A Geek History of Time - Episode 03- How 9/11 Ruined "Star Trek Enterprise"

Episode Date: April 27, 2019

Welcome to a Geek History of Time. Where we connect, nerdery, to the real world. I am Damien Harmony. I am a 40 year old father of two whom I am trying to raise to be as geeky and decent as possible. I am also a Latin teacher, formerly a history teacher. I have a master's degree in women's history and a bachelor's degree in history and of late I have stopped studying so much history and much more into the use and abuse of the English and Latin languages. I am Ed Blaylock. I'm a 43 year old father of one very little one and

I'm a seventh grade world history teacher. And my academic background is I have a bachelor of arts in history focusing primarily on Western Europe and East Asia and really heavily focused on the medieval period in both of those places. And I've been a nerd since I was well since forever. I've been a gamer since the age of nine, thanks to first edition advanced Dungeons and Dragons. I got into gaming and geekery very early on as well, but the best I can remember was playing Dungeons and Dragons

with my dad and being killed off by a bunch of lizard people when I was about eight. We also had a car ride where I got to take a test to figure out my alignment. My mother told me I was chaotic evil and it broke my heart. Okay, well that's news. You've changed. I have. I think since then. And I forgot what the next thing we were supposed to do here. That's okay. This part we can scrub out. Okay. Let's see. Oh, books we've been reading. Oh, yeah.

Ed, what have you been reading lately? I have mostly been working on still getting through at home by Bill Bryson, a history of domesticity as we know it in the modern world. How about you? I have been reading the SAGA series. It's a graphic novel called SAGA and it's really quite interesting. My buddy Zach got me into it. I've also been vacillating between that and old Timie. I'm into April of 1963, Marvel Comics. So fantastic for and the amazing Spider-Man. Nice.

Okay, very cool. So right now, we're both involved in a D&D campaign. You're more involved in it than I am at present because in a new kid. You have a mental. Yeah, but in addition to that right now, my biggest thing gaming wise is another D&D campaign that's only monthly in which I'm playing a chaotic good Elven Cavalier

and it's first edition AD&D so I'm going back to my geek roots other than our D&D campaign, what do you got going on right now? I'm actually just running a game for my son and my daughter. We are currently doing a home brew mock-up of a 3.5 retread of an AD&D module. Okay, give me a title. So what is it? It's Lair of the Where Rat King or something to that effect. Oh yeah. Yeah, it's where they're in Silverton. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah melted down silver coins and dipped her arrows into them that they would actually hurt wear creatures. So I let her have some license. Your, your daughter is somebody to watch.

It was one way or the other. Cause she's how old? I want to get, I want everybody to understand this. Your daughter is six and she figured that out. Yeah, you're raising her right. Yeah, fist bump. Thank you, thank you. Y'all can't see that, but you know.

And my son runs into every battle, growling like a bear because he's a barbarian aspect of the bear so he's really living it up and Yep, they're they're doing a great job of it. You make us all proud So what are we doing today? What's what's today's episode about? Well, I believe you had something you wanted to talk to me about with it had to do with Star Trek. Yeah, oh that's right, yes. So Star Trek Enterprise, actually just called Enterprise, came out in 20 or in 2001 and it was the final one to be put into syndication after a string of successes until just recently and so I wanted to explore where that

occurred in our cultural context because it turns out it came out on TV literally two weeks after 9-11 happened. So I wanted to really the the influence of 9-11 on fiction and literature and really the the influence of 9-11 on fiction and literature and and also on TV and movies has long been fascinating to me these these watershed moments yeah I believe they're called flash bulb history yes those have long bit of interest to me so we're gonna take a look at some geekery having to do with 9-11 so I hope you all stay tuned and we'll see you on the other side. And here we are. Ed, you said you are Star Trek adjacent, right? Yeah, I grew up watching the original series in syndication and when the next generation came out I was a fan. But Star Trek, to was cool, it was entertaining, but I have a lot of

friends who are really, really like passionately driven by you know, Ron Berry's utopianism. And maybe it's just my upbringing. I don't know what my dad in the background making remarks about a real Navy would never work that way. I don't know what my dad in the background making remarks about a real Navy would never work that way. I don't know what it is that stopped me from becoming a true believer for Trek. I think I have an idea actually because a lot of because a lot of what attracts me to Star Wars is I guess how do I want to say? It's what repels me about Star Wars, too. In Star Wars, it's a mythology. In Star Wars, there is a chosen one.

There is a religious hierarchy. There are all kinds of things in there. Star Trek is like if somebody took notes on John Lennon's song, Imagine. Like, it's boring, it's dull. And the other thing is Star Wars, there's drama, there's tension, but there's action. Whereas Star Trek, there's a little bit of drama, there's a little bit of tension, but there's no action.

Like, all of their solves are always very cerebral, and that's kind of the message. And I think that's one reason that there's such a sharp divide. I happen to enjoy both quite a bit, but I do con more to star wars than I do to star trek because I think that kind of action is a little bit more emotionally appealing to people. I'm going to talk to you today about Star Trek Enterprise. Now before we get started, the moment you mentioned Star Trek Enterprise. Okay now now before we get started the moment you mentioned Star Trek Enterprise right or just Enterprise. Sure because it didn't have the Star Trek in terms of the title. Yeah absolutely. I had a friend who I've lost touch with a long time ago but

but a buddy of mine back at the time that Enterprise came out one of the first conversations I had with him because he was he was one of these people who was a truly devoted passionate tracker, you know, had read the technical manuals, had memorized, you know. No, it was worth the one bathroom on the other. Yeah, you know, that kind of stuff. And he was really not happy with enterprise, because it violated canon at the time because the the what's

word I'm looking for the the the the history of ships named enterprise right had been established there was a cannon right already established and all of a sudden they introduced this new this new enterprise right to the mix that was before the 171 that was after you know the carrier and all that you know the historical enterprise and they introduced this new ship and this new story line and all this stuff and he was he had a reaction like a theological scholar dealing with a heresy. So there's a lot of stars, Star Wars fans after your episode eight. Yes, actually.

Yeah. In a lot of other ways. Yeah. Yeah, oh my god. Well, he didn't say you ruined my childhood and his issue, his issue didn't have quite so much to do with geek entitlement, as the guys that were bitching him out on episode eight, or a lot of, I'm going to say a lot of the people who were bitching about episode eight. Almost universally, yes, but you know, and it was this very important technical thing

to him. And I think one, this, I'm going to say that this is one of the reasons that I have remained fandom adjacent to Trek. And this is also part of the reason that I haven't gotten into hardcore Star Wars fandom. At the same time, I lean more in that direction, but I'm not a man. A canon monkey. Yeah. Which is funny because I'm a Catholic, so you'd think cannon would be a thing for you. Well, you've got enough dogma as it is. Yes, in my point, in my real life, I've got enough.

But the number of my friends, and guys, if you're listening to this because I've badgered you to listen to it. Understand, I love you all. But the level of commitment to that level of canonicity and detail and everything felt stifling to me. And so I wanna establish with you, I don't think off the top of my head that that's gonna be part of what we're talking about here. Not particularly, I mean. Because there was a lot of controversy about that at the time.

Right. No, I'm not really getting into that. Okay. What I'm going to be talking about with Enterprise is largely the impact that flash bulb moments have on our fictions. Whether we like them or not, I could do an entire, I don't know, five part episode on how 9-11 had an impact on the extended universe in Star Wars books. Because it was measurable. It was obvious. And maybe we will, who knows.

But this one is what I've titled, How 9-11 Ruins Star Trek's Coolest Concept. And I do think that it was their coolest concept. It was their poorest carried out. Poorliest, poorest least, yeah, worst, worst, worst, yeah, the Latin is me, knows how to do it. Yeah, but yeah, it was very poorly carried out, but it's not entirely the fault of the studio or the writers or the co-creators or what have you. They get some of the blame, but I think culturally, They get some of the blame, but I think culturally it was just one of those ones where The moment was such that the moment passed and things had shifted and this was they were already committed to this And so they wrote it the wrong way

Actually, this is I think one of two 9-11 episodes I've got so clearly figures in heavy for me But first of all enterprise was the fifth iteration of Star Trek. If you don't count the animated series. And you shouldn't. It starts with the original series. Seeing you know, man. You have to, I'm going to say this was the sixth, because you got to count in. Oh, okay. If you're going to, because you know, if we're going to, if we're going to start pulling that, then, you know, okay, this is the fifth live action. Okay, there you know, if we're gonna, if we're gonna start pulling that, uh-huh. Then, you know, uh- Okay, this is the fifth live action. Okay, there we go.

There we go. Uh, and, uh, the first one was the original series, common referred to as TOS. Yeah. Uh, then the next generation, DNG, then deep space nine, DS9, or as we said in my Spanish class, when I was in high school, Day-Sade in the way I went. Nice. Uh, then Voyager,

which was just Voyager, and then Enterprise. Yeah. Now between the original series and the next generation was 20 years. Yes. And there was syndication, there were movies. Yeah. Then between the next generation and Deep Suase 9,

there was an overlap of I think two seasons. Yeah, I want to say it was two seasons. You introduced the characters by using the other characters. Yeah, it was what's referred to as a soft pilot. Yeah, I want to say it's referred to, I think the term is a soft pilot. I'll have to look up the trope on TV tropes. But it's, you know, you know that you're going to do a spin off. Right.

So you introduce the characters on the original show. Right. So we see it. And then. So we see them and get a little familiar with them and we understand what their whole angle is before you go off and do that. It's, you know, a tool that gets used all the time.

Well, they used it again with Deep Space 9 Devoiders, well, you meet one of the main characters on Voyager on Deep Space 9. And so you've had a lot of that. Enterprise, interestingly, exists in the same universe, but it predates all of them, so there was no way to overlap. Yeah, it was a major big-time prequel. Yeah, it's a structural difference. Now, even though it overlaps with Voyager in calendar years, and actually it doesn't technically, they both, Voyager ended in May of 2001 and Enterprise started in September of 2001. So technically, you didn't have any overlap in scheduling and you certainly don't have any overlap in terms of in-universe chronology, nor in production. Voyager, like I said, last episode was May of 2001

and Enterprise starts in late September. Now, clearly, the first episode was released in September 26th, 2001, so that's 15 days later. And they'd already had several episodes in the can, prior to 9-11. I was unable to figure out how many were already in there So enterprise it's the first one of the series that goes back in time Well all the episodes go back in time, but it's the first one where the actual setting is before the times are The two's yeah, it comes on the heels of Voyager, which was dwindling in popularity

So what it happened was- Four reasons. Very good reasons, but reasons nonetheless. What happened was the next generation, everybody remembers it much fonder, then. I challenge you to go watch the first three seasons. Okay, I'm struggling. I'm gonna pick a bone with you.

Check that one. I'm gonna say the challenge should be to watch one first season first season was uneven at at best the first the first few episodes The thing is all of the writers might might take on it as all of the writers were swinging for the fences Like go like out of the gate everybody because it had been 20 years since the start of the event on the small screen. And so all the people that were writing were like, no man, we got to have the next sitting

on the edge of forever. We got to, you know, there's this huge legacy that they got to live up to. And so the writers are swinging hard. And the thing is, when you're swinging that hard, when you connect, you're going to knock the cover off the ball. When you fail to connect, it's a really big, dramatic, ugly fail. Yeah, you're right, you lead the league and strikeouts,

but you also lead the league and come on. Yeah, and so the first season is, because they hadn't gotten their timing down, both in the analogy and literally, like the pacing of the scripts is weird and the timing of the dialogue is strange, you know, it's just it's not, it hasn't gelled yet. Second season you have that problem too because you have some casting changes. You do. Third season you have more casting changes. So you have stuttering and stepping. You have settery in stepping, but what I'm gonna argue and my own take on it was the first season was basically

It to show survived into season two because everybody gave it a chance. Yeah, okay very true second season in the second season You actually start seeing the episodes that started to actually look like What TNG was gonna be you do, but you also still have a lot of production troubles. I mean, the very last episode of season two was a flashback episode, because they literally ran out of money. Oh, yeah. So I mean, yeah. Well, you know, it's generally, and in terms of popularity,

it's a lot like the original series. Yeah. In that, everybody remembers that Fonda than it is. Yeah. It doesn't necessarily hold up. There are some that really do. You're absolutely right. The aesthetic is quite, quite clearly moving in the right direction, but it's not that popular at all. But then it grew. Yeah. It grew. Season three, they started jelling. You still have really awful episodes even into season five though. You really do

Oh, yeah, just a few you got a couple of stinkers look like like every every season. There's one one or two like oh god Why did you why did you film this right this was this is a crime against celluloid? You know back then they had to keep 24 episodes. Yeah, you know every season. I mean they're really working Yeah, once this is a sad part once Roddenberry died it got better. Well, you know, and here's the thing. That is that is sad and you know, Roddenberry deserves an awful lot of credit. But I think and again, I know there are friends of mine that when and if they hear this,'re they're gonna want to pick a fight with me but Roddenberry was genuinely a really good human being I mean by by every by every you know kind of measure as far as what what he tried to do with

He's his legacy very much a humanist and By all accounts he was a nice guy everybody, you know, I haven't heard any Negative stories yeah, well that existed nice guy, but I haven't heard any negative stories. Yeah, well, yeah, but overall, he was writing more good than bad. He was writing these morality plays. And the thing is, that's wonderful, but at the same time, from a storytelling perspective, he had a lot of really strict rules. Yes.

The story Bible under Roddenberry was really strict. One of the things that was revolutionary about DS9 was all of a sudden you saw the federation disagreeing with other people within the federation. There were protagonists disagreeing and it was a huge big deal to Roddenberry as a utopianist, as this you know, idealistic humanist that you know, we were going to get to a point somewhere in our collective social evolution where we didn't do that. And on the one hand, there's something wonderful and pure in that kind of vision of humanity moving towards the start of the entertainment. It doesn't make for compelling entertainment.

And I think it's fundamentally unrealistic. Evolutionary biologists have argued, I've read the papers, but I can't reference any of them directly, that in addition to opposable thumbs giving us the ability to use tools, part of our evolution is also the fact that unlike all of the other apes we were able to make a fist Well, they can hammer fist you well They can but but being able to make a closed fist is not something that other apes are capable of doing and there are Revolutionary biologists who will argue

Convincingly to me at least sure that that is as much a part of our humanity as far as being separate from the other higher terms as some of the other stuff. So I think the idea that we're going to get to a point where we don't argue with each other, I mean collectively the idea that we get to a place where nation states or groups of people are able to cooperate is utopian and an ideal we can all shoot for. I don't think we're ever going to get to a place where you and me are never going to have a point of contention. And he wanted so much to be so utopian that he was one of the biggest complaints that I've heard about him was from the writers that were working for him was like

there was so much stuff that we couldn't do. Yeah. And so when he was no longer sitting on top of the structure with that set of rules, it opened up the playground in a way that had existed. Yeah, it allowed for him, like you say, you know, you were talking about they're not being action, they're not being a lot of drama. It opened up the potential for there being more human drama. Well, the thing with the next generation

as well though is that it even after he died, they they were kind of already married to the structure of the old version as well in that that it's a story about exploration so every episode can be incredibly modular. And there's not much in the way of character growth or character development because there's no drama, there's no overarching plot. Really, I mean, you have plot light by the time you get to the end of episode, or it's to the end of season seven. There's a few things that have happened, but it's all fairly blandly gotten to it. Some of the best episodes of TV have come from the next generation, but it still was... It was still a... Shallow. Yeah, and a very capsular one-hour drama kind of art form. It was not serialized really in any meaning for me. You had the characters going on and on,

but it's the continuing adventures of. Now, part way through, they decided to introduce a new series. By this point, it was unheard of, because again, the original series only got three seasons. This one ends up with seven. And I think by season five, maybe six, you have a new series come out of this. Now it is a huge rip off of Babylon five. That is established fact. But it was still a really cool series. I think Deep Space Nine was probably the best of them all, partly because of all the tracks of all the tracks. Okay. Um, because I tried to argue it was better than Babylon five, no, we're going to have a very unroddened very.

No, but I'm a, I'm a big bad five fan. Huge bad five. But anyway, deep stage nine, uh, the, the, the scene of deep stage nine was that in all of Star Trek, you always have a ship traveling. This was a station. So it didn't move, which means things had to come to it, which means inherently structurally you have a difference. And that means you have to have an overarching plot to affect these people who are fairly

stationary because they're on a station. It was the first non-Roddenberry series start. They didn't go from morality play to morality play. They all the characters developed through their conflict and they developed together. The plot kept coming to them and so it's a huge step away from what had previously been done. Now once TNG ended, DS9 was the only thing. It was the standard since it was so successful at writing the crests of DS9s or of TNGs popularity they went ahead and made Voyager and they're like, okay, well here we've got the station Let's have ship take off from it and

You've got the same overlap But since deep space nine had the whole war going that really restricts what Voyager can do The only way to get around that is to just throw them to another quadrant and have them working the way back. Trying to get home. And that's exactly, and it was the different thing still. And it's really cool. By the way, the Odyssey. Yeah. Just saying, talking about what source you're ripping off. Oh yeah, yeah. So it's a story about trying to come home. It's a story about isolation, severe isolation. Also more exploration because as you're working your way back,

there were cool plots, but there was also a noticeable shift. The way I've described it was, if the next generation was bold colors, Voyager was pastels. Okay. I've heard it mockingly referred to as, oh, the next generation, with half the charisma. Yeah. I've heard it mockingly referred to as, oh, the next generation, with half the charisma. Which ain't wrong. And some of it's because just,

by this point, we're a little saturated as a market. But they do things to spice up the plot and they examined what makes a human, a human and what makes a being, a being in ways that no other show here to forehand done. Yeah. Now, they shifted characters around, but they largely struggled.

I remember Belana Torres. She's the half-king on. Yeah. One of the, one of the, if not the legacy character dating all the way back to TNG, if I remember correctly. No, Torres wasn't in TNG. No. Sorry, I'm thinking of another off-cling back to TNG. If I remember correctly, no, Torres wasn't in TNG. Sorry, I'm thinking of another clinging on from TNG. But she was, she was, she wasn't like a see character from DS9. No, no, you're thinking in Harry. But she was in the beginning a sex Object in yes, she was going to be the love interest

Yes, and there were scenes shot very early on that obviously put her in that kind of thing and I don't I don't know if it was because she's a woman of color I don't know if it's because she's a cling on I don't know if it's because her character was just too angry to get behind and men didn't like that. But eventually they came up with Seven of Nine wearing all the skin type jumpsuits that she could. As a friend of mine named her Six of Nine. Yeah, there you go. And so she ended up taking kind of that role.

So you see them kind of shifting and adjusting, which to their credit, they were trying to shift and adjust. On the other hand, you know, the next generation, I don't remember them shifting and adjusting all that much. No. And deep space nine, they were really good at revving you up and then giving you a silly episode and then revving you back up. But Voyager seems a little bit more

a slave to the grind as far as what the fans want. And again, it could be because they're responding to the fact that people are just getting a waning interest. There's other things that are out there by that point. It's the late 90s. And the plots, the plots are a bit dodgy. And yeah, I mean it just kind of becomes a little bit bland and so they bring in other other characters from other series to kind of you know spike your interest. Now Enterprise is the next one. At this point it's expected to continue as the franchise but by this time the franchise itself is struggling. So the coattails are not as sturdy, and the plots are even weaker. The first major plot line was this thing called the temporal cold war.

And it was the idea that people have been temporally messing with the earth for a long time. Essentially turning the earth into Berlin, while two mysterious and more powerful factions were facing off over it. But it's hard to get people interested in a shadowy thing that doesn't directly impact most of the plot and it just becomes kind of a Mary Sue of like, oh, it's a temporal thing. Oh, God, it okay. The neat thing though is that there's no prime directive. Yeah. For a little while. For a little while. Yeah. And we see the interactions and blunders

that lead to the prime directive. There's no cohesive plan for exploration. Yeah, there's no. Just go do what you're going to do, figure it out. And one of the more powerful episodes that I remember from Enterprise, which I didn't follow closely. But one of the episodes that affected me a very great deal, I remember was the security officer winds up developing an attachment to feelings for an alien who is a third

Gender oh, yeah of an alien race that has that has three three sexes There's you know what we would consider male what what we would consider female and then there is a catalyst Right sex that is not a newter not a newter. Yeah yeah and and it's necessary for reproduction and there are minority that that that sex is a minority of the population and so they are they're like handmaid's handmaid they're treated like handmaid and he the the security officer whose name I'm forgetting right now I don't remember any of those one of my favorite characters, but he he became very attached to this individual He felt very strongly for this individual and he encouraged

them to To try to you know stand up and change their circumstances. And your essentially in being, you don't deserve to be treated like that. And then the authorities on both sides, the Federation and the alien race that they were dealing with basically said,

you know, we, that's not gonna happen. He got, he got basically told your meddling and stuff you don't understand. This is an hour place to be telling them how to do this, moral relativism on this stuff. And on the other side it was, no, no, this is your role in society. You're going to do it, period, look at the couple that you've been attached to and the fact that they've been waiting for this all their lives. And now you're going to selfishly tell them, no, you don't want to do that. Right. And it wound up leading to them,

the third gender non-human committing suicide. Right. And that was the tagline. That was like, at the end of the episode, you find out, yeah, well, they, I think they continually refer to the character as a she, if I remember right, in the end. Well, because he was a male and he was interested

Yeah, so you know not read by the way. Yes read my favorite character by the way out of the whole series But you know the series unfortunately was so short lived and left a relatively small impression on my mind I can remember his name Scott baccala of course I remember Captain Archer because it it's Scott Backula. And you always remember the Captain? Yeah, because he's really the only character. Sorry. But, you know, and the tagline for the episode was, you know, the knowledge that this individual had been crushed and committed suicide because of this intervention, and it was, oh, oh,

this is why we have a prime directive even though it sucks. Right. Exactly. So they get roasted for week writing, although they have some really good episodes. Yeah. They do. Now, here's the problem. 9-11. Yeah, happened. And it's seriously jarred American pop culture. I mean, we went from... I don't know if you remember what the big story was in the summer before 9-11. It was the summer of the shark because three people worldwide had been attacked by sharks and one person had been killed. Wow.

Yeah. Good times, man. Yeah. And then it turned into... When the world was innocent. Yeah. And then it turned to terrace her everywhere. And certainly, as a culture, we shifted as a result.

We were previously certain of our place in the world, mostly, and then it went to total fear. I mean, I don't know if you remember what it was like for you, but I remember like people were afraid to drive on the freeway. How Louise was Damio banned. It was, it was, it was a time of like we'd gotten our noses bloodied and we hadn't been in a fist fight in a long, long time. Which is weird because overseas we'd had plenty of interactions with Al-Qaeda and I'll probably get into that

in a different episode. But we'd also just been through an election that was unlike any other in popular memory because and it was frankly problematic for democracy and we can look back now and go Yeah, yeah, yeah, um, it was a series one two punch. We went through a hotly contested election That's fine having elections are fine, but having the results be so doubtful and having there be so much. I don't know, there'll be so much anger. Suspicion. Simmering anger and suspicion and resentment.

On both sides, really, even on the wedding side, because this is back when I was still identifying as a Republican. um you know even even on that side there there was some reflexive anger kind of floating around because Republicans had just been through nine year or eight years of Clinton. Well I mean there was there was that but I know my my own my own feeling I was you know working as a school teacher for the first time and um you, the amount of anger I was hearing from my Democratic colleagues in the lunchroom, you know, was something that made me angry.

Like, okay, look, you know, I understand, you know, but this has been settled now. And, you know, can we stop harping on it? Right. You know, and I look back on my attitude now and can we stop harping on it? Right. And I look back on my attitude now and I'm like, well, maybe we should have kept harping on it. Maybe we should have kept harping on it. And maybe there was a more constructive way to say it

rather than can we not harp on it. Yeah. You know. Well, even I think, you know, I'm going to call out the Republicans a little bit here too, because one thing we like to do is retread 18 years ago elections. But the Republican Party during its primary had done something way dirtier than it had ever done before. Well, during a primary, than it had ever done before in recent memory at least, in that you had Carl Rove running George

Bush's campaign and you had John McCain who had rehabilitated his image and was doing fine until Carl Rove was like look we either go dirty or we go home and Bush looked the other way yeah and so here's a deal Carl Rove yeah if there is a revolution as an Eisenhower Republican I want Carl Rove up against the wall with a bunch of other people right out the gate. Yeah, you made it. Yeah. But so it's a one-two punch.

And so our ability to consume something in entertainment, that's similar but different from what we were used to, was diminished. Our willingness to give it a chance was severely blunted. Okay. And season two, very similar to season one, honestly. Now watching them now, they're not really that bad. And that's kind of my point. It's actually, it's not bad TV. But if you watch them out of context

with the rest of the Star Trek series, that's why they're not that bad. If you watch them in context, then it's problematic. On its own, it's fine, but in the context of the 14 years of Star Trek that had been on TV by that point continuously, it was glaringly troublesome. It just wasn't very creative. It was not very groundbreaking, like a lot of the things that already been done. And I can't emphasize this enough.

9-11 made us not want to explore anymore as a culture. We hung her down. So show about exploration doesn't work. In fact, if you look at the shows that come out after that, it's about having a secret. Heroes. It's about having a secret, heroes. It's about being stranded somewhere. Lost.

Okay. It's about torturing the shit out of people, 24, or the shield, or it's the age of the anti-hero, but the times where you do have heroes. Or it's about being constantly under siege and having to make morally debatable choices about a Star Galactic. Yeah, absolutely. And I like that constantly under siege. and having to make morally debatable choices about Star Galactic. Yeah, absolutely. And I like that constantly.

Being on the run, under siege. Fighting for your very survival. Yeah. That's a through line from BSG to loss to heroes too. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's a connector I had not consciously spotted. And none of us consciously were making it.

It was just that effects are consuming. So the outside world is very perilous all of a sudden. And it felt very all of a sudden. Despite the fact that the coal had happened, despite the fact that Kenya and Tanzania had happened in the three years prior, it was perilous now. Well, the coal and Kenya and Tanzania were not on American soil. Exactly.

And they were not, I'm going to say this, they were not the same scale of issue. I mean, there had been, I mean, historically speaking, there's a threshold that you have to meet to get somebody to declare a war, to get somebody to truly panic. And, you know, there had been, there had been diplomatic incidents like prior World War I, there had been all kinds of diplomatic incidents. There had been, you know, backing and fourthing with Japan before December 7th, but it was the scale of the destruction on December 7th and the smoking wreckage. The smoking wreckage that was what made that so psychologically imprinting on the silent

generation. You're absolutely right. And that's the reason that we refer to things ever since then as our December 7th moment. Now it's know, now it's our 9-11. Yeah, now it's our 9-11. They're there 9-11. Yeah. Because we only see in their context of what we had. Yeah. So you have a show that's frankly kind of bland and it releases just a couple of weeks. And also everybody's wearing same color. Like that's another thing we forget. Deep space, deep space 9, they were wearing same color, but there were accents of different colors. Voyager, there were different colors, overlaying the same color in the next generation. Oh my god, it was a color fest. This one,

they're all wearing the same. Yeah. Which I get it, it's a prequel, and there's all kinds of arguments for why jumpsuits are much more practical. You're a utilitarian. Yeah, and I agree, but it's bland. It just doesn't do well. The show doesn't do well. Yeah, visually it's not. And then they did this thing where they opened themselves up to a letter writing campaign.

They asked the consumer, what do you guys want? And this is a problem because consumers are people who are hurting and scared. As a culture. And so they don't want to follow a crew that's going into potentially herty and scary places. They don't want to follow a crew that's exploring strange new worlds. They don't want that because that's now a scary thing. They want to feel safe.

So season three comes about and it's pretty clear what the writers are going for They're aiming at processing 9-11 and I don't know if it was a conscious choice So much as this is what happened, but at least the Americans who were watching the show Season two ends with a race called the Zindi It's actually a coalition of six races Five of whom actually exists the six one has been killed off a coalition of six races, five of whom actually exist. The six one has been killed off. Foreign coalition of races, and just listen to this description and see if it sounds familiar. There are foreign coalition of races who have been scattered by forces more powerful than

they are. They used to fight with each other with ever shifting alliances but have united to face this common enemy. Even then, they're not wholly united. So they attack the earth. They kill 7 million of us with a giant laser and run off before anybody can do anything. So a lot of people are praising this shift. Because it's more interesting. It's new. It's new and at the same time it's familiar and it allows us to process stuff. You know it's like when your heart broken and you listen

to sad songs. Yeah you know it kind of leaches it out of you. Yeah. Now the original concept seemed to be that the earth was nascent in its exploration. A bit daft. Yeah. Blundering and you know they're the golden retriever who's tail knocks everything off the table. And it was certainly not the powerhouse that the earth had become by the time of the next generation and the space nine. We were the dumber cousin. The Vulcans were constantly going, oh stop it you can't and we're like, well you can't do that. do that. And that was what they're aiming at. But now, in order to answer the letters, they shifted. And the writers were living through the aftermath of 9-11.

And again, 9-11, it took a long time to remove all that rubble. And that's going on while these writers are coming up with ideas. What are we going through? We tend to write and express whatever we're going through. And so the Zindies 9-11 the Earth. Now season 3 picks up looking for these killers wanting to bring them to justice. Again, this should kind of sound like, I don't know, March of 2004. That ends up being the through

line for most of the other plots to come from here on out. How do we confront R911 through science fiction? Here's the problem with science fiction. Science fiction is always about where you are now, but it's take this thing and draw it out and let's explore aspects of our humanity. This science fiction seemed to be, here's where we are now. Let's wallow in here we are are and that was it. Yeah, and it was so how do we culturally rewrite that so that we feel safer? How do we win? Yeah, we write this so that we win. Yeah, what's our Rambo three for this? Yeah, you know

Yeah, which ironically Rambo three he's helping the Mujahideen in Afghanistan and they think them Yeah, credit credits. Yeah, so or it's it's it's our Rambo 2 where he goes back and wins Vietnam for it. Yeah So the entirety of season three is about preventing the next attack Again, I don't know if you remember but shortly after 9-11 now I was in teacher school at this point, right? so get my credential on and it was gross. We were a social science methods class and the 9-11 had happened

Three or four of our our cohort mates got activated. They're on national. Okay. So that was rough And then on top of that plain crashed or lost engine over queens and crashed in queens, also in New York. And later on, you get shoe bomb guy and underwear bomb guy and stuff like that. But I remember like having a lesson on how do we, because I mean we're learning to be teachers at 9-11, right? How do we, I mean it is January is my start my credential for 2002, but how do we contextualize this for the kids? I remember one group got up. Um, a dude is just so gross.

A dude tied his sweatshirt around his head to make it look kind of turban-esque. Uh, they drew a, uh, airplane on the board and he goes up and he races the engine and laughs and sits down and that was their lesson. I'm like why the fuck? Yeah I didn't go to graduation with these people. It was it was gross and stupid. It was just and but that's where people were at mentally and emotionally like it. Yeah it was it was you know we talked about in one of our tangents in our prayer, I've said we talked about, you know, the characterization of, you know, Japanese during World War II, you know, same kind of thing is what happened on, unfortunately,

on a, on a wider scale, you know, after, after 9-11 here, and, you know, I mean, that was, that was, that was, unfortunately, the zip-kiss. That was the dark, the underbelly of our anger and our frustration. We had a chance to be better. Yeah. And we did.

We kind of flopped that one. Yeah, we did. You know, the biggest thing I remember talking about, what the atmosphere was like. I was living in Seattle when the attack happened. Another time I can tell the whole story of my memory of that day, but I was living in Seattle and in October I traveled down here to visit my best friend from college and my, my, the buddies from college. And I nearly got myself shot by an international guardsman over an argument about whether I could take

a bunch of toy soldiers on the airplane with me. Not even kidding, not exaggerating. The guy, the guy walked up as I was trying to engage in a lively debate with the TSA agent who wanted me to check a case full of several hundred dollars worth of war game figures, which I didn't want to do because several hundred dollars worth of war game figures. And this guy was an activated air national guardsman up in Seattle who walked up. I feel made a point of showing the stripes on his shoulder, put his hand near at least in my memory it's

on the handle of his weapon. He holds through his hand. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and and said, you know, do you have a problem, sir? Wow, it's a good thing you were white Yeah, no, it is it is and it's a good thing that I wasn't Two years younger or yeah, you know, I'd wound up going to jail at the very least Yeah, and having and losing all those soldiers now. Now, yeah, so, I mean, yeah, paranoia, I mean, they gripped, they gripped, stupid, stupid paranoia, which isn't the first time and it sadly won't be the last. Yeah. Now, the entirety of season three is about preventing another attack. This is happening during 2004, which coincidentally is a campaign year.

And so it's about preventing another attack. And enterprise is just kind of incidentally carrying water for the bush campaign. Here's where it kills the franchise. This kind of plot line can only last for so long. And most importantly, like I said, sci-fi should challenge modern culture, not reinforce it. Okay. Like I said, sci-fi should challenge modern culture, not reinforce it. Okay. So, in a lot like TV, like a lot of TV in 2004, it was reinforcing a culture.

Where a man who got us into a disastrous war that stained our national identity, I would just point out Abu Ghraib, waterboarding, the Patriot Act, he was running for office claiming that he was going to find the real culprit. He hasn't done it yet, and the support that we had for the war, and I'll get into that in another episode, but the support that we had for the war was starting to dwindle. Now, the market is also flooding with other stories like this that are better told, that are not from a sci-fi perspective, that are modern, and we need something closer to

home. 24. The shield lost. All the gritty shows. Everything is reflecting this culture of fear. Frustration, impendence. I'm a big fan of lost. I will always keep for lost. The idea that there's a monster in the woods is some scary shit and it was riveting. Now I was also watching this show unfortunately the the summer before I heard like the the leading up to my wedding and then my honeymoon which was gonna be in Tahiti so every episode starts with somebody else's memory of the plane crashing which is a dumb thing to watch. Oh that's great. Yeah that's awesome.

But it was so riveting. Yeah I can believe it. Now nobody really wants that in their sci-fi. They want that in other type stuff but not in their science fiction. And Star Trek has always, always, even during the deepest darkest episodes of Deep Space 9. It's always been about optimism. It's been about hope, courage, exploration, and none of that's available anymore. That's not... those aren't cultural touchstones for us at that time and this season doesn't have much of it in there. Now so season three of Enterprise starts up almost exactly three years to the day after 9.11.

It starts on September 10th. They still couldn't find the zindi who were responsible. And the more they looked, the more convoluted it got. This should sound kind of familiar. There was a sense of menace baked into the show by this point. Yeah. Pardon. I just like to point out that I brought him a water so that he wouldn't call. Yeah, and I partially inhale it since what he's doing right now.

So, and we're keeping that in. Yeah. So, just like us after 9-11, there were other attempts to hurt us by extremists. This is true. You have the shoe bomber, you have the plane blowing up over Queens. Like I said, you have the two battles of Flujah. It was a scary time. It was an election year. By the way, the battles in Fluja, you'd later find out black water and all kinds of connections to our secretary of education. But in enterprise, they're trying to stop a second attack that they don't know when it could happen. And it's, that's exactly what we were doing. We were going crazy trying to, I remember there was an article I read about them

hiring Hollywood writers to come up with possible attack scenarios that they should guard against. Yeah. Well, because they wanted, they wanted creative people who were going to think outside the box, you know, and, and from the point of view of anybody who's trying to defend against that kind of stuff, one of the things you do need to worry about in organizations, really of any kind, but especially hierarchical organizations like Department of Homeland Security, DOD, any military kind of structure is group think. Yeah. And, you know, it's a very rare individual who in that environment is able to think laterally.

That's true. That's very true. You know, especially at higher ranks where you've been promoted based on your ability to work within the system. Yeah. You know, and of course, you know, I will cape for the US military till Doomsday because I'm a Navy brat and all that. But that is a known, even within that culture, that's a known institution of weakness for anybody who's willing to self-reflect. And so when I remember hearing about that, I remember thinking, well, good, because they need people who are not susceptible to, well, you know, we know, you know, people

who are going to beg the question. They need people who are going to look at it from completely outside, you know. And so on the one hand, that's a real strength. And I know you're going to have a counterpoint. Yeah, because I can see the look. My argument was exactly the other way. As soon as you're doing that, what you're doing is you're paying people to come up with the more outlandish the more you'll get listened to. And so you're paying people to do that. And now you're focusing on that instead of on crazy pants rather than instead of looking at the data that you have. And by the way, it's not like 9.11 wasn't, what was totally out of the box.

There were all kinds of things. There were all kinds of flags. There were all kinds of flags. I am gonna say this. The idea of the specific nature of what the attack was. Yep, fly a plane into a building. I'm okay, well, even that. of the specific nature of what the attack was. Yeah, fly a plane into a building. I'm okay, well, even that. I'm okay with, we didn't know the exact particulars

of the day and stuff like that, but we knew the players that were involved. They were on lists. Well, if we'd listened to the people doing their jobs. If there had been coordinated effort, yes. What I'm, yeah, well, yes because same same same but what what what everybody the paradigm of what a terror attack looked like yeah was a very different thing. No you're absolutely right before that it was it was it was

embassies yeah it was yeah well and and, and it was not, I mean, the, the manner in which a suicide bomber operated was a specific thing. Yeah, it was a specific paradigm. And the idea of just the sheer, I mean, really, honestly, before 9-11, if somebody had said, okay, here's what you're gonna do you know you don't need explosives you don't need right you know fertilizer you don't need whatever else you just need you need to jump up chat right you know the the the head tilting like wait what right of that you know yeah and and don't get me wrong I think if they'd installed the game sims in the Pentagon you could have figured this out too but

Granted, but I I guess my point is that when When you're hiring outside people whose job it is to come up with crazy shit Mm-hmm. You should make sure first that you've covered all the same shit all the bases Yeah, because they didn't and they't. And a major and horrible way. Yeah, no, I totally agree. Yeah, we're in agreement on that. Certainly on that point. And so to me, it was a sign of, oh man, they have not.

I mean, remember they went on TV saying, does anybody know how to speak Arabic? Like Bob Bear, who had retired shortly before that from CIA, he remembered walking into a bookstore in Hamburg, and he knew what was going on in there. And he's like, how come I'm not running into other CIA agents in here? How come I'm not, like, because this is a hotbed

for radicalized young men, you know, and so like that. So I mean, it's just the amount of infrastructure we put into figuring this stuff out was criminally low. And so, yeah, they go for the creatives. For the creatives. Are you red or seen, Charlie Wilson's war? I have not. Yes, you should. I will.

Because to talk about, you know, the amount of infrastructure not put into, you know, investigating and being prepared for the attack, the tragedy of that story is that we are, is that, well, we, we, we, we armed them, we helped them fight off the Soviets, and then at that point, Wilson, Charlie Wilson, not President Wilson, for those of you who might get confused, was arguing for, okay, now we need to go in,

we need to, you, we need to funnel all the aid we can into the country now we need to go in we need to you we need to funnel all the aid we can into the country we need to build the schools we need to fix the roads we need to do all the stuff and Congress went yeah well no we stopped the commies that's all we need to do right whatever they're they're dirt farmers we don't you know camel jackies we don't need and you took you know allies and turn them into and turn them into enemies by out through neglect and it's certainly true that You know there were elements within the fedeine that were never really going to like us right but we could have Blunted their influence in that society by saying okay, look we helped you fight off the Soviets now Hubba hubba hubba moneyoney, who do you trust?

Right. We're going to rebuild what we used to have. You know, we're going to rebuild, you know, we're going to help what we build. It is a rebuild what we used to have. Yeah, because, you know, prior to... The bull-hack, my energy. Oh, before the Soviet invasion, Afghanistan was, you know,

solidly, you know, in the rank of Second World Nations, you know solidly said to solidly a you know in the rank of second world nations, you know And then the Soviets rolled in and you know you had The foreign army coming in blow and shit up You had the people who were resisting that foreign army were a lot of them were the regressive elements who had kind of wanted to tear things down When Kabul had been right, know, relatively modern place. And, you know, and we just said, all right, well, you know, we gave the Soviets a blinning nose, that's all we needed to do, and walked away.

And, yeah, sure. And that was the point at which we shot ourselves in the foot. So in Enterprise, they're trying to stop that second attack. And they don't know when it's gonna happen. And in this search, the enterprise itself gets badly attacked by this indeed. Yeah. It's all bad.

There's no getting around this that for the writers, this is still what's going on. It's just about being attacked. It's about being victimized. And in a sci-fi setting, that doesn't work. By this point. I'd say certainly within the context of anything like Trek that doesn't work.

There are ways you can do that in a sci-fi setting, but that's not the new. Yeah, even 1984 has hope at the end. You have to read for it, but it's in the afterward work talks about that this society did exist, which complies that it no longer. But yeah, I don't think this is science fiction by this point, though. I think it's futuristic chasing an intrigue, really. Well, yeah.

It's kind of like how people say that start wars in sci-fi. No, it's not. It's fantasy and space opera. Space opera. Well, what do you think about that term? Star Trek is space opera too, but it's a different kind. I would say Star Trek used to be sci-fi, and I think maybe it still is now, but sci-fi is again, we're going to use a future or a succeeding, a scientific setting, and look at aspects of our humanity, set forward, and just fast forward it.

Now season four pays off a lot of this indie timeline, by the way, it spends a lot of time foiling bad plots by extremists. This is 2004, 2005. Similar to SWAT Valley, the surge in Iraq. By this point, nearly all the optimism is squeezed out of TV. Friends is gone.

Yeah, by the way, friends, which was set in New York and never set a thing about 9-11, sci-fi is still answering for to the dominant culture instead of challenging the dominant culture. And we're still in an endless land war in Asia. We did not pay attention to the Sicilian. So here's here's my thought. So here's here's my thought or my car through yeah here's my thought experiment what if 9-11 haven't happened then explorations fine it would have been continued to be fine there would be no need for any apocalyptic storylines be or if it was it was a planet you visited and then the next week you're often exploring another one because that's not what we're facing in our real lives.

You're not facing an apocalyptic tide if there's no one on 11. But since we were scared, that was too scary. We needed paradoxically something that tapped into our existence and our very concrete fear of being attacked repeatedly instead of our fear of the unknown. And the show pays the price, absolutely. Now, a lot of criticism was that it didn't stick to the Star Trek milieu enough. That's fair.

It didn't go mainstream enough. Okay, that's also fair. So it kind of tried to split the difference. It didn't commit either way, totally valid. But the problem with critiques like that is that they also exist at the same time as the art, their contemporaneous. And so they're, they're a product, the criticisms are a product of their times just as much as the art is, and they're not aware of the

impact of the zeitgeist and the current culture on the very framing of their questions. Well, yeah, because they're fish and they don't understand that they're wet. In water. Yeah. Yeah. So hence the shift to of their questions. Well, yeah, because they're fish and they don't understand that they're wet. In water. Yeah. So hence the shift to answer letter writing. Yeah. Now, could Enterprise have worked in a pre-9-11 world?

Yeah. But probably not by much. Quite honestly. And then Margaret was saturated. The idea of prequels was still fairly new. Mm-hmm. Okay, so this is 2001, which means episode one from Star Wars has happened. It's between episodes one and two.

That's a fairly new concept was a prequel at that time. Now think about how weird that is to us now. Oh yeah, it's prequel. What? It's a weird kind of concept. Yeah. So the idea of a prequel wasn't very widely accepted. Very well could have done what voyage or tried to do and maybe even done it better though, I think. I think it was a really good way to get closer to who we are and still examine ourselves through futuristic exploration stuff.

But there's no way to tell. I mean, it's a wonderful thing about counterfactuals. One of the strengths that Voyager had was that it was a star trek that we all knew, but its weakness was that it was way too far away from anything that we did know. We didn't, at that point, we had seen enough strange new worlds and new life and new civilizations. In fact, if you look at the next generation, it started going into archaeology more than it did exploring with other people. It carried the baggage, Voyager did, carried baggage for us, and it looked at things differently. But

having a brand new to everything ever enterprise, exploring space for the first time, forging these relationships that we came to understand as a given in the next generation in Deep Space 9, that might have made for some pretty compelling TV, like you said with the Prime Directive stuff. Well, and the relationship between Terence, humans, and the Vulcans. I remember there was an episode where the Vulcans that we know are this fringe group of religious extremists, religious and quotes extremists, these are schedic logicians. The Jedi later.

Yeah, it can come to find out that no No, that's that's that's that movement becomes mainstream and that's that becomes what what our Vulcans right, well, we had the same thing that we saw in deep space now. Yeah, and yeah, and it's worse like we don't want to talk about it Yeah, I don't want to yeah, and they go with it often. Yeah, yeah, and and and and that stuff is amazing I mean like like as somebody who found the universe compelling, but was not a huge fan, those moments were what Bane me want to keep tuning in. That was like, OK, well, if you're going to do a prequel, this is what I want to see.

Right. And then it just went 9-11. Yeah. Well, so if you actually switched Enterprise and Voyager, so that Voyager was the last series that we end up seeing, and Voyager is the one that comes out in the post-911 world, that may have helped enterprise quite a bit.

But to do that, you have to agree to prequels being a thing before prequels are a thing. So it's just not in our context. You know, and I think what's interesting talking about this now is, you know, you look at the storylines from DS9 about the war with the Gem Hadar. Yes. That could have been...

Well, the Gem Hadar are just a proxy for the dominion. Yeah. Remember? Yeah. And, you know, that war, the war with the dominion, the war with the changelings, there is so much about that that would have been, if that had happened eight years later, however many years we're talking about later, that could have been a runaway success because that could have done all of those same kind of things

that the writers were trying to do in an enterprise. And it would have been true or to what that series was, like as a thing on its own. And the moral, the gray morality of what we saw in DS9 for the first time Would have fit in better with the age of the anti hero Because you know, one of the things that was always kind of weird, you know, when I want I kind of tuned in and out to Enterprise in in the later seasons of it was that Archer and his crew

in the later seasons of it was that Archer and his crew were still very much in the mold of the traditional. Yes. You know, at the end of the day, it's, you know, the power trio on the bridge, you know, Kirk Spock and McCoy, it, it, you go super ego, and I'm mixing up who the ego and the super ego are, but, you know, it's. So did the series. Yeah, well yeah. But, you know, and it's, and it's, they are. You had courage, heart but you know it's so to the series. Yeah well yeah, but but you know and and it's and it's you had their courage, heart and mind. Yeah, yeah, and and but not whether yeah, never never just all the other just all the other three and and and so but the the you know

Archer and his crew were in that same mold of yes at the end of the day Kirk was right. Yep. Even when Kirk was wrong, Kirk was right. Yeah. And there were a few times where Archer was not right. Yeah. Where he flubbed. He flubbed, which shows, you know, some maturity in the development of the franchise. But he was still... 1960s versus 2000s. Yeah, granted. Different times, different standards of what we expect out of heroes. But he was still right.

Even when he flubbed, he was still the good man, you know, capital G, capital M, you know, and the competent man and all that kind of stuff. And, and, you know, even that guy makes mistakes, but he was still very much the white hat. And, you know, there were still very much the black hats. And the thing is, I think our zip guys had also moved in this direction where we recognize we weren't really comfortable with it, but like, you know, Jack Bauer. Yeah, 24 is not really pushing He's like he's he's the guy we're rooting for right, but there are a lot of times where we're looking at him

Going one you are damaged beyond belief. Yes, and two You're terrifying Like like you you are you are the monster that fights the monsters right, you know I don't remember whether there was a big season two or season three where you know, he calls a guy into the interrogation room and you know, reads off the rap sheet of this guy that he's got in the interrogation room.

And it's, I mean, it's this cartoonishly awful list of horrible stuff this guy's done. And you're looking at this going, oh my God, you're gonna try to, you know, get this guy to help you go after these other bad guys. And he goes through the list of crimes this guy has committed and then stands up, shoots the guy point blank in the chest. And while his, his, you know, assistant is standing there, a gased, horrified, Bauer stands

up over the, you know, steaming corpse of the guy who's just shot and Said you always were afraid to get your hands dirty get me a hacksaw Wow And what you think you're on time TV that's prime time TV and what you find out is the whole reason he listed that list of awful cartoonish like oh my god This guy like the devil looks at this guy like man, even I have standards right the whole reason they did that was to set it up So no, this is a bad guy. So it's okay right when power, you know murders him Violates constitution violates a constant violates the law violates basic humanity just shoots him in cold blood Yep in order to cut his head off To take it with him to gain access to the bigger bad guy because he's gonna show that as,

no man, this is a guy you wanna dead, I killed him. You trust me now, you're gonna deal with me. And it's like, man, holy crap. You remember when the British did something like that, but they actually got the widow's permission to use her husband's body to leave it in the water and they went through all that trouble. They didn't kill him.

They didn't actually kill the guy. And they asked for the murder of the water and they went through all that trouble. They didn't kill them. They didn't actually kill the gun They asked for the murder of the guy they asked for permission is Britain the evilest empire Well, you know, they're very they're very polite though. Yeah, we'll quite you have to give them you know Yeah, there's there's there's a way you do these things. Yeah So you don't you don't just shoot the man for God's sake right? don't just shoot the man for God's sake. Right. It'll ruin T. So I still think, I think.

But I mean, that's the era that we're talking about. It's happening in. And I think that one of the things that wound up hurting Enterprise was that they were still, even though they were dealing with all this, you know, zitgeist baggage, that sounds like a luggage brand. Zitgeist baggage. Um, that sounds like a luggage brand. They were still trying to hold to the very Star Trek tradition of the, no, no, black and white morality.

And you can't, it's really, you can tell those about, so you can't tell those stories with a black and white morality. You can, but it's really hard. And it's, and it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, morality. You can, but it's really hard. And it's, and it's, it's almost like you'd have to be creative to do it. Yeah. And, yeah. When you're answering letters by consumers, you ain't being creative.

You are, you're not, you're not, you're not, you're not, you're not creative. You're a cafeteria, you're no longer a chef. Yeah. Now, I like what you said about DS9. I hadn't thought about that. I still like DS9 where it was though. It, like, I do do too. So I would rather have had Voyager be the post-911 because then Voyager is hopeful and is about coming home. Yeah, and that would be nice to see on TV. I don't I don't think I think whatever whatever franchise

They were they were creating at the time would have been whatever franchise they were creating at the time would have been affected by this. Because everything else was, I don't think you could have a had. You might not have those stories. I mean, it's wonderful to think about what geekdom would look like, what our culture would look like.

If somebody had had the ability to tell those kind of stories and make them compelling and get people's eyeballs on the screen for them during that time period. I think if we could have had voices in the media telling us, no, look, this is not the time for us to carry, this is not the time for us to be afraid, this is the time for us to go out and say, no, look, we are pluralistic, we are tolerant, we are brave,

we are going to go out, we are going to do this instead of, and I was as guilty of this as anybody else. I mean, we all did curl up in a ball and we were afraid, and that was what happened to our culture. We blew our chance. Yeah, and that's history. I wanna, I wanna piggyback what you said right there. Okay.

We have a new, you had, you had Enterprise. Okay, now you have this new Star Trek series called Discovery. Hmm, it's the first one that comes out since Enterprise. Okay, it's 2017, last year. Yeah. Now this is another prequel. Yep.

Now we are flush with prequels. Nostalgia is a lot easier to market now. It feels better when the world is crumbling around you to be perfectly honest. Yes. It follows a new model too though. Streaming has changed all kinds of TV things. Oh yeah. So now it's a shorter season. Yeah. it was 15 episodes instead of the usual 2325 that we saw in the past And they've been picked up for a second season of 13 episodes now. I haven't watched it So we'll see but at least someone is paying attention consciously to what's going on in the world that we're watching is TV showing and this might be the first time that's been true since the original series Okay, because he absolutely was taking on racism. He was making morality plays of the time that he was in and

from what I hear that's what's going on here. So here's the executive producer I'm going to end with this, the executive producer of Discovery, Alex Kertzmann. He says, the defining factor of Rodenberry's vision is the optimistic view of the future. Once you lose that you lose the essence of what Star Trek is. That being said, Star Trek has always been a mirror to the time it reflected. And the topical question now is, how do you preserve and protect what Starfleet is in the weight of a challenge like war and the things that have to be done in war? Okay. So we stand

a chance of actually having a better series. Let's have it. I haven't seen it. Yeah, okay. Yeah. Yeah. But, so yeah, I think Enterprise could have been a fantastic series. I think ultimately- I think there were things in Enterprise that were fantastic.

If you just look at the performances, the acting, the design was new, was something different. I mean, like you said, the color palette was kind of more restricted, but there was a reason for it. And yeah. You had flawed characters for the first time. Yeah, it weren't bad guys. Yeah, yeah, flawed characters, the weren't bad guys, really, really for the first time. And it within the consciously flawed. Consciously flawed.

Curk was psychotic the whole way through. But consciously flawed characters, written deliberately with flaws. You know, you absolutely don't understand. What do you mean by that? So yeah, I think 9-11 ruined what could have been a maybe not the best show for Star Trek, but certainly could have been a good one. Yeah. So now that we've dissected the events that led to enterprise not really living up to its potential, what do you think after looking on this up and thinking about it, what is your takeaway from all of it?

A couple things, 1 9 11 ruins everything. OK. 2, and that just seems to be the case. Two, I think we need to be aware of what science fiction is. Okay. Before we go slinging that term around too loosely, I think science fiction is a specific genre, just like romantic comedies or a specific genre. I wouldn't call Twin Peaks a romantic comedy, even though there were some fun parts. I mean, there were some romance.

I don't know. I might try to argue with you on that. But I'd lose, but I'd try to argue with you on that. But yeah, I don't know that enterprise was science fiction by the time it ended, whereas it was when it started. Okay, I don't know. What about you, would you find it? In going over all of this, you know, because we were living through it, it had never really occurred to me at the time, just the extent to which, like you said,

survival became such a massive through line. Yeah. In the popular media that was being created at that during that time period, you know, we were so busy, I was so busy, you've just watching, you know, the day-to-day headlines about the war in Iraq and the war in Afghanistan, you know, the war in Iraq coming on, you know, later.

But, you know, just looking at those headlines and kind of following along with all of it and the way that the tone got darker and the color palettes got desaturated and our heroes mostly stopped being heroes and started turning into anti-heroes was something that, you know, I think for most of us happened on a subconscious kind of level. It wasn't something we were aware of at the time, but now You know actually going back and looking at it. It's really striking, you know, I mean, I think I think the first time I actually really noticed it was the second season of BSG Which I'm gonna talk about yeah in another episode Because it was an anvil being dropped. In that case, it was, oh, hey, by the way, here's your Acme Anvil.

And even in that case, it was something I looked at as like, oh wow, these guys are really, they're not afraid to drop this hammer. That's really something. Funny hammer and ammo. Yeah, yeah, where... And at at the time it feels edgy. Yeah, because it's pulling on a an anxiety that you that's that's kind of part of the operating system. Yeah, so it's kind of calling out what you didn't even have a name for. Yeah, it seems edgy. So, you know, looking forward. Yeah, let's kind of look at what's edgy in our current cultural

context and see if that's pulling on an anxiety We're gonna be doing that when I talk about horror films. Oh, yeah, and when we when we again when we talk about Zombies right the zombie thing is gonna be a big deal But it didn't mean to steal your thunder was there more no, they're really I mean that's that's basically it I mean I could I could ram a lot about it So all that's left now, I guess, is to tell people what we think they should be reading or watching. Okay.

And also what's coming next. All right, as far as reading, I'm still working, because it's only the next day from the last episode we filmed. I'm still working or not recorded. I'm still working on getting my way through at home by Bill Bryson. I highly recommend it. And I also am working on the forging translation of Myers manual of combat written in 1570 because I've been away from fencing practice for a very long time and before I show up I want to have done my homework and it's really dry if you're not

actually you know a fencer but from a historical perspective it's a really interesting window into if you're able to kind of read into the subtext of it looking into the way the middle class was developing and the beginning of sportification of combat forms and that kind of stuff. Okay. So you know if you have the time or are interested in picking up a sword and learning how to use one, I highly recommend it. What do you got going on? As far as books go, I want to recommend a book by an old friend of mine actually called the moral disarmament of France.

Education, pacifism, and patriotism, 1914 to 1940. Studies in the social and cultural history of modern warfare by Mona Segal. And it's essentially about how history teachers tried to never again before never again was cool. Oh wow. Yeah, and they basically said, look, if we look at our history the right way, then maybe kids won't want to go and fight. So it's a pretty cool book.

Interesting. Yeah. Other than that, I strongly recommend if anybody wants to watch a TV show that discusses what it is to be human. There's one called Being Human, which the American version, think is superior to the British version. It's about a vampire, a werewolf, and a ghost all living together, trying to hold onto the shreds of humanity that they still have. It's four seasons, it's really good. It's really good stuff. All right, well we have been Geek History in Time, and for Ed Blalock, I'm

Damien Harmony, and we'll catch you next time. in a geek history and time and for Ed Blaylock, I'm Damien Harmony and we'll catch you next time.