Imaginary Worlds - Charting Strange New Worlds

Episode Date: July 21, 2022

It’s not often that I’m watching a TV show and I think, “I should ask the writers about that.” Luckily, I was in the same undergraduate film program as Henry Alonso Myers and Bill Wolkoff, who are writers and producers on the Star Trek series Strange New Worlds, and they were happy to chat. We cover the challenge of telling new stories about legacy characters like Spock and Uhura, the need for Star Trek to stay politically relevant, why Captain Pike is really into cooking and hijinks are the most logical course of action during a Vulcan courtship. This episode is sponsored by NordVPN. Grab the NordVPN exclusive deal at https://nordvpn.com/imaginaryworlds. Try it risk-free now with a 30-day money-back guarantee. Our ad partner is Multitude. If you’re interested in advertising on Imaginary Worlds, you can contact them here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's it like to trade crypto on Kraken? Let's say I'm in a state-of-the-art gym surrounded by powerful-looking machines. Do I head straight for the squat rack? I could, but this gym has options, like trainers, fitness pros, spotters to back me up. That's crypto on Kraken. Powerful crypto tools backed by 24-7 support and multi-layered security. Go to Kraken.com and see what crypto can be. Non-investment advice.

Crypto trading involves risk of loss. See Kraken.com slash legal slash ca dash pru dash disclaimer for info on Kraken's undertaking to register in Canada. And see what crypto can be. Introducing Tim's new infuser energy beverages made with natural caffeine. They come in two refreshing flavors, blackberry yuzu and mango starfruit. Try them today only at Tim's at participating Tim's restaurants in Canada for a limited time. It's time for Tim's. You're listening to Imaginary Worlds, a show about how we create them and why we suspend our disbelief. I'm Eric Malinsky.

This episode is about the Star Trek show, Strange New Worlds, which just finished its first season on Paramount+. We will be giving away minor spoilers in discussing the show. When Strange New Worlds first started back in May, I was excited to watch it. I sat down on the couch with my wife, and as the opening credits were rolling by, I suddenly yelled, Bill! And my wife said, who's Bill? And before I could explain, I said, Henry! And she said, who's Henry? Henry Alonzo Myers and Bill Wolkoff are writers and producers on Strange New Worlds. Henry is actually one of the showrunners.

The three of us were film majors together at Wesleyan University and we moved to Los Angeles around the same time in the mid-90s. While I had kept up with their careers I did not know they were working on the show. I had so many questions for them. I did not know they were working on the show. I had so many questions for them, and I was glad that they were able to talk with me. But first, a little background on Strange New Worlds. The synopsis is simple. It's the story of the Enterprise before Captain Kirk. But the backstory is a little bit more complicated, and it goes all the way back to 1964, the pilot of Star Trek, which was called The Cage.

Check the circuit. All operating, sir. Can't be the screen, then. Spock was there, but he was not as stoic as he would later be. The captain was named Pike. He was not played by William Shatner. His first officer was a woman

called Number One. The network was not happy with the pilot. Changes were made, and The Cage was never aired in the original run of the series. But rather than pretend the pilot never happened, Gene Rodberry worked Captain Pike and Number One into the lore and canon of Star Trek. And in 2019, the characters appeared in the second season of the show Star Trek Discovery, which took place 10 years before the original series. Spock was played by Ethan Peck, Pike was played by Anson Mount, and number one was played by Rebecca Romijn. Welcome home, Captain. Good to be back. Wish we were under better circumstances. Don't we all? Star Trek fans loved seeing these versions of the characters so much, they lobbied for them to have their own spin-off series.

And that is how Strange New Worlds was born. Personally, I think the show looks great. I mean, I love the way they capture the essence of the 1960s sets and costumes while updating them with modern day materials and special effects. And unlike a lot of sci-fi shows these days, Strange New Worlds is not one long serialized story. It's episodic, like the old Star Trek. Critics have praised the show for being a throwback, and they've actually compared it to what's called prestige TV shows, shows that are supposed to be superior in quality because they

are serialized. But those shows can also sometimes feel bloated or pretentious or difficult to follow. Bill and Henry are sympathetic to that point of view. You'll hear Henry first and then Bill. I find a lot of current prestige TV to be frustrating. And I think, and I don't know if it's, look, this is a, I'm a veteran episodic TV guy. I've been doing this for over 20 years and I really like the way the television tells stories. And I get very frustrated when people say things like, oh, we're trying to do a 10 hour movie or a six hour movie. And like, I, I want to raise my hand and say, you know, if you went to a movie and it was 10 hours long, you'd walk out. So like what we're doing is that we're doing a one hour show and trying to create like a morsel. You remember like in Willy Wonka, they had the gum that would present you with a full meal, you know, like from appetizer to dessert. from appetizer to dessert.

You know, that's what we try to do within an hour so that you tell a character story that feels like it's self-contained. But also, you know, in the classic mode of television, you know, going back to like Hill Street Blues, we try to arc character stories so that our people, you know, learn something or experience something one week and they're not the same person the next week.

The show ends up being more nimble. You can tell more interesting, broad-based science fiction stories because we are only telling short ones. Well, one thing I think is interesting is when you think about the film program that the three of us were in, it was very focused on genre. There are so many classes just breaking down what a genre was. And one thing I think is interesting about the show is how many episodes feel like their own little sort of self-contained genres. Like you'll have like a rom-com episode and then there's like the sci-fi horror episode and there's like a siege episode and then there's like a pirate episode. Do you feel like the education that we all got like helped you be more nimble and able to sort of quickly pick up what makes a genre? Absolutely.

I mean, it's the great thing about the episodic format is that you can be you can do exactly as you're saying, experiment with genre and embrace it fully. embrace it fully. And as we all went to the same film school, like we're aware of the limits and the rails within each genre to inhabit that fully within each episode to really do a pirate episode and to, you know, really do a storybook episode, a fantasy episode, but also have it still be a Star Trek episode at the same time. And that it's having that balance, that power to embrace the genre, but the balance to still be what you would recognize as a Star Trek episode at the end of it, that I think makes it fun to be a part of and write and also as an audience member experience. Hmm. So, Henry, I read an interview that you did where you said that early on

when you were developing the show, you had a lot of conversations and trying to figure out like, how is Pike different than Kirk? Because I mean, I guess on many levels you could have written them or you could have written him as like a Kirk-like captain.

But like, I'm really curious, what were those conversations like? And how did you eventually land on the idea that pike really likes to cook because he's cooking a lot in the show i do like to cook that was definitely uh uh in the back of my head but but a lot of it actually just came out of um we were trying to figure out what was his style of command and uh we were actually talking specifically about his quarters and what his set should look like and how we would do scenes in it.

In previous Star Treks, all the captains sort of have their own obsessions. Janeway loves coffee. It's not really a Picard thing, but there's always a poker game on Next Generation. And we were sort of trying to figure out what would represent the way that Pike leads. I'm a baker, and there's a guy who I admire a lot named Chad Robertson who created this bakery, Tartine, in San Francisco. And I fall back on his bread cookbooks a lot. And there's a thing in his cookbook where he talks about how to make fava beans, which are a real pain in the

butt to peel. And his method for doing it is you open a bottle of wine and you bring a bunch of people around the table and you say, hey, help me peel these fava beans. It's a way of having a dinner party that involves everyone and forces everyone to kind of cook and join in and it creates conversation. And so we had this notion that maybe this is how he approaches command. He's got a sort of central table that everyone sort of sits around. He likes to bring in people from lots of different areas of the ship and find out what's going on. He's a real listener. And so the idea that he cooks more like a conductor,

you know, he cooks at the center and kind of keeps an eye on how everyone's going but he sort of pulls people in and has them, you know, try different things and work to their strengths. It was really just a metaphor for how he leads in a very different way from Kirk who's a little more of a maverick at the center of things. He's the one who has the crazy plan. Everyone's a little surprised at him. You know

what I mean? He's more of a central hero. And Pike is a little more of someone who coordinates between people, someone who tries to see the strengths of the folks who work with him. My assistant producer, Stephanie, actually has a theory that Pike's hair is like a mood ring, depending on its height. Anson has really amazing hair. Well, I happen to be on set one of the days when somebody had done a meme, an Anson mount in the Paramount logo with his hair as tall as the mountain. And he had clearly seen it. And we were shooting one of his scenes.

And this is a credit to Anson, who's got a great sense of humor about himself. And he said, so I'm going to be over here, but my hair's mark is going to be way over there. That's awesome. Bill, actually, I wanted to ask you about an episode that you co-wrote, which was called Ghosts of Elyria. And I mean, this is a little bit of a spoiler,

but in that episode, we learned that number one, who has a name now, actually, it's Una. We learned that Una is originally from this planet of genetically modified people who are discriminated against by other humans. And at one point, she's talking to Pike about her identity. And he says, don't worry, you're one of the good ones, which makes her cringe. What if I hadn't saved all those lives? Would Captain feel the same? What would he do if I wasn't a hero, one of the good ones? When will it be enough to just be an Illyrian?

I thought that was a really interesting moment, especially to have Pike say you're one of the good ones, because we've already established that he's really sensitive and inclusive. And I was wondering if you could talk about that scene. Part of that came from and I want to also credit Akiva Goldsman, who was who guided us very heavily in that episode. Goldsman, who was, uh, who guided us, uh, very heavily in that episode. And I'm my co-writer on that episode of Kayla Cooper that came from a, uh, a desire to, to present the Federation as an imperfect place that, that has good ideals. And let's have that come out through our character through, through Pike, uh, who is somebody who is well-intentioned, who might not necessarily have the experience to understand how his view of a marginalized group would affect that marginalized group. And we wanted to give him a little bit of room for evolution. He's somebody who needs a little bit of evolution, as the Federation does.

This was a good character to play that out with. And what better relationship to have that come to a head with than one of Una's closest friends in the Federation, who is only just aware that she is part of a marginalized group. Yeah, there's also another really interesting moment in terms of current day politics. It was actually in the first episode. There's a moment where Pike is explaining the history of the Federation to these aliens that are about to go to war with each other. And, you know, according to Star Trek lore, this was, of course, set up in the 1960s, that in the 1990s there was going to be a third world war that was sort of fought over eugenics. But the timelines, you know, been shifted as, of course, Star Trek has kept going into the 21st century. the timeline's been shifted as, of course, Star Trek has kept going into the 21st century.

But when Pike is telling the story of how the Federation rose up from the ashes, he shows real footage of Trump protesters in 2020 and the insurrection at the Capitol. And that leads up to LA, New York, and DC we see being wiped out by nuclear weapons, which is a terrifying sequence. Our conflict also started with a fight for freedoms. We called it the Second Civil War, then the Eugenics War, and finally just World War III. This was our last day, the day the Earth we knew ceased to exist. So I was really curious, why did you decide to include real footage of recent politics in that scene?

Star Trek has never shied away from politics. And what we were trying to say, which I think is actually not as controversial as I think I'm sure people in some parts of the media would like to believe, is that the path towards conflict that we are on now will head in this direction. I mean, the whole point of that episode is to say, hey, this metaphorical thing that happens in the science fiction show actually has relevance to the world that we live in. Just as a context thing, in that episode, Pike is reaching out to a society that is on the verge of destroying itself. And he says, look, that is on the verge of destroying itself.

And he says, look, our society did destroy itself. And to make it feel relevant to people of today, we didn't want to say, oh, we fictionally destroyed ourself. We wanted to kind of tie together the, because in canon, the eugenics wars did happen in the 1990s. And the goal was to say, hey, yes, okay, so maybe those didn't happen in the 90s, but the things that did happen are on a path that lead to the thing that we are saying will happen. Another big challenge in writing the show is figuring out how to tell new and interesting stories about characters like Spock.

We already know what's going to happen to him for the rest of his life. We'll discuss how they made the fate of legacy characters feel a little less certain after the break. day with no odor protection. Wait, what's that? Vanilla and shea. That's Old Spice Total Body deodorant. 24-7 freshness from pits to privates with daily use. It's so gentle. We've never smelled so good. Shop Old Spice Total Body deodorant now. This episode is brought to you by Secret. Secret deodorant gives you 72 hours of clinically proven odor protection, free of aluminum, parabens, dyes, talc, and baking soda. It's made with pH-balancing minerals and crafted with skin-conditioning oils.

So whether you're going for a run or just running late, do what life throws your way and smell like you didn't. Find Secret at your nearest Walmart or Shoppers Drug Mart today. Spock is not the only character from the original series to appear in Strange New Worlds. One of the other major characters they brought back is Ahura. In the 1960s, she was a groundbreaking character, but Ahura never had the same kind of character development as Spock. That has changed in Strange New Worlds,

where Ahura is a young cadet fresh out of the Academy, and she's really not sure yet what her place is going to be in Starfleet. You know, the Enterprise only gets a handful of cadets a year from Starfleet. You've got to be pretty impressive to make the cut. Thank you, sir. I hear you speak 12 languages. Starfleet. I found early that if I wanted to be understood, it's best to communicate in someone's own tongue. So I learned them. Easy as that. For me, sir, yes. I asked Bill and Henry if there was a lot of discussion around how to flesh out her character and give her more of a backstory. And Bill said...

Many long discussions. In a good way. It was very interesting because we talked a lot about, we talked a lot about what was there in the past and that performance, you know, Nichelle Nichols performance is iconic and people, you know, rightly point to it.

It was, it was incredibly important for the history of television. It was incredibly important on the show. But there was a, there were a lot of areas that were left unexplored. We really wanted to tell the story of a younger character, like an ensign, someone who was just coming onto the Enterprise. The first episode is really a Pike episode. And so with the second episode, we really wanted to kind of come out of the gate and tell A, a very different story, and B, kind of show the types

of stories that we were going to do on the show. So we thought it might be an interesting idea to really focus on her point of view. And because she is young, she's a, you know, 21, 22, not the Uhura that we know. She's an ensign. We really wanted to kind of present her as a character, present her as a point of view character. Because, like, her view of the Enterprise is going to be very different from everyone else. On top of that, we were searching for an interesting way to kind of surprise people with her point of view about Starfleet. And one of our then writer's assistant,

who became a writer on the show in season two, Onitra Johnson, and also co-wrote episode eight this season. She spent a lot of time in the Air Force, and her family were all in the Air Force, and she had this sort of interesting military experience, and her experience was complicated. And she had sort of mixed feelings about having spent time in the service. And we spent a lot of time talking about her specific experience and how that might be an interesting experience to kind of channel through Uhura. So we have this idea that like, what if she's ambivalent about what she did, about choosing to join Starfleet, that there's a complicating factor in her life that ultimately led to her doing this thing,

to making what was sort of an impulsive decision, you know, because many people join Starfleet with a dream, but also many people join Starfleet to find themselves or because they're running away from something. And so for us, it was sort of important to give this young woman some runway, like a place to go in terms of, you know, she can't be fully formed yet because then there's no journey for this character.

Because I think the challenge with doing legacy characters is that people come in and say, well, they're already fully formed. I know who they are. I know who they're going to be. So I'm not interested in what they were in the past. And the thing that I always remember is they don't know who they're going to be.

If they don't know, then everything is a surprise to them. So let's approach her like that. Well, that actually brings me to Spock. Because I mean, you know, I mean, how do you tell stories about Spock when we know what happens to him? And you picked up on the character of T'Pring, who is Spock's fiancee in only one episode of the original series, which is called A Mock Time. And it's obviously not much of a spoiler to say that they didn't get married in the original series. Like Spock does not have a wife for the rest of the show

in all the Star Trek movies. But so much of the storyline in Strange New Worlds is about their engagement and them like working out the kinks in their relationship. A shared acceptance of mutual sacrifice is crucial to a successful relationship. Yes, that is indisputable. I am concerned that your time in Starfleet may be causing you to behave in a manner so... human. We may ultimately find ourselves incompatible.

Perhaps you should go prepare for your important work. And the actors have such great chemistry together. It's almost like you're actually rooting for them. And yet, you know, there's going to be a really long engagement because, I mean, Amok Time, you know, the episode she's in the original series doesn't happen for like another decade in their world. So, Henry, I'm curious because I know you wrote one of the Spock to Pring episodes. Why was the decision made to make toPring a big part of Spock's entire storyline? It all kind of started from Akiva and Alex and Jenny putting T'Pring in the pilot

and they're clearly in a kind of a workable nice part of their relationship and we spent a lot of time trying to find an actor to play T'Pring who was appealing and interesting and that they had said that she and Ethan had chemistry an actor to play to Pring who was appealing and interesting and that they had you know so that

that that she and um Ethan had chemistry uh because we knew that we'd want to bring her back I you know I I've done a lot of work with uh with comedy and rom-com in particular that's a tone that has not been explored in Star Trek in probably you know 20. It's harder to do that kind of thing if you're not doing episodic shows. And I think the easy thing to do would be just to do one episode that shows exactly how they're troubled and then they're going to end up at a muck time, but how boring is that? What if their relationship is more interesting and promising and that T'Pring is actually a formidable and interesting person. And so we started digging in with the room in ways in which to bring could

be a, like a legitimate fun character to have around. None of the things that people expect to happen have to happen tomorrow. You know, relationships are long and many things happen in them. And also, I think the original series sets up such a great dynamic between the two of them in that it's a very long engagement.

They were placed together by their parents and Spock is half human and she's fully Vulcan. And so the original series sets all of these things up, but it was only three seasons and didn't follow through on that. And we get the chance to really play with that great setup. I think I can speak on behalf of the other writers that it's really exciting to get to

explore that dynamic more fully. And Henry and Robin's episode is a prime example of that Spock-Dupring dynamic. I was actually going to ask you about that. Well, first of all, Henry, you wrote, I think, maybe one of the funniest lines in the history of Star Trek. Hijinks are the most logical course of action. But what is it like to write for them as a couple, as two Vulcans? Because you actually have them accidentally switch bodies during a Vulcan mind meld.

Like, how as a writer could you even tell them apart? You guys did a body swap, like your minds are in each other's... That is correct. I am Spock. And I am T'Kring. Now that you know,

you can likely tell the very clear differences in our mannerisms. Yeah, totally. Having worked on a number of body switching episodes, I was familiar with a lot of the problems and tropes that you run into when doing it. So the challenge was to find a way for their voices to be very specific and distinctive. The truth is that our Vulcans are not really the same as the Vulcans of the 1960s. And the main reason is that back then Spock was sort of the alien. He's the other. He's not as much a point of view character. And we were presenting him very much. I mean,

that's a very much a Spock episode. We present him as an emotional way in. Like he's the character whose emotional point of view we understand, which sounds funny because he's a Vulcan and Vulcans have emotions that they suppress. But this is, as a modern audience, Spock is the person whose emotions that we are tracking in that episode. There's a moment where he comes back to his, he's been kept late at work and he comes back to his quarters and T'Pring is very, you know, she's super super logical but it's pretty clear that she's pissed at him that he did not uh come back in time uh and then she exits and he looks over and sees this like lovely meal she's made and he just shuts his eyes and it's he's not being emotional but all the emotions are there and it's something that i think you know the truth is that it's a very human moment we all can connect with it. Yeah. So Spock is half human. And in the original series, they really spent all this time with him being very, I am a Vulcan, you know, I'm half Jewish.

My parents are from different religions, you know, and I know a lot of people who come from different mixed backgrounds. And, you know, one of the things that you find, I think, when you're coming from mixed background is that, you know, you tend to have an interest in, go through phases where you're interested in different sides of your family. And so we've seen a lot of Vulcan Spock, but we hadn't seen a lot of like, what if Spock went through a human phase? What if Spock went through a phase that he's different? And then we have a little bit of canon that we were sort of going back to, which is in the original pilot of the cage.

They have what we sometimes refer to in the room as smiley Spock, which is they show Spock on Talos 4, I believe, you know, looking at these sort of flowers. Yeah, these talking flowers and like having this big smile on his face, just not a Spock we've ever seen before. big smile on his face, just not a Spock we've ever seen before. And so we had some notion that, all right, well, there's some canon to explore some ideas about what this Spock could be going through as a person of mixed parentage who has a lot of different things that he's still yet to figure out. Yeah. Well, actually, speaking of canon and pushing boundaries, in the original series, the Gorn was like a guy in a lizard suit and it became kind of a pop culture joke. Like even William Shatner did a commercial with a guy in a Gorn costume. Oh, not again. But you brought back the Gorn and you made them terrifying with like modern special effects.

We got one in the chute. So I was, I was wondering, like, did somebody come in with an, with like an agenda, meaning like we're rehabilitating the Gorn or did you just start brainstorming and say, ah, you know, who could be like the Borg for this crew? And then like you eventually landed on the Gorn. I have to, I have to give Akiva credit here because Akiva, who has been with the new Star Trek universe for, you know, since its inception pretty much,

has always kind of kept an eye on the Gorn. Like he's been a huge fan of the Gorn. The challenge of the Gorn is I don't think modern audiences who are very sophisticated and expect a certain level of effects and verisimilitude would accept a dude in a rubber suit. So understanding that, you really have an expensive proposition. You have to find a way to reinvent them for modern audiences, because I don't think you could just do it the way that they did do it. I guess you could treat them with kid gloves, or you could just say, all right, what's the Gorn about? What's the metaphor that we are trying to do with the Gorn that's different? And so Akiva had this idea that there's a truism in Star Trek,

which is that if we just come to an understanding with other species, with other aliens, we will eventually find something that we can connect with. And the idea that he had was, what if the Gorn is the species we can't do that? What if the Gorn are just monsters? And that kind of leaves us room to tell another type of science fiction story. That's the first thing that you said to me when I was hired onto the show was, we're doing the Gorn and we're going to re-approach the Gorn. And I said, yes, because the Gorn was probably one of the key draws for me to the original series when I was six, seven years old.

though it's a dude in a, in a rubber suit, I was fascinated by that, uh, by that, by that dude. I was, I was kind of terrified by him and drawn into it. And I, I, I, for, for me that had a certain, and I, again, I was, I was like probably six or seven, but it had verisimilitude. Uh, I did believe, you know, that, that Kirk was up against this, this unstoppable being, uh, in, in the desert. Uh, so the, uh, the chance to re-approach that race as a potential Trek villain. Yes, canon, you know, says that they were in this kind of weird caveman suit with a sash on them and that we didn't know anything about them. But what does that really mean? So and it gave us a chance to look at canon from a different perspective. Yeah. You know, one of the things that's really interesting to me is one of the biggest criticisms

right now about Star Wars to bring up the other big franchise with Star in the title is that they're being too cautious, like people complain that they're just filling in like tiny gaps between canon and they're there's they're're not taking enough chances but you guys are being like really loose and free you know with with canon and um and you're having it seems like you're just like having a lot of fun like do you not feel that kind of pressure or are you just really good at hiding it i think we feel the i think we feel the pressure but i i i think you have to adhere to the spirit of canon and make our best effort to not undo what has been a reality for fans for 40, 50 years. We have very hearty discussions about canon and what we, you know, can and can't do.

But I think everybody has their eye. Everybody, even the people that you would call our canon police that are on staff all realize that – We don't call them police. We call them canon experts. Canon experts. Yeah. We don't call them canon police. If I had canon, they're canon police.

No. Right. Everybody wants to tell a great story and wants to tell new stories in this universe and I think looks at what's happened before and sometimes there's a new perspective to look at canon in a way that you hadn't looked at before that some people might see as breaking canon, but really isn't. It's just looking at it from a completely new, new standpoint in order to tell, tell deeper stories.

Oh, look, I, I, I can't speak to, I mean, look, I'm, I'm a Star Wars fan as well as a Star Trek fan. I can't speak to the challenges that they must go through and trying to make those shows but my philosophy has always been like someone hands you a star trek show you can't act as if you're going to break it because if you're too afraid to break it that you're going to break it you're never going to tell interesting stories um and so you know my feeling feeling is like you sort of have to find ways to push the boundaries of it. Because otherwise, why are you doing it? Gene Roddenberry wasn't afraid of

breaking it because and he wanted to use Star Trek to tell interesting, relevant science fiction stories that related to the world that we live in today. And if we're not doing that, why are we doing Star Trek? It's not all fan service. It's supposed to be a living thing that has value to the world. I think that's part of being a steward, a good steward of the thing. So far, their stewardship has gotten a lot of high marks from the fans. And I hope that encourages writers in other well-established franchises to be more playful with the characters, to swing for the fences, or, you know, reach for

the stars. That is it for this week. Thank you for listening. Special thanks to Henry Alonzo Myers and Bill Wolkoff. My assistant producer is Stephanie Billman. You can follow the show on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. And if you really like Imaginary Worlds, please leave a review wherever you get your podcasts or a shout out on social media. That always helps people discover the show.

The best way to support the podcast is to donate on Patreon. At different levels you can get either free Imaginary Worlds stickers, a mug, a t-shirt, and a link to a Dropbox account, which has a full-length interviews of every guest in every episode. And in the full-length interview for this episode, I talked with Bill and Henry about plot twists that happened late in the season, and those conversations were so full of spoilers that I couldn't even include them in this episode.

You can learn more at the show's website, imaginaryworldspodcast.org.