Upgrade - 100: The Least Less

Episode Date: August 1, 2016

In our hundredth episode, Jason and Myke break down Apple’s quarterly results, ponder its TV strategy, and Myke reluctantly views one of Jason’s favorite movies for an all-new Myke at the Movies.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 100 oh the 100 lasers are out today's show is brought to you by casper and squarespace my name is mike hurley and I am joined by Jason 100snell. 100! Woo! We did it, Mr. Snell. What a thing we have done here. 100 episodes of Upgrade. Yep, the sun kept shining and the earth kept moving around it and 100 weeks passed and here we are. We made it's good very good so to celebrate our 100th episode today at the end of the show we are going to be discussing star trek 2 the wrath of khan in the triumphant return of mike at the movies yay but we have some follow-up to get to and some topics before that and we start with uh the official announcement of free agents jason's new show

with david sparks which premiered on relay fm last week jason would you like to explain to our listeners why they should be tuning in to free agents there's so many reasons to tune in first is for the theme song as provided by mr chris breen in the style of a spy, 60s spy movie, for the narration of said theme song by Mr. Matt Alexander, using his finest spy narration English accent. And then there's the content of the show. It's a show about being an independent worker, which so many more people are becoming, and I really believe is a trend that's going to just intensify

as we move further into this century. So David and I recently, you know, a year and a half ish left our jobs after 20 years working for a regular paycheck. And we've learned things and made mistakes and have observations. And that's sort of what the show is about is topic by topic, sort of like what the issues are in being an independent worker. And we're going to mix those in with interviews with people who are also, like us, independent workers in various areas.

And that's the show. And it's every other week, fortnightly. And it's short. We're trying to make it more like a half-hour show, not like an hour-and-a-half show. So that's the, that's the plan. And the first episode is about, uh, about scope and, and not like doing, not taking on too much work and figuring out how much work you should take on. And that's directly because when

David said, I have that idea for a show that we should do together. Um, and David, unlike me, David doesn't have a million podcasts. he only has the one mac power users um but when when he proposed this i was like okay i'm intrigued but how do we make this work that it's not gonna it's not gonna kill both of us and we we tried to work very hard on the concept in order to limit the scope of the podcast to something that was doable by us so that all fed sort of into the first episode too so what i like about free agents is that neither of you kind of purport to be experts and it's like a little bit of discovery for everyone as it goes along which i quite like you know i think that's a nice way to do it yeah we'll see where it goes and when we try to not do an intro episode it's really just a regular episode um yeah which i like

that you're not getting an episode of we may may go back at some point, we probably will, and tell our stories a little more directly about what led us to make the move, but that's not the, we don't want to start there. We wanted to start with real stuff. And we're hoping that the listeners will also give us some feedback and tell their stories and we'll just kind of explore as we go what the show can grow into.

So you can go check it out relay.fm free agents so great little piece of artwork there from uh mr frank towers oh yeah great great art great theme i hope we can live up to the art theme and narration i'll put it that way uh giacomo uh recommended drawn strip reader as the best comic reader application for the mac um i haven't used it because i don't want to but i took a look at the screenshots and it does look new and it looks modern um a little bit better than uh than the one that we were looking at last week which i can't even remember the name of but was was touting universal support this one is on the mac app store yeah even yeah so check that out i haven't i haven't tried it but if you're looking for a mac uh comic book reader look for that one but again i highly

recommend you read on an ipad it's really nice i was doing that this weekend i was on i was on a train going from la to san diego for the weekend and i read a bunch of comics on Marvel Unlimited actually sitting there on the train it was great I haven't yet I will but not yet probably on my next trip I think is when I'm going to load up some stuff and whilst we're mentioning comics I want to

provide a piece of follow up strangely we got more people tell me about this today the day that we're recording the next episode than any other day but uh the actress who plays wonder woman her name is pronounced gail godot i assume it's because we were telling people that we need to people have been telling we need to pronounce the t um it's not it's not waiting waiting for godot because she's israeli and not french apparently so we would be waiting for Gadot.

Gadot. I thought I was being fancy. I think so did you. Yes. Oh, yes. Really, we should have just given in and gone with the on-the-face-of-it pronunciation. In general, I just try to pronounce things

with a French accent because it makes it more exciting. Like the accent in Pokemon makes me want to say Pokemon because it's pronounced better that way i also said gale it's gal it's just getting worse and worse thank you tenor bay in the chat room yeah i was wondering if this was pronounced even weirder than i thought gale really gal is gale but it could be but it's not it's gal gad Gadot. Basically, call her Wonder Woman is what I'm saying.

She's Wonder Woman. That's who she is. Wonder Woman through and through. Are you familiar with Carpool Karaoke? Yes, absolutely. It's a late, late show with James Corden, CBS show. He's on after Stephen Colbert. It's the 12.30 a.m. time slot on CBS.

He has a talk show. I'm a big fan of James Corden. He's a British comedy actor. It's been a lot of great comedy series like Gavin and Stacey, which is incredible, which you should check out. And you know that, of course, I know him from his two guest appearances on Doctor Who as Craig. Yep.

The guy who the doctor rents a room from him. And then, of course, there's's aliens and things um great in that too and then he was on broadway and he won a tony award and uh then he got this job at cbs doing a talk show so one of the regular recurring segments um on james corden's late late show is carpool karaoke where he picks up a celebrity and they drive around together singing and there's tends to be part song part music and part comedy as well as is how they tend to run uh the one that kind of really broke out was the adele carpool karaoke um and there's been a few

more since then there was one recently with the first lady um they're really really entertaining now there has been it's been rumored for many months now, I think since the Adele episode, that there was going to be a spin-off TV show of Carpool Karaoke. There were reports. I don't even think it was a rumor. I think that CBS was shopping a Carpool Karaoke series around. was shopping a carpool karaoke series around. I think that was definitely... The reports were out there and people were wondering who was going to buy the carpool karaoke series

because it would be produced by CBS and by James Corden's company, but it wouldn't be hosted by James Corden because he already has a show. So that is the thing that's the sad thing to me, but we'll get to that in a moment. It has now been announced that Apple have got the rights to the new show as part of apple music um from my content perspective great fit right

music related yeah you you get the sense that apple has its eye that's like the number one priority for apple when it's thinking about investing in original video content is is let's look at everything that's potentially music related because that that allows them to just sort of stitch it into to apple music instead of making everybody wonder if apple's doing a whole over the top whatever they just say no we've already got a subscription service it's apple music find music shows and this is a music show so it sort of makes sense and i feel like that there's probably likely to be some kind of update. I don't know what iOS 10 is like for video

in Apple Music. I know that on iOS 9 and on previous versions, the video player inside of the music app isn't as good as it is in other areas. There's like a lot of letterboxing made by the application. So it would be nice to see

some updates there, especially if they're moving into video content. It just still continues would be nice to see some updates there, especially if they're moving into video content. It just still continues to be peculiar to me that Apple are signing up these shows, but they're in Apple Music as opposed to an Apple video service. Every time I see something like this, I just keep thinking to myself

that there was supposed to be an Apple TV service that just doesn't exist yet yeah yeah there was a story about that too that i don't think we even have it in our show notes here but there was a wall street journal story last week about apple and the way the story was pitched was oh apple executives are so arrogant and nobody and nobody trusts them and all the other entertainment that i think left unsaid was are the entertainment executives um humble people i don't think that's true either i think the arrogance is that apple's from apple's perspective apple understands the future of technology and how it intersects with entertainment and the entertainment people are dinosaurs and from the entertainment industry's perspective apple is this text company tech company who

doesn't understand anything about the entertainment industry and is acting like they are their personal you know industry saviors and they're not they're they're super arrogant about i see both sides of it the wall street journal kind of not both seeing both sides pretty much the story being told by the entertainment people but the idea that eddie q walks into meetings strangely detailed with hawaiian shirt and uh and no socks okay and jeans all right uh that was a detail in the story and the the entertainment industry people were wearing suits of course uh good to know good to know the dress code um apple comes in and says, you know, we want to do this. We don't want to do your big bundle.

We want to take specific shows. Here's what we want to do. They basically came in with a product. And the entertainment industry says, eh, that's not how we do business. And you can see the disconnect there. But it's interesting to have it spelled out like that. And I think you can argue both sides. You can argue that Apple is coming in with their idea of a product and trying to get a whole industry to just change how they make their product in order to suit Apple and them being skeptical of that. You could also argue that Apple's coming in and saying, you guys are chasing your own tails.

You don't know what the future lies. You're afraid to make changes. And we're just going to come in and suggest we make all these changes and that they're reluctant to change and so they reject what apple is selling i sort of see i see both sides of it um but it's interesting that this is all going on um but anyway that that's the that's the reason why apple doesn't have its own tv service and instead sort of has gone to uh hey if you you want to have a TV service, you could make an app for Apple TV, but Apple's not doing it yet. Yeah, so all of this continues to be strange to me, though.

Like, I don't know, just the idea of there being TV shows, but not in a TV thing. And as you outlined, there seems to be some kind of issue with getting the deals in place but this isn't stopping apple from pushing ahead and they've they've picked up carpool karaoke so the thing that upsets me about this i guess is that james corden won't be a part of it i think it's entertaining because of his ability to make it so um so i'm interested to see what they do and it would also be very peculiar for him to drop

the most popular part of his late, late show. I imagine that his segment will continue, and then they'll also do these things, but I don't know how that's going to work. And if that's the case, it makes me think it will be with somebody who's not as good as him with less popular musicians. And it makes me wonder too

what's the format like is it going to be like the lip sync uh challenge or whatever is it going to be something where it's like uh two contestants do carpool karaoke and there's a winner or something yeah um i don't know i don't know how that show what that show looks like um it'll be interesting to see what they do. But just on the face of it, it's interesting that this is happening. Not a bad fit at all for Apple Music. Something I'm not sure about is looking at how this fits into the stable. From what we know so far, there is the Dr. Dre produced series.

It's pretty outstanding. Even though I saw some news go by that uh i think he was arrested over the weekend which is a whole different thing that's another episode for the show yeah yeah there's some kind of uh aggravation some kind of violent thing i think and he was arrested over um i don't really that's kind of being like rumor reported on like i haven't seen any facts on it yet but it seemed like he was actually arrested apple employee right um and then we've also got this uh app show now this app show this planet of the apps i i'm not sure whether this is going to be on Apple services or on television. I haven't seen that yet.

I think that might be undecided. But this could fit into that stable. I think that was a direct Apple thing, but maybe I'm getting that wrong, too. I thought that was a direct from Apple thing. I don't know. We'll see. So, yeah, just another addition to Apple's media right here. Carpool karaoke.

Lots of weird things happening these days. So Joe Stu in the chat room has given me a link to a Hollywood Reporter article about Dr. Dre there was some kind of confrontation in which he was handcuffed and issued a citation but he's not going to be charged but it was some kind of gun related thing it's a bit

not good, no matter how you look at it really I do wonder about this kind of thing. But there you go. Yep. If you want to read about it, we've got something in the notes. All right, Jason, today's episode is brought to all of everybody, including you and me, by Casper.

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Apple's Q3 financial results were out last week as well. There was a lot of stuff happening last week just after the show. Good time for me to go on vacation. Perfect time. week as well yeah there's a lot of stuff happening last week just after after the show good good good time to for me to go on vacation perfect time so i'm gonna put um a couple of links in the show notes to some of your commentary and charts yes i spent my uh i spent my tuesday of my vacation i wrote i wrote i uh wrote 4 000 words launched a new podcast recorded another podcast happy vacation everybody generated 15 charts yeah anyway independent workers is what i'm saying here is my boss is a jerk and makes me work sometimes when i don't want to um yeah so apple's results came out and and uh you know

it was a week ago now people have seen it i think what's fascinating about it is first off this is apple apple's gonna take it in the shorts for its quarterly results for the next couple quarters too it's just going to happen because they had such a great court year last year the last fiscal year and it's gonna um compare when you do a year over year comparison it's gonna look bad it's just that that's just how it's going to be the big difference is that uh now people expect it so the stock market actually reacted positively this time because and people are like oh look apple lost went you know went down year on year on revenue two quarters in a row and their stock went up how ridiculous is that and it always shocks me how people who seem to know nothing about how the stock market works um to comment

on the stock market it's amazing uh so the the guidance was pretty good they're still going to go down year over year in revenue next quarter but uh it seems like they're they're optimistic and in fact the analysts suspect that they're being a little conservative with their guess of um of uh of sales next quarter or the current the current quarter that we're in. Um, and, uh, the, you know, the pessimism of the cooling down of the iPhone is now built into the

Apple stock price. So you're not, you're not going to have the, the stock's not going to get smushed every quarter when the results came out, because it kind of happened. The air came out of the balloon. Uh,

everybody like sort of got to grips with new reality that they weren't going to keep on growing like they did last year. And so on the holistic level, it's basically that, which is they're still struggling with their comparison to last year. They're still very profitable. This was the second best third fiscal quarter they've ever done. But last year was the best. But if you compare this to two years ago it's better than that so it really is this aberrant year that uh you know but it's those those are real numbers i mean i don't want to apologize for it's like the aberrant year makes it tough to do year over year comparisons that said they had a great year

and this year is not as great as that and that's the truth i'll come back to that in a moment but like going back to what you were saying about the fact that it hasn't hurt the stock makes a lot of sense because the stock has already lost what it was going to lose when it was decided that the iphone wasn't going to do that what it did again so they're kind of now building on that and also you can correct me if i'm wrong but it feels like apple maybe did a better job telling the story beforehand. I think there seemed to be a lot more shock

about what happened in the last quarterly results than maybe there should have been. I'm not sure, but I felt like this time everyone was kind of expecting it, where last time maybe people were expecting it to be not so great, but not as not so great as it ended up being and there were a lot of things coming out like you know maybe it wasn't just because they uh had a

really great sales but also because they over forecasted a little bit like yeah it seemed to be a bit of a disaster where this time it felt like they were a little bit more in control of the message than they were before yeah and the chinese uh numbers that went down a lot last quarter that was a bit of a surprise at how bad that was and uh they went down again but it wasn't a surprise this time and that and that's just that's how it works all everybody's expectations are built into the stock oh hello uh i want to just run down some of the actual numbers and and then i'll come back to to that year-on-year thing that you mentioned a moment ago.

So this quarter was $42.4 billion in revenue with $7.8 billion in profit. And Apple met their forecast, as you said. I think they exceeded their forecast a little bit, didn't they, on this earnings? Maybe so. It was in the ballpark, yeah. But as we said, still down on 2015 it was down revenue was down 7.2 billion dollars year on year so as you said it's the same story as

last quarter and that it was all about the iphone 6 demand etc etc led to that quarter standing out and and as i've heard you mentioned we mentioned this last time i've heard you mention this um in other places like on on six colors and on the secret podcast about like if you remove that year the growth curve continues which is interesting right that if you look at um year on year if if you remove 2015 and you look at 2012 2013 2014 and 2016 you can kind of fill in the gaps to see that it would have just been a steady growth continuing right which is an interesting fact but the fact of the matter is it can't be removed and that's why we're in this scenario like it'd be great if we could just remove that year but that year did

happen and i think uh and what you see in the stock, which again, Apple stock price sort of doesn't interest me. I'm not an investor. I'm not going to be. But where you really see it is people saw that growth and thought, oh boy, Apple just is going to keep on growing. This is great. And now we look at it and go, that was an aberration. Right? And now we look at it and go, that was an aberration, right? And you have to deflate all of that optimism that came out of the wild sales of last year.

Like, look at Apple's growth. It continues to go. It's going to keep on going like this. And now we look at it and go, no, that was really just pent up demand for a larger screened iPhone. And so they sold a lot of iPhone 6s. And that's maybe never going to happen again or it won't happen again for a few years.

And that's not what their business looks like. It actually looks more like it did the year before. And that's where we are. I would be of the persuasion that it will never happen again. It seems unlikely that, I mean, there could be a scenario like that. But that amount of pent-up demand where all of the rest of the premium smartphone market has large screened phones and apple refuses and refuses and refuses and then all of a sudden it comes out with two different sizes of large screen phones um i think that did it right i mean and that's that was unusual and probably won't happen again but you never know never say never

there could be some other aberrant product that that leads to a rush on um on on that but it's unlikely right because mostly you maybe it's worth saying that it wouldn't happen again i believe with the iphone i i feel like that the iphone as it is right now that there isn't enough in that product market that we can see in the even relatively distant future that would differentiate so much from competing smartphones you know we're kind of getting to feature completeness right smartphones well yeah that's always the challenge is that then it's just about a replacement cycle and new people coming in but but not the tech driving uh dramatic uh sales because the tech every year is so much better than the last year's tech. That used to be the case and it isn't any longer.

That's been the source for the last like four or five years now of the stories that people write, which is smartphones are boring now. And there's some truth to that is that the tech doesn't advance as fast as it did in the early days when they were starting with nothing. And every year was this complete dramatic reinvention. with nothing and every year was this complete dramatic reinvention i'd also argue that it's just really hard to create a product so dramatically different that it that it makes everybody who's got a previous version drop everything and buy the new one immediately that's hard and you see it and we'll get to the ipad numbers in a little bit but you know that ipad pro 9.7 that's the flagship ipad that's the that that's a big jump in ipad and um you know you could argue that something like that could have really driven the ipad numbers and it didn't really happen so i'm not sure that that product exists and also

you know maybe maybe the fact that it's different sizes wasn't even the reason maybe it was just china was the reason and there isn't going to be another China. They're done now, right? Again, for the foreseeable future, there isn't another China. It might be India, but that's a long way away before there is an emerging middle class, which the iPhone isn't available to. And then all of a sudden, the floodgates are open.

So I think that's kind of where we are with that, like kind of the quote-unquote. Let's talk about the iPad. Yes. My feeling is positive news, not necessarily good news on the iPad. So the positive news being, and you can correct me here because I find this difficult, iPad year-on-year revenue is up. So Apple made more money than they did in Q3 of 2015.

Yeah. But they didn't sell more of them. They still sold less. Now, this is because it was the ASP. We're not getting into that right now. I can't listen to this. The amount that their sales are going down is decreasing. I know, it's madness.

It's madness. So yeah, basically that. The average selling price of an iPad went up a lot. Yeah, and this is because the iPad Pros are more expensive, and they may be including accessories into this. Maybe. I don't know. Maybe these ones? I mean, they're kind of maybe you know it's possible the pencil might be in there but not in units i don't know it's possible i don't know if that if that's the case or if those are just going another but uh regardless yeah so so it's good well i mean and we'll say this i mean i joke about

the the how it's the year overover-year revenue is down less, but it is true. It is sort of like almost at even. And the revenue increase, or the year-over-year units are down less. The revenue increase, it's the first time in 10 quarters that that's happened. And really, it's the second time in like 13 quarters. The iPad has been falling in units year over year for a while now, for like two and a half, three years. And so it's actually kind of a big deal that this happened.

Then again, you can argue that this is the, you know, they already had the 12.9 iPad Pro out there. Now they've got the 9.7 ipad pro it's the mainstream ipad uh size and it's it's you know pencil support for the masses and all of that and and they launch it and all they managed to do was barely eke out a revenue boost um it's probably not the ideal time for ipad purchases i think that ipad like so much of apple's business does actually do well in the fall and the holiday quarter and they are are set for that now because i don't think we're going to see new ipads until the spring i think that they're they're set for that but um we'll see so it's like good like you said

it's good ipad news it's not great ip news, but it's better than what we've had, which is bad iPad news. This is why it's semantics, but I'm saying positive, not good. Because there is a trend on a chart which is going up, which hasn't happened in a long time. But I want to see how the next few quarters go,

because literally all this could be is the people that replace every time replacing again. Yeah. And Apple has made more money on it because those people now have to pay more money to do that. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, more or less, that's true. What I was going to say is that there's a line that keeps going up and it didn't used to go up.

But that line in my charts on six colors, that line's still in the red, right? It's a negative number. It's not actually going up. It's trying to reach the surface and start going up because it's still a loss. It's just less of a loss, and that's not a great, you know, woo, yay, we lost less than we did last time is not really that exciting.

Yeah, so if I could try and explain that a different way because this is this part is so confusing i know it seems like the analysts and tim cook and they're trying to paint this as a good thing but all it means is they're still selling less of them but the amount at which they're selling less is decreasing so if they sold yep 10 a year two years ago and then oh but then they only sold five the next year but now they're selling four so you can see there's a there's a much better loss there right it wasn't 50 it was just a much smaller amount like you know so that that's kind of the way that i'm very much trying to simplify it because it has taken me a long time to get my head around this basically three quarters ago apple said hey uh we sold a thousand i'll just make up numbers we

sold a thousand fewer ipads than we did last year at this same quarter and then last quarter they said hey we sold 500 fewer ipads than we did last quarter and this time they're like hey we only we only sold 200 fewer ipads than we did last quarter it's time they're like hey we only we only sold 200 fewer ipads than we did last quarter it's like well that looks like progress on one level on another level they still sold 200 fewer ipads than they did last year yeah and also it's it's fine if you look at it from the previous year but if you zoom out it's still losing massive amounts right and if you don't look at change but you look at the actual numbers what you're seeing is a uh a chart that just keeps going down but it's going down slower now so it is what it is and then if you look at the revenue you see a little tick up so um i think it's all of us who

have been watching the ipad have been looking for a while for signs that it's hit bottom and that because the idea here is that the ipad had an unnatural couple of quarters where everybody bought an iPad. Everybody, like the iPad 2 and the iPad then especially with the iPad Air 1, they sold a lot. And those are just sitting out there, right? People are using them. They're fine, right? And so now we're in this moment of like, when does the replacement cycle really kick in where we can get some idea of in a normal period, again, not some kind of aberrant quarter or two. In a normal period, what does the iPad sales figure look like?

And when it's dropping every quarter for 10 quarters, you can't get a handle on it. Is it going to be a 10 million, you know, 5 million? What's the number per quarter that the iPad sells? And we still don't know. It may be that as we're watching it kind of hit bottom here, this is it. And maybe it won't even go up very much after this, but maybe it won't go down very much. And then we'll at least be able to peg. And if you're an investor, this is kind of a big deal.

Peg like, what's the size of the iPad business? But when it's in free fall you can't tell so we're it looks like we're probably getting closer to that point um and i think the next year will i believe that within the next year we will know what the quarterly ipad sales look like and it will probably be within the nine to ten million range or quarter. Now, the reason I think this is important is then that we can understand the importance of the iPad and the product line. Because right now, whenever we talk about the iPad,

we focus on the fact that things are declining. And what we're not necessarily focusing on too much is the actual amount of units sold. Because if it is within that 9 to 10 million range, it's more than the Mac. And we don't really say that the Mac is a disaster because it sells 6 million a quarter. That's just what the Mac is.

But the iPad is easy to point at as a disaster because it keeps going down. But if it can stabilize... The expectations were high, right? It sold started... Its trajectory at the beginning was faster than the iPhone. So it's like, oh my God, pretty soon everybody on Earth is going to own four iPads, right?

And that didn't happen. And so now you're exactly right. I think what all of us who have been watching this have been kind of hoping would happen and thinking would probably happen, although you don't know. I mean, even Tim Cook's like, oh, I'm bullish on the iPad, although you don't know i mean even tim cook's like oh i'm bullish on the ipad but he doesn't know either uh is that the ipad is going to settle in as a

business that is comparable to the mac business which is a pretty darn good business but it's not the iphone no but that's nothing's the iphone exactly oh i i agree i agree i mean nothing i i read a news story the other day about apple's results, and it was in like a serious publication. And they said something about how, you know, Apple continues to search for a product comparable to the iPhone. It's like, guys, that's just never going to happen. The smartphone. I mean, one of the other thing that wasn't in our show notes that happened is Apple sold its billionth iphone and um that that's that kind of thing where you have the defining product in a category that is um that everybody on earth is going to buy in the course over the course of about 10 years it's going to go to almost everybody on the planet over the course of 20 years everybody will have one and will be considered standard issue for every human being on the face of the earth. It doesn't happen very often. It might not happen again in our lifetimes. It probably hasn't happened in our lifetimes other than that.

And Apple had that premier brand in that category. Yeah, don't stop searching for another iPhone. It's not, it's probably not going to happen. And it's probably, if it does happen, stop searching for another iPhone. It's probably not going to happen. And it's probably, if it does happen, probably not going to be Apple just because what are the chances? It's a rare thing that happened. You know, and I think to myself,

if we were always looking for that, right? That was what we were hoping for, to find the product that would be as big as or like 50% the size of or 75% size of the iPhone. And Apple have had quarters where that was the case, right? Where the iPad sold about half of what the iPhone sold. But they are anomalies and will always be anomalies now, like the anomaly of the crazy 2015 quarters. Of the iPhone 6. Yeah, exactly right. But ipad is a good category if it's the size

of the mac and it continues to grow i think that's the other thing that we would like to see is we'd like to see sales sales stabilize and then see what the growth curve is because you would hope that the sales would still show some growth um in that category but you've got to come off of the high and then like find what's your new level and it still hasn't done that. But a Mac business is a good business. That's a good-sized business to be in. It's not bad at all. No. So if we get the iPad to that point

and it continues to be larger than the Mac, as a person who cares about the iPad, I consider that a great achievement because then we know that this product is deserving of the time and attention and yearly software and yearly hardware. Yearly hardware on the Mac, everyone. Do you remember? Do you remember?

Yeah. Good times. So, like, that's what I hope to see is someone who really cares about that. That's what I'm hoping for. That's what I'm hoping it ends up being. But I think anybody that does care about the ipad is gonna continue to wait for that moment and we haven't seen it yet and and that's why we keep focusing on this every single time is that moment is so important to that product i agree hopefully we'll get that in the

next couple of uh next couple of quarters it'll be interesting to see what the holiday quarter sales are for the eye for the ipad too i really don't think it's going to be anything worth calling home about, unfortunately. I just don't see it. Again, if it's flat, if it's flat to slightly up. I mean, that might be the best news. That's what I'm looking for, is stop the decline. Bottom out. Hit bottom.

Start coming back up. Still hasn't hit bottom. Well, it may have done. We don't know, right? This might be the bottom hasn't hit bottom well it may have done we don't know right this might be the bottom that's true it may have yeah you know and the mac the mac did go down uh but you know it wasn't because of the volumes it's not yeah the mac the mac quarter was bad but anybody who knows um first off the pc industry is bad in general. And everybody who knows the Mac knows that other than the MacBook, nothing has been updated. So you would not expect there to be anything driving sales other than the MacBook, which is one of the reasons why the average selling price of the Mac is down

because I think the MacBook is the only one that's really selling. And it's on the cheaper side, so it pushes everything down a little bit. So some other little tidbits. Services continues to grow. It's up $5.8 billion in revenue for Q3 year-in-year. Growing every quarter. And Apple quoted that by next year, it will be the size of a Fortune 100 company.

Yeah. Crazy. Services. iPhone ASP is down, and this is expected to be because of higher than expected demand for the 6SE. Wait, 5SE? 6SE. What is it? SE.

SE, there we go. There's no number, Mike. Who knows? Don't put a number on it. You can't quantify the special edition. It is just the SE. There you go. So it's because of the SE.

They reckon it looks like that's been the case. Plus, Apple had to kind of dump an excess of the stock of the iPhone 6 line. So they did a bunch of deals, therefore driving the ASP down. I do wonder, though, that even though the ASP is down, what the margins are like on the SE. I bet they're really good. I think they're pretty good i think they're pretty good yeah so you know i wonder like when you're looking at profit from that line if that number is maybe not all it seems so i don't know and apple is high on new technology oh oh they are mike they they tim cook and the analyst call talked about a lot of new technology that they're very excited about he spoke about the pokemans didn't he the pokemans speak about the pokemans he did a couple of times being how could like how how how how did he get that wrong it's like not like it is the most popular application on the app store in history right that someone must have briefed him it's very easy to look at pokemon and then try to pluralize it and think it's like man and and say man's pokemon pokemans and somebody maybe somebody briefed him on it i don't i don't know i everybody had a

chuckle and then you know i kind of moved on um he did talk about though in in the context of pokemon go of of ar and somebody asked about it because there's augmented reality as a part of pokemon go although it's kind of a minor part I actually turned it off because it's easier to play without it on. But the idea that you're interacting with things in the real world and then things that seem to be in the real world but aren't, that's the augmented reality idea. That's what Microsoft is doing with HoloLens. And Apple, you know, Tim Cook said AR is going to be big. He said AR is going to be big we got a lot of stuff we're looking at there so he didn't he didn't you know try to pretend that apple's not interested in it in fact he predicted that it will be big and that uh apple is very interested in it i thought that was uh uh something to take note of and they've talked about vr positively in the same way before so it sounds

like apple's not apple's basically trying to send a signal that that apple's not ignoring that market because there are people who freak out when apple's not the first company to market with an incredibly expensive kind of shaky technically but just barely technically possible thing in a new category because they think that somehow that's what apple should be doing which is not what apple does but people are like oh but microsoft has the hololens and and the and then the the vr headsets are coming out. And where's Apple? Apple's behind here. It's like, is Apple behind? Apple hasn't come out with a product yet. It doesn't mean that they aren't working on stuff, but it's unlikely that Apple would ship something and say, well, this is a $3,000 developer kit for VR. And, you know, we think we'll have a viable product in

four or five years they tend not to do that and i think that's not in their nature so i i feel like this is signaling from cook saying yes we are not ignoring vr and ar now they may be behind we we don't know but i i think the absence of an apple vr product or ar product today is not evidence that Apple is not working on something and that Apple is behind. Can I take the cynics view? Sure. The investors are waiting for Apple

to produce the next iPhone. So aren't they always? Yes, but now they know the iPhone isn't going to grow anymore. Where's the next growth area? So Apple just has to talk about potential growth areas now is the way that i think about this oh sure they have to talk about this because what else are they going to do but but they have to what they have to do is send the signal while they did that even more but what they're doing is they're sending the signal

that apple is working on new things they did this with a watch because they have to right i mean but this is the this is the the argument is the other way to send the signal is to do what Microsoft does, which is say, here's a piece of tech that doesn't really exist and is completely impractical and won't be for sale for years. But look how awesome it is. This is the sort of thing we're doing. Apple doesn't do that. Apple doesn't cart out stuff from its R&D. It hasn't since jobs came back in the 90s. It just doesn't do that so how do you send that signal if you're

not going to do the microsoft thing which is pre-announced years before the product exists the way you do it is what they're doing which is we're very interested what's the better option reasonable people can differ i uh i have always felt as somebody who got to witness some of those apple demos in the mid 90s that were for things that didn't exist, I have always felt like showing off something that's not real and that might never be real and that nobody can actually buy is kind of cheating because you're getting people really excited about a product that doesn't exist and they can't buy it. And what can they do? They can't do anything. They just have to wait. And Microsoft always used that as a tactic to destroy its competition and turn consumers

away from the competition. I'm like, well, I don't know. Microsoft says they're coming out with something too, even if there's like nothing coming soon from Microsoft. That's what they would do. They would scare off investors. Like, I don't want to invest in somebody because Microsoft's already said they're going to take you on.

And sometimes those Microsoft products wouldn't actually ever even exist. Or if they did exist, they wouldn't be anything like they were promised. So I've always believed that that's kind of a shady business tactic. And I think it's bad for consumers because you're promising things you may not be able to deliver. Today's Microsoft, I think, is better at it, but they still use those techniques. Well, they just did it with the Xbox. better at it but they still use those techniques well they just did it with the xbox so you know they're saying we have an xbox project in 2017 that's going to be really super powerful but they haven't sure and they're still doing it the same they've been talking about the hololens for

like like what a couple of years now and now they have a developer kit for the hololens for three thousand dollars um and and uh that's again when is the hololens a real product that people are going to use it's going to be a while yet so you could do that apple just doesn't play that game that for whatever reason and i think it's it comes back to steve jobs's focus on shipping real products and that that's always been their discipline has been we you know we ship a real product we don't promise we don't load you up with all our amazing technology and get you you know stars in your eyes and then three years later ship something that disappoints you because it's not everything that we promised in our mock-up because that wasn't based in reality uh apple's take is always you know we announce a product

when we got a product ready to ready to show and that's that's going to ship as that product even if they announce it six months in advance like the apple watch what they showed is basically what they shipped and uh that's not always the case if you pre-announce technology three years in advance so that's apple's earnings until next time i tell you what i have to say at least these are more interesting to talk about oh yeah yeah that's true that's true i didn't even mention it i mean tim cook also dropped a line about like the r&d budget where he basically said yeah we're growing the r&d budget a whole lot and most of that growth almost almost all of that growth is in entirely new product categories which was sending that same signal that was the car

signal by the way right there um you know that we're working on lots of stuff and we're not going to tell you what it is but it's it's not new iphones we're working on new iphones too but this huge r&d budget increase you're seeing it's not on new ipads and iphones and macs it's bob manfield's salary yeah that's right we're just paying it to bob big bob is expensive big bob yeah big bob needs a big salary this week's episode is also brought to you by Squarespace, the simplest way for anyone to create a beautiful landing page, website, or online store. You can start building your own website today at squarespace.com,

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So, before we get into Mike at the movies this week, shall we do a quick round of Ask Upgrade? Let's do it. Do a little Ask Upgrade. Richard wanted to know if we record the show over video or audio skype so do we see each other when we record um we don't we do that i don't do it of any show i know a bunch of people that do i understand the benefits of it i have

been on shows where there is video but no published video, and I can see why some people like it, especially if there's multiple people on a call because people can give visual cues when they want to jump in, and that helps with the edit. But what I don't like is what I always do, I always find myself doing, is I change the way that I talk, and I talk knowing the person can see me.

I show things, and it doesn't come through in the audio. So that's why I don't do it because i know that when i do that the audio listeners because there are only audio listeners to our shows um they actually end up in a worse position this isn't the same for everyone not everybody is like this but it is how i am well that's how i feel when i'm on leo laporte shows is that they you know that is a tv production it feels like you're on television and you have to realize that some fairly large percentage of their audience just listens to the audio and even the people who watch it on video because it's talking heads they're probably not paying that close attention so what will happen is people on

that show will make reference to like video that's playing or they'll hold something up and you realize what do the audio people get out of this is it so it's problematic i'd also say there's just some purely um pragmatic reasons we do this which is uh video takes more bandwidth and if you're having trouble having clear audio again we all record our own ends of the conversation so the bandwidth doesn't the people in the live chat room here, the live bandwidth problems, but people at home listening, everybody's at home,

to the podcast, they don't hear any of that, but we hear it. And so if you make that worse, it's harder to understand the other person. I'm also doing this over a mobile hotspot because of my internet connection. We're bandwidth constrained.

And then you put on top of that, that we're bandwidth constrained and then and then you put on top of that that we're streaming it live which means that we also have another data stream going back out there's a lot going on and so adding video unnecessarily seems like a bad idea from a bandwidth standpoint too because some people just don't have the bandwidth for it and it makes their audio sound bad and someplace some apps scale the video better like if the video if the bandwidth's really bad they drop the video out or they just make it a little one frame every few seconds but uh i i've i just sort of learned not to not to trust it we do use video for my podcast total party kill which is the dungeons dragons podcast we do on the incomparable we use

google hangouts usually for that although we've used um other stuff too and um you know that is uh that is sort of an experiment but um i think people like it there we're often referring to a map and although the audio version i think you don't need the map to understand it. We got an unusual number of requests to see what the map was. And the fact is that people watching people play games on YouTube is a thing. People do that. So we do that now. We record that video. I put it together.

I combine the video with a recording of the map because the map isn't on the, the Google hangout video that gets posted to YouTube. It doesn't come through. It's just the people. So then I overlay the map video synced up and put the better quality audio on it and then release that as a video episode. It doesn't have the high quality kind of detailed audio at it because editing audio and video together, you know,

is a very different thing than just editing audio and video together, you know, is a very different thing than just editing audio. But we do it there. And I like it. And it works okay. But you with that, where you've got six or seven people all talking at once and video it, you miss a lot. So I don't recommend it for everybody. But I see why people do it. So next up, we have a question from brando and brando asked is there an ios text editor like bb edit you mentioned on the show mentioned last week that you use bb edit on the mac i know there isn't a bb edit iphone app or ipad app so what do you use on ios and is it like bb edit i use one writer and it's not really like bb edit but it's got uh it's got

some markdown features which is what i use bb edit for too really and it's got a macro language in in one writer's case i think it's javascript it's got some macros that you can use editorial is also very good if you prefer doing writing macros in python but uh and there are many many many others and i've i've tried many of them and i i switch back and forth all the time but one writer is the one that i'm using at present it's got nice dropbox integration good markdown support and so that's what i'm using right now but there are lots out there and they're all pretty cheap too so yeah cool good good tip one more is one more is really great um i've been i've been meaning to check out Scrivener. I'll tell you what

I've been thinking about doing it for. To keep kind of a good log of all of the advertising copy that I write in an application in some folders and to keep previous versions of all of it. That could work. So I'm not really doing that. I just put

them into our system and I just replace them every time. But there are some times where it could be useful for me to go back and refer to something. It only ever happens a few times, but when I then don't have it, it's like, oh man, I wish I had it. So I've been thinking about it. I've been thinking about that. Or maybe I think Ulysses could do the same. So I've been meaning to try them both out.

Yeah, so that might be something for later on rajiv asked will the next iphone storage capacities be 32 64 or and 128 gigabyte or 32 128 and 256 gigabyte my favorite thing about this question is that rajiv seems to be completely ignoring any possibility of a 16 gigabyte phone. I'm not sold on whether there will or won't be one. If Apple put out a 16 gigabyte version of the iPhone 7, I think I will be disappointed, not surprised. Because they haven't done it yet, so why would they? But anyway anyway i think if the rumors are true that we've been seeing about there being three iphones the iphone 7 the iphone 7 plus and the iphone 7 pro

if yeah that's to be leaves would be regular plus and pro i think there will be a 256 gigabyte other than that sense i'm not sure that there would be a 256 i don't think the need for a 256 is there other than as a way to charge a higher price um i don't i don't think the 256 gigabyte iphone is required by as many people um as it is for something like the ipad where there's likely to be more uh movies and stuff on that kind of device uh we'll see what do you agree with that thinking yeah i think so i think it's more likely that they'll do 32 64 128 and then it's what you're saying which is on some models that are considered high-end models offer it as a 32 64 256 or 32 128 256 or 64 128 256 right it depends i but but offer on certain models like like an iphone pro if there's something like that a uh something like they do on the ipad

pro where there's a there's a big jump at the that you can get at the top end it could i that's that's where i would see it but i think the 32 64 128 is the most likely just because apple tends to be really conservative i'll use a generous word there with what uh specs it puts in those those devices in terms of storage but hey if somebody wants to pay i mean you could really argue like the margins on going from 128 to 256 given what apple charges are so huge that why wouldn't you offer it as an option other than the complexity of the SKU? I don't think they're going to do $4. Yeah, I agree. But if you're on something that's already a high-end system that costs a lot of money, I could see them doing it there, like you said.

Yep. And Eddie asked, this is a question I think I have an answer for, I don't have an answer for, so if anybody has a better answer than this, then please let me know. Eddie wants to know, how can I export all of the photos from my messages on iOS? I have too many to do one at a time. I mean, one thing I'll say to Eddie is change your process now. Like from now on, if you're receiving photos that you think you might want,

start saving them to the camera roll. That would be my number one recommendation there. I would suggest, Eddie, that you check out PhoneView by Ecamm. Now, what I know they can do is export your messages into a way that they can be read in their application or can export them as PDF documents and stuff,

and that includes your pictures. But I don't know if they're able to export a file for you which just extracts the photos, or if the file that they give you you can pull images from so like it might be a way that you could export them all to a folder and then could find a way to extract the images from those folders other than that i don't know there are a bunch of backup utilities and stuff but i don't want to recommend necessarily recommend them blindly i'm recommending an app to you that I have used in the past,

so I believe it to be good. Plus, Ecamm are responsible software developers. I use their products. I use their products every single day with their core recorder. So I would suggest checking that out. They do have a free trial, so you can go and do it. Other than that, I'm not sure of what else could do it. Or at least, you know, when I was Googling,

I was finding some stuff, but I wouldn't recommend that stuff because I can't trust them. So I would say give PhoneView a go. If it doesn't, I'm not sure. If you're out there listening, you know how Eddie can get the photos from his messages, then please write

in and we'll provide follow-up later on. Okay? So that is our Ask Upgrades segment, which means it is time for Mike at the Movies. To celebrate our 100th episode, you chose Star Trek 2, The Wrath of Khan.

Can you sum up why this was your choice for episode 100? Why The Wrath of Khan? Why not something else? Well, we have a spreadsheet and it lists movies that you haven't seen and some that I haven't seen. And we had a conversation, too, where we were talking about Star Trek and you mentioned that you'd seen the new Star Trek movies but not any of the old Star Trek movies and that shocked and appalled me and star trek

2 the wrath of khan is one of my favorite movies of all time so i thought you should watch it because uh then you will have seen it and if nothing else i would also say that like um do you watch the james bond movies do you watch those? Of course I do. I love the movies. You're English. I think it's probably the law that you watch them. It's in our school's curriculum. Yes, exactly, as it should be. I would say Goldfinger, follow me here, Goldfinger is relevant not just because it's um uh a good james bond movie and the one of the earliest the third

james bond movie but i think it's relevant in that i think you could probably look at every james bond movie after goldfinger as being an attempt to do goldfinger in some way to be goldfinger that goldfinger end up becoming sort of the template for a james bond movie i agree um and i could i could argue having seen all the bond movies myself i could argue to the detriment of the series as a whole because sometimes i feel like uh they the bond movies needed to try and not be goldfinger and just do something different and instead they kept on kind of replaying aspects of goldfinger not always the same aspects but replaying the aspects of Goldfinger, not always the same aspects, but replaying the aspects.

I would make that same argument for Star Trek II. I feel like Star Trek II, which was coming on the heels of not very successful, very expensive, and not generally well-liked Star Trek The Motion Picture, although it did actually do well in the box office, it was not critically successful,

and everybody thought it was pretty boring. They gave them a smaller but a much smaller budget to make this movie and uh people really liked it it was a critical success it did pretty well at the box office and then they made many more star trek movies after this um that's all great but i also feel like the weight of star trek 2 on every other star trek movie that i i see all the jj abrams produced Star Trek movies have it. Star Trek Into Darkness is essentially a two hour homage to Star Trek two. And but even the next generation movies feel like you can see the way the

villains are constructed in Star Trek movies. It's just so much of Star Trek on film is an attempt to kind of recreate or quote star trek to the wrath of khan so on that level i kind of feel like it's worth watching just from um as a representative of the best of the original crew movies and as the movie that sort of defined what people were going to try to do with star trek movies after that so thank you for your opening statement that is my opening statement turns out i wasn't expecting it but there was i have an opening statement okay so my opening statement is my feelings that i wrote down before i watched the movie this is my kind of movie style here okay i was not excited

about this movie jason i had been dreading it i don't know why i just thought i wasn't gonna like it uh i don't know why there's a reason there's a reason why i hadn't picked it up till now too is i've been a little worried about it too and this is because i think this ends up in why i ended up just watching it this morning we picked this weeks ago but i watched it today i put it off to the very last moment but i do actually enjoy watching them on the same day because they're fresh in my mind. One of the reasons that I wasn't looking forward to this is that I have such little knowledge about Star Trek and especially this crew. Like, I know these people to be the Star Trek crew, right? Like, we just know this about them.

You know, Shatner and Nimue, like, they are synonymous with Star Trek. But I've never watched any of it, so I have no feeling about them you know shatner and nimoy like they are synonymous with star trek but i've never watched any of it so i have no feeling about them right it's just not something that i've ever paid any attention to so it's just been a thing that i had no absolutely no attachment to and i thought that was gonna hinder my enjoyment of the movie because my instinct was that you would only really enjoy it if you were coming to them with both existing emotional attachment and knowledge of the TV show and previous movie. That was my feeling. I was coming into the sequel.

So I figured I would not enjoy this movie. I have a question for you. Yes. Were these the tv show actors like this is the crew that were in the tv show right yes and i would actually say it's not a sequel it's funny because it's star trek 2 because the motion picture was was completely different in terms of right production design okay then this then this movie and the producers were different the creative team was essentially different just the uh really just the actors are the same well yeah i mean you know

it might it might be a sequel in name only but to suggest sequel true well i mean and on star trek right i mean it's at the very least it's a sequel to 70 some odd uh episodes of a tv show that became successful and then they made a movie. And now here's another movie, right? You're coming in 80 hours late, basically. Yep. It's difficult for me to tell because of when the movie was made. So when was it?

82. 82. Yeah. So it's the core cast. The seven core cast members are from the original Star Trek. There are other actors in this that were not seen in the original star trek ricardo montalban was in a an episode of the original star trek that this is the sequel to if it if it is a sequel to anything it is to an episode called space seed where they find con floating in space and they bring him on board the enterprise and he

tries to take the enterprise over and they they beat him and uh put him on a planet and say interesting instead of arresting him and taking him into prison they and uh put him on a planet and say interesting instead of arresting him and taking him into prison they put them all down on a planet that is rough but they should be able to make a living there and they say well it'll be interesting to check back in 100 years and see what the uh the supermen can uh can do with this planet and that that was so so montalban was in that um all the other actors in this have not been in star trek before kirsty alley wasn't in star trek before uh merritt buttrick and bb besh who play carol and david marcus were not in star trek before um just uh just montalban and then the core sort of seven

cast members so i think i'm gonna have a really weird opinion of this movie which you watch star trek into darkness before you watch star trek to the wrath of khan so you've already got a very weird perspective on this thing it's though like yeah but they didn't they don't feel like anything close to each other other than the names we used to me it just doesn't feel like at all the same movie like the plot is so different yeah i oh i agree it's really the stuff at the end that is quoted directly by the other movie. Yeah. Like that one scene, like the scene where everybody, well, not everybody, the scene where there's like the death, right?

But they reverse the roles. Right. Exactly. And also, it's not the same anyway, right? Because Kirk lives. I know. There is that one little thing that, well I'm spoiler for for movies from the 80s they bring Spock back to I guessed that that the end of the movie couldn't write that

more if it tried I know I was honestly expecting for like Spock's hand to come out of the casket at the end like that's that they this planet generates life it It generates life, you say? Like, oh, come on. I know. I know. It's true. Yes, well, Star Trek III is called The Search for Spock. And guess what?

They find Spock. But anyway, that's not about, this is not about Star Trek III. So what I was going to ask you, and what I was saying, like the reason this is difficult for me because of the time it was made, was this movie, did it have a big movie budget, or is it like an extended episode of the TV show budget-wise? Oh, well, it's more, I mean, the TV show, if you see any of those old TV episodes, the budget was a lot lower for those.

But it is not. So Star Trek The Motion Picture was made on an enormous budget. And like I said, it's really boring. This was made on an enormous budget and um like i said it was it's really boring uh this was made on a much much smaller budget um so it is it is i wouldn't say a low budget movie but i would say it is a it is a modest budget for a science fiction feature film in 1982 okay cool all right so um i feel like i'm gonna hold off my feelings about this movie because they change so much throughout my notes i i don't want to spoil it because i'll have to give it won't make sense i don't think okay so where do you want to start start the start i'm

gonna go chronologically through my my thoughts here kobayashi maru i know what this is yeah well this is one of those things that's been quoted the jj abrams movie the first uh jj abrams star trek movie we see captain kirk cheat at the kobayashi maru and this is where that originated is in this movie where we see and it's funny one of the funny things about this uh the way this movie starts is it's the bridge of the enterprise and everybody we see is familiar except instead of kirk as the captain there is this vulcan woman played by kirsty alley sitting in the captain's chair and it's meant to be like what it's a double fake out right like it's right

there's a new crew and then they all die they all die but it's it's a simulation and so like one of the moments is ruined for me in this movie because i know that kirk cheats yeah to be it because i've learned that from the other movie because that that was a important plot point later so like and then uh there's they kind of had the fake out and everybody is established and we find out that kirk is now an admiral right and it's his birthday and there is a lot being set up here uh which i think is a good way to play it because of how everybody looks that everyone's getting old that is a big theme about this movie yeah these actors i mean i don't know how old they are but they look tv old to me. So the, the, um, I think the implication and it's never set out right is that Captain Kirk is turning 50.

Okay. And that, that, that's what's happening here. Um, another funny note is that Star Trek, the motion picture, I would argue tries to make them seem like it, it feels much more like a continuation of the original series. Like, well, yeah, it's 10 years later, but we're still off for some dashing adventures with your young tv crew they're a little older but still we're off and here which is only three years later in this movie they're like no they're getting old like that that is what this movie is about it's about getting old and coming to terms with your mortality and all of these things and so it it's a, and I think to this movie is great benefit.

That's what they decided to do with this movie as opposed to the, the movie three years before. And if you'll see pictures from it, they're all wearing like uniforms that look like they're in pajamas. And, and they're, they're like fighting against age and here they're embracing it, or at least being aware of it from the very first scene where

where uh kirk says gallivanting around the cosmos is a game for the young and he walks out and they're like what's his problem yeah so it's like it's his birthday they have all these new crew and these new recruits that spock is leading because kirk is an admiral now and spock is now captain one of the ways i really like that they set up the age thing with kirk is having him have reading glasses and they come up with like an in-universe reason that he has to have reading glasses which is like allergic to some drug that people take now which is genius fixes your vision yeah and he's like no yeah i know so the doctor dr mccoy comes over and says normally i'd give you this drug but instead have these old glasses and also he brings the illegal whiskey or romulan ale romulan ale i don't know why they call it ale but then

drink it like it's whiskey why didn't they just call it romulan whiskey that's how the romulans do it i don't know no unacceptable unacceptable uh yeah, at the Star Trek experience in Las Vegas when that was open, you could order a Romulan ale. It was blue. Was it a short drink? No, it was an ale. It was an actual beer ale. What's going on here?

It's ridiculous. It was blue. Yeah, I know. And then I'm going to kind of jump around in this a little bit. That's fine. I tend to write more like exhaustive notes, but I didn't with this one, just because sometimes these can run forever. What I'm going to jump to next is when Chekhov and his captain,

I believe his name was Tyrell. Yes. They investigate a planet to be used for an experiment. And all we kind of know at the moment is it's an experiment. And they come across someone's living quarters, and Chekhov freaks out when he sees Botany Bay. Oh, no. Perfect. And they come across someone's living quarters, and Chekhov freaks out when he sees Botany Bay. Oh, no!

Perfect. And then he whispers, Khan, like that. And then it's established Khan appears, and him and his crew capture Chekhov and Terrell. And Chekhov refers to Khan as a product of late 20th century genetic engineering. Right. Which is good, because it then proved to me why he was so strong. Now, this is where the story

goes a bit weird for me, as someone who has no prior experience. It's really interesting to me to know that people that watched the franchise would know all about Khan. Well, but the way the movie is structured, right, is they don't want just people who have an encyclopedic knowledge of Star Trek. So you if you know that episode you're like oh yes but if you're if you don't like you don't they need to explain it for you because they i think they have

to assume that most of the people going to the movie in 1982 are not going to remember that episode of star trek from 1968 sure but the reason i mentioned this is because they do explain it but they explain it in such a way that the story makes kirk sound like a villain to me yeah from well from khan's perspective he is for sure but even the way that chekhov explains it is like we we marooned this guy here like we sent him here and him and his crew were basically just sent either to die or to make their own way and chekhov says that khan tried to kill kirk which was what made me realize that there was some kind of evil doings here but the whole time and and this actually is something that prevails throughout the whole movie to me is like who is good and bad

i've already struggled to work it out well one of the good a good villain has a motivation and i think that's one of the strengths of khan is that we even though yes he's a madman out for vengeance he has his reasons because as chekhov says on steady alpha 5 there was life and a chance that they they they put him on a good planet where they could make a living and not be miserable. And this is an inhospitable desert that they're in. And then Khan replies with the classic line, This is Seti Alpha 5, which is, oh, crap. You know, this is not the planet I thought it was.

Chekhov is a little confused here because chekhov is expecting to see a fairly lush you know world where they're able to establish themselves instead of this complete like ruined desert but something happened in a planet exploded or whatever and uh it ruined the ecology of this planet so uh kirk has unwittingly sent them to basically uh uh almost like a death sentence on this a terrible subsistence living is all that they can manage on this desert planet. So Kirk's little plan to let them not be put in prison has backfired and made Khan furious, and his wife died, and he's very angry.

He then, Khan, plants these bugs. Yep, the settee eels. Into very realistic-looking ears of terrell and check off that's what people remember from this movie a lot is the bugs in the ears and because it's horrifying um and these bugs wrap around uh the cerebral cortex and make people very suggestible until they go mad and i'm pretty sure he said mad and die even though yeah chekhov doesn't die well that's because it comes out like it's not explained why that happens yeah it's like for fun to close attention but it pops it pops out of his ear and it's fine yeah i mean i saw that it came

out but it's like why did it come out like that is just not explained just like oh chekhov lived he was very angry or upset and it ran away i guess yeah it's not explained at all um and then uh we go back to kirk kirk is taking um he's he's he's at the enterprise he's gone for an inspection with some of the old crew uh including uh is it bone he goes with bones sulu and uhura right they go they go to make an inspection on the Enterprise and very quickly Kirk takes control of the Enterprise to investigate a research facility

after he's received does he receive a message? Yeah, he receives a message that they can't fully understand Yeah, there's a garbled message he gets from Carol Marcus who he knows we are led to believe that they have a past because McCoy brings it up. We see her with her son earlier, where they get the call from Chekhov.

But we don't know it's her son yet. Yeah, that's true. It's just a tall, blonde fellow. Yeah. But they, does he not call her mother at that point? No, he doesn't. Anyway, you know, they're skeptical because of, you know, he doesn't trust the Federation. He doesn't trust the Captain Kirk.

All of these things are going on with the poor, these poor scientists who are being, who are, the Chekhov ship is trying to work for them. And now they're worried that the military is going to take their experiment away from them and so kirk has to her kirk gets the the garbled message from her and uh that they're taking genesis why are you taking genesis and it breaks up jammed at the source which is a bad sign and uh and so then kirk and spock or spock and mccoy are like uh genesis anyone and he has to explain that it's a weapon uh it's supposed to be a scientific tool but it could be used as a weapon if you fire it at a planet a devastating weapon it will turn it into a new planet with life uh on it but if there's life on the planet it will just destroy the planet and replace it with new life instead so then we get kirk taking control of the enterprise again after a great exchange between

him and spark with sparks like i know you want to do this like just do this like let's just stop he's like i have no ego to be bruised here i'm a vulcan like just take control of the ship so he does and you can see how excited he is like he's super happy to take control again um the genesis device is a really great mcguffin yeah it's their nuclear bomb basically yeah it's very well made and it's also you can see why it exists so many of these things that become weapons like why why does it exist in the first place like why would anybody build this it's obvious how terrible this is gonna go but with this one it's yeah, it could go bad, but the good is so good, it's worth doing.

Well, it's made by idealistic scientists who, I mean, it's this constant push and pull between the scientists who build things and the military that deploy them. And the argument here is that they're building this because the galaxy is filled with lifeless planets, and we can use this technology to instantly make them livable to terraform them. And that is fantastic because then there are more places to grow things and

for people to live. The demo reel, by the way, is one of the first substantial pieces of computer animation in any motion picture. That's an entirely computer animated um demo where they where they shoot the missile onto the dead world and like zip through on the surface and come back around on the other side and it's a living world that's that's basically the first big piece of cgi in

any movie i bet that cost a lot of money i i think it did um is khan's chest real? You know, I want to believe. I don't think it is. It looked very fake to me. And it was just, I kept looking at it. It's like, you got a real chest there, Ricardo. I couldn't tell. I don't think it was. It looked too perfectly sculpted.

It's very impressive though, isn't it? Yeah, and the fact that it's on show as much as it is makes me think it's not real um i don't know but if it was real bravo ricardo bravo you did good work there my friend did good work indeed um i found it really interesting how so they have their first encounter right uh where ship versus ship because khan's taking control and and he's brought the what was the name of the ship the reliant and they've kind of uh tricked they've tricked um the enterprise into believing we're all one happy fleet yeah you know where they don't have their shields up it's a really nice exchange where they get as kirk says he gets caught with his britches down um and they get and then he has to kirk has to reason a way out of

this a trick to survive because con is just going to blow them up so then there's like he ends up overriding the the control panel because it's a failsafe built in for this very reason also very believable this movie is very well written for the way they get out of things um they're all plausible and that is very plausible it's like well of course you have an override right and of course nobody knows it right like it's like it's got to be kept secret it's the point of the override and scott mcnulty always points out that you probably shouldn't have the password to control your starship be six digits but it was 1982 it's fine they didn't have the computer power i guess maybe in the future the history passed um and so then there's a they end up they fight back and and that kind of thing and they end up scaring them away effectively it gets really dark here um in a

way that i didn't expect the injuries are very graphic um of the crew of the enterprise and the one guy that dies yeah the one crewman the the young engineering crewman uh has horrible burns and and dies and leaves the literal blood of himself on kirk on kirk's yeah on kirk's jacket for for as long as he wears that jacket it's very ham-fisted right like the blood of these people is on kirk but it still makes the point that for the next while you were very aware of the mistake that kirk made even though i feel a bad point in this movie a point that could have been done differently is he feels he shows no remorse for this kirk like they have that one moment in the in the medical bay but at no other point in this movie is it even referenced that a bad call from him or not reacting well

enough resulted in all these young people dying on their first mission which they were never supposed to go on in the first place which he urged to go on because he was so desperate to go on another mission like this is never really called up by anyone including him and especially when at the end of the movie like this one's like you've never faced death like this before have you dad like what about all the people that died yeah no i think it's a good point and also there's a moment where you know he's really responsible his his judgment i think it's all weighing on him throughout but um i agree it's not it's not as directly as dressed as maybe it could be um there's a funny uh quirky you know it's not a funny moment but there's a moment where um where terrell says to him later he blames you for the

death of his wife and kirk says i know what he blames me for but but you know it is a reminder that kirk got them into this not only did he take the ship and then and then keep the shields down and and allow all that damage to happen that he has to then kind of work his way out of but he caused this problem like it's his problem and it's come back to haunt him yeah he made a previously bad decision to exile these people and everyone around him yes the the kind of the brutalness of it all continues as kirk beams to the uh research for space station yeah and they are brutally murdered all of the scientists and like hung yeah it's very brutal like this this movie um is not as happy-go-lucky as i was expecting an 80s

star trek movie to be in all honesty yeah i mean i don't know if that is um something i should or shouldn't have expected star trek 4 is the pappy galucky movie you want but this is not it yeah i don't know if it's what i want i actually think i prefer this because i think part of what i was dreading was it was just going to be like bubble gum space movie oh yeah oh no it's it's uh i like this in fact the um so in the 80s i i uh i had the novelization of star trek 2 and one of the things that i really like that's not in the movie that's in the book is you spend way more time with these scientists and you see when khan comes and they're trying to get away as the khan and his people are killing them and it it's horrific. And here,

all we get is the, we get the aftermath, which is they beamed out of the station. Where is everybody? And there's a whole bunch of dead scientists hung upside down with their throats cut in the middle of this thing. And you just get the sense like, um,

something, you know, this is a murder scene and the movie, you know, you, you get it, but you, you don't see all that horrible violence but

obviously this is a place of horrible violence somebody con con came here and killed the scientists who were working on genesis and he didn't get what he wants apparently because he's still asking for it so what it's also not completely clear i wasn't expecting this um like a couple of reasons i think the movie sets it up well like chekhov says it will be three days until they get there no obviously he was tricking them he was lying yeah yeah so that but i didn't realize that i didn't even didn't even cross my mind um and also when khan comes to attack the enterprise there was no reference made to the fact that their mission was so far unsuccessful right so it was a surprise to see everybody dead i was expecting them to get there and all the scientists were going to be there you know and then they were

going to work on a plan together yeah it's a they leave that moment for for the for the characters from from the enterprise to discover that uh that there's nobody there's nobody there and that's the uh that's an interesting i mean not only is it horrible and you're like oh khan was already here he killed everybody then he came and and asked us about this what's that about did he not get what he wants what's going on and then it gives them a little mystery to solve on the space station of what's going on here um and then they meet torel and chekhov they're like hidden away in there and and it's it's interesting at this point, because I genuinely couldn't tell who they were working for, which is, again, very well written.

Because it's like, all I know is they're suggestible, right? Like they can be kind of swayed. So my thinking is, are they being swayed by Khan still? Or are they looking at Kirk and doing whatever he wants him to do? Like, it's really hard at this point to place, like, who are they working for? Like, were they just left there, which they could have conceivably just been left there because they were useless now? Chekhov says, we beat them. You know, the captain was strong.

And the implication is that they just left him behind. Khan left him behind because they weren't of any use to them anymore. But then when they then beam down to the site where all the Genesis stuff is being held, underground on a planet somewhere, Tyrell and Chekhov turn on them, but then Tyrell kills himself. Right, Khan's saying, fire, kill him, and he turns the phaser on himself and then pulls the trigger and then chekhov's bug jumps out of his ear for fun yeah

he screams and and is in this deck because he's a he's a regular character and we don't want him to die so he just lays down and khan and khan knew where they were because torell or chekhov were wearing this bracelet. It wasn't completely clear what happened previously. Like, how Khan knew? Like, I didn't get that. I was like, how does he know? Like, he went to a scene and it was like he was in the next room or

something. It was very confusing, but then later I worked it out. Yeah, because Tyrell says, Your Excellency, have you been listening? Yes, I have been listening. So I think they could have done this part without the scene where they show Khan listening, because that actually made it more confusing for me, because I couldn't work out how he was hearing them.

And then it's obvious then that there's some kind of bracelet, which Kirk then screams Khan twice in two, right? Yeah, so they're doing their they're doing their like back and forth with each other which one of the things i don't know if you realize this if you notice this but um you know kirk and khan are never in the same physical space the actors were never together in this i did not realize that until you just said it they're they're on screen with each other and they're over the bracelet but they're never in the same room together at any point maldoban and shatner are never in the same interesting because i felt like they were all the time i know

right and the back and forth here is really great too because this is they they're both trying to out bluster one another um but uh but con takes uh so so uh con takes the genesis device so con wins this round because that was that basically Kirk just did Khan's job for him. Khan couldn't figure it out, but Kirk figured out where it was, led them right to it. And now they've stolen the ultimate weapon. And what's worse, they've stranded Kirk and his people in the middle of this asteroid in this cave in the middle of this asteroid. So Khan and Khan says, I could kill you, but I'm not going to bother. I'm going to abandon you like you abandoned me.

And he takes off. We then find out that Kirk has a son. Yes, the blonde guy is David Marcus. And that's the back history with Carol is that this is, they had a son and he stayed away. And David doesn't even know that he's his son. And they had used this planet to use Genesis underground and then they have this incredible looking facility where we believe that they're going to be stranded to for a while, right? realizes kind of he lets us know that he was bluffing about a previous communication between him and spock where spock told him it would take two days before they could be repowered but kirk and spock because they know each other so well they knew that there was bluffing going

on in case they were being listened to which they were and two days actually just meant two hours and they tricked khan so khan thinks that they're stranded this is right after he reveals to savik about what he did in the kobayashi maru test at the beginning of the movie this came up it's like you know it's like there's no way to win and he gives the usual line of well you got to deal with death and then here they're eating like apples sitting in the cave on a cliff of this cave and uh she says i would like to know what you did and he's and uh i think it's dr mccoy is like you're looking at the only kid who beat the no win scenario and he says yeah i reprogrammed the the test you cheated i changed the conditions of the test so that i could win

i got a commendation for original thinking and she's kind of aghast and that you see that play out in the in the jj abrams 2009 star trek you get to see him reprogram the the simulator and all of that uh much to spock's consternation in that movie uh but with bones's help which is kind of a funny little bit that that and he's eating an apple in star trek 2009 when that all goes on which is a callback to them sitting here eating apples in the cave um and then immediately like out of nowhere after he said see how clever i am i reprogrammed the test and they're like oh well i don't know if i can trust you he just pops out the communicator and it's like kurt spock you ready and and as an audience member i was like

what yeah yeah i couldn't work out what happened this is captain kirk's magic trick he's like he's way ahead of you he's figured it all out and you're just you're just waiting for him to figure it out it's yeah i love that scene because he explains like i don't i don't ever accept that it's a no instant situation and i'm not going to do it now either and let me demonstrate spock's waiting for me let's get back up to the ship i love that scene so they then kind of trick khan a little bit so they're going into this nebula and this nebula would mean that none of the systems could be used right none of the tracking systems or the shields yeah the idea is that the enterprise is really uh crippled more than the uh the reliant is but if they go into the nebula

the odds will be even uh because nobody can use their shields and nobody can see particularly well and so it'll be it'll be a fairer battle because they can't beat them in in in clear combat but they could beat them in this hazy sort of submarine warfare kind of kind of thing and khan's second in command played by judson scott um yoahim knows this right and he's like i'm slowing down and uh and that's a kind of a fun scene where spock is like well they're slowing down and kirk says put me on with car and he gives him a little he go he just goads him it's like con right look i'm still alive ha ha so here's another thing he wants to set him up to murder him well well but they're trying to beat him i mean this is this is the idea is i got i gotta get you to chase me in here because that's the only way we're going to be able to escape but here's the other there's

the thing about that it's not just khan though is it sure on that ship well no they said they say that they left the whole crew behind on seti alpha 5 so it's just khan and his people khan and his other genetically engineered people the 70 to super people from 1996 back in the old days of 1996 when we left on spaceships um and so anyway they they um they they floor it at that point khan's like no chase him we gotta we gotta go get him because khan is obsessed with kirk he has to kill kirk and kirk knows this and uses it against him no khan's downfall is his lust for revenge yeah no this is the i mean that's the moby dick reference that gets made a couple of times too because that's a book about a a sailor who is obsessed

and his obsession is his downfall and that's that's what they're going for here is khan is out for the wrath of khan it was originally called the vengeance of khan and it's he's out for revenge and the revenge is his his downfall at one point joachim says to him we can go anywhere we want we've got a spaceship and khan's like no i must kill kirk and also they have the most powerful weapon available yeah they can go anywhere and do anything and he is not willing to do that because he is he is uh he's out for vengeance and so they enter the nebula they have a fight and the enterprise ends up taking out most of khan's crew which is again one of these other morally strange parts to me but like i don't

know there's just like the amount of people that we were watching being destroyed just like killed them all man like yeah well they're they're cons people i think that's i think the the idea is that they're you know you're you're in a space battle with another ship that's that's part of the deal and in the end it's not it's not con i mean it's not kirk kills some of the people on the ship but they're like gonna they ask them to surrender and and and cons like no i'm blowing everything up now i mean it's not kirk kills some of the people on the ship but they're like gonna they ask them to surrender and and and khan's like no i'm blowing everything up now i mean he doesn't care either about whatever's left of his crew he's gonna blow up his his ship and take kirk with him i mean he doesn't care about kirk's career but kirk's meant to be the good guy yeah no they're the enemy right yeah yeah i know i know i couldn't tell here um if the nebulous scenes were tense or unnecessarily slow paced there was lots of back and forth of like faces and it just did it i didn't

really feel the tension it just felt like it was taking too long i think that may be a difference between 1982 and 2016 that's a good point yeah i i think maybe that it would be faster paced now the idea there is they're trying to build tension they want it to be like a submarine battle uh something like hunt for red october the idea that every you know they're moving very slowly the way that they beat khan in the in the battle is that khan is thinking in terms of going left and right and they go they go up and down he's thinking two-dimensionally which you would do in space if you were somebody who's used to being like from a planet and the the spacemen of the 23rd century are are capable of flying their spaceship up and down too

and that they use that to beat him um but but yeah i i think that the pacing is not what you would do today. Because then also Khan very slowly with his last ounce of strength activates the Genesis weapon. Well, he has a speech to give, Mike. Most of it, he's not even talking. He's just turning a dial and then pressing a button and turning a dial. It takes way too long. That part takes way too long. And then Spock sacrifices himself, right? pressing a button and turning a dial and press it's white takes way too long. That part takes way too long. Uh,

um, and then Spock, uh, sacrifices himself, right? Like, um, because basically they,

they need the ship's power core or whatever to be repaired, but nobody can go and repair it cause it's horrifically radioactive. Right. Um, and if this is done and they can go into, uh, what do they call it? Warp speed and escape. The done then they can go into uh what do they call it warp speed warp speed and escape the only way they can escape they're going full impulse uh sulu's got full impulse

but they're not going to make it in fact i think sulu says in one of the lines that i like we're not going to make it are we and uh and spock has that moment where he's sitting in the chair and he's like okay i gotta i gotta do this because they got to get the warp drive back online or everybody's going to die. And so he goes into the radioactive chamber. Scotty tries to stop him. Bones tries to stop him. He gives Bones the neck pinch and then puts his fingers on his head and says, remember,

I wonder what that's setting up. And that's setting up the next movie. And he goes in, he sacrifices himself to save the ship. He bathes in the radiation, gets the warp drive back online. They zip away. Yay! Thereby saving everybody. And the Genesis torpedo blows up and kills Khan and his crew and the spaceships and all of that.

But not the Enterprise. Not before Khanhan says for hate's sake i spit my last breath at thee bit melodramatic i think that's i think that's moby dick again oh really that's too much yeah if that's the case that's a direct quote that's too that's too much that's too on the nose there there's there's a lot of moby dick and in star trek 6 there's a lot of shakespeare I think that's a yes. Yeah. Spock is in bad shape, and he repeats something that he says earlier about the needs of the many,

and Kirk ends it by saying, outweighs the needs of the few, or the one, or whatever it was that they mentioned, as they kind of change it a little bit. Then they do the Vulcan salute thing through the glass, live long and prosper. Spock dies. I didn't expect him to remain dead dead, as I mentioned.

I was expecting hand out of casket or something. But then there's the father and son moment that we referenced with the, you know, you've never seen death, and then it's like, I love you, dad, I love you, son, that kind of thing. And then there's the whole point at the end was like i feel young and life and yeah i think totally totally questionable moment i feel like this movie is i mean the whole idea is that kirk's taking a journey and he needs to embrace uh you know accept his mortality and embrace that he needs to do what he uh what he can with with his

life um and and uh because it's gonna end and he's gonna get old and die and he just needs to do it it does seem awfully sunny after all these people have died and uh including all the scientists and all of the all of the people on con's ship and a bunch of people on the enterprise and spock has died and then in the end you know kirk's there with the mother of his son wearing his jacket next to him and he's like, I'm feeling pretty good right now. It's like, I don't know about that. That's a little weird. That's a weird, weird moment.

So I thought this movie was going to be slow and kind of dumb and was only going to be interesting to people that like Star Trek. What is Jason making me watch? Right. This is how I felt. I was like, this is going to be a disaster disaster for me but i felt like it moved super fast like it was over in a flash i was very surprised about that and it had a lot more thought and moral questioning in it than i expected and they didn't lean too heavily on the previous knowledge of the viewer. And I've got to say, I enjoyed it.

I did. I enjoyed it. This is not going to make my top five of Mike in the Movies. No, it shouldn't. No. But I enjoyed it vastly more than I thought I was going to. I thought this was going to be one of the rare, I think maybe the only Mike in the Movies suggestion that I didn't't like i don't think there's been one that i didn't like before

um from you anyway i've disliked movies that casey is casey sorry casey but if they upgrade mike at the movies i've never disliked a movie and you have kept that crown going because i did i enjoyed it i and and and i think maybe maybe of all of the movies that i've seen i enjoyed it more than i thought i would the most like the rest of them there have been elements that i thought would uh would work or i would like and then some of them surprised me more than than i expect like say anything continues to be a massive surprise to me and will probably always be the most surprising just how much i adored that movie um and some of them disappointed me a little bit like real genius disappointed me a little bit in areas because there's a lot of questionable humor in that which i didn't like um indeed but this movie only surprised me positively even if i thought some things were uncomfortable like i i still dislike the kind of

feeling of kirk's bad actions and that there's no consequences for him right literally none well i guess i mean the consequences are that that he he well i mean spock dies i guess that ultimately comes back to life again it's true so there are no consequences for kirk's actions even when they are bad and or questionable yeah um and that i don't like and i don't know why i felt this so strongly in this movie when there are so many movies like it but i think it was purely because of the way that khan khan is introduced as someone who is done wrong before you find out what he did yeah he has a he has a legitimate grievance against kirk i think i think he does a great suggestion and uh a movie worthy

to take the episode 100 crown so thank you jason i'm glad you liked it uh it is i think it is a of i think it's a good movie and there are good and bad Star Trek movies, but Star Trek two is a good movie. It, you know, it has some of the best space battle scenes I think in any movie, even though the effects are obviously dated. I think they're actually pretty darn good for 1982. The effects held up surprisingly well.

I thought that this was some kind of special edition or something. No, the, you know, the, the, the phaser blasts on the hall, they get the big scorch marks, and people are screaming and jumping around and all of that,

and it all is kind of logical, and how do you resolve it? And unexpected places, they go down deeper. They go to the space station, nobody's there except dead bodies, and they go deeper into the planet, and then you get the back and forth between Shatner and Montalban, which is so great, and it is amazing that they never actually share space uh it's just on one end of a communicator or other but they but their back and forth is is great and fittingly kind of you know they're both trying to outdo each other and go even further over the top with

their back and forth and it's great i i like it a lot and I like the end. The end is very sad. I, when I saw this in the movie theater as a kid, I just sobbed when Spock died. It was so sad. Um, I think looking back on it now, of course, then they just bring him back and he's in all the other movies. Um,

and, and that devalues the end of this a little bit. It would have been more sad, you know, obviously if he had actually stayed dead, but that didn't happen. And they were already, as you pointed out quite rightly, laying the groundwork for him to come back because the way the story

goes is leonard nimoy said i'd be in star trek 2 if you killed me they're like all right we'll do that and then by the end of the shoot he's like hey because the surgery motion picture wasn't very good um and i think people didn't really have a good time on it by the end of the movie he's like hey this is pretty good i'd do more and they're like okay so they left themselves some outs so they could bring him back and then which is why that whole line all those lines are there at the end yeah and remember putting the hand on on uh on uh on dr mccoy that's in there and then they show the the casket lovingly panning over the casket no hand emerges but that is the implication right it didn't make sense to me why the caskets remain intact on these planets exactly exactly why don't why are they made to do that like there'd just be dead bodies just strewn all over these planets i know i think they figured well i

think they usually like fire them into the sun or something but in this case they fired it into the genesis planet uh but of course the genesis planet is like nothing we've seen before so that's another movie the way i read concepts is that because maybe i didn't pay enough attention so they put him in an escape pod not a coffin oh it's a uh it's a torpedo it's a photon torpedo right but then it makes no freaking sense why it stayed in piece. Because surely the torpedo should explode. Well, they took the explosives out and put a Vulcan in it instead. Yeah, but still, I don't know.

How strong should the structures be? Yeah, yeah. Okay, it makes no sense to me why that stayed intact. It should have broken into pieces when it hit the Earth. It's magic. Or whatever it is. Mike, it's the same reason that Cheekhov doesn't die it would be inconvenient yeah i'm glad you like it i'm glad you like it i like it too and i'm glad you do it's a fun it's

a fun movie with some great performances and a good it is a good script and in fact that's one of the things that i think is uh not a bad influence but a good influence on future star trek is um uh the writer and director of this uh has been involved with other star treks he did he actually wrote star trek and directed star trek six um nicholas meyer and um was involved in in the star trek uh movies for quite a while. And my understanding is he is actually one of the consulting producers and writers on the new Star Trek series that's coming out in January. So they're kind of honoring him. The TV show.

Yeah. Cool. For his work. But he injected, look, Star Trek as a movie franchise would not exist if this had been a bad movie. The only reason that there were more Star Trek movies is that Star Trek II was really good. Because it was on a $16 million budget or whatever it was. Small budget.

And it was not really given a lot of support. And it was a good movie. And that's the only reason Star Trek continued after that. Only reason. If you would like to find our show notes for this week, head on over to relay.fm slash upgrade slash 100. And if you want to find Jason online,

he's at jsnl on Twitter. He's at sixcolors.com. I am at imike, I-M-Y-K-E. Thanks again to Casper and Squarespace for sponsoring this show. But most of all, thanks to you, dear listeners, for helping us get to episode 100,

especially if you've been here from the beginning. We love each and every single one of you. Until next time. Yes, we do. Say goodbye, Jason Snell. Say goodbye, Mike Hurley. Oh, no, that's not right. You're supposed to say Jason Snell on special occasions.