Captain’s blog, star date 5/12/20: Doomsday!
Your hosts Emma Rubenstein, Chad Radford, and Jacob Chisenhall are back with another installment of Beyond Antares, a Star Trek podcast. For this episode, Emma, Chad, and Jacob examine themes of doomsday scenarios, machines, philosophies, and the devils behind them in The Next Generation episode, “Devil’s Due,” and the Star Trek: Enterprise episode, titled “The Expanse.”
They talk about the colossal tragedy that is Enterprise’s theme song, “Faith of the Heart,” and a bit of its pre-Star Trek history.
But before we start, let’s take a minute to shout out to LaVar Burton aka Chief Engineer Geordi La Forge from The Next Generation engine room, and the man who brought us “Reading Rainbow.”
Burton is currently negotiating his appearance in season two of Picard. In the meantime, since April 3, he’s been reading to quarantined people live on Twitter, taking a cue from his podcast, “LeVar Burton Reads” — The best short fiction read by the best voice in podcasting. If you check out his podcast you’ll find he’s read “The Foster Portfolio” by Kurt Vonnegut, a two-part reading of Toni Morrison’s short story “Recitatif,” and more. He’s active on Twitter, which is the best place to find out what he’s reading next, Haruki Murakami, Neil Gaiman, Octavia Butler, Ray Bradbury, and more.
Burton is recording and making available three different weekly sessions: one for adults every Friday at 9 p.m. Eastern, one for young adults every Wednesday at 6 p.m. Eastern, and one for children every Monday at noon Eastern. What he does, and what he always has done is encourage people to read and use their imaginations — children and adults alike. That’s important right about now. At this point on the timeline, the knee-jerk nature of social media and phone technology has shortened peoples’ attention spans, stunting the population’s grasp on language and the ability to comprehend similes or metaphors. As we all prepare to get back to life post-quarantine, being a bit more considered in all of our decision making will make the future a brighter place, and that’s what Star Trek is all about.
On that uplifting note, press play! Let’s talk about Doomsday!