Chad Kirchner (00:28)
Which is totally a thing from Fry in Futurama, where Fry is his own great grandfather. He does sometimes...

Roberto Baldwin (00:35)
don't yeah which is that's the

whole problem with time travel is that it isn't really like everything about time travel is actually wrong because you can't it's all pair it's all paradox stuff and so it wouldn't really work if it's in reality

Chad Kirchner (00:41)
It's all timey-wimey.

Well,

so there's an entirely other episode probably inside or in time travel, but like early Star Trek up through, you know, Enterprise was before we really understood quantum physics. So we had a very linear kind of timeline. And if you went back, you know, and killed yourself, you wouldn't appear it's the back to the future kind of paradox. But now

Roberto Baldwin (01:10)
Yeah, but you wouldn't,

but if you killed yourself you wouldn't, yeah. It's a whole, that's again, paradox. Now you have to think about like multiple timelines, but.

Chad Kirchner (01:13)
But then you have, but then yeah, but under quantum.

Right,

under quantum physics, you now have the multi, the many, the many universe theory. ⁓ Which means if you go back in time, the timeline will actually split. Which is how Star Trek 2009, how that reboot, how that reboot exists with all of the other canon is it all pivots off. But we're not here to talk about time travel, at least today. ⁓ We are here. ⁓ This is the first, this will be the first episode.

I'm recording this out of order for people that care, but yes, yes. my gosh. It is. It's a.

Roberto Baldwin (01:51)
Just like the original Star Trek, it's out of order. The first season is a train,

like the first nine episodes, none of them are like in order.

Chad Kirchner (02:00)
Yeah,

and memory alpha has them one way and the streaming services have them another. It's whatever. welcome to the Star Trek podcast that I have Christian the name of temporal investigations. It's a

Roberto Baldwin (02:14)
What's gonna be cool

is I'm gonna be the Christopher Pike episode and this is never gonna air and then you're gonna have edit it into another podcast.

Chad Kirchner (02:21)
Yeah, and then it'll be like we have to do a clip show and then eventually you'll be replaced by Anson Mount. It'll be great. ⁓ But so Temporal Investigations is a group of ⁓ Starfleet officers, Federation officers, who appeared in like one episode of Deep Space Nine, which is the one where the defiant travels back in time to the original series and the trials and tribulations is name of the episode, but ⁓ they

Roberto Baldwin (02:26)
It'll be fine.

Chad Kirchner (02:49)
don't like humor, which is funny because we're gonna talk about humor today in Star Trek and they're actually very funny. But two, like they are the group that sort of like tries to fix the timeline. And one of the things that I want to do with this show is to talk about Star Trek and all aspects of it. So not just the TV shows or the movies or whatever, like I want to get into the culture and the lore, the webisodes, but like I want to get into the culture and the lore.

Roberto Baldwin (03:14)
webisodes.

Macrame.

Chad Kirchner (03:18)
and the history and the stuff that we experience. Yes, the experience, everything that we kind of all had growing up with and, know, elaborate facial hair, prosthetic ears, ⁓ why does all aliens look human, know, things like that. But ⁓ because there's a lot of Star Trek content out there that...

Roberto Baldwin (03:22)
cosplay.

elaborate facial hair.

Chad Kirchner (03:46)
does episode recaps. And occasionally, you know, we may talk about an episode or a season of something, but I really want to look at within a broader context. And I want to talk to people that are as smart as I am, or in the case of my guest today, smarter than I am. ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (04:01)
Not about Star Trek though. To be honest,

I'm pretty low level Star Trek person.

Chad Kirchner (04:05)
The people I have on in this next episode said they were low level too and they were quite impressive with their their insight. yeah, ⁓ so this is going to be this is literally our pilot episode are are the cage ⁓ to to TOS is where no one has gone before or our encounter at Farpoint or or ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (04:29)
I don't know what any this means.

Chad Kirchner (04:33)
Strange New Worlds, think was the name of the pilot of Strange New Worlds. ⁓ But my guest today, extra special fun, Mr. Roberto Baldwin, who is a musician of many bands, a man of many bands, like 30 some last time I counted, I think. It's probably close to that though. That's

Roberto Baldwin (04:44)
Hello?

Yeah. Yeah.

It's a lot, it's not that many. It's like nine, I think.

But they're not all at the same time. if I'm working, like I'm typically working like four to five bands at once, which means the other four to five are sort of in hiatus while these four to five are doing something. It's, yeah. So it's, yeah.

Chad Kirchner (05:02)
No, no, I,

Right.

Sure. We'll

get more into that there towards the end because I want you to talk a little bit and, you know, talk about some of your projects and stuff. you are also a... You said that you are a journalist. Capital J, lowercase j.

Roberto Baldwin (05:18)
Yeah. Okay. Bands.

I am.

I like to think capital J. I did not go to J school. went to film. I went to film school and design school, but I've been doing the journalism thing for over 20 years and I'm very, I'm very picky and pedantic. So I'm just like, yeah, I'm right there. Yeah.

Chad Kirchner (05:34)
I did not either.

in in some fairly and

perfect. It's the perfect job then. ⁓

Tech journalism and auto journalism, which is how I got to know you, but I have seen your byline before I got to meet you. So it's cool to be able to have friends that I used to read and interact with. Get ruined! ⁓ When I sent you some interview kind of stuff pre-advanced, I was kind of curious when I asked all my guests what their favorite Star Trek series was, which you said Strange New Worlds.

Roberto Baldwin (06:13)
I did.

Chad Kirchner (06:14)
which of new track it is excellent. It's definitely in my maybe top three. It might even be my favorite though I'm still a real, I'm a real softy for Deep Space Nine. Like I feel like that's still like my favorite, Strange New Worlds is excellent. I think it's a great way for people to get introduced to the series, the whole franchise if they've never really.

Roberto Baldwin (06:37)
I

so I've watched you know, the the original series because you know, my dad was a huge TNG and he's even still it means sounds like he's dead my dad's still alive but He really liked the next generation. So I wasn't like looking to watch Star Trek. He just had it on all the time So I watched the next generation. I watched some D space 9 and so ⁓ Strange new worlds came out I think it does a great job telling the story in a very modern way. I think the

Chad Kirchner (06:46)
you

Right. Sure.

Roberto Baldwin (07:05)
when you look at Star Trek, the original series, ⁓ they had to do something that no one else had done before, which was do an hour long, know, sci-fi series, you know, being power, you know, and they didn't want to disappoint, you know, Desi, they didn't want to disappoint Lucille Ball, because she would like really champion them. So you have to, so, you know, so it was funny, because if you watch the original series, what happens is they just keep explaining the same thing.

Chad Kirchner (07:20)
Correct. Yes, yes.

Roberto Baldwin (07:29)
over and over and over again, or they like you figured it out. You figured out what's happening, but I don't know if, if audiences in the sixties figured it out because it was such a new idea to have a show like this on TV in prime time. Like start, like science fiction is always at the time and between then and now, and even at the time was, it's always sort of like this sort of like, ⁓ it's like fantasy and science fiction and comics and all those.

Chad Kirchner (07:30)
Right.

Roberto Baldwin (07:56)
for years and decades for anyone who's under, who's over 30, you know that there were some rough years where most sci-fi, most fantasy, most comic book, it was all just like B movies, C movies. was just really, it wasn't great content, but you loved the idea. You loved the world of mythology that was part of that. So I think for Star Trek, the original series, they had to battle a lot of that and the way film and I have a film degree, so look at me.

Chad Kirchner (08:09)
right.

Roberto Baldwin (08:25)
⁓ But you know, the narrative, you know, the narrative language at the time is different from what it is now. And I think Strange New Worlds really like speaks to the viewer now. And they've made the, you know, they take some big swings with puppet episodes and singing episodes. And ⁓ I think the idea of using the Christopher Pike character, this guy, just like sort of weird, like, which is this weird hiccup within the Star Trek universe. ⁓

Chad Kirchner (08:25)
You

Yeah.

yeah, and...

Yeah.

Yeah, because like he appeared

on one episode. Well, technically three, but like he was in one episode. And then there was two episodes of the Masjid part one and two, which was basically a clip episode. Repackaged. Yeah, like repackaged. Yeah. But like that character was not interesting at all. And they took him.

Roberto Baldwin (09:01)
It's a clip show, they really like they've re-edited everything so it's not even the same storyline basically

Chad Kirchner (09:17)
And the guy, Anson Mount Pike is my favorite Star Trek character and really made something out of him. what I love, to your point about storytelling, 1960s, 1970s storytelling is paced entirely different than what 2020, 2025, 2026 storytelling is. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (09:40)
Yeah, I mean even 2000 storytelling like and

the way people talk I don't think people realize because sometimes someone will watch a movie or a show that's like 10 15 20 30 40 years old and if they weren't An adult at the time sometimes they're like, well people don't talk like this I'm like, well, you know, there are there is a lot of bad dialogue out in the world But sometimes you'll see a movie and you're like and and at the time that's how people talked That is the you know, the cadence how people said things

Chad Kirchner (10:00)
Yes.

Roberto Baldwin (10:08)
If you go back to like the screwball comedies, like, hey, well, yeah, like, that's kind of how some people talk, which is very weird and doesn't seem real, but.

Chad Kirchner (10:15)
Right. Yeah.

No,

no, ⁓ And even some Star Trek, like even some of that 1960s, know, ⁓ this is the 60th year of Star Trek and 66. And there is like, I definitely need to have you back on when we talk about the original series sort of as a whole, because, you know, the Lucille Ball, the Desi Lu stuff is such ⁓ a pivotal thing that I'm not sure casual fans know or understand. ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (10:48)
don't

need to that's the thing this is just this is just general general nerdiness that that

Chad Kirchner (10:48)
No, they don't need they don't need they don't know no, none of this you need to know. But if you listen, but if you're but if you're

listening to a podcast about Star Trek, like you're kind of kind of care about, you know, the nerdiness. nerds. But also, like the writing on the original series was very hit or miss to DC Fontana for is well known now for

Roberto Baldwin (11:00)
nerds.

Chad Kirchner (11:14)
being the good writer, you know, there's a couple of other good writers that they had, but like the stuff that Roddenberry wrote, not so great when you kind of rewatch it. there were ideas and concepts and things that I think he got absolutely right. ⁓ Some of the storytelling stuff, like I feel like it...

Roberto Baldwin (11:34)
I think there's,

as a creator, there's a point where you're writing the first couple episodes, but at some point you just become the cop. You're just making sure that everything stays within the mythology that you've created. And sometimes maybe when you go back in to write, some people who go back in to write, they hit it out of the park. know, like, ⁓ yeah, this is why this person... Other people, they go back in the writing and they're just like, because they're so, at some point they're so deep in the mythology.

They can't see the forest through the trees sometimes and they're trying to like, do I cram more? Do I cram less? I know this really like weird thing about this other thing. Whereas other writers will come in and be like, okay, let's just move all this away and focus on this is the story. Here's, you know, here's, here's plot point one. Here's a B story. This is where we hit. This is where we're, you know, this is the inciting incident. This is where, you know, this is the, you know, the, the buddy cop part of it. This is the worst possible thing that's happened and triumphantly returned at the end.

Chad Kirchner (12:09)
Yeah.

Yeah.

⁓ I think though, like if somebody maybe hasn't given it a rewatch in a while, ⁓ some of the best original series episodes, which we'll talk about a couple here as we get into our regular topic, but some of the best of those still kind of hold up today. Like I, one of my favorite, I think overall episodes of Star Trek would definitely be my top five or top 10 is ⁓ Balance of Terror, which is the season one episode, ⁓ very submarine-themed. ⁓

where the Enterprise encounters the Romulans for the first time. And Mark Leonard, who eventually plays Serak, is the guy that plays the Romulans. We learn that the Romulans are an offshoot of Vulcans. ⁓ Kirk shuts down some real, like, prejudice, anti-Semitism kind of stuff on the bridge. Like, really kind of, no, definitely not, which we're gonna talk about. I mean, it starts with a wedding and the guy, yeah, it starts with a wedding and the person is spoiled for a 60-year-old show.

Roberto Baldwin (13:17)
Yeah. Not funny at all. Least funny.

Chad Kirchner (13:29)
The one person that got married or was going to get married dies in the episode, is the only one who remembers that dies. you know, not great. But in terms of comedy, like that episode, though, is like immensely rewatchable. City on the Edge Forever. Just Killed Him, You Just Killed Him Must Die. Like, they mean just, again, great. Arena's a little slow paced, which is the one where Kirk fights the Gorn, but still pretty, pretty solid. And then in season two, Amok Time, the Vulcan stuff.

Roberto Baldwin (13:37)
Not a left right.

Chad Kirchner (13:59)
is is rewatchable the treble triples is paced very well even for you know modern tv like there's there's stuff that you can definitely watch and you're like my gosh get this story going but

Roberto Baldwin (14:12)
Some of them can be a bit of a slog,

especially if you don't watch ⁓ movies or TV shows from the time and you're not used to it, it can be a little difficult. But I think that, you know, there's, I think one of the, to me, what humanizes Star Trek, and I think this is the humor that sort of permeates very subtly in there, which it could be a very like dry show. It could be a very,

Chad Kirchner (14:34)
Yeah.

It

can be, yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (14:41)
We're,

we're space adventurers and we're going to do space and very Buck Rogers and we're going to go out. We're going to pew, pew, pew. We're going to, know, and I think that that humor has, you know, if you look at, uh, you know, things like something like Steven Spielberg, mean, no matter, well, maybe not. Well, a couple of most of his movies, there is a sort of humor, know, if, you know, the, Indiana Jones, which you're this inventor, but you also, there's this like little, you know, jabs into, to what is going on.

Chad Kirchner (14:44)
Yeah, we're very serious. Yeah.

You

⁓ yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (15:11)
with what's going on. And I think, I think a lot of it is a little weird, ⁓ slightly, ⁓ racist attacks at Spock, but sometimes Spock is, is, I mean, there's an episode where he's such a jerk about being Vulcan, the people start dying. He's just like, I don't know what's going on.

Chad Kirchner (15:22)
They're so.

Right. Vulcans

are jerks. Vulcans are kind of racist. I mean, that was part of the whole storyline. Like, Serak, even though he married a human woman, he never seemed to, up until very, very late in his character's life, he never really viewed Spock as a real son.

Roberto Baldwin (15:54)
Well, he didn't view his,

I mean, he loved his wife, but he still viewed him as a, viewed her as a, you know, suboptimal to, to, to Vulcan, which is, yeah.

Chad Kirchner (16:01)
Right, yeah, yeah.

And really, and really, like, the story is they still never really reconciled through Sarah's death. So, spoiler alert for next generation. But you talk about, and this is, was a good segue, which is Star Trek is funny. And I don't think that it would have endeared for 60 years if it was only the straight Buck Rogers

Roberto Baldwin (16:12)
That's a bummer. Still not humorous.

Chad Kirchner (16:30)
very serious, we're going out and doing serious things in space. ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (16:34)
I don't I think that people I think what happens is you have to recognize that the average person especially in high-stress situations You do have you have to have some sort of release you have to have some sort of say well here's you know Make up make a make a weird joke make a funny situation Star Trek almost always you know that the original series they almost always end with with Spock and and and and and McCoy and Just kind of like you know giving a little jabs to one another like you with your friends, you know

Chad Kirchner (16:56)
It's Michael McCoy and Kirk and they kind of do the...

Yeah,

almost to a almost to almost to an excessive like sitcom ending kind of vibe. Because like in in the one that I think of the absolute most that like really, it doesn't irritate me but is so not appropriate is at the end of the ultimate computer, which is the one where the five, you know, they take over the enterprise and ⁓ they're doing the battle drills with the automated system.

Roberto Baldwin (17:03)
snaps doing some snaps.

Yes

Chad Kirchner (17:30)
And that automated system ends up taking over the enterprise and destroying another, completely destroying another Constitution class ship. So we learn that 400 people are murdered by this computer. And less than like, I don't know, a minute later, Kirk and Spock are just cracking jokes on the bridge.

Roberto Baldwin (17:51)
Listen, you gotta break up the monotony. You can't be sad all the time, Chad. It's a total weird, it's a total misfire. think they should have like, you know, ⁓ throw something in the middle, you know.

Chad Kirchner (17:53)
No, but it's like a very... ⁓

Well, it was

just a very sitcom ending that you have to end on that like, those scamps, those adorable scamps are doing it again kind of thing, right? So you have that, you have that kind of humor, which that's 60s TV sensibility. Like that's that. But beyond that, like in modern day, connected media, polarized country that we live in too, live in.

Roberto Baldwin (18:11)
Do do

Chad Kirchner (18:34)
I don't want to talk about politics specifically, but there is a lot of people who claim to be fans of a very particular type of media. So whether it's whether it's Star Trek or whether it's, you know, certain bands or musical groups or whatever that very clearly don't remember the meaning or the messaging or the. Yeah, yeah, that's.

Roberto Baldwin (18:56)
Well, I think it's not that they don't remember, they just don't understand. They have

a larger look at something and they don't quite realize what is happening. They don't quite realize that some things are meant to be funny, that some things are meant to be real. They don't understand certain characters. I mean, you the problem with like the Rick and Morty. We call this the bad fan. The Rick and Morty fan who thinks Rick is like the good guy. When the writers are very clearly making Rick out to be a bad person.

Chad Kirchner (19:19)
Right.

Roberto Baldwin (19:24)
who's dragging this poor child around the universe. It's a Punisher. The Punisher has always been a bad guy. And yet there's people driving around Punisher. The people who've been listening to Rage Against the Machine and then like 10 years after the band has broken up, like, you know, I used to love them before they got political. And you're like, oh buddy, Yeah, so it's, you you have, and I think we have this as a, it's a Star Trek where they're like, oh, well now Star Trek is, you know, whatever woke.

Chad Kirchner (19:25)
Right. Which, ⁓ yeah, yeah, right.

Roberto Baldwin (19:52)
I watched the episode where Kirk is on trial and there's a woman lawyer and there's like a mech, I think he's Mexican, there's a Mexican dude who's like one of the people in the front, there's like an Asian guy, there's like an Indian dude, there's like a black woman, it's just like, it's everything and it's so incredibly radical for the 60s for a TV show to do this that if Star Trek, the modern Star Trek were as woke as that.

Chad Kirchner (20:06)
Yeah, right. So I mean, there's

yeah?

yeah, it would not be.

Roberto Baldwin (20:22)
Whereas radical

as that, would just, every episode would be, the internet would explode with how how woke each episode would have to be to match the impact of a 1960s television show. And so it's like, don't, mean, whenever someone's like, well, you know, they ruined my childhood. I'm like, that ruined your childhood? You know, I don't care. I don't care about those people.

Chad Kirchner (20:27)
Yes.

It would.

Right. So it's a match.

⁓ you ruined your own childhood, you know, no,

I completely agree.

Roberto Baldwin (20:48)
I don't have time.

don't have mental space or really empathy at this point for this. At this point, we have the internet. You can look things up. It's very easy to read.

Chad Kirchner (20:57)
Yeah. Yeah.

And again, I don't want to be clear. I don't have any sympathy for bad fans. there is. ⁓ But recently, I know you haven't watched yet, but Starfleet Academy is running through its season as we record this. And it is a very TV YA kind of show. It's not rated YA, but like it's a YA show. ⁓ It's. Yes. Sorry. It's Buffy the Vampire Slayer in space.

Roberto Baldwin (21:21)
Young adult for those who are old and don't know what that means.

All right,

there you go.

Chad Kirchner (21:26)
in kind of a lot of ways. ⁓ And it's funny. There's funny. There's...

Roberto Baldwin (21:31)
Is it funny? There you go. That's it. And that's the thing is that over the years, you

know, with every iteration of Star Trek, something they have to have the humor in there, whether it's it's wacky cue, like, you know, the universe is like, you know, you know, wacky weirdo or it's it's, know, it's it's what's going, you know, there's the trouble with tribbles.

Chad Kirchner (21:43)
Yeah, and.

Yeah.

Or

it's the trope of like every time Worf gets in a fight, he gets his butt kicked all the way across the room. Like that's funny. Like Worf is like, there's obvious funny and there's subtle funny and it has it all. And just to kind of close the loop sort of on that Starfleet Academy thing, that's kind of what made me think of the comedy aspect of Star Trek lately is because people are very upset that Starfleet Academy exists and it's not the Star Trek for them and whatever. And it's like, well,

Roberto Baldwin (21:58)
or it's

Poor War.

Chad Kirchner (22:25)
There's so many different properties, Star Trek properties out there now. Like, I don't expect everybody to like all of them. Like, not designed that way. ⁓ You know, there's a show called Star Trek, ⁓ what's it called? I can't remember its name right now. ⁓ But it's a five to eight year old targeted... ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (22:31)
Yeah, you don't.

Are you talking about the animated series?

Chad Kirchner (22:49)
No, there's a there's a YouTube very special Scouts. That's right, Scouts. That's it. ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (22:52)
⁓ great

now it's another thing i had to my rewatch see what you're doing

Chad Kirchner (22:57)
I don't know where it falls into the timeline. But like, but it's very, it's very much not for anybody that's over the age of like eight. And that's fine. I did watch like one or two episodes, they're short. But ⁓ in the Star Trek Prodigy, which was definitely kind of targeted for that older Nickelodeon crowd, but I thought it was actually excellent Star Trek, like it was very good. ⁓ But like, there's just all this stuff out there. So you're not necessarily

Roberto Baldwin (23:00)
I gotta look it up.

That's what you think. ⁓

There's a Star Trek for everyone, whether or not you're concerned about representation in the universe of Star Trek. You know, they go around the universe and it's, you know, it's the whole earth is flying around in spaceships. So that would be people from all over the place in the whole earth. It's not, ⁓ so it's.

Chad Kirchner (23:27)
There is. There is.

Yeah. Well, and I mean,

in Starfleet Academy, like there's a character that wears that brings the scant back. So in like season one and two of Next Gen, there were uniforms that men would wear skirts that were beyond their knees. So they're like skirt pants. So they kind of got the name of scants. And like they're back in Starfleet Academy. Like there's just it's so there's stuff out there. mean, it's funny, but it's also

Roberto Baldwin (24:15)
There is a lot of

fan service in Star Trek, but I think it's very... it's not as... it's not as in your face as some other thing. Like, I... it's hard for me to get excited about anything in the Star Wars universe. I absolutely hated Rogue One, and I know that I'm like a minority in that. I have a lot of story reasons for hating that movie. Because originally I was going to be a screenwriter, and so I really care about story, but...

Chad Kirchner (24:18)
It's subtle, a lot of it's subtle.

Yeah, we have to do homework.

Sure. Yeah.

Right.

Roberto Baldwin (24:42)
Anyway, like I don't think anyone was funny in that movie

Chad Kirchner (24:45)
No,

no, and there's some stuff that doesn't need to be funny, but Star Trek's taking a lot of swings, ⁓ you know, and I appreciate, like, them doing that, and I appreciate...

Roberto Baldwin (24:54)
I

Lower Decks is probably one of the smarter moves they've done. I know that not everyone, not all people like Lower Decks. like, you know, Star Trek shouldn't be this funny. It shouldn't be this. That's fine. You don't have to watch Lower Decks. you just genuinely don't like it, don't think it's funny or don't think it fits. I mean, yeah, it's essentially Rick and Morty people. Yeah.

Chad Kirchner (24:58)
Mm.

Speaking of Rick and Morty, mean that's... Well, it's Mike Mahan who did both.

Roberto Baldwin (25:21)
But I

think, again, the humor of Star Trek is what humanizes Star Trek. This is why it has lasted as long as it has. mean, the casual person who you say, Star Trek, they kind of watch it, they know about the trouble with tribbles, which is just a goofy episode about things that just keep humping and making more of them.

Chad Kirchner (25:37)
Right. Yeah. Well, and they, yeah,

well, they're born pregnant. mean, it saves a lot of time. ⁓ as as Nicole would say, ⁓ Star Trek for the voyage home, the one with the whales, which stay tuned for the next episode of this because we talk a lot more about it. But that's funny. But that's but the episodes funny and it you can do it. Right. It's it's a Russian guy. It's a right.

Roberto Baldwin (25:44)
I'll teach you. Yeah. Yeah.

like whales. They're nuclear vessels, which is great because it came out in the 80s when we were it was the middle of the Cold War and the Russian

guys like I want to see nuclear vessels.

Chad Kirchner (26:09)
Right. But

he's he's fish out of water in San Francisco. He has no reason to know like what like South San Francisco at that time would be. it's wild. It's funny. But ⁓ what's funny about that or what's great about that and funny about that is that that's the third episode in that trilogy of Rathacon's Archer's Back, ⁓ The Voyage Home. And Rathacon. I mean, my favorite Star Trek movie for sure. ⁓ The but but you take those first two.

episodes or Star Trek 2 and 3, those are very serious. There's a lot of fighting. There's a lot of violence. There's a lot of anger. ⁓ There is just, it's very, very high stress. High stress, high intensity, high anger. Yes, there's some comedy bits a little bit, like especially in Ratha Khan, especially around like the Kobayashi Maru and solving that and things like that. the real, but then you come along with Star Trek 4 and it's all comedy.

There's a good Star Trek plot storyline with it, but it's also just ridiculous. A cloaked bird of prey to sit in Golden Gate Park and nobody notices it. ⁓ You would walk into it, you would hit it.

Roberto Baldwin (27:18)
notice it? You don't have it, you don't have stuff to check that out. It's just... But it's like, I think

it's high enough where it doesn't hit people. They probably, if someone's coming, they're just like, hey, raise it up a little bit. Now, of course, like the fact that it has engines running and it probably makes noise and all that, I don't

Chad Kirchner (27:27)
Let's go.

you

Right, there's that, there's ⁓

the colorful metaphors, there's the too much LDS, there's the... But it also feels like the entire cast was in on the joke too, like it doesn't feel like they're making fun of Star Trek, it feels like we're all laughing about the situation together.

Roberto Baldwin (27:52)
It's officially a guy like you said it's

though the entire movie is a fish out of water, which is a huge comedy trope It's it's you know, you throw somebody in into an area where they're not they're uncomfortable or they don't know what's going on And so they're gonna I mean it's essentially perfect strangers like Balky didn't know how to say things and I'll it know about the big city So that was the whole run of that show was Balky's like, I don't know. These are these things I'm doing

Chad Kirchner (27:56)
Yeah. Oh, we have a lot of water.

Roberto Baldwin (28:19)
You know, after a couple of seasons though, you're like, ⁓ Balky's kind of... Balky's a little dense. He should have learned how to say some stuff.

Chad Kirchner (28:28)
Right. Well, so, you know, you go back to the original series, again, there's company across all of this, but the original series, obviously, people go to like the trouble of troubles, and they're like, Oh, this is funny, it's supposed to be funny, the music's funny, things like that. A piece of the action, which is when the Enterprise goes to the gangster planet, and Kirk has to be Kirk and Spock have to be a gangster. Like that is the whole premise is ridiculous. The execution is is

Roberto Baldwin (28:48)
Yeah.

The whole idea

that we gotta go to another planet that's essentially like Earth, but they're like gangsters, or the one where they had to go and all the kids, when they hit 18, they get really old really quickly, but they're like, there's another Earth. At some point, you're like, they're running out of ideas, and they can only use the lots. They can only use the studio lots, so there's already things there. we can't, if you look at the Enterprise,

Chad Kirchner (29:02)
Yeah.

⁓ there's this.

Right. yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (29:22)
and some of the space stuff. I mean, those are really expensive sets for back then. They don't have green screen. They had somebody, a whole crew had to build all these sets that might be used in one or two episodes. And you're just hoping for the best. And then the rest of the time they're like, you have to save some money. And so unless they do stuff in a sand, you know, in the desert, like the Gorn episode, they're like, we gotta go on the back a lot again. Let's see, we're all gangsters. We're fighting, we're fighting Nazis.

Chad Kirchner (29:25)
Yes. yeah.

Yes.

Right. Yeah, well, I mean, that that that

That becomes its own trope though. It becomes its own trope too. mean, Strange True Worlds did a back lot set, like on purpose to be like, this is how the original series did this. So we're doing this. ⁓ In Starfleet Academy, there's the very first opening shot of Bejor. The planet Bejor is the exact same planet shot as Carly 358 or whatever from the first episode of Strange True Worlds because the original series would reuse planet sets and...

Roberto Baldwin (29:51)
Little kids are jerks, you know.

Chad Kirchner (30:18)
and graphics. like, there's a lot of, there's a lot of

Roberto Baldwin (30:20)
The next generation

with the holodeck they just they really lost their like some of those holodeck I like I gotta check out of this. Okay, I don't Every holodeck episode every holodeck episode is the holodeck malfunctioning and killing people or something The holodeck has created Satan and now Satan's gonna walk around

Chad Kirchner (30:23)
Yeah.

There's why would you put that on? Why would you put that on a ship? Who's who's right idea?

Right. Why would you put that? Right.

I think the best part, and I thought this was funny, I the best part is like when they sample it on strange new worlds and Pike at the very end after just there's the holodeck problem is like, yeah, don't install that and don't and don't touch that for ever. Basically, like, like this is a bad idea. ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (31:00)
Yeah, that's a bad idea.

And then they just put it on a spaceship,

throw some children in there and a robot and...

Chad Kirchner (31:07)
Well,

well, like another funny kind of trope is like how terrible Starfleet like security and stuff is like information, know, information technology security, like, how can you shouldn't be able to walk to up to a computer and say, make me a character that can outsmart data. And then, which is how you end up with Moriarty and that's how you end up with taking over the enterprise and like, it's, it's, it's, you know,

Roberto Baldwin (31:25)
Yeah, they're just, they just...

They don't,

I don't know what the password is, but I'm assuming it's one, two, three, four, because every time they come, hey, the spaceship is scanning us. no, it's just downloaded our entire history and everything about the plane. Like what's happening up here in space?

Chad Kirchner (31:42)
Right. Well,

you know, we learn in Rathacon that a six digit code is all you need to take control of another Starship. And apparently every other Starship has the six digit code to do it. It really, really is.

Roberto Baldwin (31:54)
Yeah, it's just bad info sack is what it is. But it's like, it's, it's

whether it's, it's on purpose or, you know, it's not, mean, the, the finding Kirk fighting Gorn is, is classic Hilarity. It is.

Chad Kirchner (32:05)
Skrackfighting the Gorn is...

Yeah, like it is.

When you first watch it, you're like, but like it is objectively funny. It's a guy in a lizard costume. Like, like it's a guy in lizard suit. He blinks. Yeah, the corn blinks. They add the blink, which is funny.

Roberto Baldwin (32:20)
With the new, with the re, with the remakes or the re, like now they're going blinks. Ooh. But like it's great.

Cause when they fight, you can clearly tell when it's not William Shatner. They're like that. Who is this guy? He's like two feet taller. His hair is like a different, like a different length.

Chad Kirchner (32:30)
Yes. Yes. Yes.

Well, mean, some of you just the production sensibilities and stuff in the 60s is funny. But then you like, like it like the way that kept the way that William Shatner fights, like the whole arm elbow thing, like, it's a very specific Star Trek fighting style that they must teach the Academy for everybody because like, they carry that like they carry that on through through modern.

Roberto Baldwin (32:52)
It had to be like...

I wondered like at one point

they're like, well, we gotta, we're gonna be in the future. And so we gotta put like some martial arts in there and we gotta figure, know, they're all gonna fight different cause they've learned fights from like other, you know, how to fight from other species and other planets and like, Hey, we gotta fight like the, the Robbie lens. Or we gotta fight like the Klingons or we learn how to fight like the, you know, the Spock's, you know, the Vulcans. There you go. The Vulcans. gotta. ⁓

Chad Kirchner (33:07)
Right.

Right. Vocums.

Roberto Baldwin (33:20)
We got to fight like those folks in there like,

ah, okay, cool, cool. That's how we're. So what do you want to do? You just put my hands together and smack someone. Yeah. And do some rolls, like roll underneath them and knock them over. you're like they're like, you're a bowling ball on their pins. Yeah.

Chad Kirchner (33:30)
You

Yes, yes. it's

which is it then you had mentioned again that your favorite character is Commander Pellaea from Stranger Worlds, who's a Lanthinite and also body. Like just because she because the character is several hundred years old. So you have her like talking about the Grateful Dead, like connecting, you know, ⁓ has weird stuff in her quarters. But like, like very, very

Original series type of character which I think fits really well with the strange new worlds kind of kind of thought process and stuff like that

Roberto Baldwin (34:07)
I like a character who kind of sits outside the norm within it, but still works within the general mythology of the show and still works with the general characters of the show. And you can't use her all the time, because then it's just like, it would be annoying. But I like the idea that it's like, there's an old woman who's really, really old, who's hundreds or thousands of years old, and just sort of every once in a while just sort of shows up and be like, you guys are idiots, let me tell you how this works.

Chad Kirchner (34:18)
No, no.

Alright.

Roberto Baldwin (34:34)
or

they go back in time for some reason and they meet her and she's like, ⁓ hey. And she's like a little bit of a thief and a little bit of a hoarder, a little bit of, but they still let her in the academy because, in Starfleet because she's pretty smart and she knows she's good at engineering. Cause she like built a, you know, the first sewing machine or something goofy. don't know, but I like that. And every time she's on, know, there's going to be some, some funny. So I'm just like, all right. I like, I like.

Chad Kirchner (34:38)
yeah, they.

Yeah.

Right. ⁓

Well, I love

how Scotty

don't want to almost embarrassed by her, like very kind of, okay, it is a very teacher student, which of course she is his instructor, but like.

Roberto Baldwin (35:16)
It's like your 16 year old and your mom. You're just like, mom, God. And it doesn't matter who you are. You could be like, you know, a rock star. You could be, you know, the world's top astrophysicist. You could be whatever. Your teenager doesn't care and is embarrassed by you. That's the relationship. And I think it works really well. Scotty is just like, ⁓ God.

Chad Kirchner (35:18)
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, that's exactly how it.

Right. Yes. Yeah.

it does. Right,

right. And then like the one time like when she like, needed needed Scotty to work under pressure, and he wasn't under enough pressure. So she's like, my gosh, the corner here, they're taking over the ship. And like, he just quickly fixes whatever product thing he was trying to fix. And then he's like, Dang it, mom, like basically, today. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (35:59)
Yeah, it's very, yeah. It's someone who knows you very well and it makes it worse. The fact when

your parents, you know that your parents know you very well and they're already embarrassing and you're always on the cusp of being embarrassed by them because they're gonna say something or do something that exposes who you are to either the world or your friends or to yourself. And so I think it's an interesting character that they've sort of introduced and I think she works well within.

the and I like her because she's not there all the time. She just sort of shows up. Hey.

Chad Kirchner (36:30)
Right, yeah. But you can

see, but you can see sort of, you could see how her, and they obviously wrote it this way, but you could see how her influence on Scotty ends up where we know Scotty. a little bit of stretch in the truth, maybe a little bit of, you know, definitely the engineering talent and chops to be a miracle worker, but the, the,

the off the wall kind of nonconformity stuff that Scotty will ultimately do.

Roberto Baldwin (37:02)
Well, at some point he admits that he's like, well, if it's gonna take you like this long, you tell him it's gonna take you this long and you look really good. It's the Disneyland method. So when you're in line at Disneyland, they'll say, oh, it's gonna take 45 minutes from this spot to get to the thing. When in reality, it'll take like 35 or 30 minutes. So then you're delightfully surprised. You're like, oh, it didn't take quite as long. That's great.

Chad Kirchner (37:08)
Yeah. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (37:27)
I think Scotty does that. That's Scotty's whole thing. ⁓ it's going to take all day. It's going to take 24 hours when he knows in his heart it'll only take him 18.

Chad Kirchner (37:34)
Well,

in Star Trek 3, in the search for Spock when the Enterprise returns at the beginning, ⁓ Kirk asks him, he's like, how much refit time do need for the Enterprise? And Scotty's like, it'll take eight weeks, but I know you don't have eight weeks, so I'm gonna do it for you in two. And Kirk is like, know, Scotty, do you always multiply your repair estimates by a factor of four? And he's like, certainly, sir. How else do I keep my reputation as a miracle worker?

Roberto Baldwin (37:59)
Yeah, it's very, and of course that's

that weird little humor in there where the entire series you're watching it and Scottie's eyes like, you know, it's cause it's this thing called it like a time crunch. And so it's a story element where you're like, okay, we have to do this within this amount of time, but it's going to take longer to do it. So you have the, like you said, they have this ticking clock and then Scottie is just always, you know, it's like, ⁓ it creates tension. And in the reality you find out like, you know, decades later, like, ⁓ Scottie's just bullshitting everybody.

Chad Kirchner (38:03)
Yeah.

Yeah, ticking clock.

Yes, yeah, I mean he's good at that. What's kind of put you on the spot a little bit here? What's kind of, I mean, is there anything that you can think of off the top of your head that you think is hilarious that maybe isn't generally funny in Star Trek? Like, like the Goron fight isn't supposed to be funny, but it's hilarious. Like, can you think of some other, any other kind of examples that you like?

You kind of watch and you just laugh because you're like, this is so ridiculous. This is funny. This is.

Roberto Baldwin (39:01)
It's the, the, the, the, know, in the first season, they tried him, uh, um, not Scotty bones, like he tries to be suave and charming. And a few times it was like, Hey, and it's always just really weird and creepy. And I think it's, it's, it's, you know, his whole thing is to be sort of a curmudgeon and, to be a friend and be, to be the sort of a.

the middle ground between ⁓ Spock ⁓ and Kirk and just sometimes be the voice of reason to that and the voice of humanity. But then like, you know, he's like, hey, like every time poor bones tries to like, you know,

Chad Kirchner (39:34)
and Kirk, yeah.

you

Roberto Baldwin (39:51)
throw some game at some poor woman, it always comes off very weird and creepy and I feel bad for DeForest Kelly.

Chad Kirchner (39:53)
yeah.

yeah. Well, the first

I'm trying to think on the first like three episodes, but not the first three, according to memory alpha. But the first three episodes of TOS is on Delta right now. So when I went to the the last car launch, went on. Nobody's going to care what it was because this is a Star Trek podcast. cars. But I watched them. And the very first episode of like Star Trek.

doesn't have Pike in it. It's it's it's bones meets his ex girlfriend who ends up marrying the scientist and it's the salt suckers that come in and and the whole time he's like just enamored by her and and Kirk keeps getting mad at him for not being able to keep it in his pants like talks about like his his his loins out of control like there's it is it is cringe it is it's cringe first.

Roberto Baldwin (40:36)
⁓ yes, it's ex- ⁓

Yeah, they're in a

Chad Kirchner (40:58)
It's more cringe than funny, but.

Roberto Baldwin (41:00)
It is

so, again, it just comes down to DeForest Kelly ⁓ cannot act as Scott as Bones and as someone who has ever had sex with a woman. That's the thing. You're like, you know he's had girlfriends. He's had to have had girlfriends. But the idea of every time he tries to like, either he's enamored by a woman or he tries to chat a woman up, it's always just like, ⁓ gosh, this is weird.

Chad Kirchner (41:11)
Right.

yeah.

Right. Well,

and and canonically, canonically, he has had sex with Dex because in the Trials and Tribulations episode, which is the Deepest Haste 9 where they travel back in time, Judzia tells Cisco when they're on the bridge, she's like, McCoy, McCoy. Oh, I remember that. He went to Ole Miss or went to Ole Miss and Cisco asked, know, something like, well, what host was it? And it wasn't

wasn't Curzon it was Emory which was the host beforehand and ⁓ she's like yeah he had the the hands of a surgeon and came with like a wink and Cisco kind of like rolls his eyes like dear but so at some point at some point he still had some game apparently he had some at some point

Roberto Baldwin (42:09)
It still makes it awkward. Listen,

some ladies, they like an awkward man. And so and then there you go, DeForest Kelly's bones. So, yeah, so I think that every time he's trying to throw a play, I think I find that hilarious and cringe and.

Chad Kirchner (42:19)
I mean, God willing, right?

Well, Bones, ⁓ reboot Bones, you know, the 2009 Star Trek, is, ⁓ crap, what's his name? ⁓ I'm so stupid right now. Yeah, the movies, the new ones.

Roberto Baldwin (42:45)
Talk about the movies.

Now we're research.

Chad Kirchner (42:52)
Yeah, I...

it's... yeah, ⁓ duh, Carl Urban, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, ⁓ duh,

Roberto Baldwin (43:04)
Yeah, but

Carl, I think he's... It's not the person playing them. It's the character. is literally the character of Bones just is essentially... Yeah, I think he's, for most people, this is a sexless character. Especially when you have Shatner, who's just banging his way across the universe. And Spock, who's got like a girlfriend or a wife, and then he's like...

Chad Kirchner (43:11)
No, yeah

He's supposed to be little cringe.

Yes, yes, yes.

Roberto Baldwin (43:33)
Like everyone loves, know, everyone wants to be with the, with the, with the misunderstood emo, like, like Vulcan.

Chad Kirchner (43:34)
Yeah, no, Kurt

Spock is very Spock is very horny in strange new worlds. ⁓ but like, but we learn, you know, we learn sort of through in the alternate timeline. A bone says, you know, he's like, ⁓ the wife took everything in the divorce, you know, all our life, ⁓ all our life, where were our bones, which is how the Kurt calls them bones, but like that.

Roberto Baldwin (43:42)
Yeah.

Aww.

Chad Kirchner (44:03)
It's canonically he's cringe, but like canonically he's also funny like there's the I forget which part in the Yeah, like when he when he looks at Kirk this is in the reboot when he looks at Kirk and after Kirk says something like Kakamini play and he's like are you out of your corn-fed mind and it's such I'd love the line so much because it's an Iowa joke ⁓ Because Kirk's from Iowa and it's

Roberto Baldwin (44:11)
He's a one-liner. He's a great- he's great at a one-liner.

Chad Kirchner (44:32)
It's not like, are you out of your Vulcan mind, is what he would always say to Spock during the original series, but now it's like, are you out of your corn-fed mind? And I'm like, yes, I like those zingers. There's a lot of good one-line zingers too.

Roberto Baldwin (44:46)
That's it like yeah, they throw a lot of zingers to him because again, he's the sexless sort of humanity Yeah, he of all the crew like you see Luca get it like a hurrah totally It's like everyone else in that crew is doing it but not both but poor boat I I mean they have it we're like, he had a girlfriend like he's kind of chatting his girl up but in reality, you know viewers like

Chad Kirchner (44:57)
Yeah.

but not but

Yeah.

He's a doctor. You don't want your doctor chatting you up, you? ⁓ But thinking of like, I mean, I love for some as I get maybe get a little older too, I love like good almost dad joke one liner. So like, you know, you have like, again, I got a corn fed mind. ⁓ In Star Trek five, the final frontier, what does God need with the starship? One of my favorite lines in all of Star Trek, because it is because it is ridiculous. It's ridiculous. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (45:12)
Yeah, yeah.

I've forgotten that movie on purpose. That's a ridiculous movie. That movie itself is movie. That

movie itself is ridiculous. I need to watch it again because the first time I was like, what is going on? What's happening?

Chad Kirchner (45:44)
I kind of unironically

love it just for how ridiculous it is because it was directed by William Shatner, one of the very first scenes, you see his butt, it's just climbing a rock. It's funny, there's a lot of funny stuff in there that I don't necessarily think was supposed to be funny, but comes off very funny. What does God do to Star Trek? There's lines from in Starfleet Academy,

Roberto Baldwin (46:03)
Intentionally funny, yeah.

Chad Kirchner (46:12)
First Officer is when talking about some of the kids, she's like, they shenan once, they'll shenan again. ⁓ Which I think is another great line. is some other, I'm drawing a blank right now because it's late, there are some just like good straight up zingers, I think, in Star Trek that makes it so quotable. I think there's a lot of really good kind of quotable stuff. I the humor does that.

But, ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (46:42)
It is non-stop zingers between Spock and Bones. I mean, it's just, they're the odd couple on the plane.

Chad Kirchner (46:46)
Oh yeah, but it's like, it's... Yeah, they are.

They really are. So yeah, Star Trek, it's funny. They go to a planet that's run by gangsters and the Federation's gonna have to come and collect its collection money, or its protection money, which I would've loved them to explore that in lower decks, a return to the gangster planet.

Roberto Baldwin (47:15)
Well, that's the genius of Lower Decks is that it takes all these things, whether they're intentionally or unintentionally funny, and it squeezes them for every bit they are. They essentially take all these elements and they concentrate it into this funny little, you know, a sitcom, an animated sitcom about what's going on. It's extremely, you know, it's meta, but you know, it's again, Rick and Morty stuff.

Chad Kirchner (47:20)
⁓ yes.

In some ways, yes.

Roberto Baldwin (47:42)
But the show itself is pretty meta. The show itself is very self-referential because it's working on this timeline and it's essentially, I don't know if you'd call it a military, but you're always, if you're in the Navy, everyone in the Navy knows about the whatever thing that the Navy's done over the past 200 years in your country.

Chad Kirchner (47:49)
Yeah.

Right. I think

I think the big success of Lower Decks is you don't have to if you don't get the jokes, it's still good Star Trek. But if you get the jokes, you get the jokes, then it's it's a whole kind of new level. But what I love about it, but I love about the whole premise, this idea of going on second contacts, because so many first contacts about TOS and TNG.

⁓ I think even Mariner says one time, you you plant these space seeds and you never check on them. Which of course Space Feed is the Khan episode where that ends up nobody checks on them and that's why Khan gets angry and they're at the Khan. ⁓ Kirk will come and totally mess up a planet. the one episode, I can't remember the title, where the two planets are at war with each other but they use computer simulations.

Roberto Baldwin (48:50)
⁓

Chad Kirchner (48:51)
But the real people, but the real people when you die, the disintegrator, yeah. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (48:51)
yeah. They have to go into the little telephone booth essentially.

Chad Kirchner (48:57)
And Kirk's like, prime directive, what's that? And like, your society is wrong. And he just goes around and like destroys the disintegrators and stuff. it's like, it's, I mean, it's funny. I mean, that's kind of funny because he like, oh, he just like.

thinks he knows better in kind of a funny way but like what happens to that society? Ardrew or whatever the the computer that took over yeah yeah like yeah yeah you know see if

Roberto Baldwin (49:20)
just leaves like well, see you later. I've screwed up everything So do these people

go back to shooting each other with actual like weapons or do they?

Chad Kirchner (49:28)
You know,

we don't the the planet that was taken over by the computer that had the the The days of the time where you could go around and kill each other like the purge kind of thing Yeah, I Know yeah

Roberto Baldwin (49:38)
Oh, the purge, the purge, that episode had so many things that are in shows. There's the

purge. There was the computer that runs everything. was like, there's like three or four elements within that one episode that people have created entire movie franchises. I'm like, oh, it's a purge. And then it just went to something else. I'm like, oh, it's a computer. Then it went to something else. Like, my God, this, is like a feeding frenzy for everyone in the eighties when they're like, I need an idea for a movie.

Chad Kirchner (49:53)
Yeah. Oh yeah. Well, yeah.

Yes.

Right. And Lower Decks, like, they revisit that planet and it turns out they let the computer take back over. They preferred having the computer run everything. Which is then how the computer ends up at the Dejtrem Institute next to Jeffrey Coombs' ⁓ computer character. But like, there's... It's funny. maybe, like, not in a funny haha kind of way, but the way that Starfleet just comes in and, like, has these...

Roberto Baldwin (50:15)
They're like, ⁓ it's fine.

Chad Kirchner (50:38)
Principles this this this general order one, which I love in the first episode of strange new worlds at the end because they violate the prime director to do it and and Pike is sitting there with it with Admiral April with a couple or anything else that well, he was a Commodore on the first one. Whatever April April and he's like, oh, yeah, the council's real real upset at this and

Roberto Baldwin (50:54)
It doesn't matter. You don't have to salute him, what do you care?

Chad Kirchner (51:03)
They're gonna they're thinking about renaming that to the because they're very serious about this. They're thinking about renaming to the prime directive and Pike without missing a beat. It's like he's like, oh, that'll never work. And and it's it's it's so.

Roberto Baldwin (51:16)
because ⁓

it's a plot element that only works when they want it to work. And so many times they just sort of, nah. You're just like watching episodes, like, isn't there a prime directed that says they shouldn't do any of this stuff right now?

Chad Kirchner (51:21)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Right,

non-interference, Like, mean, Star Trek IV, like we mentioned this in this other episode, but like Star Trek IV, where's the Prime Directive? Does the Prime Directive apply to your own Earth, to yourself? Can you go back and change your own history? where is, where is, where... Yeah, those way out. It's George and Gracie, and they're unborn.

Roberto Baldwin (51:44)
We never know what those whales could have been in the eighties. You know what I mean? They could have

been like the next big thing, but instead they got sucked out to the, sucked to the future and then just dropped in the middle of the night. Where, what's, what's happening? Where is everybody? Oh, that's a bummer. Just drop a man.

Chad Kirchner (51:53)
could suck to the future. And totally expected to survive. Yes, totally expected to survive. Kind of. ⁓

Well, Starbree Warhol's here. ⁓ yeah, just just in some of it slapstick like in Star Trek six when Valerius uses the phaser to to vaporize the the

pot in the mess hall and the stuff that the crewman's stirring stays there but the pot disappears when she vaporizes it. There's some slapstick stuff but some of it's also just higher level of funny. I think in 60 years of TV Star Trek has done a lot of things.

Roberto Baldwin (52:33)
⁓ that's a bummer. Yeah.

Chad Kirchner (52:52)
It's, as you said at the very beginning, to maintain the wokeness level of the sixties that it had in the sixties, it would have to be like, infinitismally more woke, quote unquote, work than is.

Roberto Baldwin (53:03)
Everyone would have to be trans

in the new shows. That's the only way you could... Yeah, everyone had to be... Yeah. It's, know, I don't... I mean, I don't understand people who don't quite understand it and people who did understand it and have decided not to do it. That's your own, I don't know, cognitive dissonance ⁓ for your life. ⁓ Good luck in your cult. ⁓ But yeah, I think there's, you know, at the end of the day...

Chad Kirchner (53:06)
Right. You'd have to get real aliens. You'd to find extraterrestrials.

Thank

Roberto Baldwin (53:32)
When you, what makes Star Trek, what makes people go to, you know, become Trekkies before Star Trek was like, you know, accepted by the general populace? ⁓ What makes people still dress up as Star Trek ⁓ characters? What makes people buy, you know, funny little ears? What makes people 3D print, you know, tricorders and the little phaser guns and what makes people, and at the end of the day, it just comes down to is that it's a,

a human story. It is a story about a bunch of friends, about a bunch of people who are going around who are just trying, for the most part, just trying to be nice to everybody else. That's it. That's the thing. It's this idea of, you know, think Gene Roddenberry wanted this utopian idea of what the future was. You know, we don't have money. cool.

Chad Kirchner (54:12)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (54:23)
We don't have to worry about, you just, everyone just has a job and you do your job and everyone's cool with each other. And then we're going to space and sometimes we fight giant, you know, rubber suits. And sometimes we show up on a planet and we turn off their, their weird computer that makes everyone go. ⁓

Chad Kirchner (54:39)
A literal

green hand appears in space and grabs the Enterprise. Sometimes you fight a child.

Roberto Baldwin (54:42)
Yeah, sometimes you fight a child. Some sort of super child. But I think

there are these fantastical ideas that they were able to pull off and enough people were watching it that they decided, wow, this is really cool. And enough studio executives realized that even though the first, especially the third season of Star Trek didn't do that well, to be honest, when it was on TV.

Chad Kirchner (55:10)
no, it was

not great.

Roberto Baldwin (55:11)
It was mostly syndication where this ⁓

became pretty famous and then decided, you know what, we should just keep doing this. The Next Generation was just a syndicated show. It wasn't on NBC or CBS. It went straight to syndication and it did Gangbusters and then Deep Space Nine and so on.

Chad Kirchner (55:31)
same Voyager

was the first one that was like on a network with an official time because it helped launch UPN the United Parabouch Network which

Roberto Baldwin (55:42)
Yeah, so it's

yeah, so I think it's it's it is that that that idea that it is a actual stories that are that don't get mired down too much in sci-fi Which is a problem with sci-fi like whenever whenever you're watching anything is sci-fi and they have to explain things instead of just doing You've that's bad writing That's that's yeah you you and I think I don't think star trek went in and like well We have to you know, there wasn't a lot these yes They have a lot of exposition that you would you know for the for the 60s

Chad Kirchner (56:00)
Yeah, I agree.

there is.

Roberto Baldwin (56:11)
but it wasn't so much where, you know, I'll watch a movie now and it'll be like, well, you know, the reason why we're doing this is because of this. And it's like, my God.

Chad Kirchner (56:20)
I will consent

though that Star Trek has the best in-universe way to do exposition, which is through Captain's Logs, through log entries. I think it's a very in-universe way to do exposition that's... Fight me, I think it's the best way to do it. Like, I haven't seen...

Roberto Baldwin (56:29)
Yeah, you get this nice...

It's essentially narration

without you thinking you're being narrated to. It's not a crawl, it's not Star Wars where there's a crawl. The Running Man, the beginning of the first Running Man movie, there's a crawl. They explain everything, what's going on. ⁓ so without having that...

Chad Kirchner (56:43)
Yeah. Yeah. Which I think is.

Yeah, yeah, right.

Roberto Baldwin (56:59)
the logs and like, well, you know, captains on ships have logs and they write down in their little things. So it made sense just as a, you know, as, some sort of military establishment or organization to have that. And then just to have it as, know, a narration, essentially to say, Hey, we're going to this planet and we're doing this thing. And then afterwards, Spock and I are going to go eat a sandwich, you know, whatever.

Chad Kirchner (57:10)
Sure, yeah.

Right.

there's other in Stetrick does use other exposition at points, but like that. I just think that's yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (57:32)
There are a lot

of shows, there are a lot of smart writers who use exposition or know how to do exposition in a way that doesn't feel like a character stopping the action to tell you exactly what's going on. And then now let's move to the next plot. ⁓

Chad Kirchner (57:47)
And on that note, two things. ⁓ don't take Star Trek too seriously. Like, I take it very, like, I'm very serious about my fandom. And I'm very serious about what I do around it. But I also don't take it too seriously. It's like in the professional side of what I do, like, I talk about cars, like, that's fun, though there's no reason to get all bent out of shape over it. So like,

the folks that watch Star Trek today and are just angry and upset. It's like, just don't. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (58:20)
Well, I think those people are just angry at media in general

because they feel like they are used to a certain thing and they wouldn't know that they were angry unless somebody told them to be angry. It is very much a, this person told me to be angry about this and so now I'm angry about it, which years ago they would have watched the same thing and been like, man, okay, cool, this is a good story.

Chad Kirchner (58:31)
Sure.

Yeah, a lot of this

there's a lot of content right now that might even run next to this on the video format of like people, know, criticizing and really ripping apart new Star Trek and it's like, yeah, you're doing it for clicks. Like, it's not it's not it's it's it's it's a TV show. It's a TV show. It's a movie. It's a franchise. It's it's. It does.

Roberto Baldwin (58:54)
Well, I mean...

Anger creates engagement. mean, Facebook

had to come out and say, they're like, yeah, we were trying to make everyone angry because it increased engagement. If you're angry, you're gonna go back to that comment. You're gonna go watch that show. You're gonna make a comment. You're gonna do the thing. Don't be that. If something is poking at you trying to make you angry, realize that you're being conned. You're being conned by engagement farmers.

Chad Kirchner (59:09)
Yeah.

Right, yeah. Because,

because Star Trek, every Star Trek's not necessarily for everybody, but it's also funny. Try to, try to see the, I mean, I know this sounds like really kind of adult kind of advice, but just try to see the positive fun side of it. It can be a really, it can be a really fun experience to, to be in, especially these days. Being a fan of Star Trek is great. There's so much stuff out there. There's so many people that are also into it. It's not like, like, like,

I was like the only one in high school that was maybe into it. now it's like everybody has so many, like one of the reasons why I wanted to start doing this podcast is I know so many people who maybe aren't super duper obsessed with it, but like, like it, get into it, enjoy it, like to talk about it. I just recently a colleague, a professional colleague that like I had never would have expected to be at all interested in this. I was on a drive program recently and she, I said something and she started talking to me about it. And it's like,

Wait, what? So, so that I sat there and, you know, we talked about the like, explained why the Kelvin timeline is what it is. And like, like, everybody, like, it's, it's, it's been around for 60 years, so many people are exposed to it. And it is legitimately genuinely funny. Not all the time.

Roberto Baldwin (1:00:42)
It's literally the

reason the Paramount plus streaming plan. It's that and mission impossible movies. What keeps the mayor of Paramount plus like ⁓ streaming service of a Star Trek and

Chad Kirchner (1:00:45)
Probably probably one of the few that yeah, I mean

Yeah, that's kind of.

Roberto Baldwin (1:00:59)
Mission Impossible movies.

Chad Kirchner (1:01:00)
Yep.

So Robbie, Roberto, Roberto, as Craig Cole would refer to you as, roll in the R. Give me something to pimp. Let's talk about what you're doing. What are you working on? What's fun?

Roberto Baldwin (1:01:03)
Yeah.

⁓ So I have my bands. think the big thing that's happened, April, if you live in the Bay Area, obviously everyone else can just tune out for this. But on April 10th at Rick Showstop in San Francisco, my Prince and my Bowie bands will be doing a show. Both of those bands were based on right after Prince died, a club asked if I could create a band for Prince for a tribute. And then Prince died a few months later. Both of those artists were extremely important to me. ⁓

Chad Kirchner (1:01:24)
Okay.

home.

Roberto Baldwin (1:01:43)
And so they reached out and it's like, would you do a Prince band? And so now I have a Prince band. So it's been six years since we've done a show ⁓ of either of those bands. I got the bands back together. They've been hassling me for like the past six years. And I said, fine, let's, we're going to do show. So it's April 10th, Rickshaw stop in San Francisco. You can use the internet. I got the SAE. There we go. We got the SAE automotive engineering podcast. If you're

Chad Kirchner (1:01:53)
Great.

You

I'll have a link. I'll get a link in the show notes.

Roberto Baldwin (1:02:12)
super into like deep dives. And we talked to some of the smart people out in the world who are building the things that make car parts work. You we did a thing about, not so much about autonomous cars, but about the things that make autonomous cars work. have a, probably by the time this goes up, we'll have one about software defined vehicles. Again, it's super nerdy. Check it out if you're super nerdy into cars.

Chad Kirchner (1:02:39)
Yeah,

I mean, people are listening to a Star Trek podcast, odds are they're a little... No, no, that's true. But one thing I kind of wanted to tell the audience, people that are listening, like I am an automotive journalist by, I guess, profession. And a lot of my... Right. And a lot of... I've been paid an exposure. It's this new thing that I don't know if you've heard about.

Roberto Baldwin (1:02:42)
Yeah, it doesn't mean they're gonna be nerdy about cars, but this is,

You guess? You're not sure? You're like, people pay me for it, but I don't know if it's real. They've been paying me in grapenuts? I don't know what I'm supposed to do with these.

⁓ exposure.

Chad Kirchner (1:03:07)
no, I work with some very good outlets that that are absolute joy to work with. but a lot of my friends like that you're going to see kind of on this, especially initially our colleagues in this industry. So a lot of the stuff that they'll pitch maybe will be kind of car related. That doesn't mean, yeah, it doesn't mean we're necessarily going to talk about cars because this is an car podcast. But, ⁓ I have again, like what one of the absolute joys of doing what I do

Roberto Baldwin (1:03:24)
Yeah, you're gonna hear a lot of car stuff from a lot of

Yeah, who cares.

Chad Kirchner (1:03:36)
I know I kind of said this at the beginning, but like I am meeting and working with people that I used to read or follow or ⁓ that are immensely creative and hugely smart and ⁓ and and Robbie who who ⁓ is also immensely creative. I We can argue if you want to argue the smartness, I guess I'll let you argue that. But but I won't let you argue creativity.

Roberto Baldwin (1:03:51)
And me. And then me.

There you go.

Chad Kirchner (1:04:06)
because you have 10 bands more than I do. ⁓ But thank you again for coming on. For regular listeners, hopefully, ⁓ the best way that you can support this right now is tell somebody about it. Share it on social, ⁓ hit the subscribe, do all of that jazz. If you want to help maybe...

Roberto Baldwin (1:04:14)
Nah, it was fun.

Give it a give

it a, know you're supposed to tell people to give it a, a review on Apple podcasts. Cause even though, even though Spotify has spent hundreds of millions of dollars for their podcasts, ⁓ everyone, I have a couple of podcasts, all the podcasts in the world, they get most of their views from Apple or listens from Apple podcasts, not from Spotify. So womp womp Spotify.

Chad Kirchner (1:04:34)
That's right, please. Yeah, for some reason.

Yep.

⁓ So yeah, so like, and that there's, there's ways to juice the algorithm and a review is a way to do that. So ⁓ and these aren't reviews, like when you get your car fixed, where everything other than a five star is like a zero star, like, I'll actually take feedback seriously. but that's, that's the best way to support us. ⁓ We do have a Patreon though. So like, if you want to throw a couple of bucks towards

this project ⁓ so that maybe I can pay some guests to be on kind of thing. ⁓ We have that at patreon.com slash StarbaseAD because I didn't want somebody to have to spell out temporal investigations. That's a long one. ⁓ But at the lieutenant's level, ⁓ you can get episodes early, almost a week early. And at the higher tier at the commander level,

Roberto Baldwin (1:05:38)
Oooooh!

Chad Kirchner (1:05:47)
we do a bit, we do some bits before and after each episode that are just for those folks. So, ⁓ it's all the swears Robbie just cursed up the storm. ⁓ In the future, I am going to drop some of that stuff for free into the feed, just to give you kind of a taste because the one that we, the one that I've already recorded that's not out yet about ⁓ ocean science in Star Trek. ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (1:05:53)
It's just X rated stuff. I'm going to say it so many swears I'm going to talk about. Yeah. Yeah.

Chad Kirchner (1:06:15)
There's this whole thing about Russian Soviet whaling that is just fascinating that I didn't know necessarily a lot about that isn't necessarily Star Trek related, but like just real, real intelligent conversation with some very smart people. So, ⁓ might be worth it to you for that, but either way, I appreciate you guys listening. And, ⁓ until next time, ⁓ I haven't really come up with a sign out yet. So, ⁓ I got that. Hold on. I can do that.

Roberto Baldwin (1:06:46)
that's better than my whistling.

Chad Kirchner (1:06:48)
Thanks for listening.

Roberto Baldwin (1:06:50)
It's just live long and prosper.

Chad Kirchner (1:06:52)
Live long and prosper.