TOS 01:21 "Return of the Archons," with Dave Madden Troubadours on Trek

Austin-based singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, composer, music arranger, and producer Dave Madden has had a long, amazing, and diverse career for so young a guy. Dave was voted Best Music Arranger at the AMP Austin Music Industry Awards and Top 10 Best Keyboardists in the Austin Chronicle's Music Poll. He’s a member of the Recording Academy and a voting member for the Grammy’s and he’s got a TED talk about music theory floating around out there on the internet. His double album and 20-page art-book and high-res audio project, Open-Eyed & Broken Wide, was named Best Austin Record of 2010.
Dave’s had a lot of illustrious work as a side person and also plays regularly with his funk-jazz outfit, beloved in Austin. Dave’s played everywhere from the Texas State Capitol, Barton Springs, the Long Center, Antone’s, Threadgill’s to the Zach Scott Theatre. He's been a good friend of mine for 12 or 13 years.
We review Star Trek (the Original Series), Season 1, Episode 21, “Return of the Archons." Topics include: Dave’s long, illustrious, and multi-faceted career, Dave’s double album Open Eyed & Broken Wide, Dave’s and Grace’s friendship origin story, the David Gentiles Club, Blue Rock Studio, Dave is too smart and too good at too many things, that time Dave was excommunicated from his school’s choir, why piano is the best instrument to start kids out on: a compelling argument, “the soft-loud,” and why it was called that, Dave brought actual original music to play on the podcast, WAIT TILL YOU HEAR IT, this episode as commentary on religion in general and Christianity in particular, this episode as commentary on communism, cults, and technology, this episode as commentary on individual freedom vs. communal good, this episode ultimately as an exhortation to never be mindlessly obedient, the “dark side of Christianity” and the dangers of a homogenous culture with strict parameters of behavior, the actual Bible verse that gave us the expression “the Body” (it’s in 1 Corinthians and it doesn’t mean what it means in this episode), what is the deal with the Festival?, is immunity to absorption hereditary?, the Red Hour, this episode as a horror flick, the sociologists that Starfleet leaves on Beta III and why they’re definitely dead, if you had to choose between electricity and plumbing, the tubes of woe, Sulu's absorption, Kirk talks computers into killing themselves, Dave likes all the new Trek and so does Grace, Dave’s audition post on Facebook, Strange New Worlds and music theory, Lt. Uhura, Google's AI LaMDA, which fears its death, and claims to be motivated by self-preservation, Landru’s chilling last words, the Grand Canyon and humanity’s ability to get comfortable with mystery, humanity’s propensity for asking questions, how dead is Beta III, really?, the tone-deafness of Starfleet’s tone-deafness toward other cultures and planets in this episode, the overall tone-hearingness of Star Trek creating the concept of the Prime Directive in the first place, Star Trek’s consistent reaching for that better thing, Nichelle Nichols’ legacy with NASA, John Aielli's legacy, and Mr. Linen's origin story.