Episode 706- A Journey Through Star Trek's Scary Episodes

0:09 Continue with the operation. You may fire when ready. Old bobs and worm stories that'll twist and turn. Baltar, Scimitar, Death of Tasha Yar. Flash, Gordon, Buck, Roger, Stormtroopers and Clone Wars. James, Holden, Tweaky, John Koenig and Ziggy. We talk about the series. You can join us live by picking up your phone now. We talk about the series.

0:55 We're coming to you on your dream services now. We talk about the series. Comics, books, and games, we go beyond the show now. We talk about the series. Come and join us as. We sit and chat and we go on and on and. On and on. Well, good evening Trekkies and Trekkers around the globe. I'm Uncle Jim. Welcome to Trek Talkin' and Beyond. And I have to get my notes ready because I don't have them ready because I just don't have them ready. I was being distracted by these glowing bluenets. Anyways, I'm trying to get my Live stream to work, and it's not working. Okay, I'm not going to worry about it. So, it's Thursday, October 29th, 2026. Welcome to episode 706 of Trek Talking and Beyond. Before we go too far, I'd like to go around the room and introduce my awesome trekspers.

1:54 We're going to start out with the blue shadow in the room first, and we're going to say hello to V. How are you doing tonight, V? Hello. Yes, well, you know, the Halloween show and... The joke was always I was a blue Andorian, so tonight I really am. It's just you definitely are. You're welcome, or I'm sorry, either one. Let's swing out to Portland and say hello to Paul. How are you doing tonight, Paul? Well, I'm doing okay, Uncle Jim. As the old adage says, may you live in interesting times. And we definitely are, that's for sure. And sticking with our Portland theme, we have our very own miracle worker, David.

2:36 How you doing, David? Pretty sad, pretty sad. But yeah, other than that, kicking in and glad we got this show going. So let's see how it goes. It'll go fine. It always does. And of course, out in Portland as well, it's something in the water. We have Eric. How you doing tonight, Eric? V has brought me joy to what was otherwise a very sad end to the day. I'm sure we'll talk all about it. But yeah, what a, I don't know, man, it's hard to recover and like, you know, build the energy here, but I think we're, Hey, we're going to do it. We'll all do it together. Right. We're all in the same boat. So let's do it. Do you want to touch my bat with Eric? I know you do.

3:18 I've, I've handled it before and that's true. And it was, yeah, it was, it worked out. Interesting. What, Yeah, okay. I mean, it was foam, so, you know. But you can't tell when you look at it, though. It looks authentic. Kind of like that thing, the big pink thing that Kirk has in the one episode where he makes the cannon out of the. Yeah, well, my bat lift is bigger than your bat lift. Anyways. And we're going to swing out to my hometown. We're going to come out to Vermont. We're going to welcome Whitney.

4:00 Whitney. Whitney. In honor of Chekhov. Whitney. Howdy, howdy. To the podcast. How are you doing tonight, Whitney? I'm good. Also sad, but good. Whitney is my peep from school. We Trek Talk every single day. Pretty much. That's pretty cool. Amidst business work, of course. Yeah, we always separate business from work. Well, you guys realize if you go to lunch and you talk about Star Trek, but you mention the business at some point, that you can expense that later as a business development opportunity. Yes, that would be an expense. Hmm.

4:42 So, yeah, Whitney has a giant poster of the Enterprise D on her wall. And that's how I met Whitney. I was like, wow, she's got to be cool. And she is. So if you guys want to check out all of our shows, you can go over to trektalking.com. They're all there. All of 762. Well, no, not all of 700. But there's quite a few there. Check them out, please. You can support Trek Talking by just simply subscribing for 99 cents a month. If that's too steep and you don't feel comfortable doing that, the next best way that you can support us is by liking and sharing our posts because that helps our algorithm on Facebook grow. Tonight, well, yeah, tonight we're going to be talking about spooky horror Star Trek.

5:25 When Star Trek tried to go spooky and horror, how did it work? What are our favorite episodes? We're just going to freeform this one, but I think we're going to have some fun anyways. We have some fan shout-outs. We're going to say hello to fans just like you out there around the globe. And what sci-fi actor do you share a birthday with? You can find out on our Sci-Fi Birthdays. And, of course, we have Uncle Jim's Movie Pick of the Week. And, yeah, we also have some Star Trek news. Some very, very sad news today. We are going to be talking about Walter Koenig. But just a few hours before the show... We found out that Patrick Stort had passed away, which is devastating.

6:09 And although we're going to do a special Patrick Stort show next week, I asked David if he could put something together in honor of Patrick Stort. And we're going to play that for you guys right now. David, if you will, please. Yeah, it's a little rough, but here goes. Wow, David. That was beautiful. Well done. For something. Wow. Awesome. Awesome. Yeah. I hope that you guys are all subscribers and you got to see that awesome video that David put together for us. If not, you need to subscribe so you can see it. It's really touching, really well done. Good job, David. Yeah, thanks.

6:51 I don't want to say too much about Patrick Stewart. We're going to talk about him for a full show next week, and you guys have time to subscribe so you can watch that video again next week. But I just felt it was very important that we We honor Patrick Stewart and at least have an opportunity to mention him tonight. Unfortunately, I had this all show already planned for Walter and it was too late to rewrite everything. So I asked David to put together this video for us just to remember Patrick Stewart. Okay, so we have more sad news to move on to as well. I mentioned that Walter Koenig had passed away and we're going to start off the show with Walter's obituary.

7:35 And for that, we are going to turn to Eric. So Eric, please. Yeah, Jim. Unfortunately, as you were saying, Walter Koenig, the Russian crewman Chekhov on Star Trek was lost to us this week at the age of 90 years old. In a 2013 interview for the TV Academy Foundation, Koenig said he didn't watch Star Trek before he came aboard. I flipped through the channels and I'd see styrofoam rocks. They were so obviously styrofoam. And I said, this has got to be phony. I didn't give it a chance, he recalled. The actor portrayed a Russian for the first time in his career, a student who had defected to the U.S. on a 1963 episode of the NBC drama Mr.

8:15 Novak. He then guest starred as a young sergeant whose goal of being promoted to officer is complicated by the fact that his mother is a communist on a 1964 installment of The Lieutenant, another series created by Roddenberry. After his Star Trek audition, Koenig spent a couple of lonely hours in an outer office wondering if he had gotten the job when he was approached by a man and asked to follow him into the wardrobe room. He drops to his knees in front of me, Koenig said, and takes my crotch in his hand and I'm saying, what are you doing? I didn't see the tape measuring ruler in his other hand and he was measuring from my crotch to my cuff to decide how long my pants should be.

8:58 He says, you do have... A costume, don't you? And that's the auspicious way I learned I was on Star Trek, and it was going to change my life. Marvin Walter Koenig was born in Chicago on September 14, 1936. His father, a translator for RCA Victor, and later an entrepreneur, was a dyed-in-the-wool commie, Koenig said. He noted that FBI agents once searched his family's apartment. Koenig starred in productions of Peer Gynt and The Devil's Disciple at Fieldstone High School in New York, went to Grinnell College in Iowa to study pre-med, and then transferred to UCLA after his sophomore year pursuing a degree in psychology. However, he took an acting class and received a letter of recommendation from his teacher that, in 1958, got him into the famed Neighborhood Playhouse in New York, where he studied alongside James Caan, Christopher Lloyd, and Dabney Coleman. The boyish actor returned to LA to claim a role in the 1961 Burt Lancaster film The Young Savages, but that job fell through. He then made his on-screen debut on the afternoon show Day in Court and appeared in the pilot and the first two episodes of General Hospital in 1963, well-loved by at least one member of our podcast community. Maybe V2, I'm

10:30 not sure. At the time, Koenig excelled at doing various dialects, portraying French, Armenian, Swedish, and German characters, as well as playing juvenile delinquents, as he did in 1964 on the Alfred Hitchcock Hour. The episode was directed by Joseph Pevny. and written by Harlan Ellison, later two prominent behind-the-scenes players on Star Trek. In fact, Pevney was one of the people for whom Koenig auditioned for Chekhov. He really liked my work, he kept telling me. You're going to be a big star, Koenig recalled. When I came in to read for Star Trek, he was very enthusiastic, and one of the reasons I got the part. Koenig said the character he was to play, was at first named Jones because producers wanted an actor that would appeal to the same demographic that Davy Jones of the Monkees did, kids 8 to 14 years old. And indeed, my fan mail was from people who were 8 to 14 years old, he said. They said, I think you're groovy. I love your hair, which was a wig, by the way. I got hundreds and hundreds of letters, the third most after Bill Shatner and Leonard Nimoy. He said Chekhov would eventually become less popular because of three things. The hair wasn't real, I wasn't really Russian, and that exotic flavor was gone.

11:52 And viewers found out that I was married, and they couldn't fantasize about being with Chekhov. Things then started to take a nosedive. On the series, Chekhov really didn't have much to do. The actor knew he was there to, quote, set out the bones of the plot and let McCoy, Spock, and Kirk fill it in. Koenig was more important to the Star Trek movies, being nominated by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror for his work on The Wrath of Khan from 1982 and The Voyage Home from 1986. In 1976, Koenig and Shatner both appeared on an episode of Columbo, but the Star Trek veterans didn't share any scenes and didn't talk during production. It was between the series and the movies, and I don't even think he remembered my name, Koenig said. He also said he was really upset when he was left out of Star Trek the animated series because of budgetary reasons. Koenig did write an episode for the 1973 to 1974 NBC cartoon. He played Chekhov again as the Admiral, aged 143 in the two-part crowdsourced Renegades series that debuted online in 2017. Ooh, good timing right there. That's the picture from that series.

13:09 Worried about not getting work after Star Trek was canceled, He began writing and penned episodes for The Power of Matthew Starr, Family, Land of the Lost, and The Incredible Hulk. He also wrote, produced, and starred in the sci-fi film Inalienable from 2010, starring Richard Hatch. Koenig lost out on a chance to appear in Babylon 5 when he suffered a heart attack and had a quadruple bypass in 1993. The series creator J. Michael Straczynski wrote the part of Bester for him when he was healthy enough to act again. Unlike Chekhov, that character was multidimensional and key to several storylines. He wrote the memoir Warped Factors, a neurotics guide to the universe, published in 1998, then expanded on that for Beaming Up and Getting Off, released in 2020. Koenig married actress Judy Levitt, who appeared with him in three Star Trek movies and on Babylon 5 in July 1965. and they were together until her death in December 2022 at age 83. Their son Andrew, who played Richard Boner Stabone on the ABC sitcom Growing Pains, died by suicide in 2010 at the age of 41. Survivors include his daughter, actress and screenwriter Danielle Koenig, from Star vs. the Forces of Evil. Great series of photos there. Great tribute to Walter Koenig. I can't believe there's only two people from the original series. Main crew left at this point. It's,

14:43 as Paul said, strange times. Strange times. You're muted there, Jim. You know, I'm old and senile, and that's what you get. Does anybody have any stories that they want to share about reading Walter at conventions? Yes, please. If I could. I'm going. To pass the flaming microphone to you, Bea. So I have two pictures to share. Now, they're not very good because it was the 80s, 1984. This is a very, oh, God, very young 21-year-old me meeting Walter at this convention. It was a small convention in Virginia Beach in August of 1984. And the funny thing was when I was standing there, Fun fact, I was standing next to him and I was waiting to get the picture taken. And I look to my left and I noticed that because I never knew that he wore a wig in the original series. But I learned that he did have thinning hair and I'd never seen anybody that had a comb over from back to front. But that's what he had. But he was a nice guy. And then there was another when we said that he was in a movie with Richard Hatch. There again, this shows you how informal this con was. There is Richard Hatch on the left wearing his sunglasses inside because he was really cool, I guess. But it was neat to because

16:16 I wasn't really so much a fan of his as I was of Walter's at the time. So, you know, he was the first Star Trek. star that I ever met, and yeah, so that one hit kind of hard. So that's my story. And I have to compliment you on how blue you look today. Well, you know, it's that Andorian part of me coming out now. Yeah, apparently full-fledged. I didn't see it in your photo. Full-fledged. I promised you I would tell you another story, and I'm going to, speaking of Andorians. Way, way back in the day, before Karen was my wife. We were still in high school dating. And we went to this costume thing.

16:57 And I went as Darth Vader. I had the full Darth Vader thing. And she wanted to be an Andorian. So I got a blue wig and a can of blue spray paint. And I painted her. Yeah, it looked really good. It looked real good. But at the end of the day, yeah, the spray paint didn't come off. I had her in the bathtub and scrubbed her with a brush with everything from Comet to Gooby Gone, trying. To get the blue off of her. Keeper's friend? She was light blue for a couple of days, and the bathtub was still blue for the longest time after that.

17:42 And she still married me, and. She never let me spray paint her again, just that once. But once was enough. So I'm sure yours will come off a lot easier. So at any rate, that was my my Andorian Karen story. And now we're going to move right into our regularly scheduled programming with our fan shout outs. I am able to do the fan shout outs. I have temporarily lost my video, but you only need the sound of my voice right now. So I will send out the very first fan shout out to Samuel Agudo Molera. who hails from Spain and sends us that amazing Spanish flag. Thank you, Samuel, for saying hello to us and for supporting our podcast in that most beautiful of countries. We're also saying hello this week to Drone Borg. Is your last name really Borg? You're from Argentina. And I love that we have tons of support down in South America for the podcast as well. Drone, thank you so much for saying hello to us and for interacting with us on our Facebook page.

18:45 Amazing. So many people are able to do that and still love doing that. So thanks for being one of them. Also would like to say hello this week to Eloy Jose Gonzalez Lama, who hails from Islas Canarias in España. Yes, Eloy, thank you so much for being another person from Spain who loves us. I love that we have all these groups of folks from Spain this week. Eloy Jose. I wonder which one of those names you'll go by. I always wonder. First one, second one, third one. Mr. Lama. Thank you for saying hello to us this week. And last but not least on my list, I'd like to say hello to Lars Rendelman from Cologne, Germany. Thank you, Lars, for saying hello to us this week from right in the middle of Europe there. Lots of support for the podcast in Germany as well. V, what would you like to do next? I'm not going to pass anything to you.

19:40 I'm just going to ask you the question of what you want to do Sure. Yes, I would like to say hello and thank you to Mark Lung, who is a top fan in Texas. So thank you so much, Mark. Next, there's Jada Whitmer, who's saying hello to us from Las Cruces, New Mexico. So thank you, Jada. Next, we have a neighbor to the north, Ted Healy, who is a fan in Toronto, Canada. So thank you so much, Ted. And last, but certainly not least, we have Wendell Delane Thacker, who is from Fife, Alabama, and he sends the Live Long and Prosper sign as well as the little gray alien. All right, well, thank you to all of those fine folks. And now it is Whitney's turn.

20:42 Well, I would like to give a special shout out to Alex Rube from Southern California. He's been watching Star Trek since it premiered here in the U.S. on September 8th, 1966. Live long and prosper. Also to Jennifer Austin from Oklahoma, USA. Joy Griffin from Seattle, USA. James Wilson. I'm not sure how to pronounce this, but DeJing... Geeds, BC, Canada. Sorry if I butchered that one. And also to Jay Brown from Indiana with a nice little U.S. flag, the world, and another one of these. Live long and prosper, everybody.

21:22 Let me go ahead and jump in. I was going to say, Paul, you're up next. I'm standing in the next lane, so that's all great. I'm a little rusty here. Don't worry, friend. Don't worry. Great to have you. So we have more folks in other parts of the world to say hello to. Let's say howdy to Carl Wilshe, who's from Bedworth, a small town in the United Kingdom, about midway between Coventry and Birmingham, if memory serves. So good old West Midlands area there that I know very well. And as we cross the pond, we'll move over to Denmark. We've got a triple Danish flag there. from Heinrich Hesselholt from Denmark, who is sharing his enthusiasm for Star Trek and science fiction as well. Warmer Climbs would take us to Padova, Italy, with Luca Zanella, giving us the Vulcan strength and respect there. Thank you, Luca. Always great to hear from you. And then finally, because we don't really do this in any kind of rational order whatsoever, we're going to go back to the U.K., or adjacent spots to Ireland and County Cork, a town called Mallow, and saying hello to our friend Stephen Murphy, who is a self-proclaimed Trekkie for life. I don't doubt it at all.

22:42 Just great to know that we have a lot of Star Trek and science fiction fans scattered across the globe. Hopefully a unifying force. We can sure use more of those. Let's see what's going on with Uncle Jim. Why, thank you so much, Paul. And Whitney, you did great, by the way. So that's cool. I want to say hello and thank you to Alexander McKnight, who's listening to us right now in. The Big Apple, New York City. Welcome to the podcast, Alexander. We also want to say hello to a good friend, Ken Swenson, who was originally from Brooklyn, New York, and now lives in Albany, New York. Thank you, Ken.

23:22 We also want to say hello and thank you to Ron Jelinek, who's from Grand Island, Nebraska. And last but not least, we want to say hello and thank you to Nancy Leary, who's listening to us or watching. Us right now in Missouri. If you would like to be mentioned in a fan shout-out, the easiest way to do it is to head over to our Facebook page, Trek Talking and Beyond. Look for the pinned page at the top of the Live Long and Prosper. Tell us where you're from. Leave emojis. It gets my attention. If you see a heart next to your name from yours truly, Uncle Jim, then you are going to be immortalized in a fan shout-out. Also, you can send us your pictures. And David will put them right up there on the screen. There's me and Eric at Trek Kondoroga.

24:11 And we can get your pictures up there. And there's Paul with a Klingon as well. So we can get your pictures up there on the screen as well. So thank you so much to everybody who's a fan. And now we're going to move on from our fan. Shout-outs to our Star Trek polls. All right, guys. While you're at our Facebook page telling us where you're from, I like to throw out polls and questions and all kinds of things like that because. You know, what would Star Trek be without you guys, the fans? And we like to have our finger on the pulse of fandom. So right now, we're trying to fill out the 60th anniversary crew of the USS Chakari.

24:54 So, Eric, what position are we trying to fill this week? Well, Jim, this week on the USS Chakari, we are trying to fill our eighth position, which is that of nurse. That's right, nurse nurse. presumably the assistant to the CMO. We have lots of good choices here that David has put on the screen. These were the choices that we put up and, you know, Jim had to work this one a little bit, right? Because not every series had a nurse necessarily. So there are some medics in here. There are some people who kind of, you know, serve in an ancillary way to the medical people who for one reason or another, couldn't actually be doing the job themselves.

25:42 So we define the term nurse slightly loosely, but here we go. In ninth place, you have chosen, that's right, Nurse Jack Crusher from Star Trek Bacar, and you may be asking yourself, well, wait a second, wasn't he like the Borg Vox or something? It's hard for me to remember exactly what was happening in that show, but yes, he did serve as a medic. At one point, it had some medical experience, so it is appropriate to have him in this list. And one percent of you voted, so thank you to that person for voting for Jack Crusher. In eighth place this week, we have, of course, the well-known Jabara. You may be asking yourself, who the hell's Jabara? Well, if you remember, Jabara, of course, is the female Bajoran.

26:35 who was part of the Bajoran militia from Deep Space Nine, right? She's actually the medical assistant to the much more well-known Mr. Bashir from the earlier seasons. So there you go. Thanks to Jabara for holding down the fort when perhaps Bashir was away hanging out with Garrick, I guess. 2% of you voted for Jabara. So thank you to both of you. This week, your number seven choice for Nurse is, of course, Tide. We've got Pollard and Majel, which I will tell you that, so listen, Majel is very hard to search on the internet because it always comes back to Majel Roddenberry, right?

27:27 So you have to know that Majel was the character from Star Trek Prodigy. in order to even find her on the internet. At least that's what I found. I don't know about you guys. She's just like really hard to search for. And then of course we have Dr. Tracy Pollard from Discovery who has that slick white uniform like the rest of the gang there from that era. Looking great holding down the CMO job when Culber's out doing his other stuff. So thank you so much for your number seven. 3% of you voted for this, so thank you to all three of you. In our number six spot, we have Cutler. No, I don't mean Culber.

28:07 I mean Cutler. That's right, Crewman First Class Cutler from Star Trek Enterprise. She was on the NX-01. You'll remember she was that entomologist from the science division, loosely being defined as a nurse here because she does some trauma stuff. Remember it's like the episode where Phlox has to go into like a metamorphosis kind of thing and somebody has to take over the job. So thank goodness we had Cutler there. 7% of you voted for Cutler to be your CMO. So thanks for that. In our number six spot, we have probably the person that I guess Jim would have chosen as his chosen nurse. We have Jaden Craig. Yes, Jaden Craig from Starfleet Academy. What a guy, our first gay Klingon, very slick style, very cool guy, like kind of somehow magically combines the fierceness of a Klingon with the gentleness of a nurse and empathy.

29:09 I don't know. It's like, he's just an amazing character. So apparently 9% of you agreed with Jim and your favorite choice for nurse was Jaden Craig. Thank you for that. Slightly above that with 10% of the vote, we have cast. And poor Kes, you know, I mean, she had kind of like a weird arc over the course of Voyager. I don't know. When she's nursing, she's pretty good. She's actually very empathetic. She's got, I like her confidence. of like whole jam. They take her character in some weird places, but I think she functions pretty well as a nurse. So 10% of you agree with that. She's our number four choice for nurse. Our number three choice, of course, is Westlake. And you may say to yourself, Eric, I just don't know who Westlake is.

29:57 I'm sorry. Well, we're speaking, of course, of about Dr. Ta'ana's nurse from the USS Cerritos, a much more reasonable version, in some respects, of a medical personnel aboard a starship. Although I'm sure Ta'ana's rough demeanor appeals to many people. 17% of you voted for Westlake, so I think that's really cool, given that he doesn't have tons of screen time, but the couple of zingers he gets to deliver are pretty clever. In our number two spot, we have Dr. or excuse me, not Dr. Nurse Alyssa Ogawa. Yes, Nurse Alyssa Ogawa. She served aboard both the Enterprise D and Enterprise E, mostly appearing in Next Generation. Lots and lots of episodes. She was kind of like the unsung hero of many, many episodes and a character that I think people kind of underappreciate in a lot of ways. So thank you to Patty Yasutake for... being such a cool, like, B character part of that series. And your second choice with 24% of the vote for Nurse. But with 32% of the vote, unsurprisingly, we've come back around to Nurse Chapel. And presumably we're talking about both versions of Nurse Chapel. When I mean that, I mean Major Roddenberry from the original series, and of course, Jess Bush, our most recent... version of Nurse Chapel, who's

31:27 pictured here on the screen as well. So 32% of you, almost a third of people who voted in this poll liked Nurse Chapel. So Nurse Chapel is your name for the USS Shaakiri. And as our eighth addition to the crew here, I'll just remind you that the USS Shaakiri right now has an executive officer of William Riker, a CMO of Bones under him, Nurse Chapel. A chief engineer of Scotty. Science officer is, of course, Spock. Your chief of security is Odo from Deep Space Nine. At the helm, we have Tom Paris, the best pilot in the galaxy. And Counselor Troy is making sure everybody is mentally healthy.

32:09 I think that's a pretty good crew. What do you think, Jim? I would agree. I think that's a pretty well-rounded crew. As far as Chapel goes, I had people that. Refuse to vote for Jess Bush because she's not the real chapel and they voted for someone else but guys I hate to tell you break your news But Jess Bush who plays chapel and major Barrett Roddenberry who plays chapel are one in the same character So there you have it. Okay so that wraps up our Polls for this week and now we're gonna dive into some just some fun freeform stuff here and usually we have a recap of And Paul tells us a little bit about what's going on.

32:57 Paul, would you like to jump in here and fill in our fans on what we're about to talk about? Well, I think so. We haven't really talked about this whatsoever, so I'm just going to guess about what this is. We'll see how this comes together, because. This is building the plane mid-flight, clearly. But I see that we have a lot of different episodes that are sort of I think, meant to fit in within the theme of horror or thriller-related scary episodes from Star Trek. And so what I can go through is go through this list and read off brief synopses or log lines for each of these episodes. And if anybody wants to jump in between episodes and comment on one in particular, we can do that. Or we can go off road, so to speak, and mention other episodes, or we can take turns, whatever we want to do. Does that seem like a reasonable beginning place?

33:56 Yeah, it's just going to be a free form. We're just going to roll with it. And I'm going to, at some point, I'd love to talk about episodes that scared me growing up when I was first getting together with Star Trek, but we'll save that for later. To begin with, on this list, we have from original series, the very, very first season one episode that wasn't a pilot. That's The Man Trap, a classic original series creature feature about a shape-shifting salt vampire that drains human salt supplies while impersonating people's loved ones. So definitely got some scary moments, a rather shocking character design for the salt vampire as well.

34:41 Yeah, you know, it's funny. So this particular episode... Paul, this was one of the ones, for anybody who hasn't kind of heard the story, I know Whitney hasn't, I'll just tell very quick. My Star Trek origin story is that I spent a lot of time at the public library as a boy. One of the things that they did in the children's department was play old episodes of Star Trek. They had episodes on 16mm film. They probably had about 20 episodes, and I probably saw those 20 episodes a million times. The Man Trap was one of those episodes, and I remember, Paul, exactly what you're talking about. just like weird creature. And I kind of oscillated between sort of being scared at it, but then also thinking about like knowing it was a costume and thinking about how hot it must be in that costume. Like I, somehow I was both scared and kind of like, man, that's a big hunk of rubber.

35:31 Yeah. It's like taking the salt out of the hem though, the person that wore that costume. Yeah. Yeah. It was, uh, you know, I, I watched a lot of outer limits, uh, as a youngster growing up, right? The original Outer Limits, of course. And it was one of those similar kind of monsters that just the look of it was just, you know, disturbing. So good, scary stuff. Another one on the list is one of the original series or overt Halloween episodes, very intentional Halloween episodes featuring black cats and haunted castles and the like. We're talking about Cat's Paw from season two. An episode set in a mysterious, albeit Transylvanian, castle, perhaps, with witches, skeletons, floating spirits, black cats, all the regalia.

36:16 Which my understanding was that the reason that they made that episode was that they had a... One of the things that they would do during TOS, which we see in many different episodes, is they had a bunch of costumes. And they were just like, these costumes are dope, dude. We need to use these. Let's write an episode around somebody being... this weird vampire guy who has this weird like black cat style woman who can change, you know, it like, yeah, anyway. Yeah. And I'm pretty sure the sets for this episode were the exact same sets from the Squire of Gothos, right? With Trelane. And then later on when the Flint episode, I can't even remember the title of that one.

36:57 You could, you could do that because nobody was binging the thing. Yeah. Like it was 20. And it was back then. TV wasn't like the sacred thing that it is now. Right. It was just a diversion. It was really seen as like a disposable commodity. Yeah. Right. The idea that people would be looking at your TV shows, you know, decades later with reverence or even remembering you or recognizing you was folly. Right. TV was just like, you know, like, like, what'd you have? What kind of sandwich do you have? You know, last week, I have no idea. You forget. So it's interesting. And now there are these historic things for us. I'm very fond of original series stuff, so it's great to see a lot of stuff on here. Original series, again, season two.

37:40 We have Wolf of the Fold, written by the great Robert Block, author of Psycho and many other terrifying, scary, mystery, noir-type stories. This was more of a slasher type of mystery that Block wrote where Scotty was suspected of a string of very brutal Jack the Ripper-like murders committed by an energy... Sorry, no proofreading allowed. By an energy entity that feeds on fear. But a pretty fun episode, as I recall. So my first introduction to that one, somehow I missed it for years until sometime last year. I was actually watching something about Jack the Ripper and actually learned about him.

38:28 and then saw this episode. And I kind of saw where it was going, but I wasn't sure, and I was pretty happy that it came out that way. Yeah. Well, a funny thing about that episode is I'm struggling to remember the actor's name, but the guy who's the shorter, diminutive guy who ends up sort of being the reservoir of the entity, Mr. Hengist, right? He's like a bald character actor. You'd see him in a lot of stuff, right? But he's like the guy who for like 30 years would do the voice of, like, Piglet in all the Winnie the Pooh things, right? It's just like, Piglet, you're the Jack the Ripper killer. I'm like, it's just... Wow. I didn't actually know that. It's just jarringly out of context here.

39:10 It's like. I don't think I realized that. And you're like, oh, what, Pooh, what are you going to do here? And he's like, oh, kill, kill, everyone to kill. I'm just like. I'm never going to look at Piglet the same way. I keep waiting for Piglet to just, like, you know... Shank everybody, right? But he never has yet, so. John fiedler was his name yeah. Good job yeah in the 60s he was in everything right he'd be like you know you need somebody in a hurry to be like a patient on the bob newhart show on bob's couch right you're gonna call up that guy right he's just one of those faces this is amazing So it's fun to talk about the scary stuff, right? It's fun to do. And I'm loving seeing there was a lot of original series stuff in here. What are little girls made of? A kind of darkish Frankenstein parallel that introduced us to the character of Roger Corby when Kirk's away team discovers that this mad scientist is trying to transfer human consciousness into immortal android bodies. I'm looking at you, Elon Musk, because I know the kind of bullshit you've got planned. So basically, it's just crazy. But starring the great Ted Cassidy is the Android Rock, right?

40:25 Which was just awesome. And a very memorable piece of styrofoam, a stalactite. It's become rather meme-worthy over the years, which is great. So I'm going to just... The price of my... recapping as I occasionally get to go off road a little bit. So I'm just going to jump in real quick because we're about to leave original series behind, right? And I want to talk just super briefly about two episodes that just scared the holy hell out of me when I was a kid, right? Because when we first started talking about this episode, right, this is the first thing I remembered was scary moments in Star Trek. Sometimes you don't think there are, but My first exposure to Star Trek was my, like, God, I think I'm, like, maybe 9, 10 years old, right, if I remember correctly.

41:12 And pretty young kid. And, you know, my godfather at the time, right, he knew I liked science fiction stuff. And he goes, do you ever watch this show Star Trek? And Star Trek was still on the air, right? So it was still in, it hadn't gone into syndication yet. It was still on the air. I go, I don't think I have. What's that? And so he told me about it, and I watched it. And the very first episode I think I stumbled across was, like, Galileo 7. Right. And I think I was at a late start to it. And all of a sudden there were like these just colossal, like 10 foot tall, like ape monster men with like throwing spears that would, you know, the size of telephone poles and just with this horrible, I don't, do you remember the sound they would make this sort of loud roaring, you know, they can, they were so big, they could keep a shuttlecraft from taking off and they were just terrifying, you know, Neanderthal types. They were just like, I've never forgot how scared shitless I was as a kid with that episode. It was just like, oh, my God, this is like terrifying. Yeah, it's great. And I was just like and I was pulled in.

42:12 Right. And then the very next one I watched was also a monster episode. Right. With the devil in the dark. Right. Which is the Horda episode, which you kind of laugh at a little bit now because it's basically Janos Prohaska with a rug on top of him. Right. But but what I remember about that episode when I first saw it. was so much of what's great at the beginning of that episode is you don't see the monster right away, kind of like in Jaws, right? They did a lot of these camera point-of-view shots of the monster, and so you'd just be... All of a sudden, the camera's moving, and then you'd see some dude at the end of a corridor, right? He would turn around and see the camera as the monster and just start screaming, and they would just push up on him like he was being killed or devoured. And when you're nine years old, or however I was, that just scared the crap out of me.

42:58 It was really effective, so... As a young person being introduced to science fiction, I think I was getting a really good dose of horror at the same time, right? Way younger than my parents probably would have liked. But, you know, and you see the wonderful results in front of you. I mean, same, Paul. Like, this episode hit me in exact... I saw it probably 20 years after you did, but, like, same kind of effect for me, right? Like, I recognized the fact that the camera style... was totally different from anything I'd ever seen before, you know, just of what was on television at the time. And then I actually, you know, of course, the reason that that's one of my favorite episodes of TOS of all time is that there's so much empathy in that episode too, right?

43:44 Yeah. Like it just, it's got such a great arc. So, yeah. Yeah. And when they were getting, you're talking still Devil in the Dark, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, when they would do things like that, where they would really focus on something monstrous, like they would do in those early episodes, right? One of the things TOS did so well was like Steven Spielberg and Jaws, right? They would use music so effectively. And the score would be, they would really ratchet it up and make it really effective and just telegraph how scared you should feel, right? And when you're young, you're like, oh my God, the music is telling me I should have heard that. Yeah, I mean, it's amazing what music and light can do. Right yeah it's crazy but that was just you know that they were really on a roll that first season you know there's just this people just you know i think it's one of the reasons the show has endured so much is it was just some phenomenal movie making going on back then i mean it was it was a tv show that nobody expected to ever endure right they thought they'd be lucky to you know just just get greenlit to have a season or two and it just look at it 60 years later we're still talking about it we're still revering it so let's move on to next gen what do you say should we do that little next gen action.

44:54 Going on here. A lot of people love to shit on the, excuse my language, rough day. Sorry, I immediately ran upstairs and took this off my shelf a couple hours ago, and I was just like, it's just a lot of other things hit me simultaneously. So it's just, it's a rough day. So no sensors, no filter today. But people like to dump, is that better than saying shit? I don't know. Dump all over... Season one of Next Gen. Right. Because it was really like awkward in places. Right. And they were finding their way. But there's some really cool episodes in there. And I'll be damned if I didn't like what I think was the last episode of Next Gen. Season one was conspiracy. Right. It was great. It was really cool. And it was like way more hardcore than any of the other episodes. There was the idea that there could be. you know, a cabal of, you know, really nefarious things going on in Starfleet Academy was just like, what?

45:47 You know, back at Starfleet? You're kidding me. Not Starfleet Academy, but Starfleet Command. Excuse me. Starfleet Academy on the brain. But the idea that there could be these, you know, admirals and people at the highest levels of Does this remind anyone of anything right now going on? I don't know. People with the. Highest level of control of a government, I guess you could say, who are really out of their minds and in control of the military. I thought you were talking about the Dominion. Sorry. No, I'm really talking about something way closer to home actually right now. Where as soon as the lights go out, they're eating bowls of mealworms. It was just terrifying. It was really great. And it was built very effective. And then they went for it, let's just say, in the most Cronenbergian kind of way with the end of that episode.

46:37 It was great. I still don't understand why they never did a sequel to Conspiracy as a movie. I'll never get it. Because they've done it with the Borg. It's totally left. It's totally like that last show that says he's begging for a movie, right? But it never happens. So I'll still, it's like, I don't even think, Eric, has IDW even revisited it as a comic? They have not, no. Let's go pitch them. That's actually a great idea because I actually think that would make an excellent comic arc. It would be awesome. I think it would be kind of interesting. If they ever came up with a Section 31 TV series, they could explain why. We haven't heard about these aliens ever again. So it'd be kind of like a put away type of thing.

47:22 And it would just play it never heard from again. So, well, you know, everything you're trying to lock up and you think you're safe for it, it always gets out. Right. It seems to be. So it's just, that could be really fun stuff to consider. So conspiracy season one. I love it. I'm a fan jumping all the way to season four of next gen night terrors, a psychological nightmare where the crew stops dreaming during their REM sleep rapid eye movement. For those of you who are just coming aboard. Maybe Dr. Science? Beverly Crusher whispered that in my ear. Just, you know. Holding a candle. What are you trying to. Say, Dr. Crusher? With a green glowing candle. Exactly. I just said, wait until after the show, okay? But they stop dreaming during REM sleep and it leads to terrifying hallucinations and catatonia. That does not mean that you're afraid of cats, by the way. I just thought I'd mention that.

48:12 It doesn't? It does not. It does not mean that. No. You should have had your doctor explain that, Whitney. Well, you know, this time of year, people tend to be terrified of cats, right? But we really, whenever we can on this show, like to educate people, even if they Runs screaming in the opposite direction, so they often do. Catatonia is when something, it's like it's a neurological syndrome where your speech and your motor movements, basically your ability to respond is different. right so catatonic. Right so there's all that but i don't. Remember a lot about this episode does anyone remember night terrace really well i mean is it.

48:55 Yeah i mean i this one freaked me out even though it was like so season four what is that 1991 or so so this was kind of like at that in in my life like my childhood was plagued by many a nightmare and so this is one of those episodes that like I saw when I was late in my high school years, and it freaked me out because it's a sleep-based episode, and sleep shit freaks me out. So, yeah, it definitely... as far as I'm concerned, belongs on this list. Okay, excellent. I just like that quote, and I want a shirt made now. Sleep shit freaks me out. It does. I think Paul's language is running off on you today, Eric. Man, that sleep shit freaks me out. I don't like it.

49:36 I know, I know. Okay, cool. All right, night terrors. I have to put that on my revisiting list. And there's one on here I definitely want to ask you more about, Eric, later on when we get to it. Genesis. And we're not talking Khan here. Not that Genesis. No, we're talking... All the way down in season seven, where a evolutionary de-evolution virus transforms the crew into their primal forms, including amphibious Troy. That could be interesting. And an acid-spraying Worf. Which is crazy. And isn't this the one where, like, am I remembering this right? Or is this from, like, Too Many Beers, right? Didn't Riker turn into like a spider, like a creepy? No, that was Barclay. That was Barclay. That was Barclay. Is it the same.

50:18 Episode though, Whitney? Yes. Riker turned into a caveman. That's right. If you ask me, he and Worf were probably the scariest out of all of them. I didn't really find this to be all that spooky. I can see why it's on the list. It was spooky when you're like seven years old. Oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely. You know, that's true. I didn't see it. For whatever reason, the TV station didn't play this one at a time when I could watch it for, like, years, even on repeat. So it took me years to actually see it, and I think I was watching The Next Generation for, like, the seventh time when I finally got to see this for the first time, so I was an adult. Yeah. I'm going to sound like I'm, like, you know, old man Methuselah, right? But it's just like... Young people growing up today don't realize how good they have it. I mean, we used to watch a TV show, and you couldn't even look up, like, what the episode was or when it aired, right? You had no idea. You'd go around to, like, friends.

51:10 Do you remember this one where there was a guy and a thing, and it looked like there was a blue thing, and there was a spider? Does that ring any bells? You'd spend years trying to track. It down, right? That and lyrics. It's crazy. Yeah, lyrics were tough, you know? It's like, I. mean evil woman i spent like 15 years thinking from electric light orchestra i spent like 15 years thinking it was medieval woman until somebody finally wait it's not thanks internet for being like i don't know 30 years too late. But that song just makes evil into a three-syllable word. Yeah and it's just like stuff like that but evil yeah I was one of the greatest things that was just like when the Internet came around, I was just like, I can finally find these movies that I had just in the back of my head that I could just barely remember that no one seemed to know. And it was just like it was amazing when the IMDb came out.

52:07 And also things like they're coming to take me away. Ha ha. Or I'm a mummy. You know, we can look these up now and say, no, really, it's a real thing. I'm not quoting air. It's not all in my head, I think. No. It's crazy. So you wonder if, like, civilization collapses and we go back in the other direction again. People will be, like, whispering to each other, do you remember this thing and this is called Star Trek? And no, I do not. Give me more of your food or whatever, right? So we devolve. Since we just talked about devolving, let's hope that doesn't happen, okay? But what else we got? We got still next-gen stuff going on here because we've got a bunch of these. This one I do remember, and it's pretty freaky, right? Because who doesn't love a really disturbing clicking sound, right? That's just like the worst sound ever. Schisms from season six, a chilling take on alien abduction and unauthorized medical experimentation on a sterile white operating table and i believe this is where dimensional critters were coming through and going and cutting out your pancreas or whatever or.

53:08 Doing bones they were breaking and repairing bones of memories that actually gave me nightmares for a while so that belongs on the. List yeah yeah they actually they. Actually cut off didn't they cut off uh reicher's arm and reattach it or something. Yeah it was horrifying oh. No it was his neck But, but watching I've been binge watching ancient aliens so I've kind of, you know, all this abduction stuff, and it's just probably watching it way too much but yes, that. That might explain the antenna. Yeah, that's it. Well said, Whitney.

53:49 That guy, what's the guy, Giorgio, who, uh, Sukalakis, Chakalaka. I know who you mean. I got nothing. I have no idea. Is that somebody on the show? He's got that hair and he's just so earnest in his, you know, it's aliens, you know, because everything is aliens because, you know, at this point, why the hell not, right? I bought some cheese at the store. It was Swiss cheese, but it arrived in a brick with no holes in the Swiss cheese. Could it be aliens? Is that the kind of thing he's doing? I don't know. Does it have mold in it? Is it moldy? It could be. Give it to me.

54:30 Yeah, give it to David. He's our cheese taster for these things. All right, so let's move on. Let's move on. Next gen still. Frame of mind. Reality shifting psychological thriller where Commander Riker begins to question his own sanity in an alien asylum. That was scary. Yeah, this falls into the dream stuff is freaky category for me. Okay. Because Riker doesn't know what reality is, right? He keeps questioning what's real and it's very freaky. Yeah, anyway. I've had dreams exactly like that, where you dream you're having a dream, and then you dream that you're having that dream, and you go, when am I going to wake up? And they get weirder and weirder. Yeah, no, pass.

55:14 This isn't the one where he has a psychiatrist who sort of falls in love with him and wants to hang out. No. No, this is the one where he. Drinks from somebody's brain with a straw. Oh, okay, cool. No, not that one. That's something else. Was that not this one? Was that Phantasms? I think so. Is this the one where he... Huh. The game. In the beginning, he's in a play. Beverly is directing a play. Yeah. And he plays a mental patient. I had it mixed up. I think that's the one. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I'm pretty sure. Some of these have been a while. That he becomes one. Yeah. I was going through a weird phase when I saw this, and I thought this episode was super boring. I was like, not this one again.

55:58 Where are the spaceships? Come on. Where's the creepy stuff? Don't ever, don't ever, David, don't ever watch the snake pit with Olivia de Havilland. That one is just. Oh man. Yeah. Don't watch Eraserhead either. Yeah. Eraserhead. I don't know if I can ever revisit that one. I really don't know. And I love David Lynch, but man, I had a not good experience watching the movie. It's crazy. Yeah. My husband and I have. This agreement where if the movie is really, really bad, the next person gets to choose the next three movies instead of one, so instead of handing off. I chose the next six movies on that one. Wow. Off of Eraserhead?

56:38 Yeah. I think that's well earned. Yeah, he looked at me and said, I don't remember being quite like this. Tell you what, you can have six. Wow. Okay, yeah, that was not a good night at Whitney's house. Okay, sweet. All right, this one, I guarantee you, I have never seen this episode, right? There's still like a handful of, you know, various across Enterprise and Deep Space Nine. There's one or two. Somehow it eluded me over the years. And Empok Nor is definitely one I have no memory of seeing. I mean, again, this is the time when I was working a lot of late nights, so I didn't get to watch as much stuff as I used to. But the summary is a full-on slasher film in space.

57:22 where an away team is on an abandoned sister station and is hunted down by drug-enhanced feral Cardassian soldiers. Feral Cardassian soldiers. So they're like dogs? No, they're just particularly Jem'Hadari in their ferocity. Yeah, they're just like crazy. Yeah, so the fun thing about this episode is that when they go to Empok Nor, you always know you're at Empok Nor instead of Deep Space Nine because they shift the camera angle. So that instead of the station being like parallel to the horizon, it's off by like 45 degrees. So. But they're using all the same sets. Yeah.

58:04 Yeah. Inside of the station is always like super dark. It's really, really dark. So part of the, I think magic of this episode is really the lighting and what makes it like a slasher film is, is, is that kind of like intensity and jump scares and like that kind of stuff. But yeah, it's, it's essentially kind of like a, It's like if the Cardassians were Jason and our. Federation folks were the teenagers. Is that the one where Garak turns psychotic? Yeah. They discover some Cardassians in these suspended animation pots. There's some sort of virus that got let out and it only affects Cardassians.

58:49 Interesting. Okay. Actually, Paul, you would probably enjoy it. I would definitely, for you in particular, I think I would recommend it for you. Okay. Have you seen a V? You've probably seen it. Yeah. You've seen all of Deep Space Nine. Yeah. Does MPOC-NOR have a bar? It does. Yeah. It did? Does it? Because it was the equivalent. Because it was the sister station to Tarak Nor, which is now DS9. That's right. Okay. But they were trying to get... What were they trying to get? Some equipment or something that they needed? I can't remember exactly. I've been taking a break from DS9 because I watched it like nonstop for 24-7 and so.

59:30 Yeah, they're looking for, like, a plasma distribution manifold, if I remember correctly. Wow, that is some serious, like, check no babble there. A plasma distribution manifold? He actually just pulls these out of his ear. It's like, wow. The Heisenberg compensator and the, you know. I mean, there's, like, 12 of these things, and if you just, like, pull out one of the 12, you're going to be right one twelfth of the time. I thought I was close. I remember Isolinea chips earlier. That's great. Yeah. Oh, my God. That's another T-shirt. Plasma compression manifold. That's a real nightmare because they couldn't find one. Oh, that's great. You have to make one out of like Worf's pants.

1:00:11 Ship Depot for that. All right. Here's another one. I have no memory of it all. Again, Deep Space Nine. And I'm with one of my favorite characters. Right. Roll up your sleeves and get to work, elbow grease guy. Miles O'Brien. But he becomes paranoid as everyone around him acts strangely, leading to a chilling existential twist. I wonder what the chilling existential twist is. Yeah, so that one was the one that he wasn't really him. Yeah. It's like a reverse imposter thing. He was cloned and was going to kill people or something, and he was cloned. And so he ended up finding this out in the end, and he thought he was really him. Just like we've had a couple of these types of episodes where.

1:00:57 People are cloned. Yeah, this one's kind of like that. That was freaky, yeah. Because you think it's everybody else on DS9 that's against him. And it's really him. But it was really him because he was, but they don't know what exactly he was programmed to do because he winds up getting killed before. But he was just as much, you know, he had all the memories and everything as the real Miles. So it was like a Dominion plot or something? Well, there's some peace talks. Like in many episodes of Deep Space Nine, there's some peace talks involved here that he's programmed to disrupt by the Dominion.

1:01:38 Yeah. Okay. Interesting. Yeah. It's really good. Yep. Well, I like a Miles O'Brien episode. So he's, you know, because he just gets cranky, which I find entertaining. He's like the one guy who's like arguing with his wife all the time, right? It's great. So moving on. Bye-bye, Deep Space Nine. We're going to pop over to Voyager for a bit here. Season two. Vuff. It features a digital clown, played by Michael McKean, who holds people hostage inside a fear simulation, embodying little educational moments, colorophobia, and psychological torture. And, of course, calorophobia is an intense, irrational fear of clowns. So, there you go.

1:02:25 Caulophoria. Don't ever say that this is not an educational program, because we're teaching you important things here. Every single time. So Michael McKean was wearing crazy makeup and running around screaming and doing all that stuff. And you did it very well, too. I just watched this episode because I had forgotten about it. And I may have a slight touch of color phobia, mostly because of when I was 16, we had to watch It. but this did not frighten me. I just remember watching this episode and thinking it was ridiculous i it didn't scare me one. Bit isn't there a clown there's a clown motel is it in las vegas or i know there's a it's a clown themed motel creepy as hell and uh if you have any you know slight clownophobia You will be forever scarred by staying here.

1:03:18 Yeah, I think John Wayne Gacy ruined it for everyone, right? Yeah, he did. He really did. So, just nuts. There was another episode on Next Generation, I think it was, where Majelle Barrett took Alexander under her wing and they ended up seeing those little creatures that were like, boop, boop, boop, boop, you know, like blowing air and stuff. And they were kind of clowny and they were juggling. And this is kind of like a more serious, more interesting version of that to me. So I didn't find it scary at all. I like Michael McKean. He does some great work. Yeah, he does. A lot of times he gets pegged as a comic, but he had this long arc on Better Call Saul, right? Breaking Bad spinoff. Man, he was just great. Played a guy with intense mental problems who just basically wouldn't leave his house and was terrified of electricity and everything.

1:04:05 And he just went for it. He was a really good actor. Amazing. Sticking with Voyager, we're going to go over to an episode called Phage, with a P. Phage. Body horror centered on the Vidians, a species that are harvesting living organs from the crew to survive a wasting plague. Yeah. So I love... Sorry, my internet glitched there for a second. So I actually love these episodes because there are a few different episodes where Voyager is dealing with, you know, obviously resource scarcity. I mean, you could say the entire series is based on that. But this one in particular is like the reverse, right? Where you've got these aliens who are, they have this terrible disease and the only way they know how to deal with the disease is to harvest organs from other alien species. And so of course, what does Janeway do? She helps them, like tries to help them solve the problem, right? So I really like these episodes, but with the fate or this, I say these episodes, but I just mean like this type of episode, this phase one is pretty good. It features Kes, too.

1:05:10 We were just talking about Kes and times when Kes is well-used. I feel like she's well-used in this episode. Didn't they harvest Neelix's lungs? Yeah, that's how it starts, and then it's really cool because they harvest his lungs, and then the doctor immediately creates a pair of holographic lungs for Neelix to be able to temporarily use until they can actually retrieve his real lungs, which I just think is a cool idea. Like a holographic organ. That's the only time I know that that's shown. Up in the track. This was also the very first episode we got to see a full human B'Elanna and a full Klingon B'Elanna because they somehow split the genome and they created two different versions of B'Elanna.

1:05:55 Didn't they steal some dude's face at the end? They cut the guy's face off and one of the crew members shows up wearing someone else's face. That's the part. I'm not. Yeah, you guys might be. I don't know. I feel like you guys might be missing up this episode with the episode faces from Star Trek Voyager. Maybe that's quite a bit. Yeah, I don't think that actually is the same episode as this. OK. OK, well, this one you're going to really like, Eric. Do you know why? Why? Why? Because you hate shit that has to do with sleep. That's why. Sleep shit freaks me out, man. Because, yeah, sleep shit freaks me out. Because season four's episode seven is called Scientific Method, and get this.

1:06:39 Oh, yeah. Are you ready? Voyage invisible alien scientists conduct painful invasive genetic experiments on the crew while they sleep. Okay? Like they wrote it just for you. Worst possible scenario. Yeah, Jamie wasn't really that frigid. It was the needles in her head. Yeah. There's a lot of episodes I'm seeing like, okay, the crew is sleeping and crazy aliens come and they do things to you while you're sleeping. It seems like they've got like, what have we got, like nine episodes? Did we lose Paul? That's because they know that sleep shit freaks everybody out, not just me. Can you guys still hear me? Yes, I can still hear you. Okay, that's all that matters. Well, it is right now.

1:07:21 We lost somebody there. I think Jim might have thrown out. Jim's paws with his mouth open right now. Can you hear me, Uncle Jim? Reconnecting. Okay. Oopsie. It's in, you know, in Vermont for fiber optic cable, they use dental floss. It's a little known fact. Truth. Well, it stuck, Jim. It's like so. Or like a whole bunch of McDonald's straws strung together. He's frantically peddling his exercise bike right now, trying to reestablish connectivity. For once, it's not me, so there we go. Yeah, you've been stable. It's good. Let's give Jim a minute. He's like, now he's yelling at his dog right now. He's like, I'm going to throw the cord.

1:08:02 He'll be back. He'll be back. Okay, so while he's asleep, we got that. Yeah. What's that? Carry on. Carry on, carry on. It's like in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation where Aunt Bethany's cat chews through the electric cord and goes. Let's see, what are we at here? Oh yeah, here we go. Still in Voyager land. One more for Voyager here. The Haunting of Deck 12. I love that one. A ghost story bottle episode, which of course means save money, told in the dark about an energy-based entity haunting the Lower Decks. Ooh. Yeah. Interesting. Any good? Kind of, you know, save some money kind of deal?

1:08:46 It's like a nebula, like they go into this weird nebula and there's like weird nebula shit, so that's kind of fun. I won't say... It's less freaky than sleep stuff, in my opinion. I was going to say, weird nebulous shit, not to be confused with sleep shit. That freaks me out. Like many episodes, I'm pretty sure this is one where Seven kind of figures it out. 25% of the episode is like, her problem solving. But Neelix is keeping the kids. Yeah. He's taking the, the Borg children and that's right. Naomi and trying to keep them, I guess all the other kids on the, on Voyager, you know, left to their own devices, but it's the main kids that he is trying to keep them distracted. But I love Mazzotti because she's this ghoulish little creature. Like when he's telling about the ship, where they had mummified crew members and, and, you know, it's like, how did, you know, and one of the other kids asked, well, how did they survive?

1:09:48 And she said, maybe they ate them. I just love Miss Lottie. She's great. She's great. Okay, cool. Uncle Jim is back. So we've been keeping the fires burning. All right. We're going to switch over to Enterprise now, gang, okay? So we're moving forward into more modern eras, I guess. This one, I guarantee you, I've never seen. I read the description of this. I'm like, is this a prank episode? Someone pranking me? But apparently in season three, there was an episode called Impulse where it was inspired by zombie survival films akin to the crazies. Yeah. Featuring a crew of mindless, bloodthirsty Vulcan cannibals.

1:10:28 Trapped on an asteroid. Vulcan cannibals. They did it. Yeah. They did it. Okay. It was basically like a disease that only affected Vulcans. And, you know, the threat the whole time, of course, is that you've got a Vulcan first officer on the Enterprise, right? So, like, you know that the story is eventually going to go there. And this was absolutely the first time that Star Trek ever did freaking zombies. And, you know, you get a lot of, much like how you get, you know, other people solving the, like, medical stuff, Phlox is, like, Enterprise constantly Phlox is always, like, creating some magic inoculation that cures everybody of everything. So this is kind of like a Phlox research-centered episode when zombies aren't eating people's faces.

1:11:15 Well, I also remember this episode. It wasn't that they were trapped on an asteroid. I thought they were trapped on a ship, a Vulcan ship. Well, yeah, and the thing was there's a type of metal that's in the shielding of the ship that Vulcans have an allergic reaction to that turns them into zombies. They Trexplain it away pretty well, but it's something that Vulcans are allergic to that humans aren't. Hmm. Okay. Interesting. Interesting. Moving on, we're into Enterprise end of season two. Regenerations. Starfleet uncovers frozen Borg drones that wake up, assimilate a research team, and start a terrifying assimilation-themed slasher sequence.

1:11:58 Yeah, I mean, that's not how I think about this episode, because we actually did a show, remember years ago, Jim, about this episode of Enterprise. Because this is a really cool episode to talk about if you want to talk about time travel shenanigans and what really... Like, what is the actual state of the Star Trek universe and what is the prime timeline and how does this tie to First Contact, which I think is really cool. Yeah, it was actually one of my favorite episodes in Enterprise and how they explained away and they connected the movie First Contact with how the Borg ended up on Earth. Okay. Is this the only time we've seen the Borg on Enterprise? Yeah, I think so. Okay, yeah. I don't know if I've seen it. If I've seen it, I've forgotten it, like so many things. But I will have to go check it out again, and it sounds intriguing to me.

1:12:50 So I had my nephew watch this one. He didn't know anything about Star Trek, so I had Uncle Jim here help me get a list of the right things for my nephew to watch to get a good flavor and not lose interest. And so I had him watch The First Contact. and then later on had him watch this, and he connected the dots. Nice. I was really impressed. That's awesome. Cool. He's like, wait a minute, isn't that the same ship? Cool. I'm going to have to check that out then, because, you know, completionism, right? You've got to see everything that's connected. Full circle. Well, I've got one more here, gang, on this list as brainstormers here, and then we can preform if there's other episodes that folks want to talk about. But this is going on to the back end of season one of Strange New Worlds. How about that? Getting up to the current stuff here. All Those Who Wonder. And on this one, it's a visceral alien-style survival horror episode on a crashed ship where gorn hatchlings burst out of their hosts and hunt the crew in the freezing cold. Yippee! Okay.

1:13:57 And it seems like that was pretty exciting. That's the Hammer episode, right? Yeah, the Hammer episode. I remember that as being a pretty good episode, right? I mean, I don't know if this is the first one where we, I'm trying to remember if this is the first one where we got the kind of, you know, Gorn two-point kind of vibe. Yeah, for sure. But this was like, you know, the first time they ever did them on Strange New Worlds, right? This is before Strange New Worlds got into the Brady Bunch and all of the family, you know, when they were. Doing a real Star Trek show. Yeah. They got a little, you know, don't get high on your own supply. That's one of those rules that every writer's room should follow. And I think there was some, oh, we got a little confused, man, this last year. So hopefully they're.

1:14:44 Right to jump in. So for me, I liked and could handle the story, the scary, bloody, gory stuff of this type of an episode way, way better than then I could handle, for example, something that's not on this list, Season 4, Episode 2, the Griffin incident, which we just had this morning. Totally agree. Agree. Totally agree. Like, Season 1's episode, you're tied to the Gorn. You've got, like, a whole lore that you're kind of filling in. You're dealing with La'ans, like, mental stuff. It's, like, a really solid episode, even though it's a horror episode. And then you go to the Griffin incident, and I... you know, I gave that episode a zero. Like I just.

1:15:26 Couldn't, well, there was no logic to it. I mean, this is like, you're, you're, I mean, with this episode, from what I remember, right. You're, you're dealing with a situation. Okay. We're, we're, we're stranded and we're stranded where there's a type of life form that is predatory and ravenous. What do we do? Right. I mean, those are like real, you know, that's not this weird, abstract, crazy thing. Right. It's just like, you know, And there's logic to it. It's just like, you know, you got to figure out the rules to not get eaten. And there you go. So it's just, but yeah, Griffin incident, I don't think any of us were too fond of. I was. I mean, I gave it an A. I loved it. You gave it an A.

1:16:07 I loved it. I thought it was brilliant. Also, I want to mention, sticking with Strange New Worlds, let's not forget the Klingon zombie episode, Shuttle to Conforte. Yeah, I didn't watch that one. I didn't watch the whole thing through. I couldn't. It was like the entire first season of Discovery for me. Too scary. I love that Klingon commander on that episode who we had on the show, right? Yeah, we had him. I just wish there wasn't the shambling Klingon zombies. I could have done with a better... substitute for that. I hid behind the couch for most of that episode. Yeah, well that's our list that we have put together here for all the various kind of, you know, fear, scary kind of Halloween themed Star Trek episodes across the spectrum of different arms of the franchise. Any other episodes?

1:16:56 We are totally missing a whole bunch of them that I think are way worse. Skin of Evil, for one thing, and The Children's Show Lead, going back to Oh, God. The original. Oh, God. That's a horror episode because it's the worst Star Trek episode of all time. That's why it's a horror episode. It's the singing of the children. Remember we mentioned something about bad music? I hate that episode so much, though, Whitney. It's like, even talking about it gets me all worked up. I'm so sorry. I just hate it. No, I'll watch. Spock's Brain all day long. And the children's show is awful. Me too. But Skin of Evil, why wasn't Skin of Evil on this list? Like Armus, come on, he kills Tasha Yar. Yeah, I know. In Lower Decks, they prank call Armus.

1:17:37 Said Armus, I love that. And then I saw somebody, somebody at a, and Denise Crosby was so great. Somebody took a picture of her. Because somebody dressed up as Armus and they were basically a giant black trash bag. And they're chasing her and she's like going up. And that was great that she, you know, played along with that. Now, I think, didn't I read somewhere that Armus was oatmeal, molasses and breadcrumbs? food coloring or something. Oh my gosh i don't know it just really had to be really disgusting. Yeah tell us that story how he got dragged into it it took days to get it out of his out of his hair and everything yeah i mean tell us you.

1:18:18 Talk about low budget but it worked man i was scared to death i still have nightmares about him too the other one that i didn't hear was phantasms yeah that's the one that i think where reicher was drinking the brain but that yeah Is. That the one where there's a Troy cake? Yeah. The Troy cake, right? Yeah. That's the one I was actually thinking of when. I was thinking of... Cellular peptide. Yes, the cellular peptide cake. And the one where Data had a phone inside of him. Yeah, yeah. And they came up with the Android phone. And then the other one that I didn't hear, which I found a little unnerving was the one with Barkley and the transporter worm thing. I can't remember the name.

1:18:58 That was really good. Super smart. And he's got the creepy episode. Yeah. Yeah. That too. But this is the one where he was trapped in there and he kept having something bite his arm. in the transporter, and everybody was like, oh, it's just Reggie. Broccoli. But they were like energy parasites that you could only see when you were in mid-transport, right? Yeah, they were caught in. The field, yeah. But this was an easy thing to turn out to be actual people inside a transporter? Yeah. Because he grabbed one. Yeah, I think. So, yeah. Yeah, it was people trapped in the... From a different ship, whatever it was. Oh, I remember, yeah. When you grabbed it and pulled through and it turned out they were like Congressmen. Yeah. Yeah, I remember that. Well, Paul, I mean, I already mentioned Griffin Incident, which was one that I thought of, you know, just from this last season. The other two that I thought of, you know, so season one, episode four of Discovery was called The Butcher's Knife Cares Not for the Lamb's Cry.

1:19:54 And that's the episode where they introduced the tardigrade that they call the Ripper. And that episode to me had some very horror-ish, like it is a very scary episode. It starts with a, with a almost like Jurassic Park-esque, you know, people are being chased by the, the slashy thing type scene. So I, I, I definitely put that one in the horror category, but the one that really like when Jim said we were going to do this show, there was literally one episode that came to mind first and it didn't make this list. And so I wanted to mention it because if people haven't seen this two-parter, they probably should see it. Best of both worlds. No, that is not what I would consider to be an horror episode. The one that I'm specifically thinking about is in Star Trek Voyager, the end of season five, beginning of season six, we had a two-part episode called Equinox.

1:20:49 And they find another ship in the quadrant that they're in. And there are so many cool things about this episode. Like it's very creepy. It has kind of like this dread sort of tone to it. You have the captain of the Equinox who's kind of a half, you know, he's kind of like put forward as kind of a half crazy guy who's got this crazy idea that he's trying to do the, I don't want to like reveal if you haven't seen the episode, I don't want to reveal kind of what the hook of this is and why it's also just an excellent morality play, like right from the bones kind of great, episode of Star Trek and Janeway classic Janeway has like a decision that she has to make that is very questionable that you can still talk about years later right so if you haven't seen the two-parter equinox from season five to season six of Star Trek Voyager super highly recommended and definitely belongs on this list.

1:21:45 And isn't this one where the great John Savage, the actor is in this, is the captain of the ship? I believe so, yeah. Yeah, who is like Rudy Ransom, I think his name is. He's Captain Ransom, yeah. This guy is like, does not get the, in the late 70s and early 80s, he did a lot of tremendous work as an actor and does not get the attention he deserves. I remember him with just being I was like, wow, they scored John Savage for a Star Trek episode? It was just amazing. He was really cool. And he gives Janeway, he serves her decaffeinated coffee. You're right, that does a lot on there. That's the real horror. That's the biggest horror. This is a guy who was in The Deer Hunter, right? He's a badass. A really cool actor.

1:22:28 I was just like, man. Yeah. That's a great episode. I agree. Of all the Voyager episodes, I think that one is one that sticks with you. It's right up there. It's really well written, right? The writing's super strong. I thought Eric was going to mention the two-parter Year of Hell. I mean, you could also argue that that's a... The thing about Year... I love Year of Hell, but the thing about Year of Hell that you guys know that I hate because I've mentioned it on this podcast is it comes... it has no meaning at the end, right? Because it comes back around and nothing ever actually happened. So it's like lost. It was all a dream, right? So Year of Hell are awesome. It's an awesome two-parter, but none of it happened. So it really frustrates me.

1:23:10 It's like Bobby in the shower in Dallas. Yeah. And Saint Elsewhere being in the mind of that kid and it's a snow globe. It's like a Star Trek puppet episode of Strange New World. Hey, I love that. Hell yeah. You know what? I was on board with that episode until that happened, Jim. So are we talking about Flight of the Navigator? It was a gremlin. It was a gremlin. It's a good call, Wendy. So does anyone else have episodes that they think should have been on the list that didn't make it? Not that I can recall. I'm glad Whitney said Phantasms, too. That was the other one on my list. Well, this was fun because we're in kind of the spooky zone this week. I don't know which is scarier, Halloween or the midterms. I mean, they're both terrifying. Just take your pick.

1:24:02 Definitely the midterms. Scary season abounds, right? So choose your inner terror and explore with. With zeal after some of these. So it was fun to look across the spectrum of the different series. So very cool. Yeah, and on Halloween, I thought this would be something fun. So that wraps up our scary Star Trek. And you know what time it is? You know what time it is, Eric, don't you? I know David does. Romulan ale? Oh, no. Sci-fi. Yes. it's always time to get. Through some of those episodes yes and the midterms wait. David are you gonna are you gonna play the song david should i.

1:24:43 Make a show okay well we of course blow out the flaming candle yeah we always always start our birthdays with. Our remembrances and so today we are remembering four members of our Star Trek community who have gone before us. The first is actor John Winston. John Winston was the actor who played Lieutenant Kyle through all three seasons of Star Trek, the original series. He reprised the role in Star Trek II, The Wrath of Khan, and also portrayed Kyle's Mirror Universe counterpart, in addition to his regular role in Mirror Mirror. And he voiced the ISS Enterprise's computer voice in the same episode, you'll remember, It's not Majel Barrett's voice in the Mirror Universe. One of the three people to play the Lieutenant Kyle role, the others being James Doohan, of course, for the animated series, and Andre D.

1:25:38 Kim from Strange New Worlds. Outside of Trek, Winston appeared in the Time Tunnel pilot, Rendezvous with Yesterday. I know you love that, Paul. Years later, he appeared in an episode of the television show Max Headroom. And he portrayed Captain Jeffries in the fan-made internet series Star Trek New Voyages pilot episode Come What May from 2004. If you haven't seen Star Trek New Voyages, you should probably watch it. John Winston, happy birthday to you. Lost back in 2019 at the ripe old age of 91 years old. Happy birthday as well to Whit Bissell, the actor best known to Star Trek fans for playing Lurie, on the TOS second season episode, The Trouble with Tribbles, one of Bissell's more memorable roles is that of Dr. Alfred Brandon in I Was a Teenage Werewolf from 1957. He later went on to play Walter Kemp in George Powell's version of The Time Machine in 1960. And while the original series was in its first season, Bissell was a regular on the time tunnel, where, coincidentally, he played a lieutenant general named... Kirk.

1:26:51 How about that? Bissell appeared in several motion pictures, which also included other actors who were involved with Star Trek. In 1956, he appeared in the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers in a minor, uncredited role as a hospital psychiatrist who interviews the film's main star, Kevin McCarthy. There is a ton of other stuff on Wit's IMDb page. I encourage you to go check it out because it is vast. Happy birthday to Whit Missile, lost back in 1996 at the age of 96 years old. Happy birthday as well to Steve Sandor, the actor who played Lars in the original series second season episode, The Gamesters of Treskelion. This was actually his television debut, this episode. He spent time as a steel worker and a copy machine salesman in his home city prior to this. He also used to train sentry dogs on while serving as an air policeman in the U.S. Air Force. Such interesting lives these guys led.

1:27:54 He gained a third-degree black belt in Shaolin Changfang Kung Fu and a fourth-degree black belt in Ching Se Do. So this guy is a badass, apparently. Perhaps best known for his role as the ill-fated biker gang leader in the 1980 cult film The Ninth Configuration, he was also the voice of the heroic dark wolf in the 1983 animated fantasy film fire and ice happy birthday to see steve sander appearing in an episode that we talked about tonight and last but not least happy birthday to jack donner the actor who played tal yes the tricky romulan in the original series third season episode The Enterprise Incident.

1:28:41 He was also a Vulcan priest, typecast much, in the Enterprise fourth season episodes, Homecoming, excuse me, Home, and Kirshara. He is one of only five actors to appear in both the original series and Enterprise. In 1966... Along with Lee Delano, he founded the Oxford Theater in Los Angeles, a playhouse, an acting school, which actually some people I know have attended, and they say it's quite nice. In addition to Star Trek, some of his other 1960s acting roles include The Man from UNCLE, Mission Impossible, and Kojak. After becoming ill in 1977, Donner retired from acting and studied to be a licensed psychotherapist. After a few years of practice, He returned to acting in 1991. Some of his later television roles include Frasier, Charmed, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Malcolm in the Middle. So happy birthday to Jack Donner.

1:29:42 I am currently asking AI which episodes of Buffy you were in. And that does it for our remembrances this week. So I'm going to pass... Our flaming birthday candle, this one is flaming V, over to Whitney. Thank you. So I only have one because I'm new to all this, I guess. And also because this is one special to my own heart. Mr. Alfred Weird Al Yankovic, if you don't know him, I'll have to control out delete you. Just kidding. You dare to be stupid, I guess, if you don't know him, right? Like a surgeon. Good one, Eric.

1:30:25 Born October 23rd, 1959, Weird Al Yankovic, Alfred, is an American musician best known for writing and performing comedy songs. Since having one of his comedy songs aired on the Dr. Demento radio show in 1976 at age 16, Yankovic's work has earned him five Grammy Awards and a further 11 nominations, four gold records, and six platinum records in the U.S., plus something in a pear tree. His first top 10 Billboard albums, Straight Outta Linward and single, White and Nerdy, were both released in 2006, nearly three decades into his career. His 14th studio album, Mandatory Fun, 2014, became his first number one album during its debut week. And passing the flaming birthday candle over to the happy birthday, Alfred Weird Al Yankovic.

1:31:17 All right. Thank you. So I got to meet Weird Al Yankovic. last year at GalaxyCon in Richmond. And so that was like a thrill because I'd been listening to him on Dr. Demento's show and I got all the CDs and everything. But he was also, he paired with, if anybody's familiar with Puddles the Clown. Anybody know Puddles? Oh, yeah, sure. So he and Puddles paired together. So that was really cool. You know, I also... know him so I was just talking a couple of shows ago about how it's the 40th anniversary of the Transformers movie this year and not a lot of people know that he actually had a role in that movie so he plays the junkie on Rekgar when they go to the junkie on planet and they actually the soundtrack has the song Dare to Be Stupid in it and he voices the main character Rekgar in that movie too so I I just got to hear Weird Al utter, what's the bo-wop something mini-bong? Anyway, they've got this great greeting on that planet.

1:32:31 He's great. And I love the movie UHF. I watch it like every chance I get. It's good, too. So my first happy birthday goes out to F. Murray Abraham. Do we know what the F stands for? I don't know. Anyway, he portrayed Adar Rovip. Ruafo in Star Trek Insurrection. He's primarily a stage actor, though he has appeared in many films and several television productions. He is perhaps best known for portraying evil characters. And he got an Oscar for one of those not-so-nice characters, I don't know if I'd call it evil, but where he was Antonio Salieri in one of my favorite movies, Amadeus. Where he's torturing Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

1:33:24 He's so good in that movie. And F stands for Farid. His first name is Farid. Do you also know what M stands for in M. Night? I do not know that off the top of my head, no. Okay. I can Google it real quick. Sure. Well, while you Google that, let me wish happy birthday to Anthony Rapp. who I saw last year at the Star Trek New Jersey, but I didn't get to talk to him. I'm so sorry. But he's an American stage and film actor who played Paul Stamets in Star Trek Discovery. He is best known as the original Mark Cohen in the musical Rent and reprised the role in the 2005 film version directed by Chris Columbus. He made his acting debut in Adventures in Babysitting in 1987.

1:34:20 So I'm not sure if it's still available, V, but just this past weekend there was available a special edition of Rent that was a fundraiser that you could rent online. And they were doing things like bringing multiple cast members to play the same roles in certain moments. So imagine taking the three most famous casts of Rent... and kind of cramming them into one show, including Anthony Rapp. It was fantastic. It was, it was like a very expensive rental, but it was a, it was a fundraiser. For a really good organization. So yeah. Yeah. I really hope they offer it on Blu-ray someday. Cause I'm going to buy it right away.

1:35:03 So next happy birthday to Robert Picardo. And he is just the, amazing actor who played the Doctor in Star Trek Voyager, the second season of Star Trek Prodigy, and Star Trek Starfleet Academy. He also played the EMH creator, Dr. Lewis Zimmerman, as well as some of his other holographic creations. Very talented and Boy, can the man sing. And then last but not least, happy birthday to Seth MacFarlane. I played Rivers in the two Enterprise episodes, The Forgotten and Affliction. However, he's best known as the creator of one of my favorite shows, Family Guy, American Dad, The Cleveland Show, as well as the Star Trek-inspired live-action series, The Orville.

1:36:05 Woo! All right. Awesome show. Yeah. So next, the flaming birthday candle goes to Paul. Daenerys Stormborn of House Targaryen. First of her name. The Unburnt. Queen of the Andals. The Rhoynar and the First Men. Queen of Meereen. Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea. Protector of the Realm. Lady Regent of the Seven Kingdoms. Breaker of Chains and Muppets. We're talking about Emilia Clarke, the legendary English actress who achieved international recognition for her role as Daenerys Targaryen in the HBO series Game of Thrones, for which she received four primetime Emmy nominations and awards here.

1:36:53 I mean, amazing. Absolutely phenomenal. Also widely known for playing Sarah Connor in Terminator Genisys and the Really great part in Solo, a Star Wars story, a much maligned part of the Star Wars universe, where she played Kyra in that film. And the character's been brought back in comics numerous times there as well. Absolutely amazing. She's got a real insane story, too, that happened to her. Emilia Clarke survived two life-threatening brain aneurysms while on Game of Thrones. One of them, she just wrapped the first season of the series, right? And she's like 24. She's got all this amazing attention and acclaim. She's got this huge part.

1:37:35 And she had a kind of stroke that's called a subarachnoid hemorrhage. It's a real life-threatening type of stroke when there's an arterial rupture in your brain. And you have a lot of cranial bleeding. It happened to her when she was at the gym. And she experienced like aphasia for a while, where she couldn't remember who she was. I mean, really freaking terrifying. So they found a second one in there and they had to go in and do minimally invasive brain surgery to remedy the problem or she might have freaking died. I mean, it's really crazy. But these things can be really frantic, life-threatening. So they had to basically do open brain surgery for her and a real tough.

1:38:20 She's talked about it very openly, which is one of the reasons I didn't want to mention this because it's really important to draw attention to these things. People ignore symptoms that they have and they end up in the hospital or worse. So a very heroic way that I think she, especially as a very young person, managed to face that and get a handle on it and speak openly about it. So good for her. So big fan, Emilia Clarke. I think she's tremendous. Long life and good health. miss clark so amazing work big fan of game of thrones uh happy birthday goes out uh original series actor i love this guy bruce mars who memorably portrayed finnegan.

1:39:02 In that first season episode surely finnegan is just like finnegan is something else man yeah and i'll tell you that i just read the autobiography of james t kirk and finnegan plays a huge role in that one too. There's a whole great there's a whole great backstory for him how they've. Never brought him even mention the guy on Stranger Worlds is baffling. He's huge. He's a huge part of Kirk's background. Yeah. I know. And he's just like his whole thing is like, I don't talk to peeps, Jimmy boy. I mean, he's just great. It's just very memorable. Reminded me of everyone who used to beat me up in school. I was just like, you are, it was such a great energized performance. Also, it was like played like a cop on assignment earth.

1:39:43 You blink and you miss him, but he's like a police officer. And that, you know, I think, what Simon Lewis, I think the finale of season two, if I remember. But so he did a bunch of TV during the time mission impossible. And we've mentioned it 35 times tonight. Time tunnel. Also on an episode of time tunnel, but man, I love Finnegan. Well, what's going on in that picture in the upper right-hand corner here that I don't think we've mentioned that one yet. That's what the one over his shoulder. I don't know. That must be something personal perhaps in his early modeling career. Okay. Eric, I hate to be the one to say it. People do a lot of things of questionable judgment when they're trying to get ahead. You know, and it's just the stuff stays around. So, you know, choose your agent carefully and stays over. But hilarious stuff. But yeah, Bruce Mars, my God, what a great, what a great freaking memorable character.

1:40:40 Will we ever see Finn again? Again? I don't know. I sure wish we did, but cannot forget that. Forget that role. Happy birthday goes out to fellow Scorpio Daphne Zuniga. Following her film debut in a memorable motion picture called The Dorm That Dripped Blood. Not a David Lean film. She had lead roles in films such as The Initiation, Vision Quest, The Sure Thing. The Sure Thing is a wonderful picture. You've never seen it. So good. And The Fly 2. However, she is best known for her lead role as Princess Vespa. in the space opera parody film Spaceballs from the wonderful Mel Brooke.

1:41:21 And guess what? She's going to be reprising that role in the sequel Spaceballs, the new one, which is currently scheduled for release in April of next year, 2027. So we will be getting more of this crazy stuff. Can't wait to go see it. It'll be really fun to watch Spaceballs again, to see her coming back, Pullman, everybody else. So really, really cool. I got some real winners on my list this week. I feel very fortunate indeed. especially another Game of Thrones alumnus, to be able to say happy birthday to the marvelous, absolutely luminous Gwendolyn Christie, British actress best known for portraying Brienne of Tarth on Game of Thrones. What a wonderful character. God, I love Brienne of Tarth. She's just so great. As well as First Order Stormtrooper Captain Phasma, she of the stainless steel armor, in both The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi. Really terrific character. pictures for sure that often get maligned unfairly, but I would have loved to see that character do so much more than they gave her to do. She received a nomination for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress back in 2019 for Game of Thrones work there, and she had done a lot of other genre-type work, really.

1:42:36 She appeared on a Netflix fantasy series adaptation of The Sandman, and and Wednesday, and then not too long ago, she showed up on Severance over there on Apple TV and received a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series for that. So good. She's really great. I mean, they really seemingly can do no wrong over there on Apple TV lately. They just got really good writing going on. Yeah, why has every single show I've watched on Apple TV been amazing? I mean, I will admit that Pluribus has been a little slow, but it's still really good. Oh, you've got to stick with it. No, I'm sticking with it. I can tell how good it is. It's just slow. But whatever. The writing is amazing.

1:43:17 And then the other one. I'm going to get the name wrong because it's been a week. Not Shelter Island. What is it? What is the show? The island one. Oh, I'm not watching that one. I don't know. It's so damn good. It's probably one of the best. Is it the one with the mayor? Yes. Yeah. I've been watching that. I just finished watching that. Widow's Bay. Widow's Bay. Thank you. Widow's Bay. Sorry, I had to actually, like, frickin' look it up in real time. But if you've not watched this show yet, it is genius. Uncle Jim would love this show to death. It's like every episode is taking a different... They're connected, but every episode is like kind.

1:43:57 Of a. A reverential take on a popular horror movie genre. Right. But it all makes sense. And you'd think it's a horror thriller show. I know I'm getting way off base here, but it's really kind of an extreme comedy. It is a brilliant piece of show though. And the acting is amazing. So, sorry, I got, I got off track here because I got excited about Gwendolyn Christie and Apple TV, and this is just going to be the way my day goes apparently. So there we go. I got one more though. Amazing, amazing person who I love. Absolutely amazing woman. Is wonderful Winona Ryder. Academy Award nominated actress who played Amanda Grayson in the Star Trek movie for J.J. Abrams there. But some of her biggest box office hits. I mean, you could just sit here and do hours on her.

1:44:44 Right? Beetlejuice and Edward Scissorhand for Tim Burton. Ram Stoker's Dracula for Francis Ford Coppola. Alien Resurrection. Mr. Deeds. And then she just... came back with a vengeance and got a whole new audience as Joyce Byers over on Netflix in Stranger Things, right? I mean, remarkable actress with so much energy and heart. She's just phenomenal. She's received two Academy Award nominations, a Golden Globe, two more Golden Globe nominations, National Board of Review Award, BAFTA Award nomination. She's worked with Martin Scorsese, Independent Spirit Award nominations, Saturn Award nominations.

1:45:25 She's just a freaking treasure i i just think she's absolutely wonderful um love her work i wish she worked more you know it's even though she's maybe picky with what she chooses to do but man her work on just stranger things was exemplary i just think she's a dynamite talent i got all these awesome scorpio ladies going on and you too bruce mars sorry don't get me gross started It's really a treat to be able to wish them all happy birthdays. Keep working. We need your talents. And let's pass the Molotov cocktail birthday bonanza blitz to Uncle Jim and see what he's got for us next.

1:46:06 I think Uncle Jim's got a movie obsession. I love it. More of that, please. So take it away, Uncle Jim. Thank you. Thank you so much, Paul. It's time for Uncle Jim's movie, movie, movie of the week, week, week, week, week. We've got to do something better than that. But at any rate. We want to start off. I've got James Cameron. I've got Stephen King. I've got John Carpenter. I've got a lot of great ones here. We want to start off with The Prince of Darkness. It was released on October 23rd, 1987. American supernatural horror film written and directed and Scored by John Carpenter, starring Donald Pleasence, Victor Wong, and Lisa Blau, the film follows a group of quantum physics students who assist the Catholic priest in investigating an ancient cylinder hidden beneath a Los Angeles monastery, only to discover it contains a sentient liquid embodiment of Satan, Prince of Darkness. Next, we have Trick or Treat. It was released on October 24th, 1986. American supernatural horror film directed by Charles Martin Smith and his directorial debut. And produced and released by De Laurentiis Entertainment Group.

1:47:22 It stars Mark Price and Tony Fields with a special appearance by Gene Simmons and Ozzy Osbourne in his film debut. The plot centers on an outcast metalhead teenager who is haunted. By the ghosts of his dead rock hero. Jim i cannot believe that i have never heard of this movie and this is literally the best movie poster i think i've ever seen it is so bad and of the 80s that it cracks me up i. Love it it's it reeks of 80s i mean look. At that it's just like whoa. It does.

1:48:02 Next on my list, we have Thinner. It was released on October 25, 1996. American body horror film directed by Tom Holland and written by Michael McDonald and Holland. The film is based on a Stephen King 1984 novel of. The same name. It stars Robert John Byrd. and Joe Mantina. In the film, an obese lawyer who accidentally kills a Romani woman is cursed by the woman's father to rapidly lose weight. Creepy movie if you've never seen it. Next on our list, we have a James Cameron classic. I'll be back. The Terminator was released on October 26, 1984, an American sci-fi film directed by James Cameron, who co-wrote it and produced it with Gail Ann Hurd of Halloween fame. It stars Arnold Schwarzenegger as a cyborg assassin sent back in time from a post-apocalyptic 2029 to 1984 to assassinate Sarah Connor, played by Lyndall Hamilton, whose future son will one day save the world from Skynet, a hostile artificial intelligence. Sojo Kyle Reese, played by Michael Biehn, travels back in time to protect Sarah, gets her pregnant.

1:49:15 She has her own son. I know you've seen it. Check it out. It's great. And here we go, another classic one, John Carpenter and Gail Ann Hurd, Halloween. It was released on October 28, 1978, an American slasher film directed and scored by John Carpenter, who co-wrote it with Deborah Hill. It stars Donald Pleasence, Jamie Lee Curtis, and her film debut, T.J. Souls and Nancy Loomis. The film follows escaped mental patient Michael Myers, who has committed to a mental institution for murdering his teenage sister on Halloween. in the fictional Illinois town of Haddonfield. Fifteen years later, he returns to Haddonfield where he stalks teenage babysitter Laurie Strode, played by Curtis, and her friends, while a psychiatrist, Dr. Loomis, played by Donald Pleasence, pursues him. Halloween, another great movie. And last on my list, another classic, a Spielberg film, We want to say happy birthday to Poltergeist.

1:50:18 It was released on October 29, 1982. American supernatural horror film directed by Toby Hoover and written by Steven Spielberg. It stars Jo Beth Williams, Greg T. Wilson, and Beatrice Strait and was produced by Spielberg and Frank Marshall. The film follows a suburban family whose home is invaded by a malevolent ghost that abducted her young daughter. They're here. Do you have one question about those? Why are so many of those kind of scary? Well, we did have Terminator in there because these. Are October movies and horror movies always come out in October. I'm pretty sure that as we start to move out of October, we'll have more genre-related movies. So we had some great ones. movies I know everybody has seen but what movie is Uncle Jim going to reach into the hat and recommend for you guys to check out if you haven't seen it or you haven't seen it in a while Dave so why did Uncle Jim pick this movie Karen and I were in high school at the time we went to see a midnight showing of this and I loved it it's got all the 80s tropes in it and if you were alive back in the 80s backward masking on songs was a big thing and this movie he plays a record backwards and hell breaks loose and i'll tell you this i took my six records recorded them on the cassettes took the cassettes apart flipped them around put them back in and played them

1:51:48 backwards devil never showed up i never got possessed i didn't kill my parents i don't know i think the backward masking thing was crap but in this movie bad things happen In fact, I just watched it the other day. Love it. It's a classic 80s tropey thing. Ozzy Osbourne is in it. Gene Simmons is in it. If you're looking for a fun horror movie to watch in honor of Halloween, I recommend Trick or Treat. So that's Uncle Jim's movie pick of the week for this week. And now we're going to move into some Star Trek news. And we're going to. Where's our... There we go. All right, V... In honor of Halloween, you get our first story.

1:52:29 All right. Why does Michael Myers wear a Captain Kirk mask? There have been rumors for a long time that the mask he used was based on William Shatner's face from his time playing James T. Kirk in the Star Trek franchise, beginning with the 1966 original series. The choice of that mask was discussed in the third season of the Netflix series, The movies that made us were guest Tommy Lee Wallace, the production designer and editor for Halloween, revealed he found it at a magic shop on Hollywood Boulevard. Up on the shelves, there were these full face masks of Richard Nixon.

1:53:10 And down at the end was Mr. Spock. And right next to it was this blank face Captain Kirk, Tommy shared. He said he also bought an Emmett Kelly clown mask. along with the Kirk mask, but they didn't think the Emmett one was creepy enough. Unless you have clownophobia. Instead, they took the Kirk mask and made some cosmetic adjustments. Sorry, I don't know why this cracks me up. Like removing the eyebrows and the sideburns and enlarging the eye hole. They also darkened the hair a few shades and painted the whole face white. Yeah, okay. It's going to haunt me tonight.

1:53:52 Thanks. Well, I think pretty much everybody knows that. But from time to time, it's fun to pull that story out. And there he is. There's Kirk and Michael Myers on the screen. All right, guys. I put this next story in for Eric, but Eric had to run. So I guess I'll take this one. I just talked with Whitney about this just today, actually. You did? Yeah. I mentioned that we were going to bring this up on the show. Magic the Gathering takes command with four Star Trek Commander decks. Boldly going to Commander, the most popular constructed format... with. Magic's latest set. The set contains four ready-to-play Commander decks, each of which focuses on a different theme and corner of the Star Trek universe. Find your favorite or pick up all four and take your Commander Knights to the stars. Each 100-card Commander deck is fully decked out in Star Trek artwork including a traditional foil borderless face commander, 32 new magic cards, and a collection of exciting reprints. Each deck is led by one of Star Trek's most famous, or feared, faces, bringing their unique suit.

1:55:05 Of abilities to the worlds of commanders. The Federation fleet, blue, red, and white, if you prefer legends to lands, this deck is for you. Jean-Luc Picard Luminary charges up your spacecraft artifacts and ensures your creatures can fight without fear. The landing party deck is green, white, and blue. Take on the Enterprise's five-year mission to explore strange new worlds by playing as many different named lands as you can. Commander Spock will deliver you more cards for your research as you cast spells for free. Klingon Fury, this is the one I want to pick up, is.

1:55:47 Red, white, and black. Charge into battle with Worf, Defiant Commander at the front of the pack. This deck deploys a ruthless armada of Klingon warriors that will keep your opponents on their back feet. Next we have We Are the Borg, which is white, blue, and black. Become the Borg Queen and join the collective's hive mind. Strengthen your artifact creatures and assimilate anything and everything you encounter. You can also take your favorite Yuta Magic cards from these decks and add them to your existing commander arsenal. Any green-based life-gain deck would love to have a copy of Christine's Chapel.

1:56:27 Combat medic. For some cross-universe chaos, try adding Starship Enterprise or any of the new spacecraft artifacts to the Edge of Eternity's counterintelligence deck. Flagship vessels could help your fleet swing in at warp speed. Each Magic the Gathering Star Trek Commander deck has a manufacturer's suggested retail price of $ 74. 99. Each Commander deck includes a 100-card ready-to-play Commander deck and 10 non-foil double-sided Pokens. So there you have it. Are you guys planning on playing this or looking into this game at all? No, not really. Resistance is futile.

1:57:09 Resistance is futile. I want to pick up the Klingon deck. I've never played Magic, but it's Star Trek, so I've got to try it. And that, my friends, wraps up our show today. for this week. So I want to take an opportunity to say thank you to Eric for hanging out and Shrek talking with us we had to run thank you so much to Paul for hanging out and Shrek talking with us as well thank you Paul. I'm happy to and just a quick word folks you want to be a hero out there and do something good like in a science fiction movie where you save the galaxy go vote next week okay on Tuesday vote vote like your life depends on it because it does.

1:57:50 Yep and Thank you so much to David for hanging out and talking with us and putting together these awesome videos. Thank you, David. Yeah, it's been a pleasure. And thank you so much to V. I love the blue motif and the antenna. It looks great. Happy Halloween. And of course, thank you to Whitney. It's been a long time since I've seen you. Whitney. But thank you so much for joining us tonight. Can I just put an extra thank you out to David for pulling that Picard, sorry, Sir Patrick Stewart thing. That was beautiful. We got one more. We got one more for you, David, put together. And I want to let you guys know, next week we're going to be doing a Patrick Stewart show. We're going to talk about him, his career, how he affected us.

1:58:32 We have some fan reactions, and we're going to spend the whole time talking about Sir Patrick Stewart. So if you're a fan of his, you definitely want to be here next week. I'm your most excellent host, Uncle Jim, saying please, everybody, stay safe and be good to each other. Alien frequencies are closed. Don't go anywhere. Good night, all.