, a host of professional educators were on hand, teaching everything from ancient history to calculus. Meanwhile, on Deep Space 9, an untrained amateur, Keiko O’Brien, stepped up to provide a curriculum tailored to the needs of the st...
31: Number-One Dads?
June 20, 2018 13:37 - 1 hour - 77.7 MBStar Trek’s fathers: the good, the bad, and the absent. “Other people have families,” Dr. McCoy lamented in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, apparently forgetting about his own daughter, Joanna. For a utopian vision of the future, Star Trek tends to offer a decidedly unflattering portrayal of fatherhood. Many of the central characters have markedly poor relationships with their own fathers and, in some cases, prove to be distinctly disappointing dads themselves. In this episode of Primi...
30: Model Occupations
June 13, 2018 13:42 - 1 hour - 72.1 MBCompared with the occupation of Bajor, a violent and traumatic event which cast a long shadow over Deep Space Nine, the brief Dominion–Cardassian administration of the station at the start of the sixth season seems at first like a pretty soft alternative. The six-episode arc focusing on life under Dominion rule offers a parallel with the World War II experiences of the Channel Islanders, the only English-speaking population to live under German occupation. Demilitarized shortly after the e...
29: NASA/Trek
May 31, 2018 14:16 - 1 hour - 75.2 MBStarfleet and the US Space Agency. When The Original Series debuted in 1966, the Apollo program was in full swing, although it wasn’t until after the show’s final episode aired three years later that humans landed on the moon. In the succeeding years, NASA and Star Trek became increasingly interdependent. Real-world space history and technology was referenced on screen, and an army of Trek fans gradually scored jobs at the space agency. When the time came to name the first space shuttle, ...
28: Honey, I Shrunk the Runabout
May 19, 2018 13:15 - 1 hour - 66.7 MBShrinking Sci-Fi and DS9’s “One Little Ship.” Ever since 1957’s black-and-white classic The Incredible Shrinking Man, stories involving size-altering accidents have been a science fiction staple. In 1973, Star Trek: The Animated Series provided its own pint-sized kids’ adventure with “The Terratin Incident,” in which Kirk and his crew are gradually reduced in size by a mysterious Lilliputian community. But it wasn’t until Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’s “One Little Ship,” some 25 years later...