This Podcast Is... Uncalled For - Star Trek 60th Anniversary with Dan Handley and Jason Hunt

Episode Date: September 6, 2026

Happy 60th anniversary to Star Trek!! We're pleased to have Dan Handley return to the podcast, and are also pleased to welcome Jason Hunt of SciFi4Me.com to discuss this milestone for the iconic science fiction series. Peace and long life.

Check the mic will go live. Stories told they rise and dive. Topics fresh with every spin. You won't guess what's coming in. We can lose surprise. Mind's a way to never lies. Conversations bold and free. Just now just wait and see.

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Welcome to this podcast and I call for. We have a very special episode today. This is our 60th anniversary discussion on the great science fiction franchise we know and love as Star Trek. I'll be joined. later in this episode by a friend of the podcast, Dan Hanley, and making his first appearance, Jason Hunt of sci-fi for me.

So, September 6, 1966, the first ever episode Star Trek, the original series, aired. It was neither of the pilots. Actually, it was neither the Cage, which was Captain Pike and Talos Four, nor was it where no man has gone before the introduction of Captain Kirk

and Gary Mitchell If we've seen the episodes you know exactly what I'm talking about And you can watch all these episodes now I know there's a big backlash against Paramounts Because of the way they treated as Stephen Colbert And all that But that's where you can find All of Star

Almost all of Star Trek Right now So the original series It only lasted three seasons Which you would think Well that's a Yeah Didn't turn out

Well but Something they used to do Called a syndication and reruns Trek found its audience And next thing you know They're doing Feature films they did six with the original cast

then they did another four with the first spin-off the next generation which actually aired first aired September 28 1987 which happened to be my ninth birthday so I grew up on this stuff all right

all right so and from there we had no, there was an animated series in the 70s, I almost forgot, but that's, that is essentially canon now, because for a long time it was treated as well, it could be canon or it could not be. But now certainly the animated series is canon in Star Trek lore. so we had a so we had a next generation

then we had deep space nine took the Star Trek concept and put it on a space station as opposed to a starship then we had a Voyager let's take our spaceship concept throwing them on the other side of the galaxy

and force them to come home the long way and then Enterprise and it's the first round of a spin-offs and that was the that was a prequel series actually the starts of the universe that became Star Trek and all that and it's on fairly

recently Star Trek revival over the last few years with I'm not going to talk too much about the JJ movies because I think they're garbage they also take place parallel the universe to the main part of the track so let's say about that one

better but we had some new series going to have a discovery which started off as a original series prequel before they got flung

into the 32nd century mostly what we're talking about is 23rd to 20 22nd, 23rd, 22nd century for Enterprise, 23rd for the original, 24th for next generation, Desperacea, Voyager. So now we're going to the 32nd century now. Then we have Picard, which picks up many years after Next Generation, focusing solely on Jean-Luc Picard, played by Sir Patrick Stewart

of course now his later years succumbing to illness being revived in a robot body spoiler alert there for those who haven't seen it and and yeah

just really different methods of storytelling for both Discovery and Picard they went lower Dex, an animated comedy series.

A lot of the jokes, you really do need to be a tricky to understand them, but they're still funny. Anyway, they had a Prodigy, which was aimed for kids, but I only saw the first season of this, and it's a really good

storytelling for kids' program. And then we had Strang New Worlds, which acts as both a sequel to Discovery. Spoiler, season 2, Christopher Pike commands Discovery.

And this picks up where they left off. And X's a bridge to the original series with Captain Kirk. And we finally get to see after almost 60 years

how Captain Pike would have commanded had the had the original series still been Captain Pike all that's

and most recently they had Starfleet Academy which is 32nd century once again so post discovery and the relaunching of the Starfleet

Academy unfortunately that's going to be canceled after two seasons and I don't particularly because of all the hates that that show in particular

got. But it's been a cultural phenomenon Trekkies are very much a thing at the conventions and their devoted Star Trek conventions that if they happen to be in your area, please check them out. You know, support your local Trekkies.

You have they actually devised the Klingon language which is how I opened if you're curious that's that's all Klingon so they made that a

functional language that you can actually study if you if you so choose and and all sorts of cool stuff but of course at the heart of it is well they say it's the Vulcan ideal of IDIC,

edict, infant diversity and infinite combinations. And I think that's a great testament for the power of diversity and the power of inclusion. So I'm going to pause for a sec,

and we will come back with Dan and Jason. So a... All right. And joining us for this special edition of the podcast is friend of the podcast dan hanley how's it going he's in long life yep live long to prosper yeah all right so uh we're both trekkies and uh

this is an exciting year for the star trek community so right um oh yeah yeah so uh so yeah is my mom that got me into Star Trek. Next Gen actually premiered on my ninth birthday. And that was my... And that was my introduction to Trek was watching NextGen. Actually, no, I take that back.

My first exposure to Star Trek was we saw Star Trek 4 in the movie theater. And then NextGen came up early after that. Good one. Yeah. And then, yeah, I got into the original series in high school. And I think it's safe to say I've seen all of the original series. I've seen all of Next Gen.

Saw a good deal, DS9 and Voyager, but not all of them. And Enterprise, that was the one I could not really get into. Seeing all the movies at least once. And, yes, I've seen all the new stuff that's been coming out. J.J., I only saw the first JJ movie and was not impressed. to put my links. Yeah, well, with the JJ Trek, the Kelvin timeline, I thought I

enjoyed the movies as just as movies, just not as Star Trek. With the exception of Carl Urban, of course. I mean, his bones was like dead on. That was just unbelievable how well he did that, just been the role. But yeah, for the most part, I enjoyed seeing somebody's take on it,

but it wasn't, he didn't quite get Star Trek, just like Kurtzman didn't get Star Trek, you know, but yeah, it's like me. I got, I got into it because my dad was a Trekkie. It still is. And he, so basically, I was raised on Star Trek. So it was like Star Wars, Star Trek. Star Wars wouldn't be going to be a filmmaker, Star Trek, got me into science and technology.

Yeah, yeah, that's good. Hey, there's Jason. All right. Let's, all right. I'm going to let them in. And pleased to have joining us

for our discussion is from sci-fi for me Mr. Jason Hunt. Howdy? Jason, great to hear you.

Let's see. Is my camera on? Something's on. Yeah, hold on a second. I'm trying to hit a button. That's nice,

yeah. It had to tend to a dog. Hey, that's all right. That's all right. So we already had a pretty rocky starts, but yeah, we're here. Yeah. So we're just talking, so Jason to catch you up, we were just talking about how we got into Star Trek. So, so yeah. I'm not hearing Jason. I'm on my end. I haven't, I haven't said much yet. There we go. Dan's not hearing me at all. Dan, can't hear Jason? Okay.

Have Jason talk because I'm not hearing anything. I'm talking one, two, three, four. Oh, there you are. All right, great, great. So again, to catch you up, Jason, we're talking about how Dan and I both got into Star Trek, very young and everything. So I think that's a good introduction, if we want to add on to that discussion. Oh, sure. Well, my first encounter with Star Trek, I can't remember exactly how old I was. I want to say it was somewhere around five or six years old, six or seven. And I had come home from school a little bit later than usual, and my normal program was already done. I was in the habit of watching the Adventures of Superman. And I was flipping channels looking for stuff. something to look at to watch and I ran across this this image of two men in a very brightly

colored brightly lit corridor the guy on the left had a blue shirt on the guy on the right had a right a yellow shirt on and the guy in the blue shirt had pointed ears and I thought hang on wait a minute what is this and got into the tv guide which was actually printed on paper back then open it up saw there's this thing called star trek and I'm like, okay, I'm gonna, I'm intrigued. Let's see what this is. Tell me more. And I was hooked from the very beginning because the visuals of it, you know,

Jerry Fitterman's cinematography was, was really eye-catching. And of course, the stories hold up even now. And, you know, it was one of those things where it was smart, but it was also at a point where somebody, as young as I was, could still follow along on the adventure and know what was going on. So I've been, I've been a Star Trek fan ever since. All right.

Yeah. Yeah. So as I was telling Dan, I got, I got into NextGen first. And then wound up again to the original series after that.

So, yeah, the, yeah, next gen actually premiered on my ninth birthday. Oh, okay.

Yeah. Made for a very happy birthday. Well, we're just days shy of my youngest brother being born, too. So there's a lot of that going on as well. Yeah, I remember when NextGen premiered. I remember a lot of fans at the time, those of us who had been fans for a while, the thing was, oh, this is going to be New Star Trek.

We were very excited that we were getting new Star Trek. The conventional wisdom has it that fans were not all that happy with another generation. And there was some of that. But a lot of that came from, you know, the press and the original cast. Or like, how could they do Star Trek without us? And, you know, neglecting the idea to mention they were doing movies at the time. And they probably wouldn't even. be affordable. You couldn't even have a budget that would include the original cast anymore.

But I remember some discussions. Could they do it again? And it was an experiment not only in a sequel series, but also the fact that it was going to be a first run syndicated television show. It was not going to hit the networks. It was going to be sold per market, first run syndicated. very much like your game shows, your talk shows at the time. And a lot of people were wondering if it was going to work. And it did. And it actually had some impact on how television operated from the get-to-go after that. Oh, absolutely.

I agree. And I think NextGen actually did have some really good storyteller. Well, maybe not the first couple of seasons. Ironically, my favorite episode of the original, of Next Gen, rather, was from the first season. There was the conspiracy, which, with the, which they termed it in Lower Decks, the butt bugs, they call it. And the frustrating thing for a lot of us was the fact that there's never, in the entire history since 1987, there has still, yet to be any payoff on that episode. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

I believe the behind-the-scenes stuff I heard about, I guess they addressed it in Beta Canon, also known as books. Yeah. And that was the basis for the Borg. Actually. Actually. They took that idea and turned it into the board. is what they think so yeah I mean I could I can see that the two the two weren't

weren't connected but I can see where they could go with the concept and take it from what was going on in conspiracy and and move it to the board but I think also too you have now this idea of a of a machine planet was first introduced in Star Trek the motion picture and Retroactively, people have said, oh, maybe Viger hit the Borg planet, you know, the boat with the Borg homeworld, which we've never seen. And it's kind of, you know, fan service at this point, you know, it's head canon for a lot of people.

But I don't recall seeing anything in any write-up that can, that directly connects the conspiracy episode with the Borg. I've never seen anything that said that they just took that idea and modified it. Right. Well, with the, you're talking about the Viger and the Borg. It's like prior to the Enterprise episode that showed, you know, Borg way back in time, they, a lot of people, in fact, myself would have loved to have seen that Viger was behind the Borg.

Because Viger wanted, you know, connection between the creator and the machine and itself. And that was the cybernetic blend. And then it decides, you know, this is this is the new paradise. But with that timeline wise, though, that doesn't work. Not anymore. The Borg would have come first regardless because you had to have the machine planet repairing Viger and sending it back. So that would have that would have meant now evolving. into the cyborg, cybernetic, you know, hybrids,

that may have come after meeting Viger, but it wasn't something that Viger instigated. I wouldn't think. Yeah, and unless there was a time travel element to it, you know, Enterprise killed it because there was that one episode where they found Borg and the ice, you know, so it's like, well, so much for that timeline. Right.

Well, well, I think the Borg and the ice may have had something to do, with the first contact movie because remember that the enterprise traveled back in time and the borg followed or rather they were found the borg and uh and uh yeah so the enterprise had a role in first contact with sephraim cochran's uh first uh test of the warp drive and yeah and i think enterprise enterprise is set uh five five years i think or ten years after first contact. It was 10 to 15 because they

had to have time to build the first engine and and I believe they did age Zephym Cochran a bit so I'm thinking it was

1015 something like that if I remember correctly it's been a while since I've watched that show so I don't remember for sure all right yeah there was and of course the original series definitely had some good storytelling as well in fact it's the original series a lot of those episodes are

written by actual science fiction writers by shore leave comes in mind that was theodore sturgeon was behind that one famously sitting on the edge of forever was harlan elson wrote that one kind of So every opportunity I get, I recommend a series of books called These Are the Voyages by Mark Cushman. It is a collection of six volumes, the first three of which cover the behind the scenes of each season of the original series, and then you get into the phase two time in between, and then you get to the movies. and one of the things that Roddenberry ran into early on is the fact that yes, we've got all of these famous science fiction writers who want to put stories together. But one, we didn't have a show Bible because there's no show.

I mean, there was a show Bible, but there wasn't any show that they could watch yet outside of the two pilots. So there wasn't any kind of a consistent. aesthetic there was nothing there was nothing there that said this is Star Trek yet and two

you had a lot of science fiction writers who could write science fiction but they couldn't write television and the format threw them a lot and Jean Roddenberry and then later on DC Fontana John D.F. Black

Jean Coon all of those guys ended up rewriting pretty much everybody and you know you mentioned city on the edge of forever harlan ellison was famous notorious for his falling out with roddenberry over that because roddenberry rewrote the episode completely and it doesn't resemble hardly at all what harlan ellison wrote which he submitted for hugo his original script now that one has since been adapted into a graphic novel i think over at idw but But the script that Hardlin wrote would have been way too expensive and wasn't consistent at all with what had been established as the look for Star Trek at that point. So, you know, Rodbury being the executive producer and, you know, Gene Coon being line producer, D.C. Fontana, you know, eventually becoming story editor, John D.F. Black in there, Stephen Carabastos. all of them were responsive had the responsibility of making sure that every episode from week to week looked consistent from the other ones you know the characters all had to sound like them you know

kirk's got to sound like kirk spark's got to sound like spock this machine works this way this technology works this way so you always had to have some rewrites pretty much on every script and some people didn't take to that very well i see i see Yeah, I guess, yeah, that's a good point. That's good points because, yeah, especially that first season was quite inconsistent. It took us a while to learn what agency the Enterprise was with. I think it wasn't really until halfway through first season, even the second season. Then we learned about the United Federation of Planets and Starfleets and all that.

it was really inconsistent I remember Spock he was called Volcanian for a good part of that first season before I finally settled on Vulcan. Yeah

so well and and it's it's interesting that the first the first mention of Starfleet is

I can't what episode that was um court martial okay yeah about halfway through the first season yeah so yeah so and court martial became you where it be and and also court martial I believe was also the last episode where we heard any mention of the volcanician

somebody had mentioned the vulcanian incident the volcanician expedition or something there in in the bar but yeah it was it was one of those things we were figuring out as we go because there was no lore and nobody working on this show had in the inkling that it was going to go past five years right it was going to be the show and we're going to do the show and hopefully we go five years and then it was done it was a job yeah by the way i'm going to correct you a little bit jason is uh this side of paradise was the last time we heard to turn volcanic in oh okay okay yeah and uh that one for our audience that's when they had the weird plants that infected everyone made everyone happy and

uh wars yeah the thing about it too is the the the first and last and all of that stuff gets a little bit wonky because the episodes did not air in production order exactly and that complicates things too because you start looking into which one was shot before the other one and a lot of that was just you know which one is this which script is ready next even though they're assigned a certain thing and there's a couple of them that still in the history is listed out of order because the production the productions were flipped but nobody changed the numbers and it was in first season i believe when something like that when that happened i think who no it might have been second season because i think who mourns for adonis was one

of them but i can't i can't i can't swear i think they did i think they did throughout all three seasons actually because yeah the first episode that aired was the man trap yeah not even the pilot that was that was that was the well the pilot wasn't even supposed to air once they did it well and that was the second pilot the second pilot wasn't actually supposed to air it was just made in order to sell it to nbc and what happened was it ended up airing somewhere like like fourth or fifth or fifth I think fifth in the in the season because no other episode was ready because all of the visual effects were taking longer than anybody expected them to and so the episodes weren't done and so well we've got this one here it is and so it airs completely out of order and it doesn't look anything like any of the rest of the rest of the show but it wasn't supposed to air that was a part of the plan it almost makes me think of uh uh uh uh when they had the the episodes where it was just them sitting around watching star trek going to the back to the planet with pike the men of azari yes yeah that was the first that was

it was starts to star trek and there's just sitting around watching star trek yeah well and and and that episode was done because they were they were over budget um and they had to have they had to have a certain episode count and scripts weren't ready and so they're like well we got this first pilot that we can't use that we have i mean it can't air we can't do anything with it what hey wait a minute why don't we make a two-part or wrap around with a story and we can incorporate this footage and save a lot of money and have two episodes in the count and we don't have to worry about and that's how that all came about is because they were scrambling to meet the the order from nbc otherwise we wouldn't have the menagerie

True, true. And that way. And that, of course, provided the bookends for the Christopher Pike story, which I'm glad we got some of the newer stuff now because we're starting, we now have more of Pikes in between story. Oh, Strange New World is great. Okay. Well, there, there are, I, I haven't really got to see much to have strange your worlds, but I already, but I am aware that there are inconsistencies between it and, and the, the, the original series.

You could call it inconsistency track. I mean, it is, it is such a terrible, all, all of Alex Kurtzman's stuff is hot garbage. You don't even give me sorry. I mean, we're celebrating Star Trek. Kurtzman track is not Star Trek That's just that's how I see it This and hopefully and very soon As we sit here and record this very soon Hopefully Alex Kurtzman will be shown the door So we'll see

His contract is up and on this So Yeah it's it's one of those things that You know there were Star Trek was a particular thing Kurtzman never got it But Seth Macfarling got it.

That's the funny thing. You look at the Orville and it's like he understood Star Trek. Curstman didn't. Well, and really a lot of the complaint about Orville was the fact that the first couple of seasons were more comedic parody until they started taking himself seriously. It's like, hey, we're actually doing the Star Trek without the, you know, with the serial numbers filed off. And everybody looked at it like, well, season three. isn't really a comedy anymore. They're actually doing Star Trek.

But you look at how many people were on that, on that production, who came from Star Trek the next generation and, and Voyager and DS9 and all that. It's inevitable that that show would become a Star Trek pastiche. Yeah. Right. The, well, the early seasons, in my opinion, I got the feeling that, you know, the fans wanted,

the fans won Star Trek and they wanted Galaxy Quest they weren't getting either until the Orville and they basically lumped both into one. Yeah, well the Orreville was Galaxy Quest first and then in season three it was Star Trek.

Right, but even in the first episode, it got more dramatic but see, because you got the comedy parody the comedy parody elements of it kind of eventually kind of

fell by the wayside and they got to be doing more serious dramatic and you know star trek like episodes as opposed to you know poking at it a little bit like galaxy quest would have right but even in the first season they they still had a lot of these the star trek feel to it because they you know the way the stories played out that you know they had it was the kind of thing that really challenged your perceptions yeah in an intellectual way and and so yeah it was it was wrapped in comedy well but it really had a star trek flare to it the or the or the orville did the beginning was the trouble with tribles the amy if you go back and you look at star trek comedy you've got the trouble with tribles you've got i mud uh those two episodes were very much kind of in that same flavor

as the orville uh much to jen much to roddenberry's frustration he hated the fact that that anybody did any comedic episodes in star trek it wasn't supposed to be a comedy that was all jean coon and when jean coon left and fred freyberger took over third season he was basically going off a marching orders from from roddenberry to make it more dramatic series and let's cut the comedy crap so and then it had his comedic moments the uh plato stepchildren comes in mind uh for comedic effect in the third season and even then it wasn't what was comedic way what was comedic about plato stepchildren uh the fact that uh kirk and spock were uh forced by those uh aliens to do ridiculous things well sure but that wasn't that wasn't played for comedy right it may

it may look ridiculous but it was humiliating for those two characters that wasn't played for comedy though Trouble with Tribbles was played for comedy. Agreed. I Mud was played for comedy. It was specifically aimed that way. Played of subchildren wasn't. And there was playing comedy in NextGen too soon.

Heck, there was even the Radchis Okana where data took upon itself to learn about comedy. And there was a DS9. DS9, they did. trials and tribulations. That's where they went back and they got to play with the comedy. Yeah. Yeah.

And that one happened purely by accident. Because the guys were all, you know, the producer, the Ira and so the other guys were trying to figure out, okay, what can we do for the 30th anniversary of Star Trek? and you had you know Voyager was doing the they did a crossover with yeah Sulu and Star Trek 6

they're like what can we do with DS9 and they were talking a couple of different options with the orbs and the guy who played Arne Darwin walks into the commissary at lunch and they're like oh hey

him yeah And that's where that started is to go back in time and use Arn Darvin as the, as the agent of change to cycle back through into that. That was a huge undertaking, too, from a visual effects standpoint. Oh, sure. Very expensive. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. But to see Jed Zia dachs in the miniskirt, totally worth it. Oh, boy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, DS9, another great episode for me there was the Blood Oath where they brought back those original series Clingons. Yes.

Coar, Colath, and Kang. But the foreheads on all them and just got them together in one room. Yeah, that was fun. That was fun. yeah and coincidentally day of the dove is i've always said is my favorite's original series episode and that was the one with uh kang my god sarah and we got and we got kang because john it was originally written for core and john colicose was was committed on another project and couldn't do it and so they had to rewrite the character and that's why we got kang and they're like okay well who can we

get to play this play this part and actually got Michael Ansarra it was brilliant in the in the role he is yeah he was yeah so yeah they've since that passed of course yeah yeah yeah so yeah I got the 10 minute

warning because I'm a cheapo and yeah doing the basic stuff but yeah we'll cut off about five in us so so yeah that was my favorite to TOS with

David the Dove and if you haven't seen it from my audience that's when the Klingons and the Air Price crew they're trapped

by a non-corporal entity and forced to fight each other with swords. It's a good episode. Yeah. And that was third season Trek.

Third season, he gets a lot of hate, but there's some gems in there too David of the Dove would be one for the world's hollow knife touch the sky that'd be another one with the

asteroid ship and McCoy being terminally ill was that was that third season that's third season yeah well okay see the one of the thing is see Fred Freiberger gets a lot of hate for season three coming in

and not being familiar with Star Trek however Freiberger was working against a couple of it he was he was he was working behind the eight ball from the very beginning because jean ronbury checked out when they changed when they gave him his the gave him the friday night death slot time runnyberry's like okay i'm done he went to go he went to m gm to work on pretty maids all in row and left marching orders for fryberger and Fryberger's like, okay, well, I've just got to do the best I can.

Everybody bailed. D.C. Fontana left. Jean Coon was on his way out the door. Robert Justman, who thought he should have gotten Freiberger's job because he'd been the associate producer all this time. He was the natural choice, and Runbury didn't pick him. So he eventually left. So by the time you got into the third season, you've got Arthur Singer.

is your story editor he didn't know anything about star trek fryberger didn't know anything about star track and the only thing he's got to work with is the network coming in saying uh we need this many episodes and we'd really like to have planet episodes that was something that they were always talking about every every season we want more planet episodes and fryberger's like you guys have cut my budget stuff i can't even afford extras not to not not to not to not mention locations i can't Right. I can't even put a crew in the ship. Wow.

You know, and, you know, he was, the network was, was trying to kill the show. Paramount was trying to kill the show because it was too expensive. Of course. Out of the seven. Yeah. Well, out of the 79 episodes, I think four came in under budget. Wow. And the first season, Star Trek and Mission Impossible, and then when they added Manix,

killed Desi Lou because they were all too expensive and Lucille Ball ended up having to sell Desi Lou to Gulf and Western which owned Paramount at the time and Paramount is just crunching numbers

they don't care they don't care anything about Starrer but it's too expensive so they slashed the budget every year, every season and deliberately did everything they could to kill the show

because NBC didn't like Roddenberry. Paramount didn't like the show because it wasn't cheap. The Firefly got a similar fate, but they didn't even really get a chance. I thought Fox was after him for one season and that's it. Yeah. Firefly, yeah, that was definitely done out of order. Yeah, they do the pilot. And Fox is like, no, let's do a second pilot. And they aired everything out of order. so yeah um well and the guys in fox never did understand that show yeah and uh that'd be a discussion

for another time of course but but uh but uh yeah i'm i'm excited to see what they have in mind for uh this uh firefly uh revival and everything but the animated yeah the animated yeah i don't think it's going to happen okay so all right well we'll see what happens um but uh yeah i guess we'll close in that Well, three seasons, but they kept in reruns and everything. And that led to next gen and all that. And to the point we're here talking 60 years of Star Trek. So, yeah. All right.

And still going strong. Oh, yeah. Well. Well, still going. It's still going, but it's not. Yeah, hopefully. Well, well, the fan base is still strong. Let's put it that way.

Absolutely. Absolutely. The fan base is still strong. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, I guess we're going to end it's there. I'll record a endendum to end everything.

So Dan, Jason, thanks for coming on. Sure. Absolutely. Yeah. And, yeah, peace in long life. Live longer prosper. Okay, so I think we might as well leave you with a list of episodes to watch if you are just getting into Star Trek.

So I left up to Google's AI to come up with the lists from me, so I'll go on, I'll go on and read that. So to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Star Trek, you should prioritize a mix of foundational pilots episodes correctly acclaimed classics and the best franchise anniversary of homages. These must-watch episodes

capture the adventurous, thought-provoking spirit that has defined Star Trek for six decades now. So, foundational classics, The Cage, the original pilots with Captain Christopher Pike, as played by Jeffrey Hunter

says the bedrock for the entire Trek universe and is essential viewing before watching modern iterations, especially Discovery and Strange New Worlds which feature Christopher Pike

in those cases played by Anson Mount and as you heard from the discussion the menagerie the only two-parter of the original series is essentially the cage where

yeah they're watching start it's an episode of Star Trek where they're watching Star Trek it's the yeah they're watching the cage is what's going on that that's Captain Pike in the BP chair once for yes twice for no where no man has gone before this is the second pilot that introduced to Captain Kirk

and Captain James R Kirk since we're on the subject of inconsistencies. We all know his male initial is actually T. Yeah. And this was Gary Mitchell

and gaining psychic abilities and basically becoming a god. And the man trap. This is the this was the first episode to actually air. And this is the

assault vampire episode. Pencles of TOS, the original series, Citi on the issue for every year. Let's talk about that. They're initially written by Haram Ellison, then really reforms to the story we know. Now with Joan Collins playing Edith Keeler,

who has to die in order for history to take its normal course. introduced the Guardian of Forever Time Portal which we don't see again until Discovery or the animated series since that's technically canon balance of terror is listed here this introduces

the Romulins from Lushthan for those who are not tricky He's the Romulus, our cousins of the Vulcans. They're descended from Vulcans who left Vulcan because they rejected the teachings of logic. They wanted to maintain more of a warrior system. And did that for a good long time before.

Ultimately, their son goes Nova. go into diaspora and ultimately wind up back on Vulcan by the 32nd century but they've still retained their culture

is the thing the Romans and the Vulcans learned to coexist with one another so that's good and Trouble Troubles which again this is a

pure comedy episode with Troubles and little fur balls that kept reproducing and reproducing to no end and all that which brings us to Best University homagees

trials and tribulations you heard Dan talk about where they found a creative way to interspice the Trouble of Troubles with Troubles with the live action Deep Space 9

actors and all that and yeah Terry Farrell and the original women's uniform 10 of 10 and those old scientists this is actually strange new worlds

it was actually a crossover with lower decks lower decks being the animated strictly comedy series with a lot of callbacks to classic track but they managed to bring Boimler and

Mariner the two leads in Lard Dex back into the past because Lardex is post TNG just post TNG DDS9 Voyager and they're

taking it back to Pikes era in the Strangelo World and we get to see Tony Newsom and Jake Jack Wade play Mariner and Boimler, respectively in live action. And that's a fairly funny episode, directed by Jonathan Franks, by the way. Captain, no, Commander Riker for in TNG, and then during TNG took up Niam Mantel as a director to which he is absolutely known to this day. Now, that's a fairly short list.

Can we, can I see a top 20 list of must watch Star Trek episodes? notice that I'm doing the talking here I'm not laying any AI do all the talking but the defendant's top 20 must watch episodes span multiple series

and and they start with TOSC on the edge of forever bounces air then they include Space Seat that's the episode with Kahn and I have been on record certainly on this podcast I think

that's an overrated episode Khan is a very overrated villain, if you ask me. Miramar, this introduced the mirror universe. Spock with the goatee and agonizing. Agonizers and agony booths. And you win your promotions by killing your superiors. That was introduced there.

Trouble Tribbles, we've talked about Amok Time. this introduces a lot of things that we associate with Vulcans like they go through the palm fire every seven years where they they're biologically urged to mate and will fight to the death or that Kunat Khali Phi and I think it was actually the first time we actually saw the planet Vulcan in Star Trek. For next generation, they add best of both worlds. This is Picard

being assimilated into the Borg. I am Locutus of Borg. The Inner Lights. I think Sir Patrick Stur said this is his favorite episode. Picard

is forced by an alien probe to mentally relive the last moments of that probe's civilization. because their son went Nova and all that. So they developed a technology that allowed people to relive those final moments. And that's the entirety of that episode. Yesterday's Enterprise, a little time travel.

This was the Enterprise C, travel forward in time, altering history to where the Farish is still in war with the Clingons. And by the way, there, X-O was Shooter McGavin, Chris McDonald, the actor

playing him. So, and, no, as far as I know, that particular character does not eat pieces of shit for breakfast.

The measure of a man, uh, uh, that's a, that one is a special irrelevant to today or when, uh,

human rights are being attacked especially if you're of a different color you speak a different language or or you identify as LGBTQ and that's a good demonstration of that in this case with data being an android as the subject of the discrimination because they want to because the scientist wants to tear him apart and see how he's ticks. I'm sorry, don't I get a say in all this? And on the subject of the language, Darmak is listed here. Picard and an alien

captain forced to work together everything, but there's a language barrier because the captain speaks in metaphors and it's how do people communicate when they don't understand each other?

And tapestry, that's a good one. It's basically Picard is about to die. Q, racism, Q, those uninitiated, is a omnipotent alien being who's able to manipulate space and time and generally fucks with Picard in particular. and then later at Janeway a little more. And he was able, with some back in, his decisions when he was at Starfleet Academy did lead to him becoming captain,

but he went, if it goes to different routes, things would change, right? And, and that's, keep that mind that the decision we make to wind up dictating our lives and that's a fundamental aspect of that particular episode. All good things. This is the series

finale for TNG which is Picard's jumping back to when the series began to forward about when Picard takes place and

staying in the present. And it's another cute influenced thing I highly recommend seeing all that for DS9 they list

in the pale moonlights I'll just read the description because this is one I am a lot of the a few of these I have not seen

in all I see but in the pale moonlight Cisco Captain Cisco compromises his Federation morals to trick the Riemelans

into entering in the Dominion War. The Visitor, a devastatingly emotional standalone tale of Jake Sisko, spending his life trying to save his father trapped in time. Far beyond the stars, Cisco experiences a vision of himself

as a 1950s sci-fi writer fighting racism. Which is important to point out, because Cisco, played by Avery Brooks, first African-American to lead a Star Trek show and then duets, this one I have seen. It's a heavy dialogue-driven episode

examining war crimes, trauma, and the Cardassian file Clark's dark secrets. Then you go to Voyager. It says, Blink of an Eye, Voyager begins trapped around a planet where time moves thousands of times faster, influencing their entire evolution.

Yes. So that's an interesting concept. One day for us would be like, I think it's 30 years for them or something. That kind of evolution. in the year of hell, parts one and two, a grim, high-stakes story where Voyager is systematically destroyed by time-altering enemy captain,

played by Kurt Wood Smith, who's pride barren known. Either as a Clint's Bautiker, if you're old enough to have seen Robocop at first release, or more likely, Red Foreman on that 70's show. He'll stick a foot in your ass for being a dumbass. And Modern Trek, they mentioned, once again, those old scientists from Strangler Worlds.

So, so there you go. There's some reading, there's some viewing for you. And I think that's going to end it for this very special edition of Uncall for. If you are Trekkie,

continue being a trekey do what you do and and yeah I hope to see at a convention at some points and peace and long life and and uh

this podcast is uncalled for is host and produced and edited by myself Mike's Chernevsky noted Treki our opening music and in fact all of our music for this episode, with one exception, is what's created at suno.com, suno.com for all your AI music production needs.

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