Black Mirror - USS Callister and USS Callister Into Infinity review

0:00 Kah oh my God. Continue with the operation read. Mayos Kane and again has gone insane. Logan six corporal hits the timber don need to fixed, Priple NPC ted evily cannot see Bumblebee Kane. I'm the doctor Rankling online Old Bob sand Worm stories that will twist and turn bout Cimita, death of Tashi Yah Flash Gordon, but Pragas don't through prison clone wars, James Holden, Tweaky, John Coney against Egy.

0:47 We talk about the series, you can joined us, but to get up your phone down, talk about the series coming to you? Is now meh about this Thomas. Show? Now? Nothing about this series? Tell me that. Well, good evening, Trekkies and trek is around the globe.

1:29 It's Thursday, June fifth, twenty twenty five. Welcome to Trek Talking and Beyond, episode number six hundred and thirty nine. I don't know if you guys noticed or not, but David did some of his digital magic. And when Paul snapped his finger as q V appeared above his head, did you guys catch that? Yes? I did, the one that I had made with that lower dex generator. Yup, Paul, I. Worked on that yes to try to get that in there, and I just wanted to point out that, you know, Paul snapped his fingers and you appeared. So thank you so much. That was.

2:12 So I'm your most excellent host, Uncle Jim. Welcome to the show. And before we get too far, I want to introduce my awesome tre experts and we'll start off with V. She's our latest edition. Welcome to the podcast. V. She's on Virginia and I loved I love the MLB motif that you have going on there. The Niners, the opposition. We shall crush them. I think he said we will destroy them, but. Still crushing, destroy. Them, destroying the same thing. Especially for war. Could you imagine war playing baseball? My god, he hit a home run every single time. Incredible And from Portland we have Eric.

2:55 How you doing tonight? Eric, I'm doing pretty good. It's been a busy, busy day, but I I'm excited to be here. And I think Wharf might hit a home run every time, but then he would also be one of those power hitters that constantly strikes out, and when he does, he would like break the bat over his knee and throw it at somebody and potentially caused some major damage. Or beat the picture to death to death. I mean he's not he doesn't really beat people to death, but he would absolutely beat inanimate objects to death. Punch a hole. Yeah, I think it was. I think it was. Actually it was actually Rom that heard everybody. It's like, look behind me before I swing the bat because he bashes uh quirk in the head.

3:36 That's right. It was m. Yep, which, ironically, Max Max grodin Chick in real life was going to be a baseball player and he had to pretend like he couldn't throw or do anything. It was really kind of cool. Hello. Yeah, And also from Portland, we have our very own toy guy himself, Paul. How you doing, Paul? Ohy MATI I am doing well. It's been an interesting week, a lot of stuff going on, but it's a good week. I think I think things are faring well. Yes, I would agree. And not from Portland. From Las Vegas, we have our.

4:18 Very own Charles. How you doing tonight? Charles? I'm doing good. Hanging out in the studio A because the palm trees might be swaying, the palm trees might be getting wet, so sayer inside. Well, we're having a hell of a thunderstorm right here today. We broke ninety today for the first time, which is very odd up here in Vermont, and it's raining like crazy. And also we're gonna swing back to Portland and hopefully David can hear us, and he's our miracle worker. Welcome to the show, David. I can totally hear you, guys. I'm doing good. It's been kind of an interesting week, but iving you know of Game of Live show.

5:05 That's all you can do. If you guys missed our special show on Monday, Man Bruce Horrick was incredible and Eric, he loved your theme song. Awesome. He he was dancing to the theme song and singing along and I punt, I kid you not. And David is going to make up a special Trek Talking Dancing Hemmer video with with him, and I'm going to use that to promote the podcast on other sites because he was singing along, he was dancing, he loved it, so I wanted to pass that along to you. And next week we're gonna be talking to Alex Steel, who played f eight Uh in Star Trek Picard's first season episodes Maps and Legends and He also played Harvey and Unit three three five in the second season episodes Stargazer and Pennance, and he was also in.

5:58 The short Treks episode. What was the name of that episode? I should have beten it anyways. Yeah, so he played all the Synth units that we saw on Picards season two and he will be with us. So you guys want to find out about Synth about destroying everything that we know, you definitely want to tune in for Alex deal. It's going to be a lot of fun. Children of Mars, that's it. Children of Mars. Yep. You guys can head over to trek Talking dot com and there you'll find a link to our Patreon page, which Charles runs for us, and you can become a Patreon for only two dollars. It's a great deal, so head on over there is cheaper than a cup of coffee. And there's also a link there for our PayPal page where if you don't want to make a regular donation, you can make a one time donation. We appreciate it, thank you very much. You can find us on YouTube at trek Talking, so check that out. You'll find some great videos over there. And that's all the cleaning I need to do for tonight. On tonight's show, we're gonna go way way back and talk about Netflix Black Mirror episode Uss Callister, which we talked about four years ago when it premiered. We're gonna touch on that one tonight, but mostly we're going to be talking about the new one Into Infinity. We also have our Fans shout outs, where we thank fans just like you around the globe for listening to our podcast. We also have a Star Trek Polls section thirty one. I wonder what they're up to and General Martok's wife gets in a fight with Dax.

7:27 I wonder who wins that one. You'll have to hang around to find out. You can also find out who you share a Star Trek birthday with on our Star Trek Birthdays and we have some great Star Trek news what's going on around the universe with Space Camp upcoming, IDW, Redshirts, comic books, and Shatner says, what, So, we got a lot planned for you guys tonight, But before we go too far, let's dive into our fans shout outs, and for that we turn to Eric. Take it away, Eric, Yeah, Jim. This week we're gonna send our first fan shout out up north, up to ont Canada, and we're going to say live long and prosper to our good friends Steve Krawl. Steve, thank you so much for supporting our podcast. I will tell you that I love Ontario in particular. That wonderful city of Toronto is something else. It's the New York of the North. And we just really appreciate all of our brothers and sisters north of the border, regardless of what our president says. Thank you as well to Rick Flintes for saying hello to us. You are retired in Panama.

8:31 What are you in like Eden? I guess that's what it sounds like. Rick. Sounds like you're living the dream there, buddy, So it sounds like you are living long and prospering. Good for you, and thanks for listening to our podcast and continuing to support it. We really appreciate that. Also saying hello this week to Zielif Madradista, who's saying hello to us from Duisberg in Germany, sending us not one, not two, but three Live long and prosper hands and that was enough to catch Jim's attention. So thank you, Zealif so much. For supporting our podcast and saying hello to us right there in the center of Europe. You're holding it down. We really appreciate that. And last but not least, like to say hello this week to bea Sukas who's saying hello to us from Pitch Hungry and despite the fact that you only send us one livelong and prosper you still manage to get Jim's attention. Bea thank you so much for saying hello to us. And I'm going to pass this shout out and megaphone over to Charles.

9:33 Okay, thank you Eric. Let's start off for the warm. Welcome to Jerry row from Indiana, who's a top fan, So welcome Jerry. Welcome Joey Denis from Florida. I wonder which part of Florida you're in, hopefully not the what part. Welcome to Mary Harmon from Texas. Welcome Mary, Hope it's not getting too hot in Texas already. And Welcome to Roy Scott Baker Becker from Durham, North Carolina. Welcome Roy V.

10:14 Who's on your list. I have Davida Lynn Pepper also from Texas. And then Roger Clark, Hey, he's from your neck of the Woods from Oregon, and let's see Adam Cortes in Michigan. And last, but certainly not least, Jerry b Lee, who gives us a livelong and prosper hand from Kentucky. Thanks me. We got all kinds of folks phoning in from all over the globe here. First of all, we're going to go over to the UK and we're going to say hello to David Wilson Croft. He says, you all, live long and prosperous. Bockwards say with hand salute, and David is just firing off the emojis here, like shrap, I'm seeing a lot of weightlifting, bodybuilding motifs. I'm seeing what looks like a guinea pig or an owl. I can't really tell. I'm seeing every emoji. It's it's, it's, it's, it's like a it's like a hailstorm of emojis. David Wolson Craft, so excellent way to way to get Uncle Jim's attention. Dane Easy, so great deal for you on and I always nice to hear from a fellow British citizen.

11:36 Wink wink so. And speaking of England, let's say hello to Lisa Bateman from Nottingham share in the UK simple singular union Jack Billowy in the wind. That's the only emoji that Lisa needs. So thank you, Lisa. I love it, love it great to know that if I ever have to move over to the UK, which could happen, that I'll still have some Star Trek France, I can rowbelbows with which istastic. And you also might find yourself in Germany with Ingo Dumbo in ryan Land Flats Ryland false. Sorry, I'm like a larger font this evening clearly or you know, we'll see. Well, we're not quite there yet, Eric, so almost sir, but not quite there yet. And then it's completely orienting the various continents. We have the lovely Brazil.

12:32 Fernande Sikier is saying hello, magical art of the world, to be sure, Bernanda. So great to know that there is enthusiasms, enthusiasm for Star Trek wherever you may look. And we'll turn the longitudinal vortex over to Uncle Jim. Well, I thank you so much, Paul, and thank you v excellent, excellent. I don't know if I can follow you guys up, but I'm going to try. Oh, we want to say thank you and to Zachary gi Or Delhi, who's listening to us from New Jersey. Thank you so much, Zachary. We also want to say hello and thank you to Ian Mayer who's listening to us in upstate New York. Also from New York. We have Keith Slocum who's in Oswego, New York, and not from New York. We want to say hello and thank you to Michael Warton who's in Montgomery, Alabama.

13:22 Thank you so much everyone. If you'd like to be featured in a fan shout out, head over to our Facebook page look for to Livelong and Prosper, which is pin to the top of the page. Tell us where you're from, and please leave some emojis. It catches my attention and you're more likely to be mentioned. And please send us some photos. All those great photos that you see going by. We'll put you right up there with the rest of them and make you famous forever or infamous, depending on what picture you send us. All right, and now it's time for our Star Trek polls and and let's see if it's gonna work.

14:09 Linol you know me like no win what you thought about the show. Then we try to. Share your opinions with all of our minions out there because they listen world. Why. So tell us just what you think. Get together we will alter Canara and romulin Ah. Okay, guys, Every week on our Facebook page, I ask all kinds of interesting and fun questions about Rakers, beard, you know, Cisco's head, all kinds of stuff You nevern't know what you're gonna find over there, and I would like to see what you guys think about that. So this is our pull section, and David, are you ready to run the video?

15:01 Thanks for giving me the day off. Captain Shelby owed me a favor, actually owed me several in fact. How would you like to have another. Two days off too? What do I have to do much? Just give me something fun to look at for the rest of the evening. Anything else, I'll let you know. You leave her, or I'll cut your head off and hang it from my belt. I'll take care of this. You weren't invited. It is time for the brain on ritual. I'm busy, busy, acting like a rising in slut.

15:41 I'm only going to ask you to leave once. You will come with me now and performed the brain on ritual to my satisfaction, or I will cancel your wedding. Tator, what the ladies please. Cuss of it? Why is everyone standing around the party's just getting started? Play something? All right? I think that anytime a quing on spits at you, that's not a good thing. So, Eric, what was our poll question?

16:22 All right? That, of course, was the Deep Space nine episode you are cordially invited. When we're getting ready for the big wedding. There, Dax gets into a fight with Sorilla, who calls off the wedding. Do you think Dax the actor correctly? Do you think Dak's acted correctly? And I'm guessing I am not frozen? Does anybody I'll see me frozen? I'm seeing no one frozen anyway? Uh, Sorella called off the wedding. Do you think Dak's acted correctly? Fifty seven percent of our responders said, yes, Dak's acted correctly, and I'm guessing correctly means uh challenged her, and then forty three percent said no, is that? What is that what you meant by the poll there? Jim, Yes, yeah, yeah, so did Dax act correctly in that she challenged Sorella? And fifty seven percent of our responders said, yes, of course she acted correctly. You know, it's interesting here because I think Sorella is just trying to like roll with some Klingon ritual here and Dax is kind of doing her own thing, and so the real question is what does it all mean to Wharf? And I don't think we get that in this scene.

17:36 So I wish we did. We did, we did, but David and I decided to cut it out because it was five minutes long. Okay, so what was what was a worst reaction to this was he on board with Dax or Sorella? No, No, Wharf told Dax she had to go and apologize, and Dax was like, no, I'm not crawling back to her and begging. That's not I'm not going to do it. Of course eventually she does, but okay. So in my opinion, then Dax was actually in the wrong here because to me, she's marrying a Klingon. She needs to respect some of this Klingon ritual stuff. If it was important to Wharf, then it should be important to Dax. And so I think on the side of this one, I would say, no, I don't think Dak's acted correctly. She was culturally insensitive. What do you guys think.

18:24 I would agree with you completely. I'm with Dominions on this one because you're absolutely right. It's Klingon culture and she was marrying into Wharf's family and should have obeyed their culture and she didn't. So I'm I'm with you and the minions on this one. Actually, the minions said yes that dax was correct. Oh I thought I thought the minions said. Fifty seven percent said she was correct and forty three percent said she was not correct. I'm looking at the next poll. Yeah, you're right, you're right. See you're against dominions. Yeah, I'm not with dominions on this one. Well how about uh? Well, I because I've watched that show. That's one of my favorite episodes, and Daxa's response when Wharf talks to her is that she pulled a knife, which she did and said, I'm not going to apologize to that hag.

19:18 That just cracks me up every time she calls Sorilla a hag. But eventually, I think the one that brings her around is Cisco, who you know, says that you know, come on, You've you've lived what seven eight lifetimes, You've got to you know how to behave so you do have to make it right. And she did. And and she was a Klingon at one point in one of her lives. Wasn't She. Wasn't a Klingon, but she went. With the Klingons on their blood oath things, so she should understand cling on rituals and whatnot. I would think, Yeah, what do you think should should she have just gone through with it?

20:10 Or did she act correctly? Oh, Paul's need sorry? Is that me? Yeah? Paul, you were saying, yeah, sorry. The audio is just I'm getting the echoes from everybody, so it's hard to hear anything tonight, guys, some apologies. I'm not familiar with this episode, so I'm going to pass in the interest of time. Okay, what do you think, Charles? Yeah, I think sounding like she really was not familiar familiarizing herself with Klingon culture like she should have. So I go against dominions and saying no, she shouldn't have done what she did.

20:54 And David, that leaves you with the caboose, buddy, Are you with dominions or against dominions? I'm actually kind of in a conflict. Can I be in the middle mainly because I agree with me that she pulled out a knife. I agree with your guy that she should have known the cleanon culture ahead of time. The other side is just like saying, you know, she was at a party. She was trying to have fun. She was trying to have her what is it her uh what do they call that when women go off? Yeah, bachelor party. So I mean. Here she was. Saying that, you know, she wanted to basically celebrate her life before married. And then of course she willa burst in without being invited and stuff and so and pulling a knife that I cannot understand her reactions. So it's kind of a touched up for me. It's both ways, all right.

21:52 So David's gonna pull a Switzerland. On us, all right, David, you can roll the next the next clip if you don't mind. A victory. Kiran Maurice A certain schools she's willing to teach us. Fierce adversaries, unite the dominion, not each other. For the sake of survival. Life is a deadly secret must be exposed. Are you thinking anything in the pursuit. Of our. Nothing is sacred? On the next star Trek Deep Space. Nine now that videos, that's the right clip.

22:33 That was the right clip, but David and I couldn't find a clip actually explaining it. So we just. Couldn't find the right clip, and I was like, okay. Okay, we looked and locked and couldn't find one. Yeah, we played it anyway. The episode well that that was the Deep Space nine episode when it Rains, And the salient point about that episode is that that's the episode in which Section thirty one infects Odo with the virus, so that you know, he can kind of return back to the great length infect them.

23:16 And I think. In Section thirty ones and maybe Admiral Ross's mind and the Dominion War, so in the Deep Space nine episode When It Rains, Odo is infected by Starfleet, especially specifically by Section thirty one. This infection is part of a plan to exterminate the Changeling race and end the Dominion War and save millions of people and civilizations. Do you agree with this action and in rare form the minions? Fifty one percent, so not a great percentage, but like a solid fifty one percent said yes, infect the Changelings, send them in commit enocide, and forty nine percent said no.

24:03 So I if it's not clear. I'm always against cenocide, so I do. I feel like that's a gimme. But sometimes these pole results really surprise me. Man. I'm like, how can you like Starfleet or like Star Trek and be on the side of geniie, it just doesn't make sense to me. So so yeah, I'm I guess against the minions, although it is fifty one to forty nine, so it's real close. What do you guys think? I kind of agree with you on that one. It's just like, how can it be that close? They surprised me. You never know, but yeah, you're right. I mean I think we had a similar question with Picard and the Boorg, you know when.

24:47 Yeah, it seems like the people who answer our polls are not against genocide, which is very interesting to me because I just don't see how that's compatible with the whole like humanist secular humanist aspect of Star Trek. Yeah, that's it may be that I would love to know, like what the nationality is of you know, is it fair to say that we think probably a lot of our poll responders are American? Does it seem you know, probably probably, yeah, because I think in America, right, from what I see going on, it's like winning is more important than anything being or right is the most important thing, and winning no matter what people do, not in this country look at ethics at all, you know, almost none, I mean little Chinese liver people do. But for the most part, it's like, oh, it's important that I'll win and nothing else matters. So that doesn't surprise me at all.

25:42 I mean, looking around at like what I see on a regular basis, it's like, you know, it can make you very cynical about the state of you know, human nature, Paul, Why do you. Think folk not to like digress too much? Here? Guys? But like, why do you think people like that dig on Star Trek? Then? Is it because of Scott's spaceships and phasers or. I don't know, I mean, it's it baffles me. Right, It's like the ones who we get on there, we've we've gone round and round. I don't know how long Viad's been watching the Facebook page before she got on here, right, but but we've gone round and around with people. Right. It's just like you know, during like the the heyday of like when the Discovery was moving into prominence, right, and all of a sudden, there was just this avalanche of like when did it star trek? You?

26:22 So whoa kill people like black folks so much? Right, And it was just so much of this There shouldn't be your portion, your gay you gurnder damn my throat, right, and this is just endless amounts of this ship, right. I mean, it's just really, you know, it's just baffling. And I don't know how you can have those kind of perceptions and be about a show that I guess you're watching the show you don't really know what it's about. I guess you just sort of let me take a science fiction and that's all I care about. But they don't really grasp the idea of themes or anything like that. So it's it's it's it's yeah. Well, if I can step in from a historian point of view, yeah, I mean this country, you know, I wish that there had been the prime directive, you know, when when people first came over and eradicated the indigenous people, you know, it was it was, you know, all in the name of conquering New Land, and initially like Virginia being the first permanent you know, Jamestown being the first permanent successful English settlement. They were all about gold and silver because that's what the Spanish had found, you know, things like that. But as far as it's one of those things where with Star Trek first off, and also people have twisted the word woke, it is meant to be a good thing. To quote Jane Fonda when she made her speech, it's like, it basically means you give

27:54 a damn about people, and that's true, and it's been twisted into something that's so far from what it was meant to be. But as far as the dominion, it is one of those moral dilemmas because they were going to eradicate. They wanted to eradicate millions, and so it's like, who's going to you know, you know, how do you know who's going to be eradicate that, the the the Changelings, the Great Link or all these people across the universe. You know, it's it's a tough one. A follow up question. A follow up question because I just I just don't remember this episode really clearly, because I don't think i've watched it since Originally, does Odo know he's been infected.

28:44 Not until doctor Basher finds when he's sick he has his first episode where his insides go gooey or something, and doctor Basher. So he learns he learns that he's infected though before he gets sent to the Great Link, Right, is that what happened? Well, No, the first time he goes to the Great Link, it's because he had killed another change Link, So that happens. Pre pre being infected. That's before this whole infection thing. I think, Yeah, that's not really It's clear. He did infect the female leader change Link of the Change Links without realizing it, or she linked with him and she became infected and he became infected.

29:32 Then doctor Basher finds a cure yepa gives. It to Odo, and then Odo ends the war by telling the female Change Link, I will link with you and cure the disease if you stop the war. Okay, so the war initially, Yeah, initially when Starfleet infects Odo, right, which is from the question right, yep, they do it without his knowledge. He doesn't know that he's been infected. Correct. Yeah, it's it's out rageous. It's like Joseph Mengela, Yeah, exactly, despicable, despicable And again, how is this Starfleet? Right? This whole introduction of section thirty one, I think maybe began with great and good intentions storytelling wise, but it just I think it just blows up in your face as far as like trying to you know, maintain and ethos and continue to say that, Okay, mankind, we've evolved, we're more enlightened, which is what you always got from Next Gen and for Original series. Right, We've we've you know, proved ourselves right, and I don't think you can continue down that road in the section thirty one universe.

30:37 So well, the other question is section thirty one even Starfleet, because I thought we kind of went through that already where we found out that section thirty one whether separate entity. It's a separate entity, but they're talked about in the Starfleet Charter. They come from section thirty one of the charter, that's the Starfleet. It's absolutely aware of their existence. They're making again it's it's very well, oh gosh. That's terrible. Well, my thing is were they were. They meant to start out as sort of a undercover like not really black ops, and then they just went bad with oh shoot, I just watched the episode too. What's the guy's name that they go into his mind when they get the cure photo. No, it's what's his.

31:29 Yeah, that's right. Yea, so maybe it's I think it started out with good intentions and you know, just went bad. They found out that the galaxy was really full of knights and. Uh, Charles, you haven't you haven't spoken yet. What do you think, minions or no, minions? Well, I think part of the thing is interesting where there we only got maybe the thirty one percent approval rating on Section thirty one. Yet a lot of these dominions, a lot of these minions upolksly are supporting Section thirty one for what they did. Definitely, I'm against this one to the fact that we shouldn't be sacrificing one society to save others. And I think this is more something that Section thirty one did as much more than what members of Starfleet were doing.

32:35 Absolutely, so we're all in agreeance here that the arminions don't know what they're. Talking about, not on this not on this one. The dominions are crazy, all right, guys, Well, that wraps up our polls. You can head over to trek Talking dot com and uh, I just put up a new poll up. Actually it's about uh, the final episode of Deep Space nine and Kai win and go through, Kat, go and check that out and vote in that poll. All right, So it's time to talk about The USS Callister. Netflix has a series out called Black Mirror, which is an anthology series with a bunch of different stories. In season four, they had a series called The USS Callister and basically, I'm gonna run through it really quick. This dude creates a virtual reality that you can immerse yourself in based on an old TV show, Shock and Dismay, based on Star Trek, and that's why we started talking about it.

33:34 He's the captain of a starship, Captain Daily, and he turns around and illegally clones people in his office and makes them slaves on the starship the USS Callister to serve his whims and he's a really nasty dude. He gets what he deserves. And it's an hour and a half episode. It's really really good and it actually has an open ending, and the open ending leads us into another episode which they aired in season seven and Steven Season seven is called Into Infinity. So that's basically what we're going to talk about tonight. But we do want to talk about the first one USS Callister because it's over four years old and a lot of people might not have seen it.

34:25 So that's our topic for tonight. And David, you want to run the video. Lieutenant Cole, Welcome board. Crew. We have a new member of the team. Wait, Jesus. Space Fleet never turned its back on those who need our help. Here hip him by.

35:09 All right, that was the first episode USS Callister. And why don't you get us started, Paul. Or what would you like me to do? Anything that you want to do? Have some have a taco? Uh? Whatever? Well, I just wasn't sure because a lot of times I will recap the story, but it seems like you've already done that, so I'm sure. I only I didn't really, I mean, we can dive right into talk about it. Then. What do you think about the episode? I think yeah, I think it's great. Again, this is from back in twenty seventeen, guys, so it's been quite a few number of years. It's been almost like eight years since this has been on here, and we're talking about from the TV show Black Mirror. Okay, and this is a show that became this particular episode for folks who never watched Black Mirror, which is an anthology series, right, so meaning that every story is different every week, so they're very seldom connected in any way, right, And this became a huge sensation. It became a real cult hit.

36:10 It won four Primetime Emmy Awards that year for Outstanding Television Movie, Outstanding Writing for a Limited Series. And then just real recently they did a sequel. We're going to probably talk about both of them. Want to point out that the director of both of these episodes is Toby Haynes, who I think Eric and Charles will know from his prodigious work on Doctor Who. It's also good episodes of Sherlock and most recently on Andword as well, so he's a real pro. And the initial episode, for folks who have not seen it, the original one that we're talking about from twenty seventeen. This is a Netflix specific show. You want to be sure to seek it out. It is frankly brilliant, Okay, I mean it is just it starts off with kind of a cold open, as though we're watching a very kind of almost Captain Proton esque version of like a Star Trek show, right with just it's shot very you know, pulpy with the camera angles and the glaring lighting, and it's it's got a very pulp sixties style to it. Everyone's wearing primary color uniforms.

37:15 It's got a real yellow drama. You know, it's camera zooming in on someone as they're having their you know moments. Right, It's it's hilarious and it's a it's a shock, and but it's like it's it's so over the top, right that when the captain destroys his vanquishes the enemy ship that is, you know, tormenting them, right, he celebrates by you know, all of his crew I has to line up and applaud him and hip it parat just on the clip, right, and he takes turns kissing all of the female members of his crew, and you're like, what the hell is this? And then you cut out and you realize that none of this is real, that all of this is going on within this large company kind of a lah you know, meta Facebook, right of a large tech startup where somebody has invented a completely immersive form of video entertainment like a gaming system, right, and people are putting on these nods on their head and they're completely losing myself in the game, and the guy who created it, this he's basically the head of their tech at this company. This Robert Day guy has taken his creation and he's kind of gone off the books with it, right, and he's created his own version of it that he can do whatever he wants to, right, and he can do his fantasization. It's almost like that.

38:36 And when I first saw it, I was reminded of that Next Gen episode where Barkley is really inappropriately using the Holideck to you know, we live out his wish fulfillment, right and doing inappropriate things with like counselor Troy and things like that. And except this guy here has taken it to a whole other level because he's got what is in the world of the story, in the real world of the story. He's got this device that basically, you know they you hear it described as being that's something that came out of the porn industry, right, that lets you take somebody's DNA, right and create like a digital replica of them and use them in your gaming system to interact with and do whatever you want. You basically made a digital replication of their consciousness. So it's like that person kind of that you created exists.

39:30 And that's the important part of it. They're like, well, the hell am I what's going on? Right? And and and the lead in from this is this woman who's new at the Callister Company, right, which is that what it's referred to with the real world is the Callister Company, right, who's run by this kind of nonsensical power mad you know, vainglorious Elon Musk type guy, which is just you know, James Walton, which is the great Jimmy Simpson who's playing him. He's just phenomenal. And the inroad for the first episode, the initial original pilot episode is this new employee who there was just starting, right, is Kristin Molothi right place her And I don't know if any of you guys have watched Anguin over on Max yet, but that's a great show which you should check it out. But the reason I mentioned is because Kristin Malothi is like the star of the show, right, and she is one of the best actresses out there up and comers that you should be keeping an eye on because she's equally good at doing both drama and comedy and she gets to do both to an insane degree on Uss Callister. And so it's all about abuse of power, and it's all about, you know, it's taking that lens of people that we may or may not all know, who are obsessed about their shows and they have all of their you know, video cassettes lined up in their special room. I have a special room, and all of their comics and everything, and they're just kind of living in that other reality more than they are in the real world. And it gets a little lonely that kind of dynamic. And if you have the ability

41:03 to suck people in there against their will and use them as your playthings and kind of start to pretend that you're, you know, God allah Gary Mitchell in that private universe, it leads to hellish consequences. So well, and Paul and in this one, right, yeah, And in this one, he does it like Daily's doing it because he's doing it as a reaction against the belittlement that he feels in the real world right now. So it's like it's not just him playing God for the sake of playing God. It's him playing God because he feels like he needs to get back at these people and he doesn't have the power to get back at them in the real world, and so he's doing it to the nth degree in the virtual world.

41:44 Exactly. It's like he's he's been belittled and is the head of the company's kind of taken over his whole vision and everything uses to make money, to lead the profiteering, and he's kind of you know, he's basically never really became the cool guy. He's like the guy wearing his fan t shirt living in the garage, right, and he feels very unseen, unappreciated. But when he goes to become the in the gaming world, he's captain of the ship and everyone must love him. And if you've offended him, he will use you as a human footstool, right, I mean he will, and he does horrible things, horrible horrible things like if you are doing things that he does not the one he's got the version of his boss in there is his you know, Lickspittle essentially right there to serve him. And if he doesn't do what he wants to do, he creates a digital version of this man's child, and you know, Pusher's the digital version of the kid out the airlock. So it's like torturing a sentient copy, a digital clone of your own, of your offspring, right with his when he's crossed, the worst sides of him come out.

42:52 Right. When the Christa Malatti character comes in there and she doesn't, you know, I'm not going to let you kiss me. I'm not going to do your bullshit, right, he moves her face, right, which I think is a callback to Naked tim if I'm not mistaken, But you know, he moves her face and she's just perpetually gasping for air with no mouth. Right. It's just he's just horrible. But what makes this I think, I mean, I think there's a lot of things to love about this episode, and we can just talk about this one if we're going to the second one. I guess if that makes the most sense. What is The acting is phenomenal? Okay, I don't know if everyone on here is a big fan of Jesse Plemons, but Jesse Plemons is just phenomenal, absolutely tremendous actor. He's got such a plane look to him, right, he's it can just very just disappear. He can look like the everyman like he'd be, you know, delivering your mail or working at the bowling alley or whatever. He's just very he's got just a very kind of neutral affect if he will, right. But man, when he gets inside of a character and inhabits that character, I don't want to give any spoilers for people haven't seen it, But go check out a movie called Civil War. And I won't say anything about when even confirmed an that gen C Plemons is in that movie, but go check that out and it will blow your socks off anyone who was seeing that yet.

44:12 No, but when you. Mentioned it in chat the other day, I looked it up and I was like, oh, dang, I can't believe I missed that one. So it's on. It's a pretty hardcore. Yeah, brilliantly done. I mean, it's just it's definitely a challenging one. But but what Jesse Plemons doesn't here the way he comes up with a whole different speech pattern for himself, more of a he's more of an aristocratic speaker when he's the captain, right, He's got. A whole he got a little bit of a Rubbert or a William Shatner thing going on. Yeah, it's like, wait, I don't know. He's just he's got a gentility and he's respects, but he's created this whole world. But when he loses control of himself right and he does not get his way, it is frightening to behold and the way like weird details, like he's created this universe for everybody, but no one has any genitals, right, because it's like a safe, friendly, family friendly thing, right where he just gets to go off and do his thing, and it's just it's just disturbing. But it's as dark as it is because Black Mirror is very often super freaking dark. I mean, they go to some places that you're just like, wow, I can't believe you weren't there.

45:19 I mean, it's just crazy. But there's also this is a hilarious, hilarious episode, and anybody that is enjoys Star Trek should absolutely be checking these two episodes out. And we'll talk about the other one whenever everyone's done weighing in on the first one. I guess if that makes the most sense, but I just will say it's really rare that sequels live up to their original episodes. Not so here this one. I think they did a phenomenal job with the sequel episode. And sometimes on this show we get a little frisky we disagree and do things right. But all I can say is, no matter what, I have never stolen any of the other trexperts DNA and created virtual copies of you so I could torment your replicas in a video game the skin to look like Star.

46:07 Trek that model behind at your house. I have never gotten a swab off Uncle Jim's mountain dew or anything like that, So I can, you know, exactly wondering if I am not guilty of these crimes. Thank you, Thank you Paul Tonight. The day is young, But that's enough for me for now. I can talk more about the second episode later if you want. But what did everybody else think of this? Me? You just watched this? I think you've seen it before. Did you just watch it recently? No? Actually, I had watched the sequel the other day and then watch the original one today, And you're right. He daily reminds me a little bit of Barkley excuse me, take a on my throat, where he is such an awkward, bumbling guy in real life, like especially when when he's in the office and the trips and falls over the guy's gym bag, and then later on he sees them laughing at him, and it's like, you're not going to laugh at me. I'm going to get you back. But when I when I saw it, it sort of in a way I've thought of Tron a little bit, you know, being in a game. But also, I don't know if anybody ever saw the X Files episode kill Switch, where

47:43 the there's a computer or a guy that one story short uploaded himself or his consciousness into a computer, and the computer controls all the satellites and you know, uses them to wipe out people, you know, throughout the episode. So I don't know that's that's what it reminded me of. But yeah, very very good. And then you write the sequel seems to I mean, it picks up right from when that one ends and really takes you on a ride. It's very Star Trek esque. In fact, when you watch it, you'll see a lot of Star Trek props. I saw the TNG shuttle sitting up on his shelf. There's a lot of Star Trek stuff in the in his office.

48:36 If you look at the collectibles he's got in there, actual Star Trek stuff. I loved it. I thought that the music reminded me of Star Trek. The uniforms reminded me of Star Trek. They really they really did a good job with that. I think, yeah, yeah, so I really I enjoyed it. I thought it was really. Like did you like this? Did you like the story? Did you like what it said about the human condition and the whole idea of like somebody becoming so immersed in their own ego that they act out against others. Yeah, that was that guy was definitely touched. He was tweaked.

49:19 We find out in the second one just how tweaked he is. But I think we touched on an episode of that TNG with Riker when Riker had a clone. He didn't like his clone, and then there was another episode where they cloned Riker without his permission and he killed the clone. I think that was a poll question that we had, And I guess it comes down to, you know, are these clones even though they're illegal, they are they deserving of the same rights and the same treatment as the real versions of themselves are in the real world. I guess is what the question comes down to. Because in the episode, they're hunted and killed because they're a legal There were legal aliens and they don't deserve to survive. But in reality, was that the first episode?

50:08 Are you talking about the second episode. Of I think? I think I'm drifting here. I'm a drifting I don't remember any any hunting. I don't remember. When they find the guy in the cave. Is that the second one? Yes? I thought it was a lot of fun and I. Like it was such a good episode. You dreamed the third episode? What about you, David? You don't put that to Netflix and you might have a gig there. So I really enjoyed this one. I watched it just last night actually, and uh, the beginning of the show really reminded me of the beginning of Galaxy Quest. That's the first thing that popped into my head. When they were trying to pretend that they're on the show and everything were going on, That's what it really reminded me of.

51:03 When they were just like clapping around, it was just like, oh, okay, it just seems a little weird. But then one day the next thing you see daily on the elevator. All of a sudden, everything just playing completely uphill from there, which is like it just got better and better. And I really liked this episode. I think that in the second one as well. We're going to talk later about but yeah, I just got it got better from that, So not much a lot of the funny things that I can remember from this particular episode, but I really recommend it to people, So yeah, I take on it.

51:47 David's with our minions. He enjoyed it. What about you, Charles, did you get a chance to watch part one? Oh? I was here when we reviewed part one together, and then I went back and watched part one and two, so I was refamiliarizing myself and realized I'd forgotten a lot about what happened this episode because it's been so long since I've seen it. The one thing about Daily is you see a little bit in one, maybe a little bit in the second. Is I wonder if he's slightly on the spectrum, that he's a little little bit, a little bit on the autism side, because I think he's struggling to relate to the real world. Also, I beat Eric in this one in the jumping. I have another one that this reminds me of, and Paul I said, RP one, and Paul's like, what it's like Ready Player one?

52:56 Because Ready Player one you go into the oasis and you go into you put on your VR equipment and then are and are transported into the system and living in a VR world. And where this one they just put a one little connection to their forehead and connect. Where is that one they actually was still using VR equipment to connect. I know some people may say, oh, the movie was okay. I think the movie was okay. The book is good. If you want the audio version, the audio version is better. And the reason I like the audio version because it's read by Will Beaton and with his sci fi connections, he's he's a great reader for that story. But definitely I concur with Paul. It's a very dark series. It's God, it's very dark moments.

54:05 It's kind of comical moments, especially when you get to the point it's like, oh, something's going in the real world. There's the peach delivery man's at the doors. Okay, pause, everybody jumps out of character, the big creature of a creature that's there all of a sudden. It's like, oh, hey, how's it going. I'm so and so it's like, oh yeah from that department, and just an interesting way of how it connects. But definitely, even the first one, I think we were very well impressed with the first time we reviewed it. When's you agree, Eric, Oh, yeah, yeah, for sure.

54:49 Launch. Yeah, I'll go ahead and take off from here. So I'll just say that Black Mirror is one of my favorite series on television. There's no question that it's pretty dark, and there's no question that sometimes it will freak you out and make you not want to go to bed at night. But I think that that's kind of the point of it. Dark Mirror, Black Mirror, Excuse me. The purpose of it is to explore kind of the effect that technology has on our lives and how it kind of warps the sense of what it means to be a human. And you know, with these I remember the very first episode of Black Mirror ever, it's called The Entire History of You, and it's this great episode where there's this like recording device in everybody's head where every single moment of their lives is recorded. And the episode goes through this relationship of these two people who are married and they get into an argument, and of course both of their head things record that argument, and it's just the minutia that they get into as a result of them both having a perfect of it that I think is just freaking brilliant, And in this one you kind of overlay that scary technology what is it going to do to us as humans? With a star trek veneer And I got so excited when this episode first came out. The things that it of course reminds me of initially, are you go all the way back to

56:21 the eighties when William Gibson was writing. He's the guy who coined the term cyberpunk, so he wrote Neuromancer back in like I don't know, eighty eight, eighty nine something like that. You got Neil Stevenson with snow Crash kind of following up on this virtual reality living. What I think this episode does, probably better than any of the other cyberpunky style television or movies that I've seen, is that this one really I think explores the idea of what is real. You know, we're using terms like in real life and in virtual life, but I think this episode really blurs that line together, and it says we're making an exact clone, duplicate of this person who happens to live in a different place. I mean it could be a different country, it could be a different city, right, it doesn't really matter that it's virtual versus not virtual.

57:18 The point is that the people who are in the box are people, and they have all of the rights, all of the once needs desires of a person who is living on the planet and is made of physical matter. It doesn't really matter that they're made of digital stuff. So to me, that's the part of this episode that I think is so brilliant and actually resonates the most is it explores that idea of what is real and does it even matter if you're made of electrons versus versus actual matter? And actually the thing that that kind of reminds me of more than anything is the doctor on Voyager, Right, he's made of photons? Does he not have the same rights as a regular person? Or you go back to next generation and the measure of a man?

58:13 What is the actual definition of sentience? What does it mean to be a sentient being? And what does that give you with regards to human rights and that sort of stuff. So I absolutely love this episode. I've seen it probably five or six times over the years. I watched it twice when it first came out, I watched it once just recently, and I've probably seen it two or three times in between. I absolutely love it. I completely agree with Paul in that the acting is fantastic. I think the writing is really good here too. The dialogue is well laid out and you don't have to you always kind of know where you are in the story.

58:53 You're never wondering or left in some kind of a mystery where you kind of have to figure things out. I mean, of course, it's a mystery that kind of builds from the beginning because initially you don't really understand what's happening, but you're never lost, right, So is one of the best written. Black Mirror in general is a fantastically written series, and this episode in particular, I think is really really good and just you know, the acting and everything is great. So yeah, to me, this is about as good as Black Mirror gets. I would absolutely put it up in that like nine to ten range if we were given numbers to anything. I mean, anytime you start giving me science fiction that starts talking about what is sentience? What does it mean to be a human?

59:36 What are my rights? Does it matter what I'm made of, doesn't matter what color I am? Like all of that stuff. Just I totally get off on that. Yeah, the part that had me on the floor laughing is when she first shows up there and she's at odds with him, and the boss says, check your pants, and she goes down and says, he took my po Nani. And then she starts fighting with him and he takes away her face. He just snaps his finger. Her face is gone, kind of like Charlie X did in the Star Trek episode, and he's just wielding his power like a crazy maniac.

1:00:16 Well, I think what it shows is that, like the other thing that I didn't really get into, but that like could also be discussed about this episode is it's corollary to people who play video games these days, particularly like massive multiplayer online games, wherein they get to live these digital lives. But the games that exist these days have and we're going to talk more about this in the second episode. There's no consequences, right. Your character can die, you can regenerate, you can build a new character. It's not like a real life that's being lived within these games, and yet people pour all of their heart and soul into it and it means so much to them. In this case, you know, there's actually a sension being in the so it's it's a little bit different, but I think the I think those are the ideas that is it's exploring, is like, Okay, what if our technology, our technology is here, what if it got to hear? Like, what would that do to society? What would that do to people? What would that do to their way of thinking about one another? And yeah, let's talk more about that in the second episode. I love this, it's good stuff.

1:01:25 Well, you want to run the video, David, and then we can have Paul do the second video. You can. Oh my god, what am I wearing? I look capable? Okay, so you want to do this? You want me to kill your clone and then you kill. Myne Oh my god, you're right.

1:02:08 There will be so much more to give we kill. So know what you're talking about? What I can kill anybody? Why are we here? What are we doing here? Come on? Ou hi? Don't hi out? I come in peace. I come in peace? Oh hi? Do you need a hand there? What?

1:02:50 No? No? No? Why it's me? I mean I'm you? No, you're you? I'm me? Yeah, but I'm not really you. That's subjective. Why are you here? Oh? Wait? We just want to talk? Who's we? Yeah? Yo? I must day, let's have nerdsop it. Oh yeah, of course, I don't even know I had it in that work. Wow, that's a that's a big thing. Gun glad I'm keeping trim.

1:03:32 All right, ball tak it away. You know, I didn't know we were going to do in these clips, so I kind of feel like it makes them doing an in depth recap a little redundant, but I'll try to abbreviate it. So it's been a few months since the events of the first episode, right, and so all of our digitally cloned people, led by Captain Nannette right, have been surviving in the game universe, but outside they've been doing things to monetize the game or right, so they need to go and get credit somehow. And the way that they've been doing this because none of these characters write, these digital clones, they don't have any kind of game tags, right, So they're basically like rogue players within the gaming environment. So they've been going and finding other players and robbing them, right, which shows up out in the real world and the game players for them is somebody say, hey, you know, somebody's coming out there and you know, robbing us. And they don't have a gamer tag what's the deal here, right, which doesn't really get too much attention at first in the real world, right, And then that is like going, we need to figure out a way to get someplace where we can have long term survival. And so they conclude that if they can get access to the games source code, right, the original source code, they can get themselves sent somehow to a private server where they don't have to deal with any other people, right, they deal with any threats and they can just exist. But to do that, they need to be able to go back to the CEO guy,

1:05:04 Lieutenant Walton, But he died sacrificing himself in the Engines in the first episode side for the spoiler alert, But you've had seven years, where the hell have you been? Meanwhile, in the real world, Walton himself is the CEO, right, is getting being grilled by an investigative reporter from the New York Times about all this stuff there, and he's onto the whole fact that there's been you know, illegal dna u's going on there. Nanette in the real world, she listens in on this interview, right, and she offers to help James the CEO, look for these rogue players because she knows what's really going on, right, she suspects everything, and she is way hip to the whole fact that you know, DNA samples, including her own, have been used from Robert's apartment, right, which is all the stuff that we found from the first episode there. And so she tells all this to the CEO, to James, right, and so they figure out that that Walton, which is James the CEO, has respawn shortly after the crew entered Infinity at the end of the of the last episode, and they figure out what planet he's on, right, and so they choose a planet to go there. That's the whole scene that we just saw right where you're seeing Walton is basically kind of rebooted, right and respond and he's kind of almost living like a caveman right in isolation, like castaway with his pet rock, right, which you got

1:06:37 a whole Yeah, we won't talk about why that hole is in the back of that rock. We're not going to go there. We'll let everyone else read that for yourselves. Right. But so they encounter each other, right, and she explains the situation to their counterports, right, and it just ends up getting very complicated, essentially, back in the real world. The important thing to focus on there is the whole business of Annette trying to explain to CEO James what's going on. Does not go well, right, and so she disconnects herself, takes away the game and the controller, and she just gives him all kinds of hell leaving the office, right.

1:07:18 And as she's leaving the office, he's like trying to blackmail her into coming back and doing all these different things. And in a really shocking scene it's one of the best I've ever seen, she's hit by a car and Jesus, I just jumped out of my seat. I meanwhere dude. I mean the edit on that. I mean, we know kind of the frontal part of our brain and it's a special effect, but Jesus Christ, I was just like, it just knocked me out. It was just, you know, so shocking. It was just really well done, really well done. So she is hit by a car and she's in a coma and potentially brain dead, right, and later on we're going to find out that there's a lot more to that and what's you know, can I tivity possibilities?

1:08:01 But Walton, you know, Walton, the good guy, Walton in the in the game universe. He explains that basically they need to go to someplace called the Heart of Infinity. Okay, that in the universe of the game looks like a big space station, look like a big armillary spinning around, right, and that is where the source code is kept. Okay, And we get this crazy flashback because we've seen, you know, how Robert had been, you know, using the DNA digital replicator for his own nefarious purposes. But in this episode we find out that that actually came from the CEO guy who'd gotten it right, and and you end up discovering right that that Robert really had been getting you know what, this is part of what warped him and made him so screwed up, right, is because the CEO wanted to figure out a way to automatically just keep generating planets for repetitive game content, to keep expanding things there.

1:09:02 So he used the illegal DNA cloning device, the digital cloning device, to create and trap a digital clone of Robert's enslaved consciousness in this depiction of his garage lab right well from when they first met, and just keep him there for what to him feels like centuries, you know, forcing him to update and expand Infinity indefinitely while he lives this solitary existence. So and when we see him, he's almost like a like you know, like a you know, like a twelve year old, right, he's just completely like he's like an innocent At first, you can't believe this is the same, you know, guy who was just went so dark and so evil with everybody else when he didn't get his way. But Nanett has to travel there and transport in there, and again we're using a lot of the same motifs from Star Trek. Right, people are able to beam and teleport wherever they need to go. Right, So she meets the clone Robert and he's willing to help the crew after she explains the situation, right that they need to be put into, you know, some other kind of private service so they can live without being threatened.

1:10:13 Right. It's complicated plot to hear me describe it, but like Eric was saying, you never really lost when you're watching it, right, And he basically explains to her that he can do two things. He gives her a choice. He goes, we can access and then Net's body via the hospital and a cerebral implant, and he can merge her consciousness with her to revive her in the real world. But if he does that, it would basically erase the crew from the game and they would just be gone without any explanation or knowledge, right, And so she doesn't want to do that. She wants to save the crew, right. She believes in, you know, kind of doing the more ethical choice, if you will, to kind of move into pole universe there.

1:10:54 She wants to keep the rest of the crew alive. And then he actually revealed that actually he can do both and that it's like a test, like he's re enacting this whole motif from one of the old Callister episodes that he loved, where it was like a godlike test to see if you were capable of doing the right thing right, And and he says that she passed that test because actually do both options, and he goes, it's okay, I'll copy and paste you so we can do both. And then she's like, wait a minute, I think you should cut and paste me, right, not copy and paste me, because he said, oh, it's no big deal, it's okay. But the reason he wants copy and paste is because if he does a copy and paste of Annette, then she would be basically creating yet another copy of herself to be Robert's companion in the garage for eternity, and he's like, I'm a nice guy. I'll treat you well.

1:11:51 And it's just like the ick factor is just off the charts with this, because you're getting to see that bad Robert again of you know how he was when he was the Captain Robert in the earlier iteration of the first episode. So it's just crazy. So they have a big fight. I won't spoil how the fight ends, but it's awesome. It's pretty exciting. And James meanwhile has gone back in the game posing is his counterpart there, and he sends out an invite to all players that the crew had robbed, and then he exits the game to create more of a threat for them. But in the course of the struggle, something happens that basically incapacitates Robert, and it is like, to borrow the word that v had said, it's basically like a kill switch, right, and so if he's not around to initiate things anymore, it deletes the entire game, and so it's like a race against the clock there, and it all works out because she's able to find the way to put the disc into the machine that lets everything for both her and herself and herpaigns surfive. But she wakes up in the hospital, right, and she's alive and she's not brain dead. Her consciousness is melded with her own consciousness of her body in the hospital, and it is also co inhabited by the entire Callister crew, who where they're looking at the main view screen of the ship, they're seeing from her eyesight

1:13:23 potential looking in the bathroom mirror at the hospital. And meanwhile, the whole of Infinity and all backups have been wiped from the server, right, So it's just wild. And then we see CEO James get arrested from the FBI, and there's all this come uppe's there and it's basically this form of them coexisting together inside of her head, right, And they agree to you know, close their eyes while she goes to the bathroom or have sex with kinder date what her describes. And the payment for that is whenever they want to watch their favorite show, Real Housewives of Atlanta, they get to watch through her eyes. So it's a crazy ending to things. I know how complicated that all sounds, but it works beautifully.

1:14:10 It is. I please fight me if you think I'm wrong, but I think it's incredibly well written and clever, and it's just beautifully mapped out and very very smart storytelling. And it's hilarious when it needs to be and disturbing often as well. But I just thought it was a great It easily lived up to the level of the storytelling and the premise from the first episode. Would you all agree, Eric, my friend what say that? I would say that it was right on par the I found the ending just a little bit cheesy, But here is what I think was on par At the end of the first episode, we're kind of left with this feeling of like, oh, everything's going to be okay, because now they have control of the ship, and now they're in this universe where they can go and they can do whatever they want, and they've been say from the bad Guy and the bad Guy's dead boom done.

1:15:03 But in fact, what they learn is that the world that they live in is full of bad full of people who want to haunt them down. It's full of people who just want to kill other people, which I think is like a super strong corollary to why a lot of people play video games these days. It's always kind of fascinated me that that things like sex in the United States are taboo, but things like violence are not taboo, and you can be as violent as you want and it doesn't really matter. And I think there's no other place that that comes out more than in video games. And this episode kind of picks up on that.

1:15:44 You know, we learn that the digital clones are not like the other players in the game, right, They actually bleed when they. Get shot. They have one life, they won't regenerate if they die. They because the game has been monetized so much, they literally can't live because they have no good way other than stealing from other people to make money because they don't live in the real world. They don't have. Real jobs and that sort of thing. And there's one moment, you know, where somebody starts calling them illegals and then the real Robert, not Robert, the real Walton character, you know, there's that moment where he like grabs a gun and starts shooting people and says they're all illegals and that kind of stuff. Oh man, that one just really hit home, and you start to kind of see like the the the parallels between other groups of what people call illegals and the way that they treat them and that they don't necessarily treat them like human beings. So I thought it was fascinating in this episode that the whole crew is referred to as illegals, and I just think that was really cool. I completely agree on the car hitting her scene.

1:17:04 I was shocked. I literally gasped out loud and was like, what. Like, what the hell just happened? So moving moving on from that though, there's this whole idea of, like, so the the Robert Daly clone that is the center of this universe. There's this idea of kind of like what is creating a universe actually mean? And I love that this kind of gives you this this episode in particular, it gives you kind of the backstory of of infinity and like where did it come from? What happened when these two guys met each other, you know, the Walton like comes to Daily's garage because he's got a bunch of money that he wants to spend and he experiences this thing for the first time, and he's like, how.

1:17:54 Many plants he got. He's like, I got four planets, and he's like, we need fifty, we need one hundred, and so you you see immediately the kind of greed that drives Walton into wanting to invest in this company because he sees it as an opportunity to make more money. He says something about this is gold or or something like that. So his intentions, Walton's intentions are never ever good, never good. They always are about making money and about being greedy. And I love that this episode gives him the arc that he sort of deserves, where he starts out as a super greedy bastard in that first episode. And also, I mean, the virtual version of himself is shit upon, right, But like that's kind of the point. But then in the second episode you see the real guy and he kind of moves from being that greedy bastard to actually having some redeeming qualities. I guess it's not unlike his virtual character in the first one, now that I think about it, because his virtual character kind of saves them at the end of the first episode, right, So he actually has kind of like two redemption arcs in these two episodes, which is which is the kind of cool thing.

1:19:04 I love how they flipped the story around. And initially when uh Nannette gets to the center of the thing and she meets Daily, it seems like they've kind of flipped the paradigm where Daily is not the creepy, weird guy anymore and he's actually the benevolent, like simple center of this thing, and Walton's the bad guy who's been kind of like keeping him under his yoke and that. Sort of stuff. But then they slowly evolve that story and make him creepy again. So man, just the like storytelling there where you're you don't know how to feel about this guy. You super hated him in the first episode, and then the second episode comes along and you finally meet the real guy and you're kind of like, okay, it's oh he's really he's just really like a cool.

1:19:49 Holy shit, he's not a cool so I love you and you feel sorry for him for a while. You're you know, you're totally feel sorry for him. They good manage this gentle guy in your in your in your garage with your collectibles you and then you realize it's just like oh god, right, it's just like yeah, it's just like it's just like God help you if you disagree with them. So it's kind of the age old story of like absolute power corrupts absolutely right. You can't possibly give any human being that much power and expect them to not exploit that power. And I think that's exactly what Daily is shown as doing, uh in this episode.

1:20:34 Let's see other things. I mean, it kind of has the So let's talk about the ending a little bit. In my opinion, it has kind of that what I'll call the American ending that I often talk about, which is that everything's okay at the end, right, like Infinity is. Destroyed, the. The people all make it out and they're in her head, so they're kind of safe. The gamers can't game anymore. Daily's not there anymore. Virtual Walton. Is he he's gone at the end? Right? Do we not have virtual Walton anymore? Is he still on the couster? Maybe that maybe I'm he's still there, okay, So he's so he's still there, Okay, So I thought that was okay. It was just the way that they handled them, kind of being in her head and the fact that every time she moves the ship kind of goes bah. I just like that particular part of it was a little cheesy, but it wasn't enough for me to get pulled out of the episode and say, oh, this is drunk. I really hated it so so the very very end was cheesy to me, but the rest of it was a fantastic sequel to the first episode and kind of like permutating on all of those concepts that we had set up at the at the very beginning.

1:21:55 So I agree, Paul, it's not like quite like a alien Aliens where the second one's better, but definitely on par Yeah, yeah. Would you be interested? Do you think there's enough juice in the tank to explore this universe more and do a third episode? Well, okay, so if they did that, it would be kind of a post Infinity. Episode. And so what does that look like. I mean, it's probably like a different version of Infinity, right because unless it's unless it's a story about how to get them out of her head and into the real world. I just I don't know, conceptually speaking the way that it was written there. If the writers were really really good, maybe you could do it, But it just doesn't feel like there's quite enough there to like make number three as good as the first couple.

1:22:51 Yeah, I would say, I mean, I think that the demand is going to be there for sure, people are going to because I think this thing's got a great response. I would say, don't do it unless you can figure out a way to bring back the Robert Daily character in some form, right, because he's Plemmens is just the heart of this thing. I think he's just so fantastic. And when we went into the start of this, we didn't know and we said, oh, he was killed in the end of the first one, right, and we're seeing his memorial on the desk at Callister Corporation, right, we figured he's dead. And so it was very surprising the way they came up with an idea that we could still have that character. Did not see that coming. So hopefully they could come up with something, you know, equally clever to keep him coming back again in a new way.

1:23:36 That was surprising as well. But I don't know that I want to see it without without Plemmens, because he's just so he's just such a gem. I mean, in some way, in some ways a reference what Charles was talking about earlier. So if you haven't if you like science fiction books and you haven't read Ready Player one, you probably should read it, But they did write a Ready Player two, and like at the end of the first book, you kind of feel like everything's all sewn up. This has done the story. That was a great story, and then Ready Player two comes along and it kind of tries to like take you back there and tell another story that's in the same kind of universe, but it never quite gets there, right, So I kind of I'm almost like, don't mess with perfection at these first that are so good, just don't go there.

1:24:25 And I think they're gonna have a really hard time because these actors have just all shown what they can do. And you know, I think Kristin Miliodi is on her way to freaking a list town. I mean she is. I mean, I don't think she's going to be having a free moment, you know. And I think the same could be said for Jimmy Simpson, right, Jimmy Simpons and Simpsons. He's like the next Walton Goggins. I think he's just you know, he's a phenomenal and Plemings is you know, I mean, he's already done Scorsese movies. Get out of Town, I mean it's just crazy. So who. This was going to be a series and that's they were gonna they were going to take it into a series, but COVID came, the strike came, this happened, That happened.

1:25:08 Uh, so we ended up with what we have now and no series. So would it have been different as a series versus as a two part episode, I don't know. I don't know, but I enjoyed it. I thought it was it was poetic justice that when she gets to the Center of Infinity, the same dude that is illegally cloning people in the real world is a clone of himself and he's torturing his own clone on the ship. And did he even know that there was a clone of himself in there already? Was he aware of that? I mean, the theo the uh?

1:25:48 I mean he the what I read off of it was that he I mean, they showed the scene where he's getting swabbed by Walton, right, so he's aware that Walton took his DNA. I wasn't sure if he was aware that he actually was the center of the Infinity universe or not. Yeah, I wasn't sure if he knew that at all, and if he knew that. I think he is, because he at one point he talks about how he just I don't know how time works here it seems like five hundred years, right. I think he I think he knows. Because I just thought, like, here here is the clone of the clone torturing people on the Calister, and then here's another clone of the clone who's creating a world torture more people.

1:26:30 So you know, I mean it's an out of sight, out of mind kind of thing, Jim, or Yeah, Like if he doesn't see himself being tortured directly, then it doesn't exist. Yeah, because he's he's like, all, oh, I'm a poor guy in a garage, blah blah blah. But here he is torturing people on the Calister. So I wasn't sure if he knew that the other hymn was doing that or if he didn't know. I don't know, but. Jim, he didn't. I don't think that. I don't think the guy in the garage knows about the camp and. He didn't know. I'll talk about when I get to it. I found it fascinating the differences between the people on the ship that were cloned versus their versions of themselves in reality, like you know, and then that the woman who gets hit by the car, she's positive, she's you know, the captain of the ship, but in reality we saw her falling down the mountain.

1:27:24 She can barely walk. She's practically inept, but because she was raised, its nature versus nurture, and we see that on fold. The CEO of the company is a real dink, but in the game he's not. He's like some dude that you'd want to hang out with. He sacrifices himself to save them. I don't think the CEO guy in the real world would have done. That same thing. So I really, I really. Liked seeing the differences between the characters that we see in the real world versus them in the video world, and how they're circumstances forced them to be better people and work together as a team and basically be a family, a starship crew, where those same people in reality were nothing like that because reality had twisted them into something different.

1:28:19 So I thought that was really really awesome about the episode. But what were you going to say, Charles. Okay, in episode one, he would not have known about his Daily, would have not known about his clone because Daily was part of the main server where the callister was in his private server that did not have access to the main server. When he destroyed, well, he destroyed when the server, when the patch erases the copy and erases him. He did not realize that exists because they pass on on the server. So I don't think he knew about the original Calister crew and the way it worked because I was a private server that he did not have access to.

1:29:22 Well, it was it was a timing issue. Infinity started up before the USS Calister was formed, so right, you know, the guy who runs the middle of Infinity was there long before any of the other stuff happened. Yes, but why do we talk about how evil Walton is. Well, one of the things we didn't mention was the fact that he's he's pestered by a reporter and we find out from this reporter that they the topic of cloning comes up, and he could bely denies it. Well why is he deny it? Because the cloning of taking somebody's DNA and putting it into a system is considered at that time illegal. So that's where it gets interesting because he does not daily does not want to get caught with the charge of cloning anyone, which he didn't clone the Callistar crew. He cloned his employee in the system, so he still was illegally cloning somebody, which was against the law, which is why he finally was captured by police a couple of years later when he tried to escape capture. So that's an interesting little ethical discussion there

1:30:53 is what the what's the uh, what's the right of taking somebody's DNA and put in digitizing it for your own use, which is an interesting topic in itself. This one definitely I agree with both gentlemen that this series, we're just both episodes were so well done and such an interesting ethical point of view and discussion, but the definitely how they do it was definitely worth it.

1:31:34 Yeah for sure. V What about you, what did you think about the second episode? Well, I mean you all have pretty much said it. I really I did enjoy it. When what's his name Walton when they find him, you know, looking like he's on castaway. Those moments just cracked me up. Where he says, oh, I can't leave Rocky behind and get some you know, She's like, oh, what's this hole? And then she drops when she realizes but oh, actually before I know what what grossed me out was when he's running into the water and he captures that squid thing and he's just like tearing it apart. And then for the rest of the when he's he's got that blue gore on this beard, and every time I saw that, I just went bath.

1:32:22 That was that just was hilarious and you know, just wrong at the same time. But I do think I think when she got hit by the car, which I agree with everybody, that I gasped out loud too, and I. Thought she was dead. But I thought in the hospital that she was technically brain dead. There was no activity, which is why getting the her you know, digital clone that would have brought her back to life, so to speak, in the real world. But it was a little bit it was a little bit weird when you know, when I see that they're inside her head, I thought, come on, the only way they could that I could see that they could you get out of her head is if you created I'm thinking of, you know, Vic Fontaine's holideck work, because he if you remember when in It's Only a Paper Moon.

1:33:24 As a thanks to Vic for basically saving his life, nog arranges so that the program is on twenty six hours a day, and so he gets to live his life. So that's the only way they could do about I don't think they have enough to you know, make a third episode. I think you'll are right. Oh that's that's my take. It brings up an interesting question though, if if the real life versions of the crew that are living in her head die, then they could beam the people or whatever out of her head and into the bodies of actual people in real life and bring them back to life like they did to her. Right.

1:34:05 Theoretically, well, it's a little unclear on how things age in the virtual world. I'm not really sure, Like they didn't they didn't go into that level of detail to let us know. But I what, like what I agree with what V was saying, because the Sonnette had brain damage, right, and brain brain damage caused by physical trauma. So theoretically her brain is like scrambled, and yet they somehow find a way to like make it all work by just beaming the consciousness back into it. I think that was part of the cheese that I found, is like, if they had found a way to repair physically repair the tissue, Okay, then you know, then I get it.

1:34:46 But. Suspension of disbelief there. Well, David, it's up to you, buddy. Yeah, I I agree with a lot with everybody's been saying. And the reason I I was pointing at my watch over here was because it reminded me of the doctor's mobile mirror, which means that's another way they could potentially get them out of into the virtual reality into a physical world where they could just wear a Patriot on their arms or something. Yeah, they could build some kind of like a robot or like a hollow. Yeah. Yeah, so that would be an interesting third episode. I could see that had happened. But then Jim mentioned the whole idea where they could just like beam or like transfer their files who other people bringed, and so I was like, that kind of reminds me of the situation where I don't know if anybody's aware of this, but did you know some of the world population do not have monologues in their head, which interesting because that when they put them in their head, that reminded me of like a monologue that they're talking to themselves kind of thing.

1:35:55 And so I'm not quite sure what the percentage did, but there are some people I no fortunately actually don't really have like any kind of they can't seem to talk to himself. Well, David, I find the whole concept of human consciousness distilled down to data to be fascinating, And I think we could have an entire episode of Star Trek about that, or Start Trek talking about that, because their entire shows like Altered Carbon that that talk about that sort of thing, like can you take a human consciousness and turn it into data in such a way that it can actually be transferred to somebody else? I don't know. Yeah, well didn't they kind of do that in the emotion picture with Aliyah where she was her digital self or her essence was put into the robot version of Ileiah, except with the overlay of the consciousness I guess of vedure.

1:37:00 Interesting. Yeah, there's a lot of things that Star Trek did didn't relate to a lot of the sci fi fun But overall this particular episode, yeah, it was a lot better I think than the first one. It definitely opened up a lot more mystery that we were asking ourselves way back then, like you know, all the different things that if they were to make a second one, we were like, okay, So however they do it, and so then they did it and it was like wow. But other than that, it was h Yeah. I think I think my favorite part in that whole episode was that whole rock thing, which you just like realized.

1:37:48 It's just like, I mean, was I the only one that when he says we can't leave Rocky behind? I was like, yeah, I know, yeah, Wilson. Wilson totally yeah, totally cast away. Even even the well sort of like what he was wearing too was was cast away. But then they they took that gross twist with the rock That was just the look on her face. Could just go, Yeah, they're willing to do crazy ship like this on this show, which I like is because they're not really very inhibited. Right. It's at one point they're all back on the ship and he's there, uh you know, he's still dressed like, uh, you know, his cave man attire, right, and I loved Alaska because you're a disgusting right, And he's like, what do you mean, I didn't kill anybody. You know, you're disgusting.

1:38:40 I didn't do anything. Ball, Yes, I was gonna I was gonna say that too, because that was just the way. She said it. That was hilarious stuff. So in the midst of all this darkness, I just liked that they're willing to just go nuts with the humor and just how it right. I mean, there's just very, very creative work. Definitely had a lot more humor in this one than the first one though. Yeah. Yeah, it's just so funny, so great achievement. I hope other creators I see. I've only just recently watched this other show. I just wanted to get too far off throw.

1:39:26 But there's another series on Netflix I've recently called Discovery, Go Love, Death and Robots. Oh yeah, yeah. A lot of short work being done there, a lot of short films, right, And it seems like Netflix is really embracing fresh ideas for science fiction, right, And so I hope that they continue to be a welcome home for that. And I was just you know, i'm, I'm, I'm. It gives me optimism to see this kind of storytelling happening and not being you know, oh, we can't do that. It's like they're kind of warning about the direction that you know, h we're going as a civilization. So I really think it's healthy. Well, let me know if anybody needs a list of like the best six episodes of Black Mirr or anything, because I've seen them all and I just think that this series is brilliant. But every once in a while you get one that's better than the other.

1:40:14 Ones, So I definitely share those with this. I think I'd love to see that by all means, so well, fun to talk about this, friends. I really it was a it's very Star Trek adjacent, but I think it was a really super fun, fun examination and I hope we get people to watch the show who've never seen it before, right, I think they'll really enjoy it. Spoiler alert. Maybe we're going to edit that to the very beginning. I don't know. Did everybody notice the TNG playmate shuttle Craft sitting on his desk there? I did, indeed, Yeah, I missed that. During the Great Fight, saying in Correife came right away.

1:40:56 I just thought it was funny when when Nannette is in Daily's garage and she goes over to All's collectibles and she picks up was it a sword or it was something? And she's just like picking it up, and anybody who you know, my phone when she picks it when she yeah, I'm solely. I'm solely uh uh oh something happened there? Oh sorry, anyway, when she just casually picks it up, and you know, any collector is going to say, you know, and he just goes over and basically, you know, it's just horrified that she's picked it up casually when it's a collectible. He's like, this is a real such and such a thing.

1:41:37 Yeah that. Yeah, and it's just like, you know, the same to build on that whole thing. Right. At one point, he's like, really, oh, oh, are you going to be the person who finally share all this stuff with me? Like this stuff? And she's just like, I don't really like old shows. He's just deflated, right, You're not who I thought you were. And it's just like, oh God. And it's just you know, not a line of dialogue from him at all, but just his you know, his reaction was just priceless. That's an answering question because you mentioned that that's not how you were like at all. Did he know her before he got copied into the machine? I mean, shouldn't that clone not know who she is?

1:42:25 I don't think he does know This version of him doesn't know her, but the version that I was asking about at the beginning, does yeah the version of the ship, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, because he knows her in the real world, and so when he's had breaks for pizza and things like that, so it's like he's updated and stuff. Whenever he's put the game on pause or whatever, clone garage garage him doesn't. It's like he's meeting her for the first time. So he's enchanted, Oh, come stay. With me, just like episode. That's role play and I'm just like, oh, it's just like time to go, Sifter, take that floppy disk.

1:43:07 I mean, so, Paul, that's another great like topic for future shows is what does it mean to have a human being, a human consciousness that's alive for like five hundred or one thousand years, Like wouldn't you know, wouldn't any normal human just kind of go insane after that amount of time because there's just too much going I don't know. I love that. Relative to the concept of vampires or you know, immortality or any of that kind of stuff. Well, the difference between if you're alone versus being around people, I think there's a difference. If you're alone, you go crazy. But yeah, then you need to have Rocky with you to help you get through. If you're gonna be like digitized into some like live forever in an android body or in a conscious computer or whatever it is, make sure you've got something set up to this friendly advice for Elon Musker whoever, right, it's just like, have something set up that simulates sleep, because we know that if you want to make somebody insane, at the fastest route to make somebody clinically insane the Armies and experiments with it is just deprive them of sleep and they are off the deep end. Is faster than anything else. No drug can do it as quickly.

1:44:18 It's just you've got to have sleep with your brain. God, yeah, it's crazy, crazy. Well, I just started taking melatonin this year. I feel better. I'm like, oh, thank god, I'm finally getting some good. You guys are ready for some Star Trek birthdays, do it? Sure, let's do it. That was not okay. This is the part of the show where we do our Star Trek birthdays, and we always start off the show by remembering those members of our Star Trek family who, sadly enough, are no longer with us. And for that return to Eric.

1:45:06 Tonight, Jim I will abbreviate my readings of our six members of our Star Trek community who have gone before us who we are remembering this week. The first is Michael J. Pollard. Michael J. Pollard was the actor who played Yon in the TOS first season episode Mirian. We lost him unfortunately back in twenty nineteen. He was eighty years old. He's been in a lot of stuff. You should go check out his IMDb page. What I will say is that he earned an Academy Award nomination as Best Actor in a Supporting Role for his role of C. W. Moss in the film Bonnie and Clyde from Back. In the Day. Happy Birthday to Michael J. Pollard, Happy Birthday as well to Ivy Bethuen. She's the actress who played Dwana in the Next Generation first season episode When the Bow Breaks.

1:45:52 She also has been in quite a few things, including being My Peabody in nineteen eighty five's Back to the Future. You may have heard of that movie. She was only the eighth Star Trek to performer. To reach one hundred years old. That's right, folks, we lost her at the age of one hundred and one years old back in twenty nineteen. She was born in nineteen eighteen. Ivy Bethuan. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday as well to Sally Kellerman, the American actress who portrayed Elizabeth Dinner in the TOS first season episode where No One Where, No Man, Excuse me, it's ingrain in my head has gone before. Best, of course, remembered for her portraying role of Major Margaret hot hips Oolahan in the nineteen seventy film Mash not the television show, but the film, for which she received a supporting Oscar and Golden Globe nomination. Happy birthday to Sally Kellerman. Happy birthday to a super heavy hitter. And I remember when we lost him back in twenty nineteen on the podcast, we spent quite a bit of time talking about him.

1:47:00 But Renee Murat aber Jenois was the actor best known for portraying Chief of Security Odo on Star Trek Deep Space nine. He was also, of course, Colonel West in Star Trek sixth The Undiscovered Country. There are so many good things in this man's resume, including his role on Benson and various other things. He was even considered as portraying the doctor on Star Trek Voyager at one point. If you do not know much about his resume, you should absolutely go and check it out. Renee Murat Aberjenois. His birthday is June first, nineteen forty. We lost him back in twenty nineteen. Happy birthday, Renee.

1:47:41 He shares a birth with me, so that's oh I remember. And he was in the nineteen seventy six remake of King Kong. Wait, did we just miss your birthday then, Jim four days ago? Yah? Well it was on Facebook. Happy birthday. It was not a Facebook. Anyway. Okay, Well, let's come back to that. Happy birthday as well. To actor John Abbot born John Albert Chamberlain Keffer, the English actor who portrayed Isle Born in the TOS first season episode Errand of Mercy. Of course, lots and lots of good stuff in this guy's resume, including plenty of stage presents. In nineteen thirty seven, he was actually in the production of Hamlet that was performed at Elsnore with Lawrence Olivier and Vivian Leigh. Yeah, big stuff right there.

1:48:37 Happy birthday to John Abbott, lost in nineteen ninety six at the age of ninety years old. He was born in nineteen oh five and last, but not least, folks, we're going to celebrate actor Robert Lansting, the actor who played Gary seven in the TOS second season episode Assignment Earth. I'd love to talk about this character because not only was that a great episode, but of course we got to follow up stories with him in the IDW comics. Robert Lansing was all over the place back in the sixties. He made appearances on Bonanza, Gun Smoke, all that stuff. Then fast forward to the eighties with Law and Order. In nineteen eighty five, he actually became part of the regular cast members on the TV series The Equalizer, which you may remember. So just lots and lots of stuff to celebrate this guy. I wish we had more time to talk about it, but Robert Lansing would have had a birthday just today, June fifth. He was born in nineteen twenty eight. We lost him at the young age of sixty six years old, and you can go check out why he was lost so young. Happy birthday to Robert Lansing. And that does it for our remembrances, folks.

1:49:46 I'm going to pass this birthday candle over to Charles. Thank you. Eric. Let's start off with a Happy birthday to Mark A. Shepherd, British actor played in Voyage's sixties an episode Child's Play. Happy birthda Nicole Nicki Cox, actress who played the role of Sergenta in TNG's second season episode pen Pals. Happy birthday to Michelle Phillips, singer and actress who played Denise Mayhem in TG's first season episode Will Always Have Paris. Happy birthday to Chad Allen, American actor who played Yono in Star Trek's Next Generation four season episode Suddenly Human. Happy birthday to Anthony Montgomery, actress from Inanapolis, Indiana, who played Ensign Travis Mayweather on Enterprise from two thousand and one to the show's cancelation in two thousand and five. And I'm gonna throw David, the.

1:50:57 Most underrated and underused character d on Enterprise. I'll just say that, and I'm going to throw an extra one on there to throw David off. As a Sunday, June first, A very special warm birthday to our own uncle Jim, who celebrated another year round. Und you really need to start planning your own version of the birthday song, dude, because you deserve You got that weird al ready. To go. I didn't move weird over with us from blog. I have to. I'll have to track them down.

1:51:41 You got to do that. That's right, thanks guys. But definitely a very happy birthday to Gym for all he's done with this podcast and it's there to here, all the work that before I got, I joined before. You join, that's right, yeah, along before Charles, yeah far. Away, yep, yeah, that's right. Well, now I'm gonna take this flaming birthday candle with our host name on and pass it over to Paul.

1:52:26 Paul's got some good ones, Thank you, Charles appreciated. First of all, let's say happy birthday to the phenomenal James Callus, a British actor who we are acknowledging for playing Maurice Picard patriarch and also an illusory Star Trek psychiatrist in his image in the Star Trek Picard episodes, The Stargazer, Monsters and Hide and Seek. Of course, we're also how can you not talk about James Callous without mentioning Doctor Caias Baltar in Ronald Y Moore's reimagined Battlestar Galatica was phenomenal, absolutely phenomenal. Every now and then I under somebody who's never seen that battlestary, I think, and I'm like, oh boy, you have really something great in store, so amazing. I think we have a next one I would say qualifies Star Trek legend. I would say certainly those of us who like to try to fix things and you know, are impatient with devices don't work correctly. Where would be talking about? The great legendary calm Meani born on May thirtieth, the Irish actor best known among Star Trek fans for Hiss Trail of Chief Miles O'Brien on both Next Gen and Deep Space nine, and he also played Albert Macklin in the acclaimed episode Far Beyond the Stars, which is just superb. But what a legend this guy is. I just like that. He's just he's, you know, kind of a rough knuckle, workaday guy. His values are going to the pub and friendship and being a good husband, right and you know he is he's a union man, right

1:53:58 and and uh and he's you know, he's a character who often depicted as thinking he knows more than he really does and being willing to admit when he doesn't know as much as he should and I think that that's great. You know, he's he admits when he's wrong and admits, especially in the midst of marriage. Right, I could do better. I didn't necessarily, you know, I had an attitude about being a dad and I didn't know as much as I should know. And I think he just really plays a wonderful humanity to that, which makes him just very endearing. So a lovely character and a wonderful performer. So Happy Birthday called me. And and the only character that's not enlisted. He's enlisted, he's not an officer. And it's not that's portray that's not an officer. That's still a main character.

1:54:49 Yeah, I work for a living yep, exactly as every enlisted man would say. Uh. Happy Birthday goes out to Leah Thompson, wonderful actress and director who directed Star Trek Picard second season episode Assimilation and Watcher. She also played Diane Werner in the episode fly Me to the Moon, and of course, you know, sci fi fans must acknowledge her wonderful portrayal of Lorraine Bains McFly in the Back to the Future series. But wonderful actress, absolutely splendid, very cool individual. And finally for me, let's bring some Spock Jock love into the house, right, and let's say hello and happy birthday to Zachary Quinto. Okay, actor portrayed mister Spock in the JJ versus Star Trek, Star Trek Into Darkness and Star Trek Beyond. I hope we get to see you and happy the character again, Zach right at some point in the future. But because you rock pretty hard and I think you really was a lovely interpretation of much beloved character. You had big shoes to fill and you did it and did it well.

1:55:57 So Happy birthday to all of their Une and late May birthdays. And let's send it over to the big guy the birthday Paison himself, Uncle Jim, Why. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Paul. I've got some great ones. I've got some Klingons, and I've got a really really good one. I want to wish Cynthia Gao a happy, happy birthday. She's the Chinese American actress and model who played Caitlin Dharr in the best Star Trek movie ever, Star Trek five, The Final Frontier. And I was lucky enough, well, Charles was lucky enough to meet her at Star Trek Las Vegas and get her autograph for me and sent that to me. So I treasure that, so thank you, thank you so much for that, Charles on Happy birthday to Cynthia Goo. I also want to say happy birthday to somebody who was on this podcast, Susie Plaxon, who of course played kay Lar. She's the American actress who appeared in four different roles in three different Star Trek series. She's best known as Kaylar and the TNA G episodes The Emissary, Reunion and Firstborn. She also appeared as Doctor Salar and TNG's episode The Hizoid Man, and she appeared in the Voyager episode as Lady Q and Q and the Gray And she also appeared as an Andoran Tara in the enterprise episode Cease Fire.

1:57:20 Happy Birthday. She's a gem, she's amazing, She's got it. You guys need to check out her appearance on this podcast. Go to Trek talkin dot com look it up. She was a lot of fun to talk to. I think you'll enjoy it. Terrific as a lot of fun, a lot of fun. And last on my list another Klingon. We want to say happy birthday and to Mark Ward and the Canadian actor who played Alexander Rozenko and Star Trek Deep Space nine six season episodes Sons and Daughters, and you are cordially invited and uh ed d D D D D looking Uh Eric, do you think we have time to squeeze in a news story?

1:58:03 Well, Jim, unfortunately I don't have time to read my news and. We may have to save it wait till next week. All right, So guys, we're going to bump the news stories from this week up to next week. I'm looking here. I don't think there's anything that's dated that would Nope, nope, there's nothing week. That we can wait till next week. Yeah, yeah, okay, all right. So with that, guys, we're gonna bid a do. I want to let you guys know that we're going to be talking to alex dial f A and Harvey from the Star Trek Picard, So tune in next Thursday for that. It's going to be a lot of fun. I'm your most excellent host, uncle Jim, and I'd like to say thank you to V for hanging out and Trek talking with us from Virginia. Thank you so much. V.

1:58:44 My pleasure and I promise next week you'll get to do your new story. And thank you so much for David for hanging out and Trek Talking with us and putting all that work into the videos. Yeah, it's a lot of work and I'm glad. We were able to show them. And thank you to Eric for hanging out and Trek Talking with us as well. Thank you so much, Eric. Absolutely, great time. Is always still great to have you on the podcast feed. Absolutely a great addition to the Trek family. And of course thank you to Paul for hanging out in Trek Talking with us as well. Thank you so much, Paul. Thanks Uncle Jim. We had a lot of fun this week, so good time. And of course thank you to Charles for hanging out in Trek Talking with us as well.

1:59:26 Thank you, Charles, Thank you so fun talking about Callister. That was a good topic, that was a good conversation. And with that, guys, hailing frequencies are closed. Good night, everybody, can I help? Long and prosper, Long and. Prosper Okay, okay, we are experiencing technically difficultee. Does anyone else getting that reconnecting thing? Weird deal? All stations, all stations ready for departure, sir, some problem, right, I'm just hoping this isn't the usual way ourmissions will go.

2:00:17 Sir, Oh, no, Number one. I'm sure most will be much more interesting. Let's see what's out there. Engage