Episode: 3084
Title: HPR3084: AudioBookClub 18 - Star Trek: The Continuing Mission
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3084/hpr3084.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-24 16:32:08

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This is Hacker Public Radio episode 3,084 for Thursday 28 May 2020.
Today's show is entitled Audio Book Club 18 Star Trek,
the continuing mission. It is hosted by Thach Sarah
and is about 100 minutes long
and carries an explicit flag. The summary is
the HPR Audio Book Club reviews the fan audio drama Star Trek,
the continuing mission. This episode of HPR is brought to you by an honest host.com.
Get 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code
HPR15, that's HPR15.
Better web hosting that's honest and fair at an honest host.com.
All right, we are talking this evening on
the Hacker Public Radio Book Club. We're doing something a little different.
It's Star Trek, the continuing mission.
And you can find it at www.StarTrekContinuingMission.com.
And I suggested this at the last meeting.
This is fan fiction and both Paramount with Star Trek and Lucas with Star Wars.
They're pretty lenient with their properties at fan fiction
as long as nobody is making a profit off of.
And of course, there are several, well, there's a good, it's like continuing mission.
I think you're using the same name.
I mean, there are several video Star Trek homages out there that you can watch
and most of pretty much I'll hold them around you.
But when people don't have the resources to do the video, because there's some,
some of these series have started out on video and then gone to audio
because people didn't have the commitment to dress up and all the stuff.
So this is an audio only series and there's probably several of these out here.
But so far, they're up to eight episodes with a ninth planned should be coming out fairly soon.
But it's the Starship Montana from pretty much the original Star Trek year.
I'm thinking that it's maybe slightly after the Kirk period, maybe not.
If you look at the, we have to, as far as the class of the Starship,
we have to go off the artwork because they never really say it's excelsior class or whatever.
I was thinking that, but looking at some of the pictures for the later episodes,
it may actually be an earlier class because it's got a,
it seems to have a twin boom behind the saucer section like the enterprise from,
you know, the enterprise series and then branching off in the
original Star Trek, maybe from the time of the Star Trek movies.
But slightly before next generation, because several places,
they talk about the galaxy class Starship as the original Star Trek,
maybe from the time of the Star Trek movies.
But slightly before next generation, because several places,
they talk about the galaxy class Starship as the new thing that's been gone,
that there aren't any, it's in the prototype stage.
You know, the galaxy class is not online yet.
Well, I should say, okay.
The first episode goes ship.
They get in the battle with the Romulans who are trying to make the Federation
think that they're being attacked by the Klingons and in the ensuing battle,
which what turns out to be a Romulan Starship, the Romulan,
the explosion of the, no, I guess it wouldn't be explosion because that you do,
we do have the Romulan ship coming back later as crash landed.
Something that the Romulans did opened the time portal and they,
they wind up being intercepted by a ship from pretty close to next generation,
a time point.
And of course, it's not allowed to go back up.
Oh, what happened to you 50?
Something just electronic and weird just happened.
I bet it's something we're not flying.
Okay, so as 50 was saying, yeah, they get zapped forward in time,
70 or 72 years or something like that.
And they have some directive similar to the prime directive that won't let them go back in time
because that will cause a paradox and affect the timeline of these people in the future.
So that's no good.
That would be the temporal prime directive.
Okay, yeah, that sounds like something they said.
So yeah, so they're not allowed to do that.
So just kind of stuck in the future here.
And then does come up once at least where, you know, they question that.
But while they're stuck in the future, they have some adventures.
And they're pretty cool adventures.
What are you guys saying?
Should we go through and introduce everybody because I don't think we did that when we started.
Yeah, it's a good idea.
Hi, I'm X1101.
What's up? It's Taj.
Hi, my name's Pokey, and I'm addicted to audio books.
Word.
Yep.
And 5150 has been lost in the ether, but hopefully we'll come back.
Yeah, he usually comes back when that happens.
And hopefully this will be no exception.
So I'll go first.
I, when I was listening to these, I just like was really like instantly,
especially like the first few episodes, really strong.
Like how much I missed Star Trek.
Like there's no Star Trek on TV.
Like I was just like, oh my God, this is exactly what I miss.
Like this is it's the tone, especially early on is dead on.
Like next gen DS9 era, like Star Trek, it's right there.
And it's perfect for that.
Unfortunately, I came to the realization because it just made me want like Star Trek back.
Like I'm like, yeah, let's have a new show.
But then I realized like if they bring back a new show, it will never be my Star Trek.
Like my Star Trek is that Star Trek.
And it's there and nobody can touch it.
But this really like made me kind of like realize how much I missed it just being there every week.
See, I have Netflix and I'm currently rewatching DS9.
So I don't miss it because I'm currently watching it.
But other than that, I completely agree with you.
Yeah, it's not the same as having like new Trek.
You know, like I've seen once again, we were talking in the chat.
I am this nerdy.
I've seen every episode of Star Trek.
So like, you don't get surprised anymore.
And I mean, even some of the stuff that happens in this show was kind of like, okay,
that was part of this was from this episode and part of this was from this other episode
that actually was a Star Trek episode.
But like, it's just nice to see like something new in the universe.
But I do concur that I want new track on TV, but I wanted to be done with the, you know,
TNG, DS9 Voyager, something that caliber again, but now.
Yeah, and this is very good.
I have to say I, I was never.
Well, I was always a Star Trek fan.
I've always liked Star Trek.
I was like, all of them.
I was just, I've never into it.
Like, certainly not to Todd, just level and never, you know, really like obsessed about
or anything like that.
But, um, but I always did like it, especially like, um, well, especially all of them,
really.
There wasn't a Star Trek.
I didn't like.
And, um, and this was cool.
This was really good.
Uh, first episode, uh, early on.
I made a mistake when I downloaded these in not numbering the episodes.
And I, I listened to them in alphabetical order, or at least they started to, and then
when that didn't make as much sense, I went back and, and numbered them and fixed them.
Um, but I'd say like the, the first episode, the acting was, um, like kind of way overacted.
But that went away quick.
They settled in and they found they were them really quick.
And this was really, really well done.
The acting is superb, um, especially Captain Edwards.
I mean, he is an outstanding actor.
And his voice quality is tremendous.
He is, he is nearly at a hookah level of, uh, you know, listen to the phone book readability.
He's, he's, uh, or read the phone book.
Listenability, rather.
Um, he's outstanding.
And everybody else seemed to come along pretty well too.
And this was, uh, really well acted, pretty well written and, uh, and well done overall.
It's really funny.
You say a hookah because like, I kind of had a dude that looks kind of like a hookah in my mind.
I was like, imagining what he looked like.
He, he, myself.
Hey, your back.
Uh, sorry, guys.
Uh, since I'm doing it on my phone, I have an actual phone call.
I hope none of that blood, or it didn't sound like it in the background.
But we didn't know who you phone call.
Okay.
But, uh, yeah, I mean, I, I kind of think might find myself wishing some of these characters were more fleshed out.
I mean, we've got the, uh, the Irish engineer, Commander McGuire, you know, it's pretty well fleshed out.
You know, is the guy that, uh, the Captain Edwards bounces everything off of.
Uh, we hit, we hit, you know, very interesting character in the doctor.
Uh, who we still don't know whether he's actually sinister or not.
I, I think that may be a booze by the all.
I think we'll find out he's definitely a weird fellow.
But I think we'll, we'll find out if, should I say second season?
I don't know if they're going to break this up in the season.
What they've done so far seems like first season.
And I think, you know, I think a lot of the questions about the, the questions about the doctor will probably at some time be resolved.
Whether, whether, whether he's a sinister fool.
I had some problems with the ship combat stuff coming through well in audio drama.
Stuff that, you know, you used to seeing and it being chaotic on the screen.
I, I really didn't feel like a translated well to good audio drama.
But other than that, I thought it was really well done.
Well, there is a lot of stuff with this audio drama.
I mean, they're not saying lieutenant so and so do this.
You're, you're left to assume by the voice and unfortunately, yes.
Doing as an audio drama gets, gets a little confused who sang and doing what.
But I think they've done as good a job as could be done because you're not going to say the speaker's name every time you talk to him.
I think the one thing they really got right that made it for me very understandable and clear was the fact that they got the language of the structure of the show.
Like all the little transitional music was in the right spots and like even where like in the show when it's a visual show,
like sort of like the beginning shot of any scene is like the ship outside.
And it has like a little, you know, either the sound of the engines or maybe like a little music.
And they even put that there in the audio drama, even though that wasn't something there.
So like you're imagining it there anyways.
So I think that like just making sure that it matched the structure of an episode really helped get over those barriers.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, sorry.
It's interesting you say that because I thought one of the things that they got really right as well were the mixture of sound effects where some of them sounded like the original series and some sounded like next generation.
And they blended them really well.
And I don't know if anybody.
Okay, who am I kidding?
Everybody would notice whether they came from original or next gen.
But I thought they did a good job as far as like the doors all sounded like original Star Trek.
And I think the photon torpedoes did too, but then like there were other stuff that sounded like next gen.
But I thought that was cool.
And I think that's part of what gives it very strongly a feel of right between those two time periods.
And you know, obviously I think the music has evolved because you know, originally they were using the next generation theme and they slightly paraphrased version.
Old ago where no ship has gone before, et cetera.
And especially I think in the last episode, episode eight, it looked like they'd come up with a brand new score for the for the intro music.
Plus, you know, diverged quite a bit from the, you know, from the standard Star Trek.
And on some of that, I think it may be because, you know, Paramount.
Well, if you're not making a profit off, we're not coming after you copyright.
I'm wondering if the, who actually wrote the music, liberal.
And they might have got a letter someplace in there said, hey, you knock it off.
Well, if they did that music has worked for higher, they wouldn't.
And Paramount owned the rights to the music.
They wouldn't have any say in the matter.
Well, I don't know. I don't know what goes on behind.
I think these guys would be definitely worth an interview, another podcast.
I've always been fascinated by the fan fiction realm and I've never made progress on that.
But I should sometimes try to contact these people like this and say, well, what kind of tools?
How do you make magic happen?
I think it really stood out about this production in particular.
And it's a rant that we keep having on the show.
And I just have to, you know, get our drink in.
The fact that I'm going to, I'm going to call this the anti-JJ Abrams condundrum.
The fact that I can't come up with a new story because there's so much canon that I have to spin it off into a new universe.
Or I can't do a Star Wars movie set after the original movies because there's too many novels and there's not enough space to put in another movie where I can't use my own ideas.
This, what this does is it finds a place where there's nothing else that exists and tells a story that doesn't impact anything else.
And it's perfect. Like you don't have to change everything around it. It's okay where it is.
Like there are ways to be creative. You just can't be lazy about it.
What you're saying that this universe could coexist with the new J.J. Abrams universe.
I think he's saying exactly the opposite that it does perfectly coexist with the non-JJ Abrams universe where this group of people went into the existing track universe, not the J.J. Abrams version of it.
And did exactly what J.J. Abrams didn't do found a place in that universe where they could play without touching any of the other timelines and still be able to do their own thing without messing anybody else up.
And I've said this before, I am scared by J.J. Abrams getting control of the Star Wars universe because they said anything outside the six MOOC is no longer canon.
We can't be bothered to read any of the novelizations, et cetera. There's this whole thing about the children of Han and Leia and Luke and all that stuff.
Well not so much children of Luke. They're just going to stop on whatever's been in novelizations.
I've always thrown up Star Wars as this great example of what you can do if you do take in everything as canon.
When I was in junior high after the, I think the first or the first two movies, there was a series of like kids books, you know, about Han Solo before, you know, a new hope.
And you know, it's at, and he goes on some planet and they need to defend it against the Empire and he jumps in a Z95 headhunter as an older fighter they have around.
And lo and behold, 15 years later, they come, they come out with, you know, the X-wing game and the Z95 headhunter is a plet, well I think it was an opponent in that one.
It was a playable. Eventually it became playable and it's like, wow, somebody went back and read this little novel written for eighth graders or whatever and pull that out of it.
Unless that was something that was in the Lucas canon all along that never came to the screens and all, you know, all in one stroke, Abram says, no, none of that stuff exists.
Where I'm going to do my own thing because I can't be bought.
And there are so, so many rich, well done stories that have just been thrown out. I have an entire bookshelf behind me of stories that apparently don't matter anymore, but they do matter.
They matter to who wrote them and they mattered to people like me who read them.
The running joke with me and my friends is if we go to the movie, we're not really going to do this because we're shills and we'll set and watch the movie no matter what and probably love it.
Yeah, me too. Yeah, me too.
Is the fact that as soon as they bring on Han and Leia's kid or kids and if their name is not Jason, Jason or Anakin, we're going to walk out the movie because it's just like no.
And I know they're not going to be that, but it just does me off because it's like why couldn't you? I mean, you could even just like as fan service, just use the name, you know, but even you couldn't be bothered with that.
You had to change it. I would walk out of that movie for you.
You're a better man than me because I don't even think I'll walk out of the movie for me.
No, no, I'm probably not even going to walk into that movie.
I have to admit, you know, I did like the second Abram Star Trek movie or near camp.
I did enjoy it, but it's like I'll put those over in another little cubby hole because thank you for destroying my childhood, JJ.
You know, I don't know that he, I saw the first one and I don't know that he destroyed anything or did a bad job of it.
And some of the later Star Trek movies weren't that great anyway.
So, you know, like specifically the one where they were riding the wave for whatever the hell it was from the from the supernova.
I just I thought that movie was was crap or mini series, whatever it was. I don't remember now, but I didn't think that thing was any good at all.
So for him to kind of pick up and wipe out some of that stuff, I didn't really mind.
Well, and I'm on the opposite of a lot of people of all the next generation movies. I rather enjoyed Nemesis.
I'm not a big fan of insurrection.
I can't even keep him straight anymore, but I've seen them all the next gen movies and I then think they're all serviceable.
I just my whole problem like and I agree with Bogey like the first Abrams like Star Trek movie wasn't bad.
It wasn't what I wanted, but it wasn't bad. Like I can sit and watch it and understand what I did.
The second one makes me want to punch things like, especially the last half where it's like, oh, our movie is so shitty.
We have to remake the last like 20 minutes of wrath of con because our movies just not good enough to have its own ideas.
Now, when you say punch things, do you mean things or do you mean you want to punch JJ Abrams?
For a long time, and I'll be honest, I didn't blame JJ Abrams for the problem.
I blame the writers because those writers are atrocious. They've made their whole career on taking properties and ruining them.
Like that's what their career is.
And I was totally cool with JJ Abrams and especially when he was going to Star Wars, I was like, you know what?
That's cool because he's always said, you know, I like Star Trek, but I'm a Star Wars fan.
And I was like, okay, cool. He gets to go do what he wants. That's cool.
And I'm sure he'll make a badass Star Wars movie.
But then as soon as he walked in the door, he's like, yeah, we're throwing everything out.
And I'm like, nah, now you get the blame for the other two.
Well, and he did the same kind of thing in the middle of lost where he set lost up with all these different stories going on.
And then he just walked away and they kind of never finished any of them.
Like I finished that series and still don't know what anything meant.
And they bring it back to the current topic, Star Trek, the continuing mission.
A lot of people might listen to this and find out, well, you know, they've brought up stuff and they've never continued it.
And this is why I'm saying this reads to me like the first season of a Star Trek series.
Because a lot of times, well, let's face it, the original series hardly anything ever got carried over or mentioned again to another episode.
Because they had all these different writers like DC Fontana and stuff control.
So there wasn't a thing that, oh, we're going to possibly accept a hairy mud.
You know, we're going to we're going to pick up this character or storyline and and continue it.
But of course, you know, the the later series Enterprise and and next generation DS9, that was that was pretty much a common thing.
But if you think about it, really usually you didn't revisit the same topic more than once in the season.
Well, I think on DS9, there may have been a couple alternate universe episodes and the same scene.
So it's in the same seat, you know, after they introduced that there was definitely at least one per year.
So, you know, some of these things have been introduced like the brain sucking alien and, you know, the saboteur.
There's something else that the beer makes it escape me.
You know, the listeners may listen, well, why, you know, they dropped they did this and then they dropped it.
They don't mention again, and I'm thinking like, well, wait for the second season when it comes.
I don't know if you guys looked into the web page, whether these are all hosted, but the there's a bit about the actors here.
And the people who put this together and they got some real acting chops here.
And they've got also like some some guest stars who showed up who were in like original Star Trek, or in Star Trek movies.
And like that's that's pretty impressive. I don't know if you guys noticed any of that.
No, I had no, I have to look into that because so that's not uncommon for the video series.
Either pick up old characters or have same, you know, bring back some of the original actors playing different characters.
Yeah, I think that's what happened here when you get to what happened here is that they had some of the original actors playing different characters.
But like a couple of my looked into real quick, there's Spice Williams-Crosby, who was a Klingon in one of the movies.
And she's like a bodybuilder and stuff.
You can see from her pictures. There's another woman.
Celeste Yarnall was a crew member and several things and Lawrence Montaine was a Vulcan.
It's a couple of these other guys that recognize their faces. I can't I can't play some, but they're they're recognizable.
And I wish I knew why I had to look them up too, but yeah, they did a good job with this thing. They really did.
The only thing that really bothered me a little, well, there's a couple of things that bothered me a little.
But the one sound effect that I did not think they got right is when they when they, you know, engage the warp drive.
There was a thunderbolt, the thunder crack. I did that. I don't remember that being canon. I don't remember that being correct.
Yeah, that was actually that's funny. You say that. That's the one sound effect that I didn't like.
That was because of the same thing. It sounds a little more like the movie like warp jump, but it's not that either. It's kind of like in between.
It's like somebody tried to remake the sound. Yeah, maybe there's not a sound for warp and they had to invent one.
That's the guy I should have had on there. Just been in every thing. That's Mark Shepherd. I swear this guy is in everything nerdy.
He would be awesome. Name something Mark Shepherd is in that isn't awesome.
Well, they just he's going to be he's going to be in the now. Am I thinking the guy played a Apollo originally?
No, that's Richard. You're right. I saw something today. He's going to be a new Star Trek thing and a not tracking.
Mark Shepherd is it. Did he play Sarek? No, he's only been in a little bit of Star Trek. He was some random guy and I think Voyager.
But he's been in damn near everything else. I believe Mark Leonard was Sarek.
All right, you're right. And I'm certain he's probably if not past certainly retired.
It was a weird crossover there.
You know, he's most famous for being the bad guy in here come the brides, that old series.
And there was actually a Star Trek novel that drops Spock into that unit of time travel thing.
And he becomes like March Clark or something.
The only thing other than the Thunderbolt that I didn't like is I had a problem with Jack McGuire, the engineer.
I thought he was just a little over acted or maybe the guy just didn't get Irish accent quite right or combination of both.
He was the only guy that I had to struggle through.
Well, let's face it in the future. I mean, because of TV, all the accents are combining.
I don't, you know, I bet if you took accents around the United States from 50 years ago, the less homogenous than what we had now.
Man, I looked up Mark Shepherd. He's, oh, what's his name? The King of Hell on Supernatural.
Crowley, but he's been in Supernatural, warehouse 13, dollhouse, Star Trek, Firefly, Battlestar Galactica.
It's where this guy is in everything and he's fantastic in all of them.
Doctor who you miss, Doctor who?
I did. He's got credits all the way back to X files.
I never even noticed the guy before. I don't even recognize him. But everything you're naming, I've seen in all his movies on his IMDB page, I've seen. I never even noticed the guy.
Well, that's why I'm jokingly calling him the secret king of the nerds.
Yeah, I mean, Chuck, CSI, dollhouse, Galactica, my good burn notice, my goodness.
Somebody's going to X 101, you're going to have to email these guys and tell them that he needs to be on an episode.
He might be slightly outside of their pay scale.
Well, so a lot of these people though, 24 medium, a biotic woman, you know, the remake.
All this looks like all CSI's monk. Wow.
Yeah, I'm looking at Daniel Robux IMDB page right here and it just goes on and on and on and on.
So it's not like, you know, I can't imagine they paid for all these appearances.
These are probably people who just start track fans and wanted to be a part of it, would be my guess.
I wish they would see on this page, if you hover over a face, it kind of tells you what they did in the episode.
I only did that for their regular cast members for their special guest.
It doesn't say what character they played or what part they played in this.
I wish they would do that.
Yeah, I just posted in the chat the IMDB for Frank Weller.
You want to see somebody with a bajillion credits. That's the dude right there.
Or Frank Wellker. I'm sorry, that's his name.
Well, it's funny and the first four that are shown at least on my version of the page are all cartoon movies.
No, that's actually what he's known for is like voices.
Yeah, and my understanding is is his stick for a long time was like every time there was like an animal noise in a cartoon.
He was the guy they would call.
But like he was the voice of Megatron and like transformers.
He's done like all these huge like voice acting things, but like his bio list.
Like you have to like hit the scroll wheel on your mouse like five or six times just to get past the 2000s.
Like that's how much work this guy has done.
Yeah, you really do. He's got Flintstone's credits.
He's got the super globe trotters TV series credits.
I had to hit the scroll wheel 20 times to get down to 1999.
Okay, this should use this guy too.
He passes muster.
I think he has a solid bio. I think we get trust him.
That's all I can think to say about these episodes without getting into spoilers.
Yeah, I think I need a drink and we need to spoil this stuff.
So you guys wait for the spoilers to take a drink?
Yes, if it's a special drink, yeah.
Yeah.
Well, I've been drinking non-special drink.
I'm ready for one.
That's the other thing is I've been hammered enough on podcasts and it was embarrassing that I don't want to do that to myself if I can help it.
I'll be right back. I got to go fetch mine.
What's that 50?
I said, you're cutting in and out now.
Oh, no.
Well, I mean, you're good now, but you were cutting in.
Well, I hope it doesn't happen again.
I don't know what's going on, whether it's my router or my modem, but I had one router crap out on me and I'm using a backup unit and I've ordered a new one.
And what, you know, what this book puts me in mind of, you know, if somebody can come up with a script again,
I can't think of a more international cast than the HPR contributors.
You know, if we, if we want an Irish engineer, I'm certain kid and Fallon could concede leprechaun voice of the fake kid and Fallon or something.
Oh, bring me back me lucky charms.
I was going to say that's like Poke's two actual like voice credits is space Poke and fake Kim Fallon.
Oh, yeah.
I didn't know Poke was the fake kid Fallon.
I didn't either.
You did it once on the show and it was hilarious.
And actually X1101 and I were talking about it in the back channel when he was editing the episode that it's in.
And he was like, this is in reference to something that we're not actually going to do, but I can't take it out because it's hilarious.
That is kind of funny.
I don't even remember doing it now.
I can't wait to hear the episode.
And we have a plethora of scuts, not including me because I can't fake a scar shacks in a can.
But we've got this a web and Kevin.
So please, somebody hit us up with a space opera.
Lost in bronze, I'm looking at you.
You don't think he's a little out of our league, huh?
Nah, he can come down to us.
It's okay.
All right, X1101.
Would you, would you go and fetch for your beverage this week?
I have diabetes in a bottle.
I have real sugar Mountain Dew.
Oh, yeah, that would be real diabetes in a bottle.
Now, what is that like?
I don't think I've ever had it.
It's pretty much like regular Mountain Dew having just said it except it tastes more real and less like artificial sweeteners.
Oh, that's cool.
I don't think I've had Mountain Dew in years.
I used to live on the stuff when I was in high school and college, but I drink so little of it now because I drink so much water.
But I kind of wanted something different and I've been wanting these for a while.
So I figured it was something different.
That's cool.
Taj, anything interesting this week?
I'm going to continue with my series of completely just doing something beside the drink because I'm drinking water and apparently that's lame.
So we're going to go on with the crap that I'm stuffing in my face that I probably shouldn't be eating.
And I have a giant bowl of generic Kroger brand chocolate ice cream.
And it's mildly passable for chocolate ice cream, but it's still satisfying.
Oh, that's exciting.
50 what do you got, buddy?
Well, I can't, I don't think I can top Kroger ice cream, but because I've had that and it is as far as taste, but it's probably better for you know, if you can't taste it, that's probably a better thing for.
But I was just about to clean out of glass and let me preface this.
I went to the doctor a couple weeks ago and the doctor told me they think I had diverticulitis and put me on some really powerful antibiotics
that they said, no, you can't drink because we'll hurl these antibiotics.
And so I just finished that regimen up Sunday.
So my second day of freedom and to celebrate, I bought myself, well, you know, I'm going to be here with my old friend, Johnny, Johnny Walker Black.
So give me a minute because I got to clean out of glass, but I'll be presently happy for sure.
And you know, we'll see about hard liquor beer still tastes funny to me two days away from the medication.
I imagine it was probably the 14 or so days on the medication that's made it taste funny rather than the two days off.
Well, I mean, that's one recommended by the doctor.
I looked up the medication question and they said, no, you shouldn't drink, you shouldn't drink anything for three days after your.
That's almost always my question when they prescribe me a medication.
Can I drink with this? No, can you prescribe something else?
It would be good for us that I should have done that.
I've never actually asked if they could prescribe something else, but, but I will now, damn it.
Well, I'm kind of proud of myself for 10 days.
I did not go into, I ate a lot of pop and candy in lieu of alcohol.
Even though the alcohol tastes funny, I'm trying to go try.
So have you poured a glass of it yet?
Are you going to tell us how it tastes and do a review?
Please don't wait on me to do a review. I can insert that later.
Okay, well, I'm not drinking tonight either because I, I got to work in the morning.
So I, I'm, I'm racking my brain. This is about a million things I could review over the past month.
I've got a good month, but I think the one I would like to review and maybe just do a generic review here is I installed some LED light bulbs in several rooms in my house and I put most of them, maybe even all of them on dimmer switches.
And I got to say that's the way to go.
We put, we put some in the kitchen and they were, they're the like natural daylight color and that's pretty good for the kitchen.
It's a bit harsh for other rooms.
My daughter doesn't even like it in the kitchen, but, but that's pretty decent.
And I put some in the bedroom and they're a soft white, they're calling it.
They're like 2700 K for, for color temperature and they look just right in there.
And when you get the right kind of dimmers for an LED and they're a little expensive, but, but they're adjustable so that you, you take the switch plate off and you set it to where you want the lowest light to be.
And then the slider on the switch does all the rest of the work, but you get the right kind of switch behind a dimmable LED bulb and the effect is really nice.
About as nice as any other dimmable light, I'm sure, but, I mean, I love dimmable lights and these LEDs are really, really nice.
So if that's my review, get yourself some LED bulbs and dimmer switch and be a happy person.
Did I just disconnect it says 50 did, but no, I'm not hearing anybody.
You guys still there?
I'm still here.
Still here.
Okay.
All right.
You might be my router cracked out again.
See you must spoil this thing.
Oh, yeah, let's do that.
I have one major issue with the whole series and it has to do with recasting.
What's that then?
Oh, you mean, you mean the girl who died and then the user again for own needs or something?
No, although that was actually I thought that was hilarious.
Yeah, that was kind of funny.
I was going to forgive for that.
It was, it was weak, but it was funny.
It was very like it confused me for a little bit.
It was very like cheap sci-fi like cost-cutting measures.
I liked it.
Now, my big thing is, is the last two episodes, I think, when they recast the captain, like
he is so different and even the character is so different.
It's like a totally different person with the same name.
I get that you can't get somebody that has as good of a voice as the guy originally that
did it.
I get that.
But like the guy that they got is so totally different.
I'm like, why didn't you just kill the original captain and then like make a new character
because I mean, that would create all kinds of new drama, you know, like this old crew
being captain by a new captain, like from the 24th century when they're from the 23rd,
like that would be a really cool dynamic.
I don't know why they felt the need to recast that same character, especially if they
knew it was going to have to change.
I totally, totally missed that.
And part of it is because I didn't listen to them as I was saying earlier, I didn't
listen in the right order.
I heard the Cthulhu episode first and then came back to the rest of it.
So I hope you can forgive me for not noticing that it was different at that point.
But the other episodes, the one where they were on Earth, so he was drunk and slurred
in anyway, right?
Right.
Which is just like, yeah, I don't know.
It was just like it was so, he was so different, just the way he acted.
And when he, you know, just the cadence was different, it was like, it was like it was
an intentional choice to not try to emulate the original actor.
Which I get that's that's a choice you can make, but at the same time, if you know
that it's going to be that big of a deal, why don't you, especially because it's flexible,
you don't have to, it's your story, like you could change anything you want.
Why would you keep that character?
I don't know.
It's interesting.
Yeah.
Well, I'm glad I missed it.
You brought up the other thing I hated, which was the Cthulhu episode.
Ha, ha, ha.
You hated that one?
Oh, I love that.
I have, I have a problem with any, like a lot of sci-fi shows or a lot of anything really.
Let's be honest, has a Cthulhu episode or like something that's, like, love crafty in
or like, it's just like, there's a bunch of things that have done that.
And my problem with it is for whatever reason, and it's hilarious because it kind of just
fits with like the theme of sort of the Cthulhu mythos, is that like whenever you inject
that into another story, that story instantly ceases to be, you know, the feel of that
kind of story.
It instantly becomes a lovecraft story, like that's being Star Trek.
It's a Cthulhu story.
It was Cthulhu in space.
It was perfect.
It was really well executed, but I do get your point, but, but it was perfect.
Oh, man.
I just, and I thought of you, Taj, when they said non-uclidean.
I knew like as soon as they started talking about, like that was one of the words they
said a couple of the other words that we like nailed when we did the Cthulhu, but I was
like, this is pretty much perfect for us.
It was very funny to me that that, that it came up that way, but hearing it the first,
like that was the first episode that I heard, I was like, oh, no, really?
But then I kind of got into it.
It was fine, but like you could hear the chanting.
You could hear them saying things in that as much as they tried.
It seemed like they tried avoiding specific, you know, Cthulhu, verbiage in the script,
like all the background noises you could hear them chanting.
Cthulhu and Raleigh, and all that kind of stuff.
Except the specific non-uclidean.
That's a, that's kind of one of the instant touch words for, nope, this is going to be
lovecraft.
Yeah, exactly.
I don't even think they tried to avoid it.
When they started talking about Narlahotep, I was like, nope, you didn't, not even trying
anymore.
Like that, that is specifically like Cthulhu.
Like that is a Cthulhu thing.
It said, I guess I wasn't familiar with that name.
Yeah, was Narlathotep, was that in Cthulhu directly or was that in one of the other lovecraft
stories?
I believe it's in one of the other Cthulhu stories.
I know it from the, uh, call the Cthulhu RPG, but, um, yeah, it's like one of the big names
in like the Cthulhu mythos.
No, okay.
I was saying, I haven't read all of lovecraft stuff yet.
So that might be why I missed it.
Okay, I'm a little away by this.
I did not catch until I started.
I heard you guys talking and looking back at the episode credits that they'd switched
the captain, the new actor.
Yeah, I somehow missed that too.
You guys are pulling my chain, right?
I'm not, I'm not the only person that like really felt that that was completely different.
No, I had no idea, but like I said, I heard them out of order.
So the, you know, episode eight, the Cthulhu one, I heard first anyway, so it wasn't a different
captain to me.
I was still trying to still getting used to the series.
And then episode seven, he was drunk, you know, I, he was always slurring anyway.
So I just totally missed it.
Now on my player, I, uh, Sansa Clip and the stock software, uh, one thing I like about,
I seem to like about this stock Clip software.
I mean, I can pick up episode, you know, podcast right in the middle where I left off, you
know, not just one, but several of rockbox software every time you upload, uh, new files,
use your place, uh, but, uh, with, oh, not, not to enable the database, then you can,
you can do bookmarks.
Okay.
Well, I wasn't doing, uh, intentionally doing bookmarks, but it was like, you know, I,
I could listen to four or five podcasts and come back right to a place where I, where
I'd left them off that, that not being here there, then, uh, the first seven episodes were
in the right order and then the metadata on eight must have been different because like
off, you know, but that, that was okay.
Yeah, the, the Clip stock firmware does read metadata and the, uh, the default for rockbox
is to read file names and do them alphabetically so that, that's the difference there for sure.
Yeah, I had to go through and like Poki did, I had to add the numbers on rockbox to get
them in the right order.
So what, what was everybody's favorite episode?
Oh, I love the Cthulhu one.
It was just too perfect.
Psycho Vulcan all the way.
That was awesome.
Psycho Vulcan was cool, but I, I kind of like the one with the, uh, the other aliens who
they had to, they had to teleport the, uh, photon torpedo onto their ship to kill them.
But then they were like, oh, there's so many more of us that you can imagine.
Yeah, that's, that was, that was a brain sucking aliens, you know, like, like I said, you
know, expect them maybe to return to that, but, uh, you know, wait, wait for seasons, whatever
that comes out.
Yeah.
If this were to like, you know, ramp up and catch on, have many, many episodes, I can,
I can see that alien species being this series is Borg or, or Q, you know, this, the
recurring menace that's completely undefeatable on, on, on a large scale, but episode by episode
we can keep out smart in them.
That is actually the one thing that this has so far lacked is Q, but I know because Q
only ever took an interest in Picard, but he's in all of the other series, all the
series is after that, I should say, the only time it counts is when Cisco punches him
in the face.
That's fantastic.
I don't remember that one.
Maybe I should what rewatch all those series to, I don't know, Janeway and Q is always
funny.
I just love the Q is on one episode of DS9 and he gets busted in the face and it never
comes back.
He's just like, no, you know, I'm not having it.
I may be, you know, more powerful than all of time in space, but he hit me and I don't
like it.
That's kind of funny.
Though I think that was early enough in DS9 that he, um, Cisco was trying, they were
trying with Cisco's character to, to show that he was not Picard and so, you know, he
hits Q and Q says, oh, Picard never hit me.
And then Cisco says directly to him, I'm not Picard.
And I think they're trying to say, this is something completely different.
Do not expect TNG from this.
Yeah.
But I think the first episode of DS9, that scene where Picard is sitting there with Cisco
and just like, Cisco's not having it like he's just like, no, we're not having this conversation
get off my station.
That was, that's what you knew that they were not alike at all.
Well, I know it seems like I've come to the right place because it seems like I am always
in the minority, uh, where we post original series, uh, far and away, DS9 is my favorite.
And most of the time I express that opinion, I am pounded down.
Well, then you hang out with people who are just wrong.
I agree.
DS9 is the best.
I don't know if it's the best, but it is fantastic.
They're all good.
All of them were good.
I've said it before.
I'll say it again.
Even Voyager was fantastic.
See, as I've said before, I have some strange nostalgia with Voyager because that was my
Star Trek is in.
I watched it from premier to finale live, but going back, it to me ages the least well.
It doesn't hold up well over time.
For me, I think I see it through the rose colored lenses of memory and it was so good
in my memory and then it just isn't.
And so, you know, because I never saw DS9 until I watched a Netflix and binge watched
it, there is no rose tinted glasses of memory.
So you just saw it for what it was and it is really just a better show.
Was it was it only good because of the holographic doctor because he's probably my favorite
character.
Silo and I really remember from deep space nine, excuse me from Voyager.
For me, it was good because it was what I was watching as I was growing up, also seven
of nine.
Duh.
Yeah.
My only thing with DS9 is this like I love Rodenberry and I love Rodenberry's vision and
I love TNG like that's that was my growing up like when I was, you know, a kid in a teenager
TNG was what was on TV.
So like that's what I got, but I guess DS9 hit that perfect time when I was old enough
to get it and Rodenberry had died.
And so he had this edict for a long time that everything has to be this utopian world,
which is beautiful.
I mean, it's a great idea.
It's wonderful.
But you can't tell too many really good stories in that world like when Ron Moore and the
people who did DS9 had free reign because nobody was staying over until they couldn't
they're like we're going to have a war and we're going to see what happens to the federation
when that happens.
And that just completely opened up a whole new version of Star Trek that nobody had ever
seen, which was fantastic.
But what happened also is very character driven and the characters are somewhat whimsical
in that, you know, I mean, you've got, you know, the bartender there, she's now I don't
remember any of their names.
He had Odo, you know, with a shapeshifting, you had, we just had all kinds of crazy interpersonal
reactions there that just didn't happen on the other ones, the other ones were more
story based.
Well, I like it when, you know, second generation of Malgamon, how should I say it?
You know, well, you know, there was in the, in the original Star Trek, yes, we were, you
know, next generation was whitewash everybody's happy or that and DS9 was not really under
a bell.
Let's take a look.
Well, like everybody always says that like the original Star Trek was like sold is like
wagon train to the stars, like it was supposed to be a western in space.
DS9 is a western in space, like for real, you have a bartender, like it's an outpost,
like way out in the middle of nowhere, like it's a western and like the construction of
the characters and stuff is a western, but then crap, I was going to say that I can't
remember what it was now.
I had a great point and now it's gone.
Well, I mean, even in the later series, you know, the character outside of security
off and everybody's trying to tell him, you know, of course, not so bad, he's at least
he's a devil.
We know.
And, you know, if we take him out, there's somebody's going to take his place and we,
let me just the fact that they start the show like the main premise of the show is like,
we're here and this is like post a Holocaust just happened, like the Jordans have been like
basically thinly veiled World War II, you know, reference, you know, and just that that,
they built around that like those were two like species in TNG that nobody gave.
A damn about and they turn them into like two really complex like civilizations, which
is awesome.
Well, the, oh yeah, that was that was very complex side of the Jordans were at the same
time.
They were the Palestinian.
They were the resistant, you know, so many things, you know, they did things.
They were, they were all these, but they being besieged, they did these unthinkable acts.
You were both on, you were both on the side, rooting for sometimes, maybe that was going
a little too far.
Well, about one of their prime ministers, it was said in an episode I just saw, he knows
exactly how to deal with terrorists.
He used to be one and that, what's the old saying you'd end terrorists is, it was also
like the first time that like a Star Trek don't like just like on the nose with religion.
I mean, the first episode, they're like, yeah, you're the emissary, you're like this
messiah and they actually pay it off at the end of the series, like they play it the
whole way through.
Oh, that made me so mad the first time I saw it because one of my friends, I, he knew
I was watching him, but he thought I'd seen it before and he spoilered the end for me.
Two things, he spoiled Dax dying and he spoiled the whole Cisco messiah thing at the end.
And it was like, I hate you so much, I didn't know either of those things.
Yeah, and then all of a sudden, you never get Cisco out of hell or I kind of got the impression
right after that.
No, we were not going to touch the DS9 universe post the last episode because that's for
paramount.
I'm going to have to go back and rewatch this because I've heard before that DS9 was kind
of a knockoff of Babylon 5, and I thought the messiah thing was pretty big in Babylon
5, the episodes of that that I saw.
And maybe I just missed a few to deep space nine episodes because I never heard any of that
about him being any kind of messiah.
Oh, the Babylon 5 and DS9 rip off, there's no doubt in my mind, I love both shows, like
irrationally love both shows.
It's totally DS9 was a rip off, like he shopped it to paramount, took it to him and they're
now we'll pass and then he goes somewhere else and makes the show and then like that season
or the next season, they come up with DS9, which is basically the same premise.
Yeah, yeah, with better graphics.
Well, they weren't, I think like Babylon 5, I don't remember correctly, like they shot
that whole show like in an old hot tub factory because it was the only thing that they could
find that wasn't their budget range or something stupid like that.
And that's okay, that works out sometimes, you know, like the soldiers uniforms, the space
Marines uniforms, left over in the costume department when they shot Firefly, you know,
from the Starship Troopers, you know, like that shit works out sometimes and it's fine.
Well, I've seen the thing, you know, how they did B5, it was like all the walls, all the walls
for all the offices when walked in to look really solid and if you tap it, you know, it's,
it's just a stretched frame of fabric and incredibly flimsy.
So what else did people like really dig about the audio series?
I'm glad you're bringing it back to that, I keep struggling to do so.
I liked a lot about it, I'll tell you what I didn't like about it and it took me a little bit
to get over it and I did, it was okay, but from episode one, man, I don't like Star Trek's
time travel at all, every episode of Star Trek that's ever had time travel and it has just,
I've found annoying and I never liked it.
I think DS9 does a good one where somehow the crew gets pulled back into TOS time frame in trouble
with tribbles, but yeah, that was cute, I remember that, that was cute.
And graphically really well done, they pull all of it together, I was just astounded by the
cinematography of that episode when I saw it, but other than that, your right time travel has
been a little hokey. Then if that episode was kind of weak, you know, especially bar scene,
worst says, yes, they are cleaners, which you never, you know, never been explained why the
original series looks so different from Klingons from, you know, from everything else.
Yes, everything else. And I really thought that was very, very weak when they finally explained
it for Enterprise, you know, Klingons scientists decided to incorporate the superhuman
con DNA and give it to Klingon, that's why they looked, there were, there were, there were
explanations in the books, you know, that they, there were, that the two Klingon species came up
because of the herd and the human looking ones, you know, crossbreeds with the herd, the invaders,
because were this futile empire, you know, they didn't have any technology and then the herd
lands on their planet and enslave them. And after three, four hundred years, they finally, you
know, killed the herd, but at least them with two distinct species, ones that look ones that fall
the head, rigid and stuff. So I thought that was a much better explanation of the difference
when they did during, how does it explain why they look so much like battlefield earth?
Well, they don't have six fingers and they're not 50 feet tall.
Oh, okay, yeah, I'm glad I got laughed at for that. And they don't have a crazy religion based
around the guy that wrote them. I think to differ. They worship a guy who killed their gods.
That's a little bit of a crazy religion to their first emperor.
Yeah, but the whole lake head religious thing wasn't even consistent when they came up with it,
because there was like a DS9 episode where it had the original series Klingons and they had
bumpy heads. So it's like, what? They suddenly get bumpy heads. Like if they're the augment ones,
you know, they should have the smooth heads, even that, but they hadn't come up with that yet.
So they just played fast and loose, I guess.
If I remember correctly, I think the idea was, you know, the good day to die,
one where you had all the antagonists to Kirk come back together and join with the Trill.
But it was just one of my favorite episodes. But, you know, I'm assuming when they came up with the
cure, then they applied it to everybody. So these guys were original series. They were afflicted
with human DNA and they have the technology, you know, instantly remove all the human DNA and they
snap back to be. If I remember correctly, Worf, which is like, yeah, well, we don't like to talk
about that. That, that was enough for me. I don't know why they had to go any farther than that.
That was the way, that was like the best one because you know, you would, you would think of all
the history and stuff. They would, you know, they would be looking at pictures and Klingons looked
this one way. And unless it was, you know, because, you know, on alliance between the federation and
the Klingons and, you know, sanitizing all the history, you would think it, you know, it's only been
50 years or whatever they would notice. So let's go through the list of things that augment blood
like magically think here. Don't be foreheads. And it can bring people back from the dead. So that's
that's not a big effort or anything. Sounds like we've got our plot bullets. Hey, let me ask you
guys this, since this was the, the bridging of gaps between, you know, first gen and next gen.
And maybe I'm wrong about this because I'm not the huge Star Trek fan, but one thing that stuck
out to me when I was watching, you know, some of the original series first, some of the next generation
stuff. I thought that like Warp 9 was the maximum that next gen was ever able to go until some
of the real later episodes where there was time travel involved or, or next next gen stuff. So
like Ryker had a ship that could go faster. I thought when he was a captain, but these guys were
going Warp 10 the whole time, weren't they? No, Warp 9.9 is the theoretical maximum. Yeah, Warp 10
is transport. Yeah, I didn't think they ever talked about War 6 or 7. Okay, maybe I'm wrong.
Because I think they explain transport is as soon as you hit that, you like simultaneously
exist at all points in the universe at the same time, and you could just like pop in and out of
wherever you want to be. If you're in the Voyager crew, you turn into some crazy lizard person.
Yeah, let's cover that. That's my least favorite voice. It was pretty bad.
That's everybody's least favorite voice episode. I just said at all points in everywhere,
and now I'm a lizard person. And there's a cure. So anyways, back to the audio drama.
This is at the point when the doctor sashes in and fixes there. And I don't mean holographic
doctorable. Maybe I'm a total urban nerd, but I kind of wish these guys would totally, because like
we were saying, they have these art, the art for like the, I guess the cover art for the episodes.
I want to see a 3D model of this ship, because I'm sick of only seeing half of it. Like,
maybe because I'm a Star Trek geek. And like, I'm about the technical manuals and like,
looked at the ships and was like, this is pretty. I really want to see this ship, because it's like,
it seems cool. And it's not a class that is listed anywhere, or you can find like even a made-up
version of the ship. So it's like, I would really like to see that. Yeah, and no two of these
pictures. And all the ships that they encounter, because, you know, about a month ago, it was on
like this Trek history site, and it had like all the, you know, all the starships from the 21st
and, you know, 25th and the evolution of one and not just the, not just the federation ships that
it had, you know, the Romulan and the Klingon ships, the five crew. And none of these ships look
similar enough to me to be satisfying. They all seem to have differences. Yeah, it's like they
can't just decide like, like 51 50 was saying. It almost looks like they took the NX class and
just threw some like movie missiles on it from one angle. And then you'd like it from another.
And it looks like a totally different ship. So it's like, I would love to see that, because I mean,
you, from next gen, you know that there are still ships trolling around from that period. Like,
they're old. And, you know, they don't do much, but they're still around. I mean, it would just
be cool to see like, you know, that back story part of it. It would fill it out more, especially
because I imagine it being like one of the movie ships, like not very nice and cushy, like,
because even they were complaining, like they're putting a holodeck on here. Who needs a holodeck?
That's stupid. Yeah, they were like, what the hell? Well, yeah, there was like that one episode
I think it's next generation, but, you know, they took the model for the Genolan from the one
where they brought back Scotty and distressed it. It was a cargo ship. And it was originally would have been
a original series generation and presented it to questions of Spuggler guys ships. So, yeah,
I would like to see more of that. Because I imagine like the other ships like running around at
this time because the Galaxy glasses and done are like enterprise sea ships. Like, they're still
like solidly like the movie designed with like new missiles on it. So it was just for me, just my
nerd side, I just want to be like, what does this ship look like? It's notifying. I mean, this comes
back to whole Abrams that they scan this. You know, you know, I thought kind of silly in the first
move, mining ship. You know, even 70 years later, it was advanced enough to just, you know,
kill every military ship that it came up against. That kind of, you know, didn't sit well.
There's a reason for that. Go on. Is it lens flares?
No, actually, it's not. It's actually one of my favorite things that actually came out of the
Abramsverse things. Before the first movie came out, they did a comic book series that was canon.
It was the first comic book series that was officially canon. And it was set in the prime timeline.
And it's basically data is the captain of the enterprise. And like, it basically tells a story
of like spot trying to help Romulus. Like he's still there from reunification and stuff.
And they know that I forget what happened. The sun goes over or something's going wrong. And
that's why they're the Romulan planets blowing up. And so it explains Nero, like it goes back
and explains why that villain, because like in the movie, he's terrible. He's a terrible villain.
He's just like, I'm angry. There's a whole reason for that. And it's why he hates
Spock is because of this whole thing that's in this comic book. But they were trying to find a way
to stop it. And so they took that mining ship and all the stuff that's on the outside of it is
Borg tech. Like they basically just outfitted it with as much Borg tech as they could get.
So that thing can toast pretty much anything ever. Yeah, it's like the baddest ship in the universe.
And it also explains that the little light jellyfish thing that Spock flies
was invented by Jordy, which makes me happy. What's what? So like in the the Abrams movie,
the little ship that Spock flies, it looks like a spinning jellyfish thing.
Jordy LaForge is the guy that designed it. Like he leaves Starfleet to like design ships. And
that was like his like master design was that ship. Oh, that's funny. Okay.
Of all the series in all the ships I've seen, the defiant is still my favorite.
It's pretty beast. And it's just it's a little ship just made for kicking ass.
You know, they're lucky to cling on. Their tech is not nearly sophisticated nor the
Romulan as the Federation. You know, both them, they build warships. Yeah, we've got a
science ship. So whose ship was the defiant? That was Cisco's ship in DS9, but it's docked at the
station. And it's there for their kind of eventual war and general ass kicking.
Oh, okay. Yeah, it was it was designed to fight the board, but the board didn't come back.
Yeah, that's what I was going to say. It was specifically like the Federation crapping
its pants going, what are we going to do against this board? Let's build something just to fight them.
The USS fuck you. And of course, completely different from any other design, because we think
well, there's probably a reason they put they put the warp in the cells, clear out here on war on
arms away from the, you know, and then the defiant is like, oh, screw it. We're going to put
everything together. If the motherfuckers die from radiation, so be it. Let me tell you how the
planning meeting went for the design of the defiant. Somebody probably walked in with this pretty
cool looking ship. And then somebody on somebody who was running that show goes, I want a goddamn
Federation version of the Millennium Falcon. Can you make that happen?
Yeah, right there. And apologize for my language, but this won't be the first
sighted for me. Oh, I always mark my explicit.
Yeah, I do too. Seeing that. All right. So now I'm looking for better pictures of the defiant,
because I was going to pictures of like all the Star Trek enterprise,
class ships or or different classes of ships and the defiant. So small, it doesn't show up
clearly on any of the pictures that show all the ships. So anyways, back to the audio drama.
Yeah, I assume you guys have that, uh, you know, JPEG background is like every ship from
its sci-fi series. It's, it's like ridiculous by, uh, relativity, the Star Trek vessels is tiny
and forget start. And then there's the Galactic, that's just gigantic. Yeah, but there's
bigger stuff out there, sci-fi, the name, the Galactic is. Yes, baseball one.
What? It was really, really big. Yeah, but if you think about it, like Star Trek ship to ship
combat is not what actual ship to ship combat would be, it would be like Galactica, like it would be
just like it was on the ocean, broadside. So you can get as many cannons on the person as you can,
and lots of little fighters to just mess things up. Like, it, I mean, it just, you wouldn't have
two ships flying around just shooting each other that big. That's, that's a waste of time.
That's pretty much how this almost all does. I don't know. I mean, a Starward excuse why the big
ships on as fast as, you know, that's, that's why they have fighters. You know, the fight, the
fighters are fairly 10 times as of the capital. In space, you wouldn't have that.
Well, momentum that would let you change your speed faster in a smaller ship. But I don't know,
from all the space battles I've seen and or heard, I honestly, I think Lost in Bronx did them the
best. I'd like to see more, I would like to hear more of his space battles. I'm looking at you,
Lost in Bronx. Well, I think now that is main character, the space gunner, we, uh, hopefully
I'm not sure we'll see Eddie Kay. I would oddly be okay with that. He would dress them down.
I don't know if he'd shoot them down. I think, I think Saul, Saul could probably shoot a whole
ship on us. You know, folks that, uh, anybody's going to eventually be what the hell word?
We opened the cannonworms of talking about Star Trek. Anything Star Trek is going to devolve into
just like Star Trek. There's so much to talk about. Yeah, it's, it's hard. I keep trying to stay
on topic here and this one and it's just really hard to do. I mean, they were all for the most part,
they were really excellent episodes. They're all really well acted and they all reminded me of
stuff from other Star Trek episodes. So what, I mean, what am I supposed to do here? My hands are
completely untied. Well, I'm glad my suggestion you carried through so well. I was afraid when I
suggested you guys would be saying, what the hell did you do? It was a good change. Like,
I love the other books. Like, I don't want to stop that. But like, it was nice to do something
different just to kind of like, I don't know, just a nice little change of place. Look,
palette cleanser before we move on. And I should say, you know, while these episodes
free to download creative comments, a lot of what we talk about and our assessment, you know,
I guess, confounded that for because originally you had to go to episodes and each episode's
webpage. Yeah, I was about to do exactly that. And then on the HPR mailing list,
though it would be hold someone already at it, which seems to happen a lot. HPR mailing list for
the win. Yeah, so I mean, I guess here's normally where we do our final thoughts. But I think I've
said my final thoughts two or three times that I really enjoyed this. It was to have more up the
downs. And the acting, I think, is what stood out more than anything, though the audio production
was top notch as well. Yeah, one thing I would point out, I mean, I wish there was a little more
character development. Obviously, we meant to fuel the loss of the science officer, you know,
unfortunately in the previous episodes pretty, you know, pretty much she was relegated to saying,
you know, scanning so and so, Captain Bob Law. You know, I wish they developed her character a lot
more for Nisa's character after her death than they did before. And I rather imagine that came
about because whoever the actress was contributing had to come to them and say, you know, things have
come up in my life. And I can't continue when they adapted the series under that, but I'm guessing.
Yeah, when you have an all volunteer cast, you kind of have to, you know, work with what you've
got. It's tough to say, hey, we need you to be on this for our schedule. So it's completely
forgivable as well. But I think that's why a lot of people do, you know, solo productions too,
not that one is any better than the other. It's certainly grand when something like this comes
together and is this good? And I want to repeat, man, you know, if somebody wants to create a
script for HPR with our, you know, pretty much international cast, I would be so up for
contributing to that if you need a Ben Wester drunk off his butt for some volunteering to be a
town drunk in a space opera. Yes, yes. You know, I could, I could be the town weapons officer.
What the hell did you miss that fair enough? X 1101 or Taj, either you guys final thoughts?
It was a welcome change. It was something a little different. And it was fun to have an excuse to
go even further down the rat hole into Star Trek than we usually do.
Yeah, I can agree. It's nice to do Star Trek. It is a well-made Star Trek audio drama. Trust me,
you can do worse. There's something out there that are horrendous and you shouldn't listen to.
This is a safe one. And while I've got the mic, Marvel Comics, DC Comics, we did Star Wars,
we did Battlestar. What else do we miss? Dungeons and Dragons. I don't think we talked about it in
the pre-shadow. And there's a hundred other things. I think we could just say Mark Shepherd,
again, and cover pretty much everything. Dang, he's like a nerd hyperlink.
I wonder if he's the Kevin Bacon of nerds. I think Kevin Bacon's big enough. He is the Kevin
Bacon of nerds. Yeah, you're probably right. Yeah, but I think we can nectar or think of Mark
Shepherd in three links. So I'm gonna jump in here and thank everyone for listening and thank
everyone for participating and put the title on our next book here, if you guys don't mind.
Go for it. Please do your brother's books. You were talking about this.
So yeah, this is actually not a book I've ever talked about because I have nothing to say about it
yet. I've never listened to it. This is one of the few books that comes with such high
recommendation that I haven't listened to. And it's still even after a month. I'm looking at
the page now. It still has a hundred percent rating on this. So the book is Tincture,
an apocalyptic proposition by Matthew D. Jordan. It's available on podiobooks.com.
And there are two books in the series and they both start with the word Tincture. So be sure you're
getting book one or else the conversation's gonna be really skewed. And no, you know, it's not,
it's gonna be abnormal. But yeah, so Tincture, an apocalyptic proposition by Matthew D. Jordan.
And I have not read it at all. From what I gather, it's like a post apocalyptic story.
And no one is really sure what the apocalypse was or how it happened. It just kind of happened.
It's just kind of a de-evolution into post apocalyptic truth.
So from the podiobooks.com page, it says, Ramual. And the last of his family,
Eberinia, maybe travel their barren world, shack to shack, selling Tinctures to keep a full belly
and evading the dogmatists to keep their throats safe. Time has turned funny after the whatever,
an apocalyptic event that few remember and even fewer can explain. Danger now
as commonplace, as the unrecognizable relics of war, and the madman of Fulan, along with an iron
rule over his small township, may hold the answers. With a cure for the sick and a passion to uncover
what happened to their world, Ramual and Eberinia set off on a journey to the other place,
the days before the whatever, and ready themselves for a glimpse into what happened and what was
always meant to happen next. So the whatever sounds really cool that hey, there's an apocalypse
or was, but no one really knows what it was. We don't remember it.
I love how apathetic it sounds like the whatever. Yeah, exactly, exactly.
So I got a head start in you guys. I've already got this one downloaded and I put it on my
MP3 player. So I'll be probably be listening to episode one on my way to work tomorrow. So that's
that. This time tomorrow night, I have a fraternity meeting at Boulevard Brewing Company in Kansas
City, Missouri, and hopefully, whatever the beer tastes like, I'm going to be entirely blotto
by this time tomorrow night. However, I do intend to leave my truck at the hotel, which I'm
staying at, they they've said that they have shuttles back and forth, and if not, there'll be
taxis and stuff. So no worries to folks who might think I might be doing something
inconsiderate and frankly illegal. So wouldn't it be even thought to accuse you of it until you
brought it up? Well, I've had some people say, oh, no, if you have one drink, you can't drive.
And it's like, well, and uh, you know, uh, at KELF, I was very careful drink only what I can
metabolize evening, though I wouldn't might have wished I could have done otherwise, but I was
driving and that was the thing. Well, it's probably enough said on that then. And I'll just say,
let's see if anybody's got anything else. Thanks everybody and have a great night. Have a great
month. We'll see you next month.
You've been listening to Hacker Public Radio at Hacker Public Radio dot org.
We are a community podcast network that releases shows every weekday, Monday through Friday.
Today's show, like all our shows, was contributed by an HPR listener like yourself.
If you ever thought of recording a podcast and click on our contributing to find out how easy it
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please email the host directly, leave a comment on the website or record a follow-up episode yourself,
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Attribution, ShareLife, 3.0 license.
The Sterling engine, like, if the problem is it's the problem with everything,
it's like material science. We don't have something strong enough and light enough to make it work,
but what we do, that Sterling engine could be like fantastic.
The other problem with the Sterling engine is the lighter the gas you can put in it,
the better it works. However, you don't want to tight seal on the lighter the gas, the quicker it
leaked out of that seal. So it's got a couple of problems the Sterling engine does.
Well, apparently this was the first 3D printed one that didn't have to have liquid in it,
as it was all just oxygen, ambient oxygen. You know, it looks like the piston in it is about
like the size of CD or DVD and it's only moving back and forth about a quarter inch.
Yeah, the big piston doesn't move far. I'm surprised nobody when we talked about solar
sailing mentioned the work of Nathan Lowell. I mean, that's that's the the whole method of
transportation his quarter share series. Now I have invited those, because I didn't mention it
because I've not read them yet. You guys haven't listened to those? No, I would I would almost
recommend that you two guys drop off right now and go and go to potty of books and download
the entire quarter share. But you're just trying to get rid of us. No, no, he's right. If we
didn't need you for the show, we'd we'd make it. Damn. Yeah, those those that series is excellent.
That's someone that we read that like prequel to or like sidecooler. I forget what was the name of
that one. No, no, we just we listened to a book read by that guy, but he didn't even write it.
No, no, we did it. Oh, yeah, on the planet with the fishing people. What am I thinking?
Yeah, Shaman tale, South Coast. Yes, that's right. That was yeah, that is not on the same level.
Okay, because I was like interested in that, but not terribly. So making it in space makes it
a lot more interesting to me. Oh, yeah, definitely. Definitely his best work is the quarter share
series. I've you know, I've listened to all of it, the one of the witch or whatever. That was
I mean, it's all good, but no, if you're if you're going if you're judging his writing by
Shaman tale, no, you're doing yourself with this. Yeah, I agree. Shaman tales is not bad, but it is
not. It's not clear. Stay. I'll see you. And Nathan, if you're listening, we want the next
quarter share book. What do you mean he's finished them? Well, that's true. He's well, he said he
might revisit the some of the same characters or something like that. I'm I'm thinking Ishmael
now he's retired. May go back and look up his old friends books. No, what I heard was that he
he was going to write more books in that universe, but it would be like the the kind of
underworld crime story type books, which sound really, really neat, sound very interesting.
But I don't I think he's done with Ishmael. I think he's that's what he said. I could be wrong,
but I thought he said that. Speaking of underworld, anything recently on this thing of ours front?
No, I think it's dead. It was good while it lasted. Well, it's like this book we're going to talk
about tonight, you know, it seems we're not booked, but episodic series. I caught it when there
were, you know, seven episodes, the eighth one actually, that one showed up after I originally
and then what, you know, between the time I listened to it originally and when I mentioned it to you guys,
so, you know, the knife one seems to be in the works, but it's, you know, these things they,
they take this incredible amount of time. Yeah. Well, I don't want to talk about that,
so we're doing to review. We can get into whatever you like. We can start whenever you like.
Now one thing I think we might want to ask ourselves before we start, where do we put the break?
Before the spoilers, we just won't spoil any of the stories. It could be very early on,
if that's what you're saying or asking. Yeah, because we don't have to do a lot of the background,
because it's Star Trek. I mean, most of the people isn't and can't already know the background.
Well, I think, you know, maybe we should make the break where Nume gets shoved out the airlock.
Spoilers. Yeah, we're recording now, bro. It touched. Did you see the link I threw in there about
the Thorn dice set? It's beautiful. Yeah, I wish Oh boy would like open source the files for
them, because yeah, I would totally print those. They're bad ass looking. I know a guy who's
got them. I wouldn't consider them particularly practical, but they are gorgeous. I've never seen
them in black. I've only seen them white, but that they look great painted up. Dude, you're a
baller. If you walk up to the table and you roll those dice, I'm sorry, you're just like the
coolest person in the table, whether they're practical or not. And I just went and added the entire
trader tails to my, I've got a ever note note of audio books to read. So they are now in the list.
Well, put them at the top of the list. I guarantee you won't be disappointed. Yeah, I just finished
underwood and flinch, and that was fantastic. Thank you, Pokey. Oh, yeah, right on.
I'm using me. I already had it in my list. And then I'm like, wait a minute, didn't we talk about
this? I'm pushing that to the top. And wow, it was the, the one I grabbed was actually the first two
books. And then he went to Patreon for the third book. So I haven't listened to that one yet.
Oh, I didn't even know there was more. So you're ahead of me. Well, the one currently on
audio books goes to like 44 episodes. And it's the first two books. Oh, okay. Wow.
Did any guys listen to CC hits? I do not. I did. And then for some reason, I think I switched devices.
And it didn't come across for some reason. And so I haven't listened for like a while. Oh, man,
then there's another nerd rap artist that I'm attempting to get into at the moment who's just
fantastic. It's, I'll shoot the guy's name's Till. But I forget what the, what they named the group.
I'll have to look it up. And they did this, this one particular song. And I'm a sucker for a
clever lyric. And I don't know why no one had thought of this yet because it was so clever.
But the line is for your hands in the air like you're just apathetic.
Wow, Bob. That's fantastic. I thought it was good, man. And then that rap is the fastest rap
I've ever heard continuously throughout the song. It's there's not just a fast bit. The whole
thing is so fast. The, the hook is not the, the, you know, that's, that's not super fast. But
anytime he's actually rapping in the song, it's, it's really fast, fast as I've heard.
Is it bad that every time we have the audio booklobe, I have to open up a tab with my own cloud
to like take notes on things that people recommend like every single time. It's awesome.
No, that's why we do this. Shouldn't those all be in the show notes?
Yeah, I guess. Damn it. That's work.
Paste link, paste plain text. And whoever edits a show will go find a link. That's what I did when
I just did the show notes yesterday. Yeah, really. That's, that helps so much when you're editing
the show. Because we, we talked about some movies and I remember just shoving the movie names in
there and then going and finding the links and pasting them in. Hey, the EMAX user in our group
can totally complain about hitting controls and you control V. All right. And that is who? Me.
And I want to give proper props to X 1101. The first, you know, a month ago we all pledged to help
out on the editing to actually get some of the backlog book club out there and on HPR or even
a one is the first person I guess to actually accomplish the mission. Well, I said I would accept
group punishment if I didn't and so I did. My thing is I think we need to like figure out who's
doing what? Because I'm hesitant to start something because I don't know like I know we need
to do street candles and I don't have the audio for that. It's not on the server. But I don't
think it's on the server. Just grab anything and, and you know, when it comes up, it'll be ready to
go. That's, you know, okay, groovy. So we are really releasing it order then. Oh, yeah,
I think we have to. I agree. And there is a page on the wiki to help figure that out. I was thinking
people would just write down who was doing it and then start working on it. Well, I knew we wanted
to do them in order. So like I didn't want to do like David's interview before we put out street
candles. You know what I'm saying? And I didn't know if somebody was doing street candles. If not,
I was going to do that first. Yeah. Because I miss more than I thought of. A lot of the
ones that are posted are the ones I missed. You know, not like I can't do a, you know, edit one
that I'm, I prefer to do what I was there for. I think I download the title is escaping me,
but the one about the people, various size families, etc. Match of rules. Yeah, that one. I
grab that one. Man, I have heard more stuff on polyamory in this past like week that I ever
would have a man. And like I was familiar with all of it because of that book. Oh, Pokey,
when I do release or get on get on the schedule, the notes for the KPO that wasn't two weeks ago,
there's a couple, couple two or three stories in there. You'll be really interested as
there are about human technological and biological modification. Yeah, that stuff does peak my
interest. You're right about that. Woo biohacking. Transhumanists, wait a minute. I don't know if I'm
ready to go that far to transhumanism. It's, I don't know, there's still too much government
involvement in computers to want to do that just yet, but you know, a couple of small
non-networked modifications would I would like. I forget where I read an article somewhere and it was
like I'm talking about transhumanism versus grinders and like how transhumanism is like very
heavily steeped in like the West Coast kind of like Valley scene and it's all these like super
privileged people who who are into transhumanism and then grinders are like from the Midwest and
they're all like blue collar guys and they're just like, I mean, fucking, I'm gonna cut it into
myself or something and I was like, I'm much more in the grinder scene. That sounds like more fun.
I had never heard it called grinders. Yeah, I'm gonna have to look that term up, but no, there was
this one dude. Totally coward blind. You know, not red blue or red green color block. You know, no
colors. He sees gray. Oh, yeah, the lollipop guy, right? Oh, you've seen that. Yeah, yeah,
like a couple of years ago, I remember that, that one. Well, I think this is recent. I mean,
he had like a headset that he had on his head that, you know, every color, you know, they're free,
he would do the frequency as a vibration that, you know, he could hear through a skull, but he's
finally found somebody to, you know, to implant the computer that he and all that into the back of his
skull. So he plugs this, uh, plugs his boom mic thing in the back of his head and loops around
to the front and from his forehead. Oh, okay, this is not the lollipop. Oh, yes, I remember this,
this particular story as well. Sorry, the lollipop guys, the guy who's completely blind and he's got
this like lollipop that he puts in his mouth and can taste. Um, you know, what, what a camera sees,
and it, it totally just, his brain just kind of reads at his site and it just totally works.
It's not high resolution at all, but it works. So he can taste how ugly I am? Well, heaven,
we all. Whoa, whoa, whoa, stuff just got real. This is totally not like freely available, but
is anybody ever read Peter F. Hamilton's books? No. Um, dude is spot on unlike transhumanism and
like the future of that, like imagine like the stuff that was in down and out in the magic kingdom,
but like serious and like actually treated like real things. Um, it's his books are fantastic.
He's like one of the people that I just like anytime that guy writes a book, I'll read it and his
books are like 1200 pages long. They were ridiculous, but I'll read the other single one.
And the other guy, Pokey, this was biological. It was core fill stuff. And I guess sometimes they
do use a for treatment of night blindness, but they had it like a big eyedropper to drop it into
to his eye. I think it's an extract from fish that are way, way deep in the ocean. And so they
didn't inject it in his eye, but it got in through the tear ducts or something. And then they had
this freaky picture his eyes were actually green, but then they took him out in the dark. And he had
night vision where nobody did. I mean, he was like, you know, they they they tested it by having
people out in the forest, standing next to trees or something. And he was nearly a hundred percent
saying, yeah, there's a guy over there, whereas, you know, the regular cited people were like 25 percent.
That's pretty cool. Allow me in that episode. Whenever it comes out, I need to get on it because
people are stepping up for HPR and it's getting farther and farther and you can get stuff on.
So that's that's that's always a good. Yeah. Yeah.
Good problem. Yeah. When I pushed that episode last night, May 5th was the first slot.
Cool. Yeah. The good problem to have. Here's a credit card beer opener for you. X one one
one. Oh, no, that looked cool. Isn't that neat? It's a ace of spades and the spade is cut out and
that's the beer opener. Oh, I didn't realize that. Okay, it's got to be the the credit card ninja
that I go. If that thing has a can opener on it, like a old P 38 type can opening action,
that'll that'll do it. All right, I have to stop looking at credit card tools. We need to start
to show when your wallet has more credit card tools than you have money. You're doing it, right?
You can say that again. Actually, I don't have any credit card tools, but X one one one to
fraud it up a little earlier in it. It's neat. Well, I have a cousin who's a locksmith. He could
probably teach me how to use that lock pick tool. You know, my guess would be that no, he couldn't
because typically it seems to me when you talk to locksmiths, they know nothing about picking locks.
Yeah, they have specialty tools. They look at a lock and they're like, oh, this is this kind of
lock. I have a key to one lock it. Most of the time they bought the tools to be able to do it.
Speaking of back to lock picks for a minute, Taj, do you have any southward stuff?
No, I've literally been everything I have is I have one set that I've had forever and I got it at
the local hackers, excuse me, the local hackerspace had a whole like lock picking thing a while back.
And so they brought these little cheap Chinese kits, I guess, or something. They're not even that
good. They're actually kind of terrible, somewhat I understand. But like, I can get into most
things with that. So I'm not real worried about it. There's some like certain kinds of locks that
you need different kinds of picks and rakes. I would love to get some of those specialty ones,
but really the set that I have does everything I want to do. That's cool. I was looking
not too long ago at a shoot. Now I can't remember what it's called. It's a way of bypassing a padlock
that you don't even pick the lock. You just dig into it and release the mechanism right through
the keyhole. It was kind of neat. Yeah, like most lock picking is really picking. It's raking,
which is like, you know, you need a scalpel to do some surgical precision and you're going in
there with a chisel and a sledgehammer. And you just bite dumb luck and repetition get what you need.
Yeah. And that's the thing that like when I said that locksmiths don't seem to know about lock picking,
I have a friend who is a locksmith at my last job. And he did not even know what a 999 key was.
Yikes. Yeah, Poki. It's called bolt cutters.
Yeah, exactly. What's the fun in that? But then again, when I, when I bought my house here,
I wanted all my doors to be key to like. So I went out and bought a set of key to like door knobs.
And I didn't really know anything about door knobs. So I asked the guy at, at lows, you know,
the difference between them. And he says, well, these are, I call them thumpers. He said, I call
these two thumper. These are three thumper because that's all it's going to take is a, you know,
two thumps from a sledgehammer and, you know, they're getting in your house if they want to.
The guy that was teaching the like picking class he went to, he was like, and apparently he goes to
like all kinds of hacker conventions and does like picking stuff. And he's, he was like, you know,
the first thing that people ask me is what kind of locksmiths on your house since you know so much
about locks. And he's like, I buy the cheapest, like, quick set that I can get it the store because
I have windows and anybody who wants in my house is just going to break the window. Yeah, locks keep
honest people honest. It's a, it's a truism that is true. Yeah, I mean, you guys don't know about
the new house time. It was broke into about two layer building it. It didn't take long. Yeah, I think
really what saved all my contractors tools is that I, I ring the house with an electric fence so
the cattle wouldn't get well, the contractors were there. And I think at night they couldn't find
the gate handles for the electric fence. And for people who are not farmers, gate handles are,
you know, a spring loaded deal that you put at the end of the electric fence wire. And on the other
side, you make a loop in the, in the electric fence. And, you know, you sort of stretch that
thing for them to spring. And it, you know, it snaps into that loop. So, you know, I buy, by that,
I would say, you know, I'd say they couldn't bring their vehicle close enough to haul stuff off.
So all they got, they took the, they, they, they took the contractors propane stoves and they had
like a couple stoves and a big bottle of pro, I don't think they took the big bottle of propane,
but they took the stoves. And one had its own bottle of propane and the other was on the big bottle.
But the contractor told me, yeah, I hope they go use that in their math lab because we hot wired
the thing to make it work and it'll blow them all to hell. Do growing up in like the country is a
kid. That was my favorite pastime. As when friends came over and they didn't know anything about
electric fences. And you just be like, no, it's okay. I turned it off. Just go ahead and just watch,
watch a layered ensue. You are an evil man, Tosh. Cause I, I have been hit, I have been hit by those
things. And every time I've been nailed, it's felt exactly like somebody took a five pound hammer
and hit me in the back of the head. Okay, it sucks. It's not pleasant at all. Have you actually,
have you actually been hitting the back of the head with a five pound hammer?
Fortunately, no. I grabbed an electric fence once. It's just 110 and eat that bad.
It's one of those things. I've actually been hit, I've actually been hit working on electricity
by 110 and it's, it's similar, but it's different. I hang out with a lot of guys in law enforcement
and it's kind of like a taser. Like it sucks to get tased, but that doesn't keep people from doing
it to each other just for fun. And yet earlier you were talking about being surprised at the number
of stupid people you know, fair point.
