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
27: The Purview of the Diplomats
May 09, 2018 14:01 - 55 minutes - 38 MBFederation Politics in Star Trek. The United Federation of Planets is at the heart of Star Trek’s utopian vision of a deeply complex future society, though relatively little interest has been shown in the nuts and bolts of the organization’s democracy and governance. The machinations of the Klingon High Council have taken up more screen time than the workings of the Federation’s own equivalent, and the bulk of our time is spent in the military environment of Starfleet rather than the civil...
26: Clara Dropkicks a Borg
April 19, 2018 14:52 - 1 hour - 62 MBStar Trek and Fan Fiction. Star Trek fans have always been more dedicated than most, organizing large-scale letter-writing campaigns to save their favorite show, perfecting elaborate costumes so they can impersonate individual characters, and even mastering entirely fictional languages. But for some fans, simply enjoying Star Trek as audience members is not enough—they want to be co-creators of the stories that keep their beloved franchise alive. In this episode of Primitive Culture, hos...
25: The Bravery of Hope
April 04, 2018 10:00 - 1 hour - 63.9 MBAnne Frank and Counterpoint. Perhaps more than for any other Star Trek series, the shadow of the Holocaust loomed large over Voyager. So, it’s not surprising that, when the time came to pitch a story about alien refugees using the Starfleet vessel as a way to escape persecution, The Diary of Anne Frank was a key touchstone. The resulting episode, “Counterpoint,” remains both a fan favorite and the personal number-one of Captain Janeway herself, Kate Mulgrew. In this episode of Primitive...
24: Heart of Lightness
March 21, 2018 13:27 - 1 hour - 58.3 MBMichael Piller, Joseph Conrad, and Star Trek: Insurrection. Love it or hate it, most fans agree that Star Trek: Insurrection was not the strongest story to spring from the keyboard of Michael Piller. He is the man who set the template for much of nineties’ Star Trek as a writer, producer, and eventually showrunner on The Next Generation, yet this film is something of a mixed bag. The same cannot be said of Fade In, the memoir Piller later wrote about the time he spent working on the scree...
23: An Englishman, an Irishman, and a Scotsman Walk into a Bar
March 07, 2018 23:25 - 1 hour - 53.7 MBThe British Isles in Star Trek. For an American TV show, Star Trek was multinational right from the start. The bridge crew of Kirk’s Enterprise included an African communications officer, a Russian navigator, and a Japanese-American helmsman. But down in the ship’s bowels, other nationalities were represented, including a Scottish engineer, an English transporter chief, and an Irish communications specialist. Throughout Star Trek’s 51-year history, the British Isles have offered Starfleet ...
22: Finding the Big Mama
February 21, 2018 12:34 - 1 hour - 64.3 MBCinematic Influences on Star Trek: First Contact. As a first-time movie director, the stakes could not have been higher for Jonathan Frakes when he signed on to helm the Next Generation crew’s first solo outing, Star Trek: First Contact. Aware that his small-screen experience might not cut it at the cinema, he immersed himself in the work of three science-fiction masters-Ridley Scott, Steven Spielberg, and James Cameron-from whom he borrowed cinematic touches. It was an approach that paid...
21: So, What's the Problem?
February 09, 2018 14:33 - 1 hour - 70.8 MBWhen Star Trek: Discovery debuted in September 2017, it brought to our TV screens the first explicitly gay couple in the franchise’s fifty-year history. Lieutenant Stamets and Doctor Culber, played by LGBT “actorvists” Anthony Rapp and Wilson Cruz, quickly won their way into the audience’s hearts, presenting one of Star Trek’s most realistic onscreen relationships. But why has it taken half a century for Star Trek to get to this point? Is sexuality the true final frontier for Gene Roddenberr...
20: Would You Rather?
January 23, 2018 15:05 - 1 hour - 50.1 MBStar Trek’s Impossible Choices. Since the publication of William Styron’s novel Sophie’s Choice in 1979, the title has entered the cultural lexicon as a term meaning a difficult situation in which a person must choose between two equally deserving alternatives. Two Star Trek episodes-Discovery’s “Lethe” and Voyager’s “Latent Image,” both written by Joe Menosky-borrow the story’s horrifying central conceit: a mother forced to choose between her children. In Jeri Taylor’s Voyager novel Mosai...
19: You Can Go Home Again
January 10, 2018 11:00 - 1 hour - 66.8 MBVoyager, History, and Nostalgia. While Captain Picard took command of the Enterprise-D with an order to “see what’s out there,” Captain Janeway’s mission statement was almost the opposite: “Set a course for home.” For seven years, the crew of the USS Voyager was, in a sense, exploring backwards; and this return journey was reflected in the show’s obsession with the past. Many episodes dealt with thorny questions of history and historiography, debating the relationship between official narr...
18: The Mother of All Resolutions
December 27, 2017 14:45 - 1 hour - 58.1 MBA Christmas Carol and Tapestry. The halls are decked, the wine is mulling, and the presents are neatly stacked under the tree. But what hope is there of a white Christmas in the inky black of outer space? Traditionally, Star Trek has steered clear of more than glancing references to the festive season, yet popular holiday stories—such as A Christmas Carol and It’s a Wonderful Life—have worked their way into the plots of fan-favorite episodes. In this special Christmas installment of Pri...
17: Everybody’s Human
December 13, 2017 00:55 - 1 hour - 56.7 MBStar Trek and Human Rights. Star Trek’s progressive, humanist outlook has always involved the extension of legal protection to a wide range of non-human entities. The courtroom battles fought by Data and Voyager’s EMH reflect how legal status is called into question in our own world as a way of justifying exploitation. Although Starfleet—for the most part—upholds the same moral principles enshrined in the UN and European rights charters, other species, such as the Cardassians, show a syste...
16: More, More, More, More, More!
November 28, 2017 11:16 - 1 hour - 41.7 MBLive from London: Star Trek and Director’s Cuts. As Star Trek fans, we know there may be more to a story than what we see on screen. We pore over deleted scenes, read novelizations and comic books, listen to behind-the-scenes stories, and scour unrealized versions of shooting scripts—all to find subtle nuances of character and plot as we imagine how things might have been. But what does it mean when the creator themselves decides that the original cut isn’t final? Three of the six movies...
15: Existence is Futile
November 14, 2017 14:38 - 1 hour - 41.7 MBTime Loops in Star Trek. Time’s up! Or is it? For those Starfleet officers unfortunate enough to find themselves trapped in a temporal causality loop, the mental strain of repeating the same moments again and again can be hard to bear. And for the writers and directors faced with the challenge of making a deeply repetitive story exciting, the logistical problems are significant. Nonetheless, time-loop stories have become a science fiction staple, running the gamut from comedy (Groundhog Da...
14: The Trek Is Out There
October 31, 2017 15:47 - 1 hour - 46.1 MBThe X-Files and Star Trek. Just like Kirk and Spock, Mulder and Scully have become pop-culture icons, outgrowing the some 200 television episodes and two films in which they appear. Although The X-Files has yet to achieve Star Trek’s level of longevity, the property will soon mark its twenty-fifth anniversary, and is returning next year for the further adventures of the two indefatigable FBI agents—now both in their fifties. In Star Trek terms, it has made it from “The Man Trap” all the w...
13: Everything I Need to Know About Baseball I Learned from Watching Star Trek
October 24, 2017 14:35 - 1 hour - 48.6 MBThe Federation’s Field of Dreams. “Death to the opposition!” Starfleet officers are expected to be good sports and, for many of them, the lessons they’ve learned while playing their favorite games—tennis, fencing, even water polo—are ones they’ve brought with them onto the bridges of their starships. But no Star Trek character is as closely identified with his personal sporting passion than Captain Benjamin Sisko, whose deep love of baseball shines through all seven seasons of Deep Space N...
12: The Fable Conference
October 17, 2017 12:14 - 1 hour - 59.9 MBStar Trek and Allegory. In February 1964, Gene Roddenberry’s television show The Lieutenant produced an episode dealing with racism in the US military. The episode proved so controversial that NBC refused to pay for it, let alone broadcast it. A month later, Roddenberry pitched Star Trek, a science-fiction format that would allow him to address such incendiary issues indirectly, by telling stories set in the future as allegories of contemporary concerns. Although occasionally ham-fisted, S...
11: In Years Gone By
October 03, 2017 13:28 - 1 hour - 77 MBStar Trek and Epic Heroes. “Sokath, his eyes uncovered!” When Captain Jean-Luc Picard finally cracked the Tamarian language, he countered “Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra” with an ancient myth of his own: the Epic of Gilgamesh. One of the earliest known works of literature, this deeply strange but profoundly beautiful Mesopotamian poem, predating the Old Testament by more than a thousand years, offers an unlikely bridge between two very different spacefaring cultures. In this episode of Pr...
10: Hiltons in Space
September 12, 2017 12:29 - 1 hour - 58.2 MBStar Trek’s Design Influences. Matt Jefferies, designer of the original Starship Enterprise, was less than complimentary when he saw its 24th-century incarnation in Star Trek: The Next Generation: “Gene asked me how I liked the show, and I said that he had taken the bridge of my ship and turned it into the lobby of the Hilton.” But throughout its 50-year history, Star Trek’s aesthetic has always moved with the times, assimilating current fashion trends and adapting basic designs to accommo...
9: Yippee Ki-Ay!
September 06, 2017 03:28 - 1 hour - 45.7 MBStar Trek and Action Movies. Lights! Camera! Action? Compared to the other science fiction franchise with which it shares half its name, Star Trek has always been distinctly contemplative, as much morality play as spectacular entertainment. But right from the start, there were moves to punch up the action. In 1965, the show’s original pilot was rejected by NBC executives for being too “cerebral.” A quarter-century later, Patrick Stewart expressed a similar view, begging Gene Roddenberr...
8: Not Futile
August 15, 2017 13:42 - 1 hour - 60.3 MBThe French Resistance and Star Trek’s Maquis. In the mid-1990s, when the writers of Star Trek were dreaming up a new terrorist splinter group that would threaten the Federation’s delicate treaty with Cardassia, they turned to the history books to choose a name for the controversial organization. The term maquis, a Corsican word meaning hilly brushland, had originally been adopted by French Resistance fighters who fled to the hills to escape the Nazis. From the relative safety of their rust...
7: Were I Human
August 02, 2017 00:47 - 1 hour - 51.7 MBStar Trek and Shakespeare, Part II. Once more unto the breach! Part II of our look at Shakespeare in Star Trek focuses on the Next Generation era. What does it mean for a Starfleet captain to have a copy of the Complete Works in his ready room? Can an android truly understand what it means to be a fifteenth-century monarch? And at what point does the line begin to blur between heavyweight classical actor Patrick Stewart and bookish Shakespearean fanboy Captain Picard? In this episode of...
S2: Improv Frère Jacques
July 25, 2017 13:32 - 57 minutes - 39.7 MBMusic and Characters. In space, no one can hear you sing. But for Starfleet’s best and the brightest, a passion—and preferably talent—for music is practically an occupational requirement. From Spock’s harp to Riker’s trombone, Data’s violin to Harry’s clarinet, Star Trek’s characters have carried on playing for more than half a century, filling the silent void of space with a rich medley. In this supplemental episode of Primitive Culture, recorded at London’s Royal Festival Hall during ...
6: Brave New Worlds
July 18, 2017 11:37 - 51 minutes - 35.6 MBStar Trek and Shakespeare, Part I. The play's the thing, whether on the stage of the Globe Theatre in sixteenth-century London or aboard a twenty-third-century starship. In The Original Series episode "The Conscience of the King," Captain Kirk and his crew play host to a troupe of Shakespearean actors hiding a terrible secret. But the Karidian Company of Players offer only the first of many interpretations of the Bard's plays within the Complete Works of Trek. In the first act of a two-p...
5: Computer, End Program!
June 27, 2017 14:35 - 1 hour - 50.3 MBWestworld and the Holodeck. A state-of-the-art entertainment complex where you can live out your wildest dreams, surrounded by people who look, sound, and even feel like flesh-and-blood. The sixth-season TNG episode “A Fistful of Datas” tips its (cowboy) hat to the 1973 film Westworld, in which a robot gunslinger runs amok in a Wild West fantasyland, terrorizing the hapless players whose fun day out has just turned into a nightmare. In this episode of Primitive Culture, hosts Tony Blac...
4: Flirty Fly-Boys
June 20, 2017 14:10 - 1 hour - 45.2 MBLegacies of WWII in The Original Series. For the cast and crew of The Original Series, World War II was more than just a dark page in the history books—it was an experience through which they had lived, loved, and lost. From piloting bombers over the Pacific to storming the beaches of Normandy, many of them had seen more than their fair share of action. Those who were too young to have served had witnessed the devastation that war brought to ordinary people. William Shatner and Leonard Ni...
3: One for the Hero, One for the Villain
June 06, 2017 14:41 - 1 hour - 54.3 MBThe Wrath of Khan and Classic Literature. Nicholas Meyer, upon putting his stamp on the Star Trek universe with The Wrath of Khan, introduced classical human literature to the franchise in a way never before seen. Khan Noonien Singh's bookshelf on the wreckage of the SS Botany Bay displayed a host of significant texts—from Shakespeare to Milton—which spoke to his grandiose fate as one of the galaxy's most dangerous villains. In this episode of Primitive Culture, hosts Duncan Barrett and...
S1: Caught Off Guard
May 30, 2017 11:45 - 1 hour - 46.8 MBStar Trek and Terrorism. The darkest nightmare of our age—terrorism—has become the problem of the early 21st century. The fear of rogue forces striking at the very heart of civilization—killing innocent civilians—has never been more potent. Star Trek has never shied away from addressing the issues humanity faces. The franchise has looked at the nature of terrorism in many different forms, from rebel separatists to freedom fighters to extremists operating under the guise of a religion or c...
2: Levar Burton’s Stand-In
May 16, 2017 14:17 - 1 hour - 44.7 MBThe Manchurian Candidate and The Mind’s Eye. Across human history, assassinations have driven the path of societies, empires and governments. Along the way, they have accounted for some of the most insidious and mysterious conspiracy theories the world has ever known. Star Trek: The Next Generation’s fourth season episode “The Mind’s Eye” adapted a classic piece of American cinema: The Manchurian Candidate. This 1962 film, directed by John Frankenheimer and starring Frank Sinatra and Laur...
1: Destroyers of Worlds
May 08, 2017 23:44 - 1 hour - 46.3 MBOppenheimer, Degra, and Jetrel. Star Trek has always been a looking glass through which we see ourselves, a way of examining our world, who we are, and where we came from. Trek.fm is proud to introduce our newest show, Primitive Culture. In each episode, hosts Duncan Barrett and Tony Black tie history and culture to Star Trekand discuss how our own world inspires the franchise we love—and how that franchise inspires us. In the pilot episode, “Destroyers of Worlds,” Tony and Duncan look at...