Chad Kirchner (00:28)
Hello and welcome back to another episode of Temporal Investigations, my Star Trek podcast talking about kind of all things Trek, new Trek, old Trek, ⁓ the lore, the canon. ⁓ And I'm really excited today because we have, I have my first return guest. ⁓ He didn't have a terrible experience. So that's always a positive. Mr. Benjamin Hunting, hello.

Benjamin Hunting (00:52)
Hello, I'm still in the honeymoon phase of this podcast.

Chad Kirchner (00:55)
Yeah, yeah, wait, so I actually have a plan I kind of want to talk to you about after we get a few more of these in. No, I really want to play, I kind of want to do some kind of like gaming and stuff. And I bought the 50th anniversary of Trivial Pursuit. And I want to get like a couple of my more knowledge intense friends around and play it on the podcast.

Benjamin Hunting (01:01)
you

Is knowledge intense a different way of saying non-neurotypical? Okay.

Chad Kirchner (01:20)
Sure, sure. And

the new guest joining us today, he is the executive editor at a car magazine that uses an ampersand in its name. ⁓ He grew up watching The Next Generation, which I think probably all of us did here at some point. But his favorite series is Lower Decks. I respect that. Though Captain McCard, or I'm sorry, William Riker, Commander William Riker, Mr. Jonathan Franks, director

extraordinaire ⁓ is his favorite character. ⁓ Mr. Mike Austin, hello. How are you?

Mike Austin (01:56)
Hello. Thanks for having me. You know, I just

remembered I actually met Jonathan Frakes in the LAX baggage claim once. So that that really locks it for me. He was he was gracious.

Chad Kirchner (02:02)
Okay. I was coming home after

Benjamin Hunting (02:02)
Nice, nice.

Chad Kirchner (02:06)
I came home after one LA Auto Show one year and the flight back to Detroit was I had LeVar Burton on the on the flight so

Benjamin Hunting (02:14)
Was he flying the plane?

Chad Kirchner (02:16)
I felt better that he was on board, but he was not flying it.

Benjamin Hunting (02:20)
⁓ I went to a comic convention one time with a friend and my friend, the whole Next Generation crew was on stage and my friend asked Frakes if it was true that he would have been fired had he not worn a girdle in season two of Next Generation, like from that point forward. And ⁓ Marina Sertis actually answered the question for him because she was so upset by it.

Chad Kirchner (02:43)
Right.

Benjamin Hunting (02:46)
But

she said that the people at Paramount had come to both her and Frakes and said that you both have really nice, really cushy jobs and it would be a real shame if you lost those jobs because you didn't take care of yourselves. And it was like, wow, this is like a totally different era of just fat shaming people like in the public eye as an executive. And so the answer was yes. He was threatened with losing his job.

Chad Kirchner (02:59)
you

Yeah.

Mike Austin (03:12)
I mean,

maybe don't make them sit all the time. Like sitting is not a flattering position for anybody.

Chad Kirchner (03:18)
Right,

Benjamin Hunting (03:18)
Seriously.

Chad Kirchner (03:18)
mean that's how we end up with the Picard maneuver. Not the combat one, but...

Benjamin Hunting (03:23)
But think of how awesome it would have been

if Ryker had embraced his bear persona back then. He's so about it now and everyone loves him for it. it would have been inspiring, I think, to a lot of us.

Chad Kirchner (03:29)
Yeah. Right.

Yeah,

I do love, I did mention that he's a director and has been directing for a while now. He's been doing a lot of new Trek episodes as well. And he just did the most recent Starfleet Academy. you know, I like that the modern Trek is exposing us to all new writers and directors and different visions and trying things, whether it works or not, I appreciate them trying things.

But you can always tell when Frank extracts the episode. he understands Star Trek in the way that it should be filmed in a way that I think nobody else probably alive really gets.

Benjamin Hunting (04:12)
There's like a musk too that comes through the television I find when it's like comforting, but also a little arousing.

Chad Kirchner (04:15)
Yes, yes.

Yeah, yeah.

Mike Austin (04:19)
I, yeah, I have, yeah, I

have like complicated thoughts about the new track. I watched them all, but when, yeah, when you see the frakes credit, you're like, okay, this is going to be a good one. And, and I do, I do want to put out ahead of time that like, I, have watched. Like I've, I, well, I haven't watched all of DS9, but I've watched a lot of Star Trek. Like it was definitely a huge part of my life. And I even identity in my teens and early twenties, but I am not an encyclopedic like Trek knower.

Chad Kirchner (04:25)
sure.

Yeah, and I remember I remember... Go ahead, I'm sorry.

Mike Austin (04:49)
I cannot reference specific episodes. just want to, I want to get that out of the way that if you're like this guy's

Benjamin Hunting (04:54)
That's why we have Chad. I'm putting

it the wrong way. That's why we have Chad.

Chad Kirchner (04:57)
It's going to depend

Mike Austin (04:57)
If you're like, this guy's an idiot, you'd be like, he's not a real fan. It's fine. If you

Chad Kirchner (04:57)
on how the edit works. No, no, no, no, no.

Mike Austin (05:01)
want to, if the listener is like, this guy's not a real fan. I, I understand it. I.

Chad Kirchner (05:04)
I don't think so because

first off, don't think that there's a real definition, a real good definition of a real fan. Like you enjoy watching it, you're a fan, you enjoy talking about it, you're a fan. One of the reasons, and I've actually, it's sort of kind of validated my reasoning for doing this, which I'm glad Ben kept pushing me to do it over when I kept telling him I kind of want to do this. He's like, well, you should do it. What are going to do it? Is my friends in this business that like Star Trek all have

obviously, a different perspective that they bring into it. And after recording these episodes, I like feel so good about the conversations about what I've learned because I've always learned I've learned something new, even after being a fan for, you know, as long as I can remember. And that's such a, that's such a cool experience to be able to talk to my friends who are all pretty smart about, you know, this, this, this thing that you know, I wouldn't necessarily expect a bunch of

people to be talking about. ⁓ So I don't think you're, mean, maybe after you after your take on Star Trek Picard, maybe people will say you're a bad fan, but ⁓

Mike Austin (06:13)
Ha ha ha.

Benjamin Hunting (06:15)
no,

totally I'm right with Mike on all of that.

Chad Kirchner (06:18)
I'm

probably going to push back a little bit, that's going to bring us to what we're going to talk about a little bit today. So just to give the listeners a little bit of background, when I've been talking to people that I want to have on here, I want them to feel the most comfortable. So I kind of poke and prod and like, well, kind of like, what would you want to talk about? Do you got any takes on Star Trek that you could talk about? Not necessarily a hot take, but like something you could talk about for a while that you're like, you're really kind of passionate or enthusiastic about it.

We're kind of bouncing stuff back and forth and Mike, had said some ⁓ of the stuff you had said I told Ben about. And he's like, yeah, we should talk about Star Trek Begaard ⁓ because both of you were probably not fans of it. And I will say, I mean, I am going to have to play the role of somebody who liked it, but I did like a lot of it. I think there's some stuff that they definitely got wrong, but.

Benjamin Hunting (07:14)
Dude.

Mike Austin (07:15)
I liked a lot of it. I also disliked a lot of it. had a lot of the like things I find annoying about the bad parts of new Trek. So I guess I'm in the middle here.

Chad Kirchner (07:15)
But.

Right.

Benjamin Hunting (07:24)
Yeah

Chad Kirchner (07:25)
Well, and we'll get into that. just want to give a little bit of background for listeners in case it's been a hot minute since they watched it.

Benjamin Hunting (07:31)
I had to read several synopsises this afternoon and like

Mike Austin (07:34)
I

Benjamin Hunting (07:34)
as

Mike Austin (07:34)
have one open.

Benjamin Hunting (07:34)
a yeah, while I was reading them, I kept finding stuff that like I had forgotten was terrible. And I'm like, man, there's even more bad stuff in this season than I thought.

Chad Kirchner (07:41)
Yeah.

So I remember, for some reason, remember right where I was when I was talking to some other automotive journalists about Picard coming back, because my friend Wendy, who works now at Stellantis, ⁓ is a sci-fi fan and we were talking about Picard and we were, for some reason, we were in Morocco doing this. But I remember the conversation with a couple of other folks that was with us that was like,

Patrick Stewart had said, look, I'm going to do, it sounds like I'm going to do this new Star Trek series. Patrick Stewart had always said, he's like, I don't want to do it. The story is done. The Picard story is done. there's what else is there to tell? ⁓ And he had met with, and the story goes, had met with Michael Chabon, who was the show runner. And basically he went to say, basically tell him no in person.

Benjamin Hunting (08:24)
He was so right.

Chad Kirchner (08:38)
because he felt like he owed that to the studio to go tell them to turn him down in person. And they chatted. And through that discussion, ⁓ Patrick Stewart's like, maybe I will do it. Now, I don't know if it was a dump truck full of money that changed his mind or whatever, but Shabon had to rewrite the first episode. ⁓ And that kind of steered the way the show was going. from most people's general understanding was,

They didn't want to just retell next gen. They just didn't want to be an extension of that. wanted to, ⁓ they did, which would probably be the season that Patrick Stewart liked the least. Now haven't heard him talk about it, but that was the one that he really didn't want to do. He wanted to tell a story of an older Picard because he was older. ⁓ And I like sort of some of the things that they did. The problem is Patrick Stewart's also.

Benjamin Hunting (09:13)
Will they save that for the third season?

Chad Kirchner (09:36)
not an action hero. He's never been an action hero. ⁓ And they try to force this older gentleman into an action hero role in more than one of these seasons. And I don't, that definitely doesn't work.

Benjamin Hunting (09:53)
It's the problem that they had with the Indiana Jones sequels of the last 15 years, where instead of showing us an older Jones doing cool stuff that an older person could do, they did exactly what you just said, where they're like, we're going to put them on all those same adventures again and forget that he's probably breaking his hip every 15 steps. And it really didn't work for me story-wise. I didn't believe any of it. And I wanted to see that more interesting, more nuanced story told from a perspective of someone who's different from the earlier movies.

Characterization is a huge problem in Picard across the board. ⁓ And I think that part of it too is when they were doing the original series, Stuart was, as you mentioned, part of an ensemble cast. Now he's a huge star and an icon. And as a result, he has massive weight he can throw around in the story process. And so there's nothing to check his worst impulses about the character.

And if he wants the character to suddenly be this, who's going to say no to him? You know, they're going to do whatever the star of the show wants to do. So you end up with like a non-cohesive look at a character that's very familiar to audiences, but it's no longer presented in a familiar way.

Chad Kirchner (11:03)
I that, I think we should break it down by like kind of key themes through the three seasons. ⁓ The first season, like we'll just do a real quick recap. First season was ⁓ the Borg, the Romulan Borg kind of Romulans using Borg technology kind of thing. ⁓

Benjamin Hunting (11:24)
That's not all that happened. There was like a fake body. Wasn't there Mike? Was it like, didn't he steal data's body?

Chad Kirchner (11:27)
Yeah, Picard, Picard,

Mike Austin (11:28)
Yeah.

Chad Kirchner (11:29)
Picard dies. Does he die in season one or season two? I don't actually remember. But basically, he dies, he gets put back into another body. basically, but Data, the thing that I want come back to is they brought Data back to life just to kill him again. And that's not the only time they bring Data back to life. Season two was the time travel, not the time travel one, but the alternate kind of huge

Benjamin Hunting (11:33)
I think it's season one.

He steals that body, it's not his body.

Yes!

Chad Kirchner (11:57)
future that Q kind of sets into play. ⁓ There's a lot that I like about that season. I don't like the Borg plot in that season, but I like a lot about that season. ⁓ And then Picard works through his daddy issues. ⁓ I, whatever. And then season three is I think the most interesting one because it brings back a lot of these original cast characters. ⁓ But it also explores like what happened between

Beverly and Picard. And it turns out they had a kid. Picard didn't know about it. we got we. But, but before before we get into the before we get into it, I promise we'll get into it. ⁓ I would like to say that I like a couple of things that I think were very smart that I think they may be missed a little bit on, which if they wanted to bring back the Borg plot.

Benjamin Hunting (12:30)
Yeah, we get a fun young whippersnapper character. Everyone loves that when there's a new young character. Isn't that amazing when they do that? Give them an accent too.

Mike Austin (12:33)
The

Chad Kirchner (12:55)
That's fine. I think Voyager kind of overplayed the Borg, the Borg, Picard's assimilation was never dealt with properly in the next generation. Because it was not, because it was, because it's not serial television, it's episodic. So they couldn't, like the 90s storytelling wouldn't allow that serialization to continue. So we don't really learn about

Benjamin Hunting (13:06)
They just put him back in charge of the enterprise like literally weeks later.

Chad Kirchner (13:25)
⁓ any of Picard's post-traumatic stress until first contact and while that's an excellent movie I would like to point out that Starfleet was right in not sending Picard to fight the Borg again ⁓ the he he yeah he should not but he just rolls around in the mud with his brother for you know an episode and then everything's fine again so he still doesn't deal with that post-traumatic stress so in

Benjamin Hunting (13:39)
Yeah, of course not. It's insane. He should not have been a captain ever again either. Like this should just have been done.

Chad Kirchner (13:55)
card, finally that catches up to him, which I think is good. I think having Seven of Nine there is excellent. I'm a big Jerry Ryan fan, but I think her character outside of Voyager is even better than what her Voyager character was. She was actually really well written in Voyager, I would argue. The cat suit was a Rick Bourbon thing. Don't really necessarily need that, but there's this in the season one, I believe, of

⁓ Picard. Seven and Picard share a line where Seven wants to know is there ever does the voices ever go away in her head and he says no and the glance that they they share each other it's a very powerful scene because it's those two people in the entire galaxy that share the same trauma and they did they did which was which was a problem yes I'm

Benjamin Hunting (14:45)
Well, because they killed Hugh. Hugh had that trauma too, but he's dead now.

Chad Kirchner (14:51)
I

know, we're getting to that. But I think that could have been, and to your point, I think that could have been a really interesting way to explore and explain a lot of things that had happened to Picard after Nemesis, which was a terrible movie. ⁓

Benjamin Hunting (15:10)
I feel like I gotta

take back saying that like it was a mistake to put Picard in charge after Best of Both Worlds because we know that like if you're an older white man in a position of power and something bad happens there's no consequences to that so ultimately it was a very realistic move on Starfleet's part that we shouldn't question whatsoever.

Chad Kirchner (15:22)
right.

Good.

Mike Austin (15:29)
I was going say my, the things you point out are valid, especially like, you know, storytelling in 2026. Let's, know, let's explore, explore generational trauma, like strong, strong thing that like all media doesn't I like, but, and I think that was a good thing to address, but my initial reaction, it was always like the Borg is the lazy Star Trek crush and Voyager is set this, set the mold here where it's like,

Benjamin Hunting (15:52)
100%.

Chad Kirchner (15:55)
Yes.

Mike Austin (15:56)
We don't have any ideas. We need to make sure people watch. We're just going to do Borg and they did it in the movies too. And it's just like, I am so tired. Come up with new stuff. We don't need to always do the Borg. That said, yeah, let's explore this, you know, traumatic thing. And even like in season three, like let's explore the fact that you led a genocide against a third of the fleet. Okay. That's something there.

Benjamin Hunting (16:04)
And what's the second?

Chad Kirchner (16:19)
Yeah. Yeah.

Benjamin Hunting (16:22)
And the second laziest story crunch in Star Trek is Q, because Q can do anything. Yeah, as a personality, sure, but as a plot device, the second season of Picard takes the Borg and Q together, and it's like, that point, Star Trek messed up with the Borg by creating an unstoppable enemy. When you have that, you have a huge story problem, and you can only deal with it in ways that aren't really gonna work for the audience.

Mike Austin (16:26)
I love Q.

Chad Kirchner (16:28)
I

Benjamin Hunting (16:48)
So it's been like variations on what's not really gonna work for the audience ever since we first saw the Borg. And when we get to Star Trek Picard season two and they bring Q in, it's like, okay, so whatever happens here, we could just wipe it away with the magic Q eraser. And that's probably why I dropped out of that season halfway through and never came back. I watched the other two in full, but the second season I could not deal with.

Chad Kirchner (17:04)
Well, yeah.

I and then they do some timeline, timey wimey stuff. Yeah.

Mike Austin (17:13)
I, that was, that was where I was at. I watched it,

but it was like, wait, we're doing, we're doing, you're going to go to modern day. Cause I, I don't know, maybe because you don't want to build sets. Like.

Benjamin Hunting (17:22)
Yeah, some budget thing.

Chad Kirchner (17:23)
Well, I mean,

that's that's that's a Star Trek trope, right? Like, you know, that's that's not necessarily unusual. I there was some good ensemble characters, I think, in Picard. But I think that's overall. I'd like the third season. just rewatched most of it recently because I had it on while I was building the Enterprise D Lego model. And, you know, there's some there's some fun stuff there. I know fans.

Benjamin Hunting (17:27)
Yeah.

Mike Austin (17:28)
Yeah, I've.

Benjamin Hunting (17:46)
Hmm.

I think you're just associating

a fun activity with like this show that maybe wasn't as fun.

Chad Kirchner (17:54)
Well, so, so

fans were upset that Troy and Riker were not having the most perfect loving relationship in the history of ever. And it's like, that's not surprising. ⁓ know, relationships in the future, mean, relationships aren't always perfect. So why does theirs need to be perfect for so long? ⁓

Benjamin Hunting (18:16)
How was

Worf still single? That didn't feel realistic to me.

Chad Kirchner (18:18)
Worf. Worf. We learned in Starfleet Academy that ⁓ Klingons have four testicles and we learned in, I'm just saying, with two Dongs and four testicles, he should be able to find himself a mate. But Worf is this Zen character, like this, what, Zen martial arts kind of whatever in...

Mike Austin (18:21)
Let's be.

Benjamin Hunting (18:28)
Where are you going with this chat?

Chad Kirchner (18:48)
season three of Picard. Some of the story decisions I thought were weird. I liked seeing all the cast back. I kind of liked the idea of Picard having a son that I really didn't tell all about.

Benjamin Hunting (18:59)
No, absolutely not. That was terrible.

Mike Austin (19:00)
No, that was bad. look,

love I especially season three. I was like, give me the nostalgia. I am here for it. Just feed me the, you know, the syrup. And like, I love Picard. I love the idea of like, he's at the family home. He has this, you know, quiet life. He's sort of an intergalactic hero, but he's, know, no one cares about him anymore. I love, you know, Seven of Nine has this different interesting life that is shaped by

Chad Kirchner (19:06)
Yeah.

Mike Austin (19:28)
her who she is and who she's finding out who she wants to be. But yeah, and you know, Troy and Riker, there's there's a bit of like, if you want to know the epilogue, the epilogue is not always going to be happy with everyone. The wharf one gets into the territory of like, come on, you just you guys are just trying to do stuff like who in the writers room is like, what if what if wharf was calm? It's like, OK, maybe. But the execution was lacking.

Chad Kirchner (19:51)
Right.

I.

Benjamin Hunting (19:56)
And surprise sun is like something

that's already been done in Star Trek, I think to greater effect in the movies. So coming back to that was a little weird. It's like, it's such a cheap way to make a character interrogate themselves about their life decisions by being like, I suddenly have a son now. So I'm thinking about my legacy. It's like, come on, man. Like there are other ways that we can do this without just creating a character to do that.

Chad Kirchner (20:19)
The seasons were very, and then I do want to kind of follow a little bit more of like asking you both like what you really didn't like and kind of breaking that down. I would say the one last thing though is the seasons were very disjointed. ⁓ So this initial idea that Picard, what was making him reevaluate his life as an old man was how he let down the Romulans.

when he was supposed to be the one spearheading the evacuation of Romulus before the supernova that we learned about in the TOS, or in the 2009 reboot movie, which actually happened in real time. ⁓ So, no, the supernova happened. It's the time travel back that split the multiverse. ⁓ So it's time travel. You don't need, you know.

Benjamin Hunting (21:03)
that wasn't that an alternate timeline though? Wasn't the Kelvin timeline a different timeline?

Alright, you lost me, but alright.

Chad Kirchner (21:18)
so that was supposed to be the way that, Picard is kind of realizing, ⁓ he screwed up. He's not infallible. He's not this, larger than life, ⁓ you know, leader, ⁓ because he failed and a lot of Romulans died.

Benjamin Hunting (21:42)
feel like we

knew that about him though. I feel like in the seasons of Next Generation we saw him fail. You know, I don't think he was presented as infallible.

Chad Kirchner (21:50)
No, but but you guys have both mentioned that he was sort of like this, in some ways, this larger than life character, you know, going to, you even retirement and then you said something along that line there. And he's always had this reputation, even very early on in CNG, of being the greatest captain in Starfleet. Like when when Commander Shelby, not Admiral Shelby, who gets shot ⁓ when she

Is confronting Riker in the rest of the world's she's like that's why that's why you stay um you know following the coattails of a great man like Picard and it's like We're only three seasons in and he hasn't done a lot of great stuff. He got his first starship blown up by the Ferengi I was just thinking the other day. I don't think there's a single combat Yeah, he let his best friend die. There isn't a single like combat Yeah

Mike Austin (22:38)
He let his best friend die.

Benjamin Hunting (22:40)
Yeah. How does Sonny didn't know about?

Chad Kirchner (22:47)
There isn't a combat situation that I think that he handled particularly well. He may be a good diplomat.

Benjamin Hunting (22:52)
Hey,

Picard maneuver, man, come on. That was combat.

Chad Kirchner (22:55)
That was the only one that I could really think of. He didn't beat the Borg, Riker did. ⁓ He didn't stop the Klingon Civil War, Data did on the Endeavor. ⁓ When he fought the Borg, again in first contact. Yes, he was at that one time at the command of the Enterprise, but the battle's already kind of done before then. ⁓

Benjamin Hunting (23:23)
So this turning into like

a Picard diss track? Cause it kind of feels that way.

Chad Kirchner (23:26)
I feel like we could I could have a separate episode about that of just Picard district

Mike Austin (23:29)
I was just going to say,

like, I think the, interesting thing, the door that Picard, the series opens is, ⁓ in the, especially in TNG, but also in the movies, it's like, he does mess up or he does, he is fallible or he does have like earnest conversations, but he still has, whether it's, ⁓ you know, like the nineties, portrayal of masculinity or just the British stiff upper lip, you know, you never really

talks about his feelings. And you know, now 20 years later we do that and it's a, it's a cool place to go.

Chad Kirchner (24:03)
which

is so funny because they had a counselor on the bridge. Like the writers knew that in the future you would need this and then didn't know what to do with it. Like that is...

Benjamin Hunting (24:04)
Yeah.

Mike Austin (24:06)
You

Benjamin Hunting (24:11)
Well, they were pretty

good to the show about like highlighting that Picard doesn't talk about his feelings when they had like, know, like Captain Picard day and stuff like that, where he was super uncomfortable around kids and like, wouldn't.

Chad Kirchner (24:18)
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the only time

the only time he really kind of sees seeks mental help is after he was tortured by the Knessians. Like they kind of do that cutaway at the very end of that episode of Chain of Command, where he sits down to talk to Troy and says that he broke he tells Troy that he broke that they broke him. ⁓

Benjamin Hunting (24:37)
I mean maybe it

was all done off camera and it was like a confidentiality thing, we don't know what Starfleet's policies really are.

Chad Kirchner (24:42)
We don't. right, so let's let's air let's air grievances. This is Festivus. Mike, ⁓ things you absolutely did not like about Picard that maybe we haven't talked about.

Mike Austin (24:53)
⁓ well, I would just say in general, like my main, my, yeah, I know. Like my, two problems with new track are, ⁓ I would just say it's like one, there's just like a lot of exposition and Picard was better at this than discovery, but it was like, ⁓ you know, where's the subtlety and it had plenty of moments that weren't subtle or you're just like, come on, they're doing, they're doing this version. It just seemed like they could have done it a little.

Chad Kirchner (24:56)
The series, mean, not.

Mike Austin (25:23)
like they maybe took the easy route out in terms of like plot or dialogue or like, or just like super overt when they're like, you meet a new character and they have a beef. It's just like, I wanted it to be a little more subtle. and then the other thing I'm forgetting while I talk, so my brain doesn't work while I talk. But, the, ⁓ the other thing with Picard was I think the disjointedness was a piece of it. ⁓ but I think,

Chad Kirchner (25:39)
You're fine. I forget why I talk to you. It's great.

Mike Austin (25:52)
Yeah, I would say a lot of it was just like, you're, you, you didn't have to go that obvious, ⁓ on it on a lot of the, on a lot of the bits. Like I get it that, ⁓ the other, captain in like season three, like hates Picard, like you don't need it to be like every single time he's, know, it was almost satire. ⁓ and then, you know, there was, yeah, that's

Benjamin Hunting (26:12)
It doesn't need to be his entire personality,

Chad Kirchner (26:14)
Right. Yeah. But he was right.

Benjamin Hunting (26:20)
Sure, but...

Chad Kirchner (26:21)
All

the jerk captains in Star Trek have all been right. Which is kind of funny. ⁓ Okay, go on. I'm sorry.

Mike Austin (26:28)
And then, mean, they also like,

you know, there's this whole like the, the data arc again, it was just like a minor annoyance, but like, it was like, okay, he misses his friend. get it. But I thought the show was about moving on, like, and so we're spending a whole season not moving on. Um, you know, was just, it's that sort of thing that was again, like the intent, like I watched it. I'm in, I want to see where it turns out. Like the, the general idea was there.

but like getting it all the way to the end didn't quite make it or like mistakes were made along.

Chad Kirchner (27:04)
I mean, bringing Data back to life to kill him and then to bring him back to life. ⁓ I mean, I don't like the way he died in Nemesis. I don't. But I don't like a lot of things about Nemesis. ⁓ We could. ⁓

Benjamin Hunting (27:16)
We can just pretend Nemesis didn't happen. know, like that's how I live my life. That's my code.

Chad Kirchner (27:23)
But you know, like we say goodbye, then it's like, well, well, that death also wasn't a fitting send off. So we bring them back. Like that drives me nuts. ⁓ I do actually really like the Captain in season three of Picard. And I like...

Mike Austin (27:43)
Yeah, that was my favorite season. It was the strongest one. Like I said,

there was some minor annoyances. There was some, again, just like acknowledgement of like, you know, I am just there. They're just feeding me the stuff I want. ⁓ But again, it was, it was, I was there for the fan service, but also like, yeah, give me like, you know, just go not to be all about Frank's, like Frank's just like eats up the scenery anytime he shows up now. So it's like,

Chad Kirchner (27:54)
Right.

Benjamin Hunting (27:55)
It was the most fan-service-y of the seasons,

Chad Kirchner (28:10)
It Yeah.

Mike Austin (28:13)
Give me this guy who's like, you know, loving playing the character and gives me the fan service and we learn some new things about him and, then they also talk about their feelings.

Chad Kirchner (28:20)
Well, I

think I mean, the one thing that I hate about the only one thing I absolutely did not like about Captain Shaw, which was Todd Stachwick, who's a fantastic actor, was he was dead naming Seven of Nine at the beginning. I understand why they explain that, you know, he hates the Borg. It's still dead naming in 2023. Like, it's not cool. But

What I really liked about Shaw's character was not only kind of the arc that he went through, but when they're in the holodeck and he's explaining he finally confronts Picard about it. ⁓ Picard responds the same way that Picard responded when Ben Sisko confronted him in the first episode of Deuce Face 9. Because he just doesn't know how to handle it. He does not know how emotionally how to handle ⁓ people that he affected by being Locutus. And ⁓

When Stash, or when, not Stashwick, when Shaw, the character is telling the story about, at Wolf 359, like the sound design, like the background music and stuff drops and you just start to hear these voices and screaming and explosions. And he talks about, when he talks about how he was picked to go onto a shuttle randomly by some lieutenant who didn't even save a seat for herself and he had real survivor's guilt.

He's just this dipshit from Chicago, this quote. ⁓ And that's such a, I actually like, on social media reached out to Stashwick and said, like, I thought that was a really powerful scene. And I got a like on it, which was cool. But like, I think that that was a real, could be the storytelling addressing the Borg that is not the crutch that Voyager used. Voyager used it as a crutch.

I don't think, I think the board could have been much better if they would have leaned more into all of that, all of that trauma that happens and the ramifications of that. it just, it ended up being the scratch. I completely agree with you on that. ⁓ Ben, what else about Picard? Were you?

Mike Austin (30:34)
I'd say that I want to cut it off, but I want to just before we leave it, ⁓ you mentioned the dead naming and I was, I was thinking that, ⁓ Picard of, of, you know, discovery being like by far like the gayest Star Trek ever made. ⁓ and then like, was like, well, you know, Picard is fairly straight, even though, ⁓ Star Trek has always had, you know, this sort of a pretty, ⁓ like the concept of gender fluidity has been existent.

Benjamin Hunting (30:34)
So like, I, yeah, no, please.

Chad Kirchner (30:36)
Yeah, please.

Yeah,

Benjamin Hunting (31:02)
⁓

Chad Kirchner (31:02)
⁓ and

Mike Austin (31:03)
in Star Trek going back to the original series. now, but

Benjamin Hunting (31:03)
yeah, Riker is not a straight character, you know? Like that's pretty clear.

Chad Kirchner (31:07)
⁓ no, no.

Mike Austin (31:08)
when you consider Worf and his ⁓ very interesting ⁓ anatomy, then maybe Picard does move up on the Star Trek gayness ranking. ⁓

Chad Kirchner (31:18)
Maybe. I just had

a mic. I just recorded this yesterday as we're recording, but it'll be out before people are listening to this. I talked to Aaron at Jalopnik on this, the show, and we talked about the horniness of Star Trek and the characters and, you know, the fan fiction and the queer, all of the queer focused and queer coded characters. yeah, yeah. ⁓

Mike Austin (31:35)
You

Yeah, actually, I should say queer instead of gay to that point.

Chad Kirchner (31:48)
Discovery is very queer coded. Starfleet Academy is very queer coded. And that's great. Like, I've always had, and I was telling her, I've always had representation in Star Trek. I've always kind of been drawn to the captain, but like the captains outside of, know, especially early on were white dudes. Like, I could very easily see myself in that, right? ⁓ I'm excited for people now who can find characters that they can identify with in...

in Star Trek because that just, I want more people to enjoy the experience and the lore. ⁓ Yeah, and I think that's why I'm extra frustrated about the dead name in the seven. I know, yes, it just didn't feel right. Her name is Seven of Nine. Like, that's how it should have been. Yeah, too much Annika.

Mike Austin (32:37)
Yeah, they played, they played it a little strong. Like, you know, there is, there is some,

there is some way to like establish this character as a jerk. And then later he comes around or gains greater understanding, but they went really hard at the beginning of

Chad Kirchner (32:50)
Yeah, really early

on on the Anika, Anika, Anika. it's like, and then eventually she does, he does say when he dies, it's like you have the bridge, you know, seven of nine. ⁓ So like it closes the loop.

Benjamin Hunting (33:01)
I'm glad she was able

to facilitate his transition from jerk to redeemed jerk. I'm glad she was alive for that purpose and written into the script for that reason. That's great.

Chad Kirchner (33:04)
Right

⁓

But we do even learn Ian Picard that ⁓ 709 is queer. So she goes from being this cat-suited Rick Berman sex appeal to, you know, not something that Rick Berman probably wouldn't like at all.

Benjamin Hunting (33:27)
I think any robot is

Mike Austin (33:27)
You

Benjamin Hunting (33:30)
by definition queer. there's no, robots do not have a gender preference or identity or they can, it's like the world is their, by the world is their oyster is what I'm saying. Like it's, you don't, you're not in a box when you're a robot. get to, you get to experiment, experience life's a rainbow, which is pretty awesome. Cyborg.

Chad Kirchner (33:34)
It's just a cyborg.

Well, she's a cyborg. Yeah, well, I mean.

Yeah. So anyways, ⁓ do want to

basically to finish I want to talk about what we would have done differently. But Ben, were there any other grievances you want to air about?

Benjamin Hunting (33:56)
I mean,

the stuff you guys are talking about I had also forgotten about in season 3, like I forgot that the Borg were involved, I forgot about Data coming back again, and lore and stuff. ⁓

Chad Kirchner (34:06)
Well, we don't really

learn the Borg are involved. We learned that there are changelings involved very early on. But for some reason, the changelings partnered up with the Borg. But we see the Borg queen, and it's Elisa Kreegei who plays the queen, who was the original queen in First Contact.

Mike Austin (34:15)
forgot about that part.

Benjamin Hunting (34:15)
Yeah, see.

I think Borg Queen was

one of the dumbest ideas in all of Star Trek, because you had this really cool idea of a collective identity. And then they're like, well, how do we make that into ⁓ something that Picard can fight one on one or that Data can have sex with? And it wasn't possible. So they created this like queen that suddenly controls everything. And it's it doesn't that defeat the purpose of a collective? It just seemed odd to me.

Mike Austin (34:35)
Ha

Chad Kirchner (34:42)
But if you're following a beehive, a beehive has a queen.

Benjamin Hunting (34:44)
but

they're Borg, they're not bees. That's like, that's what made them cool. Anyway, I think I'm Borg-ed out. I just don't need to see the Borg anymore. I feel like it's a big universe and there's lots of cool stuff that they can do. like, this afternoon I reread a synopsis of season one, as I mentioned, and it reminded me of all this stuff in the show that I had forgotten about that was like semi-infuriating. I think the Romian supernova was dumb. I think Picard having

Chad Kirchner (34:52)
Yeah. Yeah. Yes.

Benjamin Hunting (35:13)
Having Picard fail in this massive way and become like a pariah within Starfleet was a dumb idea. I think there's...

Chad Kirchner (35:20)
Well, he wasn't a pariah

within Starfleet, but he was a pariah to the Romulans.

Benjamin Hunting (35:24)
Well, but within Starfleet, like he was forced to resign and all this stuff. And I just think there's other ways you can explore what they wanted to explore without like the universe being involved in such a massive way. ⁓ The synth attack was dumb. it's it's it's again, it's like, Mike, you were talking about how there's so much exposition in this show, and they had so few episodes.

Chad Kirchner (35:38)
The synth attack was dumb. Yes.

Benjamin Hunting (35:50)
And so to tackle these like giant concepts in like a tiny number of episodes gives us this just constant information dump of what's going on. And I don't think it needed to be that massive, but there's smaller stuff too. Like in the first season, Gerardi just like straight up kills someone and then they're all, they're okay with her. after that, they're like, yeah, it's fine that you murdered this dude. We're still going to be friends. And like ethically that was okay. Cause murder is fine. I guess. I don't know why we're not going to talk about it anymore.

was just really weird and then Picard is suddenly immortal and we never talk about that again when he gets his synthetic body why isn't it immortal

Chad Kirchner (36:23)
But he's not immortal. They

explain that the body was programmed to basically last an X amount of years and then simulate death. So he will die. Well, he...

Benjamin Hunting (36:34)
But simulate death is not dying, first of all.

Mike Austin (36:36)
I mean, it's that's still like, that's

like, that's like Blade Runner epilogue shit there.

Benjamin Hunting (36:40)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And like, if you can program something to do one thing, you can program it to do another thing. Like you could change that program, right? And then data.

Chad Kirchner (36:46)
Sure. Sure. But you know, we had to

we had to have that cybernetic tie in because we had to have Brent Spiner playing another Soong.

Benjamin Hunting (36:55)
Well, that's where I was going

with like the idea that Data decides to give up his chance at coming back so that Picard can like what have arthritis for another 25 years. It seems very odd. ⁓ Mike was right, very disjointed or you were sorry, think Chad, you were the one who's saying that Mike was confirming it. But it's like, what are all these elements? None of this is what interests what I find interesting in Star Trek. I think that's what it came down to Picard. was we're going back to familiar characters. We're giving them

Chad Kirchner (37:05)
Right.

Weird I think we're all agreeing very distributed

Benjamin Hunting (37:25)
dramatically different motivations and changing who they are as characters. Like there were things that Picard was doing and you talked about him being an action star all of a sudden, or ⁓ just the idea of this like failed man is a very different presentation of the character. It's not what I wanna see. You know, like I didn't find it compelling and I don't understand why we had to go back and tell these stories other than, you know, they threw a bunch of money at Stuart.

And he's like, well, okay, I mean, I'll do it if I have reasonable amount of creative control. So I should have been the target audience for this series. know, there's nothing. And I liked, I find strange new worlds is like 200,000 times more interesting than Picard ever was at its most interesting, you know, and the third season pulling a Battlestar Galactica by having the old enterprise be the only one that's not connected to this new system.

Chad Kirchner (38:02)
Right.

⁓ yeah, yeah.

Benjamin Hunting (38:22)
You know, it's like, even worse than that, it's like that, remember the Terminator sequel, where everyone was super excited about that operating system that we're all gonna get, and it turns out the operating system was Skynet by a different name? Well, they're doing that here too. It's just, these are tired concepts that have been explored in so many other properties.

Chad Kirchner (38:25)
Yeah.

Yeah.

But you

have to admit though, that when the Bay 10 doors of Space Dock opened and you saw the Enterprise sitting there, you had a moment. Come on, you did. And when they walk onto the bridge and the bridge lights up and you hear Michelle Barrett's voice at the computer, you gotta be a little nostalgic. I mean, right? Like...

Benjamin Hunting (38:48)
I don't know man.

Mike Austin (39:00)
This is what season three did well, was like, we're gonna do those things, if we're gonna look at the characters, and we're gonna change and we're gonna explore them, it's like, we're still here because we believe in this person, or these people, and like, give me the like, triumphant crescendo at the end, you know, that like, gets me a little wispy-eyed to be like, yeah, they found themselves again. That's what season three did really well. ⁓

Chad Kirchner (39:02)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yep. Yes.

Mike Austin (39:24)
And yes, I did forget the annoyance of like all the computers are connected and like, they definitely would do this without any safeguards or like other backups. That's, that's the thing that it's, it's sort of like we're in the future and we like, presumably don't use natural gas or other combustibles, but like anytime there's an explosion, there's always an active fire that's just continues to go.

Chad Kirchner (39:29)
Yeah.

you

Benjamin Hunting (39:47)
Yeah, there's like a scary coolant

of some kind that like instantly catches fire.

Mike Austin (39:52)
Yeah. It's like,

sorry. The cool, it's flammable. haven't figured that out.

Benjamin Hunting (39:55)
I

Chad Kirchner (39:55)
Yeah.

Benjamin Hunting (39:55)
feel

like burns are like the number one Star Trek injury on a starship. Whenever you're in like the medical bays, it's always like horribly burned bodies and like people being scanned. I guess that's true. And you don't want to see people with like severed limbs, I guess. I don't know what the...

Chad Kirchner (40:05)
Well, it's probably the easiest to do makeup for. mean...

No.

Mike Austin (40:11)
Yeah. And look,

some of that stuff's going to catch on fire and like having some spark shower. I understand. And like, you can't have a thing like on fire and then burn out or get bigger because of continuity. But I it's, it's that sort of thing where I'm like, I mean, that's a minor one and I'm willing to, you know, accept the suspension of disbelief. But a lot of the show is just like, who would do this? No one would do it that way. ⁓

Chad Kirchner (40:22)
It's... ⁓

Yeah, I mean the...

Right. I mean

the connected computer stuff didn't, it was a make-up and that didn't make any sense, like it just didn't. ⁓

Benjamin Hunting (40:39)
And change links are

another problem, like if you're gonna have shapeshifters and stuff, I mean, that's a third cop out from a plot thing. Like if you can have a character that looks like any other character and you can't tell and there's no way to deal with it, it's like you've written yourself into a terrible corner at that point.

Chad Kirchner (40:46)
Right.

Yeah,

which Deep Space Nine, thought, I know Mikey didn't see all of it, but I Deep Space Nine handled it pretty well. ⁓ It should have been one or the other. It should have been either the Borg or Changeling. It should not have been this rogue Changeling faction working with the Borg Queen. And it makes sense the Borg Queen is angry and it makes sense that she is basically horribly disformed and dying because the last time we saw the Borg Queen, Captain Janeway

well, Admiral Janeway technically fucked her up. I mean, there is the season finale, the series finale of Voyager ⁓ left her in a bad state. And clearly she was never able to recover from that. And I think of all the things that they don't explain, or that they do explain in exposition, they don't touch on that at all. So if you hadn't seen the series finale of Voyager, you have no idea why the Borg Queen is battered and broken the way that she is.

Benjamin Hunting (41:49)
I haven't seen the series finale

of Voyager, so.

Chad Kirchner (41:51)
Yeah, yeah, so you wouldn't know

unless you read it somewhere. So I feel like again, of all of the exposition and all of the explaining, they don't mention it at all.

Benjamin Hunting (42:03)
I have question about the idea of like a Starfleet museum. Now, how do you get there? And like, how big is it? Because these ships are pretty big. And why would you go there? Like, what's the is it like, it can't just be school kids? Like, it seems it seems odd, like

Chad Kirchner (42:06)
Yeah.

Mike Austin (42:17)
It's it's this

Chad Kirchner (42:18)
Yeah, I

think it's, I think it's cool kids.

Mike Austin (42:18)
it's the Starfleet version of the Udvar-Hazy Museum. This is the Smithsonian with all the planes.

Benjamin Hunting (42:22)
but like so far

Chad Kirchner (42:22)
The Air and Space Museum, the Smithsonian.

Benjamin Hunting (42:24)
away.

Chad Kirchner (42:24)
Well, only because we only because we don't have faster than light travel. If you have faster than light travel, it's not that far away. It's like going to DC to go. I mean, but it does it does kind of make sense that Jordy is just this, you know, dad who spends his weekends tinkering away at

Benjamin Hunting (42:32)
depends where you are. I the universe is big, man.

Chad Kirchner (42:47)
his old car that he's trying to get working. It's just the old car as the enterprise, you know, I kind of felt like that that worked. And I liked that LeVar Burton could act with his daughter as well because one of his his real daughter played one of his character's daughters, which I thought was a great a great moment. I okay. All right, so

Well, I don't want to be one of I definitely don't want to be one of those podcasts that just hates and stuff to hate it for clicks. There's a lot of that going on right now. ⁓ What would if you were Michael Chabon and you were doing Picard? And you can't say no, you wouldn't have done it then I know you're saying just let the story die. What would you?

Benjamin Hunting (43:33)
I know I didn't. You're putting words in my mouth.

Chad Kirchner (43:39)
What would you do different? How would you do? What story would you tell? there any, is there any loose ends you'd like to see close? Like, what would you do to tell a modern per card story?

Benjamin Hunting (43:47)
I mean, never give away your story ideas on a podcast. First lesson of podcasts. ⁓

Chad Kirchner (43:52)
I think Patrick

Stewart's a little too old now to be doing a new Picard series.

Benjamin Hunting (44:00)
I think that it was a missed opportunity to not do a Riker series as a sequel and have him on a ship doing actively doing stuff like they used to do on the Enterprise. Cause that was like a natural extension of that crew. And you could have Picard be involved in the show as kind of someone he goes to for guidance or someone who's either maybe retired or maybe still in Starfleet. But I find that Star Trek really suffers when they have to wait for the action to come to them or you rely on something that happened in the past.

to drive the story or Star Trek doesn't typically do worlds outside of Starfleet very well. They haven't really mastered the idea of what a non-federation planet looks like. It all kind of ends up looking like the Masa Isley Cantina with like a higher budget. And I feel that, yeah, you can avoid a lot of this. I just think that there were other vital characters from that cast. Freaks is probably too busy and why would he want to return to episodic television in front of the camera like that on a regular basis? I get it.

Chad Kirchner (44:46)
and a quirks.

Benjamin Hunting (45:00)
I just don't know if this, I mean, you predict I was gonna say this. I don't know if this particular story needed to be told. ⁓ I don't think we needed him like hiring a ship and going off like a buccaneer. That seems a little bit weird. Like the most buccaneer Star Trek captain of all time was Kirk. And he only did that once to go get Spock's body. Like that was the whole reason. He never...

Chad Kirchner (45:12)
Right.

Yeah.

Mike Austin (45:22)
And

the whole point of TNG was that we don't have the Buccaneer, that Riker's the Buccaneer and Picard's the... Yeah.

Benjamin Hunting (45:27)
Yeah. And he's kept in check, right? Like, yeah.

Chad Kirchner (45:28)
Yeah. Right.

Benjamin Hunting (45:31)
So to throw that away, it's like, again, I mentioned earlier, the characterization was really off for a lot of this show. And it's like, these aren't the characters we remember. And there's no bridge between who they were and who they are now that really makes sense.

Chad Kirchner (45:31)
Yeah.

You do have to make a bit of a leap, though I don't think the leap was, especially for the third season, I don't think the leap was that far. ⁓ The other two seasons maybe a little bit more so. ⁓ I will say that, and this isn't a Picard criticism, it's just a Star Trek criticism, ⁓ nothing happens after Deep Space Nine. And ⁓ you can't go back and have Jonathan Frakes play Captain Riker on the Titan in live action.

do an animation, which they did in Lower Decks, which I think is the closest probably we're going to get to something told in that, with those characters anyway, in that time period. But like the Lost Era between the movies and TNG, this is also now kind of another Lost Era ⁓ that we're only real recently getting to kind of explore, again, a little bit with Lower Decks and then Episode of Starfleet Academy directly addresses what happens to Cisco.

Benjamin Hunting (46:43)
What about the last?

What about the lost era between the original series and Star Trek the motion picture when DeForest Kelly grew that beard? like, what's the story behind that beard? Like that's a hundred percent, I mean, that's a missed opportunity.

Chad Kirchner (46:46)
⁓

Yeah, yes, the hippie beard when he became a space hippie.

Mike Austin (46:54)
You

mean, you could have done that in discovery if they hadn't done the time jump.

Chad Kirchner (47:02)
Yeah, well, so I mean, this isn't spoilers,

but because they're already done filming all of Strangely Worlds, but they did cast a McCoy and he will be in at least the final episode.

Benjamin Hunting (47:13)
Total spoiler,

right? Now I don't need to watch. Thank you, Chad.

Chad Kirchner (47:17)
You know the series is going to end with Captain Kirk on the bridge. So it's of the Enterprise. Like that's pretty much established from episode one. I know.

Mike Austin (47:24)
I mean, I know this is, we're talking about Picard, but man,

the Kirk casting is like so good.

Chad Kirchner (47:30)
I

like I like Paul Wesley, I know some people who don't like his role with Skirk. ⁓

Mike Austin (47:34)
It,

Benjamin Hunting (47:34)
I'm

Mike Austin (47:35)
it's

Benjamin Hunting (47:35)
ambivalent towards it.

Mike Austin (47:35)
so good that I got mad when they had that like thing that was making fun of old Kirk, that like movie within a movie. It was like, they're doing it dirty.

Chad Kirchner (47:39)
Yes, yes. Yeah, when they did the Halodeck stuff and it was the...

Yeah, I thought I... I like Paul Leslie. There's a lot of stuff I like about Strangler's Two Worlds.

Mike Austin (47:49)
and now I'm upset

that they, yeah, that they leaned on doing a Holodick episode. Anyway, let's go back to Picard. Well, here's, okay, this is, this is a bit aside, but I want to just before I forget one of I read on blue sky and I, this sort of hit home for me. That was, it was an opinion that the problem with new track is that it's a bunch of writers raised on star Trek, whereas

Chad Kirchner (47:53)
and you should how that caps we were well ⁓

Benjamin Hunting (47:55)
they have so few episodes, right? And that's what they choose. That's the thing.

Mike Austin (48:15)
older Star Trek's was you're just getting good sci-fi writers and they're exploring new ideas and that a lot of new Trek is just exploring Star Trek. And I think that's, think there's some validity to that.

Benjamin Hunting (48:19)
or not even sci-fi writers in some cases. That's a good point.

Chad Kirchner (48:26)
Double-edged sword, though, because I can see where new fresh ideas make sense. But I can also see when you have a writer's room full of people who understand Star Trek. Like, I don't think anybody that's just a fan of Star Trek can go out and write for Star Trek. I don't necessarily, I don't think I could be a Star Trek writer. Like, we're gonna speculate what we would do if we were. But yeah, of course. ⁓ Yeah, obviously. But... ⁓

Benjamin Hunting (48:49)
You could be an X-Files writer, though, Yeah.

Mike Austin (48:52)
You

Chad Kirchner (48:56)
But like, I keep going back to Tony Newsome, who played Beckett Mariner, and who's one of the other writers of Starfleet Academy. she, and again, the Starfleet Academy episode that deals with Cisco, is basically her love letter to the character that got her into Star Trek. her knowledge of Star Trek is combined with her ability to write good Star Trek, or to write good science fiction.

Mike Austin (49:01)
Yeah. Amazing.

Chad Kirchner (49:25)
I think if you can get both, the Star Trek fan who can also be a good writer, then I think you get...

Mike Austin (49:30)
I will, and I will

undermine my entire argument, which is like lower decks is full of in-jokes and references, but it's also good. It's good TV in its own little encapsulated episodes. So.

Chad Kirchner (49:36)
Yeah, it's good Star Trek. Yeah. If you don't get the

jokes, it's fine. It's still good Star Trek.

Benjamin Hunting (49:41)
But I think to

Mike's point, the idea that the series has shifted away from an episodic format to an overarching story format, it kind of, I think, excludes some of the non-Star Trek fans from participating because you're operating within this...

very specific canon that you suddenly have to be very familiar with because the whole everything is building for the entire season. Whereas you can't just write, I mean, unless you feel like writing a holodeck episode, apparently you can't just write a one-off episode and have it be cool and fun and interesting.

Chad Kirchner (50:12)
Yeah, so

⁓ Discovery started with a 15 episode season. were a bunch of problems with that first season of Discovery, production-wise, that ended up just being this kind of mismatched whatever, so it didn't feel like it worked. So they cut the episode numbers down for after that. But I would argue that now that they've kind of got their footing, especially with Lower Dex Strange New Worlds and I would argue Starfleet Academy, ⁓ they can now 10 episodes isn't enough.

Benjamin Hunting (50:39)
It's horrendously expensive though. It's like 3 or 4x what TNG costs even if you adjust the dollars.

Chad Kirchner (50:41)
I know I yeah, no, I but

you don't you don't get this opportunity. mean, Mike to your one of the same to one of your really early points was like, it's very exposition heavy Picard is because you can't tell because you have to Yeah, but you kind of have to force feed it a little bit because you've only got 10 episodes.

Mike Austin (50:57)
Picard less than Discovery, but yeah.

Chad Kirchner (51:02)
So you can't draw, now these episodes can be as long or short as you want. And I think that Discovery had some 30 minute episodes that should have been longer. ⁓ But you don't have enough time. And when you look at Picard and some of the episodes they do, it's like, why are you doing this? You've got 10 episodes. What is going on here?

Benjamin Hunting (51:25)
They also

brought in so many characters they didn't need to bring in.

Mike Austin (51:28)
I was just, I was just about to say that was like, you know, there's a, yeah, a problem with modern TV is it's hard. No one's getting 26 episodes. So it, you kind of, if you can encapsulate it into an art, great. And I think the thing with Picard was it tried, it has so much out there and there was so much, so many characters, new and old, that it just kind of tried to do too much. So I'm not going to give away my story like Ben did, but, ⁓ I would say like, you know, try to stick to

Chad Kirchner (51:52)
I'm

Mike Austin (51:56)
to one or two things, right? So it's like, we exploring his guilt about Romulus? ⁓ Then let's just do that. Or like, are we exploring that he misses his dead friend? Let's just do that. Like I think a good example would be Loki, where it was like, Loki didn't really address the broader Marvel universe and the other Marvel movies that don't wrap in the bigger universe. ⁓ Sometimes they have a problem with it. Loki didn't because it was in this alternate location and this alternate thing. And it really

Chad Kirchner (52:09)
Yeah. Yeah.

Mike Austin (52:25)
It really just explored who is Loki, you know, is he a bad guy or a good guy and how does he feel about himself? And it took two episodes, took two seasons and a lot of episodes, but it still was essentially telling a very small story. And I think that's the key is you have to, you have to tell a small story.

Chad Kirchner (52:42)
I think that ⁓ you have Discovery really was trying to figure stuff out plus they had some production issues Picard they were still trying to get their sea legs but you look especially the more recent seasons of Strangely New Worlds like they've got it they've figured it out so I would bet not a lot of money but I bet some money if they could retell the Picard story

Benjamin Hunting (52:42)
in the end.

Chad Kirchner (53:10)
themselves, they probably would do it a little bit differently. ⁓ Just because they they better understand that format. But yeah, it was just too many characters. It was in it was dumping them in each time and trying to cover too much ground. were trying to fill in this this 20 or 30 years between the end of Nemesis and now. And they wanted to tell a bunch of stuff really quick. And I don't think that that works. ⁓

I think the Supernova thing was dumb. I understand why they did it because the 2009 movie kind of forced their hand in the timing of that. ⁓ I think it's kind of interesting if they would have told that story a little bit better. I like the idea of revisiting Borg trauma, especially with characters like Hugh in Seven of Nine. I think...

Benjamin Hunting (53:57)
Yeah, Hugh was cool,

but like we get him for like what a handful of episodes and then he's just jettisoned. See, that's the other. So speaking of jettisoning characters, I think that Star Trek Next Generation has a problem that none of the other Star Trek's have had and it's a data problem. The fact is they killed the most popular character on the show and then they didn't unlike the original series when they did that and they realized this was a problem.

Chad Kirchner (54:00)
And they kill them. They just kill them.

Mike Austin (54:01)
You

Benjamin Hunting (54:25)
and people wanted Spock back and they brought Spock back and then they didn't mess with it. They weren't like, okay, you're back, you're dead, you're back, you're dead, you're back, you're dead. They were like, no, he's back and everything's fine and everyone loves him. It's like in next generation, they killed the most popular character, didn't seem to realize they did that. And then we get Star Trek Picard. Like, why don't we get Star Trek Data? I know why, because you created a character who can't age, which is another problem you have for a quote unquote legacy series. It's like they've shot themselves in the foot so many times with Data killing him.

the aging thing, the fact that suddenly he has emotions, which is not something anyone was interested in except perhaps Spiner who was like tired of playing the same character over and over, you know, and I think that really was the detriment of that property.

Chad Kirchner (55:04)
Right.

Well, that's a lot of that's a lot. ⁓

Mike Austin (55:13)
Yeah, now I mean, yeah, speaking of revisiting trauma, now I'm remembering how annoyed I was when

in the, ⁓ was it first contact where it was just like, data has feelings. And you're like,

Chad Kirchner (55:21)
No.

Benjamin Hunting (55:22)
He's... He's afraid!

Chad Kirchner (55:24)
Oh yeah,

but I like the emotion ship thing in Generations. I like the scene where he drinks the alcohol he doesn't like and he's like, oh I ate this more? Please, like, there's some good stuff there.

Mike Austin (55:31)
Generations,

Benjamin Hunting (55:37)
guess but like every other character has

emotions like the whole thing with Data was he's the sounding board on which our humanity is projected or our alienicity whatever we want to call it and then it's reflected back on us and we realize we're terrible people I'm sorry exactly but Spock was but Spock was also flawed quote-unquote flawed in the views of in the eyes of his own culture right so he was like an outsider who was an outsider everywhere he couldn't be at home on Vulcan he couldn't be at home on the Enterprise until he

Chad Kirchner (55:47)
And that was Spock and that was Spock and TOS. And that was Spock and that was Spock and TOS. They're playing the same.

Sure, yeah, of course.

Benjamin Hunting (56:06)
came to terms with that. But like data is like a blank slate.

Mike Austin (56:08)
But that's why the modern exploration

of Spock works. Aside from my current beef with strange new world, which is just like, I don't need a whole show. I don't need Spock soap opera. I like sexy Spock. I'm just like, can we take a little break from Spock dating soap opera and get back to like going to space? Okay. Z's a smoke show. I'll give you that.

Chad Kirchner (56:15)
He's horny as fuck.

Benjamin Hunting (56:18)
I like sexy Spock, I'm into that, I think it's cool.

Chad Kirchner (56:20)
This is...

Benjamin Hunting (56:25)
You could if you if he wasn't so hot Mike maybe we could. I'm sorry it's a casting issue.

Chad Kirchner (56:29)
Yeah, I mean, I mean, Ethan Peck

is is an attractive man. Actually, that entire cast I was talking to Aaron about this. Jess Bush, man, I ⁓ yeah, I'm sorry. but Anson Mount, Anson Mount and his gel and his hair. Like, yeah, I mean, it's

Mike Austin (56:37)
Yeah. And chapel. Yeah. My heartbeat still. She's great.

Yeah, we're just going to go off the rails here because that whole thing about it is like, everyone on that cast has has

Benjamin Hunting (56:50)
Every single member of that cast is unreasonably attractive. Every single member.

Mike Austin (56:54)
Yeah. Yeah. In all distinct

and amazing ways.

Chad Kirchner (56:59)
Yeah, and all extremely talented too. Like it's, it's, it's good. It's well written and well directed. It's, is there, let's assume that Picard didn't exist. was, yeah. See? was, was there anything, I guess, Ben, for you, like, is there anything that you wish that Star Trek would have done with,

Benjamin Hunting (57:11)
Way ahead of you.

Mike Austin (57:15)
might rewatch it now. I'm like thinking back to the parts I liked.

Benjamin Hunting (57:19)
You

Chad Kirchner (57:28)
that character, yeah, with with Picard, like, or do you think that the because Nemesis was a bad movie. And it ends in a bad and it ends in a in this kind of weird place, because Riker's gonna go off and do his own thing. ⁓ But do you think that do you think the Jean-Luc Picard story really ended there?

Benjamin Hunting (57:30)
the character?

Yeah, I-

I don't think he's the most compelling member of that cast. Not a knock on the character or on the actor. I think that it was a compelling ensemble and I feel that like, we didn't need, we don't, I don't know who was asking for a focus specifically on one character and then to drill down even further, I don't know who was asking for a focus on Picard. You know, like it's, it just doesn't, the show was not like that in a lot of ways. He was the focal point because,

Chad Kirchner (58:15)
It was all in sample.

Benjamin Hunting (58:16)
Yeah, but he was the focal point because he was the captain, but it wasn't like every show was about him. In fact, I would think even the majority of shows were not about him. So to change that, it's like I didn't need it. Like I would have welcomed another return to see everybody, but I don't know realistically how you write that story, especially when you have like warrior monk wharf. Like it's

Chad Kirchner (58:19)
Yeah.

Now, and...

Sure. Mike, there anything that you kind of wish that you still knew about Picard or wish they would have maybe closed the book on?

Mike Austin (58:48)
I mean, I think they should have shipped him with

Laris. I'm upset about that.

Chad Kirchner (58:52)
Yeah, yeah.

Benjamin Hunting (58:52)
She's the person

in the first season who's living with him? Yeah, of course, 100%.

Mike Austin (58:55)
Yeah. And, she like,

Chad Kirchner (58:55)
The Romulan, yeah.

Mike Austin (58:58)
they totally have a thing that they're like kind of in denial about and they just like let it go. And then it's like, now Beverly's back in the picture. Come on. ⁓

Chad Kirchner (58:59)
Yep. Yep. Yep.

Benjamin Hunting (59:02)
Yep. And honestly, she... No, thank you. I would

say that she was the only new character who was introduced across all three seasons that I liked. She just seemed interesting and like she seemed like Picard's equal in a way that few other characters did. And that's what I want to see. I want to see him like being challenged by somebody.

Chad Kirchner (59:12)
Bye.

Yes. Yeah.

Well, and

the way that they wrote her too was obviously she brought these two Romulans in, again, because of his guilt on what happened and something that we didn't really get to see a lot of, which was of course the supernova and the evacuation. ⁓ But she also knew that. And the way that she played off of Picard with that I felt was like very, she genuinely cared about him. I think he cared about her as well. the

the way that she was written to be that sort of equal I thought was was very was smart. I liked what they did with it. And then she ended up being one of those traveler type whatever people things that Will Wheaton ended up going off and doing. Yeah, it's whatever. doesn't matter. ⁓ It doesn't. I did like her as a character a lot. ⁓

Mike Austin (1:00:03)
I about that.

Benjamin Hunting (1:00:06)
Wait, what? I don't remember that at all.

I wanna make sure we're talking about the same person now.

Chad Kirchner (1:00:19)
It was played by the same actor in the second. Yeah, it's complicated. ⁓

Benjamin Hunting (1:00:21)
Yeah, no, we are. Yeah, this is, wow.

Mike Austin (1:00:24)
I would say

now that we're here and pretending that we're, you know, we can, we could ⁓ be show runners or that we have, we have the capabilities that these professionals who are very good at their job did, but you know, didn't do to absolute perfection. I just, I want to point out the hypocrisy as, as, you know, on a panel here with people that all deal in, in creative endeavors and how like, yeah, it's hard and it's, if

Chad Kirchner (1:00:33)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean.

Yes.

it is,

Mike Austin (1:00:52)
If

you're good, you're never satisfied with yourself and all that stuff. ⁓ I think maybe the, as we're talking through this, that the, the thing that they could have done and the thing they still could do is especially, and still hit fan service is do like a Star Trek visions thing. Just do, do eight episodes in the Star Trek universe, pull anywhere in the timeline you want, pull the cast members in that you want.

tell new stories, tell like revisit characters, but telling these stories, exploring new places. That would have been a cool way to do it.

Benjamin Hunting (1:01:23)
anthologize it you mean.

Chad Kirchner (1:01:24)
Yes,

in anthology, yeah.

Mike Austin (1:01:25)
But a lot of, like single, yeah, but you know, single capsule episodes, like, yeah, what are the, what are record and foray up to? Like, you know, but I don't know if you could do it in an hour. That would be the other challenge, but I think that would have been, know, then yeah, you could visit Picard a couple of times. And then again, like not to give too much to star Wars visions, but like you can, cause now I watch it. like, I don't remember the first two of this one that was five years ago, but, but you can revisit some of those timelines again.

Benjamin Hunting (1:01:32)
I'm into that.

Chad Kirchner (1:01:33)
Yeah.

Mike Austin (1:01:54)
Or actually, Marvel does it with what if. I'm like, I don't remember.

Chad Kirchner (1:01:55)
I yeah, they did the what

else? Yeah. I think that there I do think even though it was very overloaded with characters, I think there's some characters on Picard that I'd like to see more of. I really like Santiago Cabrera as Chris Rios as Captain Rios. I like that he he liked real cigars. I like he didn't like replicated food. Like I like I like the quirkiness to it. He's he's quirky. I like it.

Benjamin Hunting (1:02:19)
He felt

kind of like a stock character though. It's like here's the Han Solo who's not Han Solo, you know? ⁓

Chad Kirchner (1:02:24)
He was...

Mike Austin (1:02:24)
He

came into it. He grew on me.

Chad Kirchner (1:02:26)
Yeah, right away, sure, Han Solo, but I think he grew into something, you know, a little bit better. Michelle Heard as ⁓ Musica, as Rafi. I like... really?

Benjamin Hunting (1:02:38)
My least favorite character of the entire thing.

Yeah, I felt that she existed exclusively to be tortured by the writers. Kind of, except like more emotionally. Like, Miles was like physically tortured and put into weird situations, but she was like, you will never have peace, Rafi. Every part of your past is traumatic. And no matter what you do, you will never overcome yourself. And I'm like, wow, this is really harsh.

Chad Kirchner (1:02:44)
⁓ So she's Miles O'Brien.

Right.

⁓ We were talking about Laris, played by Leroy Bradley. ⁓

Benjamin Hunting (1:03:07)
I have so the I wanted to mention about Laris. I would love a Laris spinoff because I have a thing for characters who have like she was in the Tal Shiar, right? But now she's a cook and she's chill doing that. I love like characters who have found peace at something that is the total opposite of like how they live the rest of their lives, whether they're in retirement. Yeah, they're in retirement. They're doing something else and they've moved on. And I think that's a very compelling storytelling device because you can dip into the past, whatever you like.

Chad Kirchner (1:03:25)
Kirk.

Benjamin Hunting (1:03:35)
something happens, she does something amazing. She's like, yeah, I was in the Tal Shire and you're like, you're not just a cook. And then we forget and then we come back to it.

Mike Austin (1:03:40)
And

you can use that as a foil for the character that's in the process of finding that piece.

Benjamin Hunting (1:03:46)
Yeah,

totally, totally.

Chad Kirchner (1:03:46)
Yeah.

Todd Stashwick again as Liam Shaw. I liked the character a lot. I was in the one thing obviously we talked about. ⁓ But then I think there were some things that were kind of missed like Vatican season three played by Amanda Plummer, the daughter of Christopher Plummer, ⁓ which I thought was great but I don't really think that her character like I liked her but I didn't it was just so disjointed with with

how is this part of the changeling plot but then this is a boring plot like it's just it

Benjamin Hunting (1:04:18)
She was like kind of a superhero too, right? Like from what I remember.

Chad Kirchner (1:04:21)
Well, was the one,

no, she was the captain of the strike. She was the one that...

Benjamin Hunting (1:04:24)
Yeah,

but like, like, just in terms of her plot, her place in the plot was she was in control of the grand conspiracy, correct? Yeah. Yeah.

Chad Kirchner (1:04:33)
Yeah, yeah, she was well, she thought she was because

when really the Borg Queen was but of course, ⁓ in data being fully functional, which I don't, I don't get the mixing of, of the Holodick characters into this now data that's really just Brent Spiner.

Benjamin Hunting (1:04:38)
Of course, I mean always the Borg Queen. Well, it all comes back to the Borg Queen and data being fully functional.

Chad Kirchner (1:04:55)
⁓ I don't get how data with emotions would be picked up by a Betazoid. don't because I don't know how computer generated emotions work. There's a lot of things I don't.

Benjamin Hunting (1:05:05)
Can you imagine how

annoying that would be if betasoids like could pick up computer emotions? Cause they're surrounded by computers all the time. Like it would just be a constant barrage of, I don't know, boredom or terror or whatever computers are feeling.

Chad Kirchner (1:05:09)
.

Mike Austin (1:05:16)
That's that's still one of the best of many good lines in a lower dexterous like we're in the movie You can change the transporter rules anytime

Chad Kirchner (1:05:23)
Yeah, you could you could do it. Yeah. ⁓ so just because we don't want to we could talk about this forever. But I mean, Picard, I mean, is the worst Star Trek you've ever seen? I don't think so. But no, no. ⁓ But I think that I think there was, I think it could have been better. I don't know, you know, how much sort of creative control Patrick Stewart had, he definitely had some. ⁓

Benjamin Hunting (1:05:35)
No. No. The animated series exists.

Mike Austin (1:05:36)
No way. Well into the mid. Well into the mid.

Chad Kirchner (1:05:51)
But I think, Ben, you made a really good point, which is Star Trek's all about the ensemble. And when you have one character kind of take over as the dominant, I don't think that works with Star Trek. ⁓ Or work as well. So I definitely think you're onto something there. ⁓ I will say that the very, very ending, they're obviously setting up for hopefully another, maybe another Star Trek series. I like the idea that Seven of Nine is Captain of a Starship. I think that closes.

Even if we don't see more of her character, I think that closes her arc from when she was rescued by Janeway and what Janeway had wanted for her. ⁓ I think that's a very good way to end that. I hate, I don't hate, but I really hate that they set up this big thing at the end and talking about naming and how the importance of legacy and stuff like that. And then they named the ship the Enterprise. Like it really should have been, it should have been the Starship Picard.

Benjamin Hunting (1:06:47)
I forgot about that too.

Chad Kirchner (1:06:50)
Because because if you're watching, yes, it should have been it should have been the Jean-Luc Picard because

Benjamin Hunting (1:06:50)
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

though should have been named after his brother.

Chad Kirchner (1:06:57)
Okay.

Benjamin Hunting (1:06:59)
Well, mean Starfleet hates Picard. They gotta like, they'll give him a Picard ship.

Chad Kirchner (1:07:01)
start,

they like to invent the end of that. they do this whole build up and they talk about naming and how important that is. And you're starting to tear up just a little bit, like it's a little dusty in the room, because you're like, they're going to do a ship reveal. And you're like, and then they set it up. And then they fake it with just being the Enterprise. it's like, no, I think the Enterprise is his own character and whatever, but it didn't.

Benjamin Hunting (1:07:24)
they could have named it the data

and then instantly destroyed it. Like we didn't at least that didn't happen, right?

Chad Kirchner (1:07:31)
Right. Um, so to be continued, I guess we'll say, um, I think we pretty much set this here, but I think there's a lot more that we could still even talk about in terms of, of, um, these characters, these iconic characters, I think that we all, you know, grew up with them. Mike, you were saying pre-show that we were kind of the first Star Trek you're exposed to like.

It's probably my comfort track, like my favorite is Deep Space Nine, but the first track you're kind of really exposed to, I think, is what you gravitate to. And I think there are some solid wins, but I also think there's some things that could have done better. I think that's fair. Does that seem...

Mike Austin (1:08:08)
Yeah, I mean,

maybe this is just out of guilt, but like I would say like even when Picard was on, was like, you know what? I'm going to, I'm going to patronize all track because having track is a good thing and I'm not going to like it all. And some of it is some of it's not for me. That's another thing that, know, like, ⁓ so.

Benjamin Hunting (1:08:11)
You

Chad Kirchner (1:08:11)
No, you don't need to feel guilty.

Having track is better than not having track.

Benjamin Hunting (1:08:24)
Yeah. Yeah. No, but

Chad Kirchner (1:08:26)
Thank you, Mike. Thank you. That's what

Benjamin Hunting (1:08:28)
I am an.

Chad Kirchner (1:08:28)
I've been trying. That's what I've been trying to say for so long.

Benjamin Hunting (1:08:31)
to continue

that thought. like, completely agree. And that's why I don't watch. So I'm not watching Starfleet Academy, because I don't think I like it, but I'm happy it exists. I'm not upset at it. But I think Picard was intended to be for us. And that's the problem. Like it was aimed directly at us, you know?

Chad Kirchner (1:08:37)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Mike Austin (1:08:43)
haha

Chad Kirchner (1:08:44)
Right. Right.

Yeah. Star Trek Scouts is not for you, but yeah.

Mike Austin (1:08:49)
But anyway, I'm glad, I'm glad they made it, even

though I've just spent an hour picking it apart, you know, I'm glad they made it.

Chad Kirchner (1:08:54)
well, we criticize what we

love. We criticize the things we love, right? ⁓ If we weren't fans, why would we come on a podcast and talk about it? ⁓ So there, so there you go. ⁓ Ben, we'll start with you. ⁓ Where can people what do you any work when I pump anything, when I plug anything, anything that you want to talk about?

Benjamin Hunting (1:09:14)
⁓ sure.

There's a new issue of Dead Air coming out, my comic book about a world where one day out of the year you can talk to the dead. And as a result, a woman who has some trauma in her past tries to talk to someone to apologize for what happened and realizes that her friend maybe didn't die after all. And she gets together her group of nineties college DJ friends to figure out what happened to that trauma. You can find it at DeadAirComic.com. It's probably going to be hitting Kickstarter at the end of April.

And can find all my other comic book stuff and car writing stuff at benjaminhunting.com. And if you want to hear my voice talk about cars and stuff, unnamedautomotivepodcast.com. We're at episode 450. So there's a lot of listening to do. I do that with my co-host Sammy Hajuset.

Chad Kirchner (1:09:56)
Wow. There is.

I miss Sammy. should nag you guys about being on against Sam. Links in the show notes for all the stuff that Ben's talked about there. Just as a real quick reminder to everybody, I have a lot of car friends, so a lot of stuff they're going to talk or pimp are going to be car kind of related. That's okay. But yeah, you should option your dead air to Paramount so they can make a Star Trek series or episode of it.

Benjamin Hunting (1:10:03)
Yeah.

One day we'll have a conversation

about what options are like in the comic book world and what happened when we did that.

Chad Kirchner (1:10:27)
any who has ⁓

Mike when you're not when you are not ⁓ talking about Star Trek, what are you doing?

Mike Austin (1:10:40)
I mean, I'm cooking dinner, but, ⁓ which it's, it's, it's, no, I've just thought about how it's like, it's, it's probably my number one hobby, but it's in between like, well, I just do this versus something I really like. ⁓ no, you can, you can find me at, rodentrack.com and you can also find me in the pages of road and track. We publish a magazine, ⁓ six times a year. And if you like cars and you like magazines, we do, we put a lot of effort into trying to make it.

Chad Kirchner (1:10:42)
You're the executive editor.

Benjamin Hunting (1:10:42)
Nice.

It's probably burned, Mike. ⁓

Chad Kirchner (1:10:54)
You

Mike Austin (1:11:10)
⁓ You know elevate it because we recognize you're paying money for a thing to hold in your hands and We have an amazing art department that does a lot of that that makes the editing and word parts look better But that's where you can finally mostly

Chad Kirchner (1:11:24)
Yeah,

I love that you're still doing print. I know it's difficult to do. I was just on a program last year, actually with Zach, and we were having dinner. It was just like me, Zach, one of the person, and Angus, Mackenzie, and Angus was talking to us about print. And we had all kind of got like these bright eyed looks on our faces when we were talking about being in print. And he asked us all, he's like, what's the big deal? You know, why do you get so excited about print? Your audience is...

he knew where we were all writing. like, your audiences are bigger digitally. I'm like, I'm like, dog, it's not the same. Like, it's, it's not like and it is a different audience. And it's such, it's so great to be able to take something and like, I don't know, hand it to my mom and be like, Hey, this, this is what I, this is what I do. Because, know,

Benjamin Hunting (1:12:00)
It's a totally different audience.

Mike Austin (1:12:14)
And yeah, it's also weird because

I've been on both sides of it. Like there's things that we do in the magazine that like take long or like seem inefficient, but are an important part of the process. And then there's, and there's things we can't like, there's things that are better told on either medium, but it's, it is fascinating though. Cause yeah, there's like a lot of stuff. It's like, wish you could do that, but we can't do it the way that we need to do it in the book. So it doesn't make it into.

Chad Kirchner (1:12:36)
Yeah.

But I like the, I like the, have both options and that Hearst is still supporting both options because I feel like I think you're right. There's some stuff that really kind of only maybe works in print. And then there's some.

Benjamin Hunting (1:12:37)
And

I also want to

just talking about like audience. the stuff, some of stuff I do in Canada is ⁓ syndicated through a newspaper chain and it goes like across the country and it goes into papers I've never heard of in towns that I'm not familiar with. And the number of people who reach out to me to talk about the stories that I've written, who read something that I wrote in a newspaper that's serving a town of like 25,000 to 50,000 people is probably higher than the digital engagement.

that I get on platforms that are much, much, much larger. And I find that fascinating. And just the idea that you're reaching people who are more comfortable in some ways with contacting the writer and being like, hey, I had this experience with this car, or I don't agree with you, or I want to find out more. It's interesting to me that it is a different type of reader. And you're not going to find that necessarily in all online forums.

Chad Kirchner (1:13:41)
So if you're looking for a magazine to subscribe to, Road and Track is it. That's my plug for that. Thank you both for, oh, I guess I should say my own things. You can find me in the shout outs, whatever. But if you enjoyed this episode, which I hope you did, I'd be sad if you didn't.

Mike Austin (1:13:48)
Thanks.

Chad Kirchner (1:14:03)
you know, give us a review. think that's probably the best way that you can help us right now. We're on Apple podcasts, we're on Spotify, we're kind of a little bit everywhere. That helps juice the algorithm. It also helps tremendously helps just to share it with friends, people that you know, people you like. ⁓ If you want to support it maybe a little bit more, I will take your money.

We've got a patreon set up that you get early access to episodes and we do some chit chatting before episodes that ⁓ Only certain member levels get of that. So no, no, definitely don't feel like you're obligated to do that. I know money right now is really an issue ⁓ because war but ⁓ Yeah, if you think about it, but the best thing you can do like I said is let other people know Thank you both for joining me. ⁓ I hope both of you will come back at some point maybe

Benjamin Hunting (1:14:56)
I had a lot of

Mike Austin (1:14:56)
Love to be

on. Yeah.

Chad Kirchner (1:14:57)
And until next time, I still don't have a closing stinger. So.

Benjamin Hunting (1:15:03)
Play the theme song in reverse.

Mike Austin (1:15:05)
You need your own warp. You need your own go to warp phrase.

Benjamin Hunting (1:15:08)
Yeah, you need an engage.

Chad Kirchner (1:15:08)
Oh,

you're right. was thinking that. kind of think I'm kind of a sucker for the classic. Like, I feel like engage is the way to go. So yeah, make it. But we're talking about Picard, so we got to be make it so.

Benjamin Hunting (1:15:09)
What's your engage?