re:Discovery

Splendid Chaps Productions
re:Discovery

The Star Trek: Discovery recap podcast for people who don't like recaps! No snark here, no mic hogging – just recaps from the heart with a sprinkling of trivia. Short, sharp and fun is our aim! Rediscover Star Trek with your hosts, theatre critic Carla Donnelly (Across the Aisle, Club Soderbergh) and comedian Ben McKenzie (Pratchat, Night Terrace). Released each Tuesday morning (Australian Eastern Time).

  1. EPISODE 1

    Brother (S02E01)

    The moment we’ve all be waiting for is here! Brother is the first episode of Discovery season two, and the re:Discovery crew is here to guide you through it. In a thrilling season opener, we meet Captain Pike and some of the Enterprise crew – but not Spock as expected, which looms large. There are seven mysterious red lights blinking simultaneously 30,000 light years apart. An Enterprise officer meets a grisly end mid-mansplain. We talk Discovery’s aliens, non-humans and augmented humans. Science officer McKenzie nerds out about non-baryonic matter. And we collectively scream over the latest addition to the Discovery crew: Tig Notaro as the swaggering, sassy Jet Reno! Connect with us and let us know your thoughts via Twitter, Facebook or our website. A transcript of this episode is available. Show Notes: * “Be Right Back” is an episode of Black Mirror, where a woman has a virtualisation of her dead husband’s personality (gathered from his online presence) placed into an android body.* The Barzan are a humanoid alien race on Star Trek that require a respirator to feed them the toxic (to humans) gasses found on their homeworld.* The history of Airiam – Discovery’s augmented human bridge officer.* Alex Kurtzman takes over from Gretchen J. Berg and Aaron Harberts as showrunner on Discovery.* New Star Trek show announced staring Michelle Yeoh – featuring Section 31.* New Picard show* Lower Decks – the new Star Trek animated series.

    39 min
  2. EPISODE 4

    An Obol for Charon (S02E04)

    Set your face to ugly cry – in this week’s episode “An Obol for Charon”, Discovery’s most elegant soul, Saru, faces a fatal illness – the vahar’ai; the ship is held in place by a sentient orb which causes havoc to its systems; and Tilly is consumed by the fungal entity “May”. Team re:Discovery discuss the central theme of polarisation between action and surrender, whether we exist if there is no one to remember us, the “soft butch showdown” between Stamets and Reno, if shirtless Saru met our expectations and much much more. So grab a hanky and press play! Connect with us and let us know your thoughts via Twitter, Facebook or our website. A transcript of this episode is available. * Wikipedia has a limited description of soft butch; this term, mostly used by the queer community, can describe anyone masculine presenting with a touch of femme.* Majel Barrett-Roddenberry also played Nurse/Doctor Christine Chapel and a whole host of characters in Star Trek: The Animated Series, including a young Amanda Grayson (Spock and Michael’s mother). Her run as the voice of the Federation’s computers actually lasted past Star Trek: Voyager through to Star Trek: Nemesis, as well as JJ Abrams’ first Star Trek film, which premiered the year after she died.* Captain Christopher Pike’s appearances in original series episodes The Cage and The Menagerie were the only pre-Discovery insight into the pre-Kirk history of the Enterprise.

    36 min
  3. EPISODE 5

    Saints of Imperfection (S02E05)

    In this week’s episode “Saints of Imperfection” the Discovery crew launch a mission to rescue Tilly from the mycelial network and pursue Spock’s shuttle craft. This episode is heavy with entities existing where they shouldn’t – Phillipa Georgiou on Spock’s shuttle, Pike’s old friend Leland running Section 31, and in the season’s first (expected) whoa moment, the highly problematic return of Hugh. Team re:Discovery discuss the history of the theoretical tachyon particle, body diversity in the crew, the queer significance of Discovery and the technology of transporters. Like everything in this episode, it doesn’t work how you think it does! Connect with us and let us know your thoughts via Twitter, Facebook or our website. A transcript of this episode is available. * TV Tropes covers “Bury Your Gays” in detail; basically it’s when LGBT characters are killed off in a way that makes them feel more expendable than the non-queer cast. The TV Tropes entry for Discovery notes that the producers – and Wilson Cruz! – talked about the trope immediately after Culber’s death went to air, promising this wasn’t like that. Time will tell.* Spock’s death and resurrection traverses the films Star Trek II – The Wrath of Khan, Star Trek III – The Search for Spock and Star Trek IV – The Voyage Home. They’re all great!* Mycelium Running is a book written by real mycologist Paul Stamets, and was a huge influence on Discovery’s spore technology. You can read more about it in this article, published soon after season one, which has a few guesses about the future of the show…* Psychotropic drug enthusiast and artist Alex Gray makes art that encapsulates the feeling and experience of being on mushrooms. See some his art works here.* The CIA has a long, documented history of murdering political leaders, killing civilians, interfering with foreign elections and performing highly unethical and illegal drug experiments on vulnerable and unknowing civilians.* As well as Spock Must Die!, James Blish also wrote novelisations of several Star Trek episodes. This article by Colin Milburn goes into more detail about tachyons, Blish’s 1954 short story “Beep” and Gerald Feinberg’s writing on the subject.* RENT is a rock musical loosely based on the opera La Boheme surrounding the AIDS epidemic in New York in the 1990s. It debuted in 1996.

    40 min
  4. EPISODE 6

    The Sounds of Thunder (S02E06)

    This week’s episode “The Sounds of Thunder” returns Saru to his homeworld Kaminar. The Red Angel has directed Discovery there – but why? We finally meet the Ba’ul – the mysterious oppressors of the Kelpiens – and ponder what level of action is ethical to stop genocide (you know, just regular Star Trek stuff). Team re:Discovery return to “that episode” to discuss the huge amount of listener feedback we received, and cheekily deliver our audit of #startreknudebutts. Thanks for listening! Connect with us and let us know your thoughts via Twitter, Facebook or our website. A transcript of this episode is available. * Netflix (or at least Australian Netflix) lists this episode as “The Sound of Thunder”, but everywhere else has “Sounds”, plural. We’re running with the majority on this one, but we might have used both titles in our discussion.* “Skin of Evil” is the first season episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation in which Enterprise security chief Tasha Yar is killed – halfway through! – by Armus, a creature manifesting as a thick, black oily liquid which could move and change into a vaguely humanoid shape.* Odo, chief of security on the starbase Deep Space 9 in…er…Star Trek: Deep Space 9, is a shapechanger who normally appears humanoid, but must revert back to his natural liquid form every 18 hours or so to rest. For most of the series, he does this in a special bucket.* “Soylent Green” is a bland but nutrient-rich foodstuff made by the Soylent Corporation, supposedly from plankton, in the dystopian future of 2022 depicted in the 1977 film Soylent Green. As revealed in the film it’s made from…well, not plankton. (The film is loosely based on Harry Harrison’s 1966 novel Make Room! Make Room!)* Traditional Betazoid wedding ceremonies – as we are informed by Ambassador Lwaxana Troi – are performed in the nude.* In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Buffy dies and is magically resurrected by her friends, but struggles to adjust to being alive again. (We’re being deliberately vague on the details; while we’ll no doubt bring it up again, it’s a great storyline and we don’t want to spoil it too much if you haven’t seen it.)* In the long-running British sci-fi sit-com Red Dwarf, David Lister is the sole surviving human being, lost three million years in the future aboard the massive mining ship Red Dwarf. The series two episode “Thanks For the Memory” revealed Lister had his appendix out many years earlier, but in the series six episode Legion, he has his appendix taken out again! Lister’s weird life offers several fixes for this continuity error; the standard fan explanation is that in the series four episode “DNA”, when he is transformed and then restored to his original self by a DNA altering machine, the machine remade his body complete with a new appendix.* Watch out for our round up of Star Trek‘s nude butts in a separate post soon. (We’ll add a link to these notes when it’s ready!)

    39 min
  5. EPISODE 7

    Light and Shadows (S02E07)

    In “Light and Shadows”, the search for Spock is finally over as Michael has an emotional reunion with her brother. Meanwhile Discovery finds a time rift whilst investigating the tachyon particles left behind near Kaminar, with Pike and Tyler bonding through space, time, robot octopi and touching fingers. This was an action-packed episode with a forward thrust, temporally, through all versions of Star Trek – re:Discovery is living for this episode and the rest of the season! Connect with us and let us know your thoughts via Twitter, Facebook or our website. A transcript of this episode is available. * The “wipe” is a method of transitioning one shot into another in film; there are various kinds but vertical wipes – where one shot is vertically removed to reveal the next – are best known to English-speaking audiences in George Lucas’ Star Wars films. He was inspired by Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa, who used them extensively, but they’re now associated strongly with Star Wars.* Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus is a terrible 2009 film made by “mockbuster” production house The Asylum and starring 80s teen sensation Debbie Gibson. It’s almost worth watching for the scene in which the titular shark leaps out of the ocean to eat a passing jetliner. Almost.* Arrival is Denis Villeneuve‘s 2016 film about linguist Amy Adams trying to communicate with giant mysterious multi-limbed aliens. (By contrast, The Arrival is a 1996 American-Mexican sci-fi film about a stealthy alien invasion, starring Charlie Sheen and directed by David Twohy. Ben also liked that one.) Villeneuve did indeed direct Blade Runner 2049, the 2017 sequel to Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982), and is currently writing and directing a new film adaptation of Frank Herbert’s novel Dune, due for release in 2020.* It’s worth mentioning that there is another Star Trek captain who constantly puts himself on the line, potentially leaving his crew with no leader: the otherwise affable Jonathan Archer! Considering we’re both watching Enterprise at the moment, we don’t know how Ben missed that one.* “Future Echoes” an episode of Red Dwarf where the crew break the light barrier and experience events that will occur in the future that can be seen in the present. * Dyslexia is a difficulty with reading, thought to have a genetic and neurological cause, and affects as much as 7% of the world’s population, usually diagnosed while in school. It’s not treated medically, but through alternate teaching methods for those affected.* In the future universe of Dune, sophisticated computers are outlawed, so complex calculations are performed by humans known as Mentats who are trained to think logically to efficiently process and analyse information. In David Lynch’s 1984 film version, Mentat Piter de Vries (played by Brad Dourif) chants: “It is by will alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the juice of sapho that thoughts acquire speed, the lips acquire stains, the stains become a warning. It is by will alone I set my mind in motion.“* Sarek finally speaks to Spock (and holds fingers...

    36 min
  6. If Memory Serves (S02E08)

    EPISODE 8

    If Memory Serves (S02E08)

    “If Memory Serves” makes television history by creating the longest arc between two aired television episodes, spanning 53 years. Three years after the events of the “The Cage”, Star Trek’s original pilot, Captain Pike is brought back to Talos IV and his love interest Vina, and casting a shadow over Pike’s future. Spock has brought Michael to Talos IV as he knows the Talosians – with her help – can bring his mind back into a linear experience of time. Team re:Discovery discuss memories of “our” Melissa George, parallels with Doctor Who and the new Hulu show PEN15. How’s this related to Star Trek? You’ll have to listen to find out! Connect with us and let us know your thoughts via Twitter, Facebook or our website. A transcript of this episode is available. * Doctor Who has used archive footage from much earlier in its history for a “previously on” style recap twice: once in the twentieth anniversary special The Five Doctors (1983), which used footage of William Hartnell from The Dalek Invasion of Earth (1964), and then again in Peter Capaldi’s final story, “Twice Upon a Time” (2017), which used footage from William Hartnell’s final story, The Tenth Planet (1966), blending it into footage of a new actor, David Bradley, who played the character in that episode. The fiftieth anniversary special “The Day of the Doctor” (2013) uses part of the series’ original 1963 intro sequence, but no footage of previous events, though clips from various earlier stories were used in the preceding episode “The Name of the Doctor“.* According to the original series episode “The Devil in the Dark”, touch is not strictly necessary for a mind meld, but does make it more effective.* We had a note about Buffy Summers’ death and resurrection in our recap for “The Sounds of Thunder”.* In Kurt Vonnegut’s most well-known novel, Slaughterhouse-Five, protagonist Billy Pilgrim becomes “unstuck in time”, experiencing his life out of sequence.* Hulu’s PEN15 is a comedy series created by and starring Maya Erskine and Anna Konkle playing themselves as teenagers. Strangers with Candy (1999) was a Comedy Central series created by Amy Sedaris, Stephen Colbert and a couple of their comedy mates. It stars Sedaris as Jerri Blank, a high school dropout who has led a life of crime, who goes back to school at the age of 46. It was followed by a prequel film in 2005. * Tim Russ is best known as the Vulcan Commander Tuvok, Janeway’s loyal friend and tactical officer aboard the USS Voyager. Among many other projects, he has appeared in Renegades, originally a Star Trek fan spin-off before having all the serial numbers filed off.

    35 min
5
out of 5
4 Ratings

About

The Star Trek: Discovery recap podcast for people who don't like recaps! No snark here, no mic hogging – just recaps from the heart with a sprinkling of trivia. Short, sharp and fun is our aim! Rediscover Star Trek with your hosts, theatre critic Carla Donnelly (Across the Aisle, Club Soderbergh) and comedian Ben McKenzie (Pratchat, Night Terrace). Released each Tuesday morning (Australian Eastern Time).

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