Casual Trek - A Star Trek Recap and Ranking Podcast

It’s time to get assimilated into the new episode of Casual Trek!

We’ve got some great episodes all about the ominous Borg. We’ve also got John DeLancie lounging on things and seeing a young Q here, wouldn’t Andy Samburg be a perfect Q? I’d love to see if he could be as ominous as John DeLancie, and we know he’d be good at the capering lunacy. We get some Frankenstein vibes from Drone which was not the episode I thought it would be, and then Let Sleeping Borg Lie gives us an excuse to check out Prodigy again and the Borg are scary in an episode made for kids. Good work, Prodigy!

8:52 Star Trek The Next Generation “Q Who?”

43:27 Star Trek: Voyager “Drone”

1:08:59 Star Trek Prodigy “Let Sleeping Borg Lie”

Talking points include: Paranoia, Watchmen, Before Watchmen, Doomsday Clock, Early Versions of The Boys, Into the Archives with Peter Fleming, Doctor Who (A LOT), Charlie being extremely slow to realise what ‘firing power’ meant although he’s talking to a man in America so it’s somewhat justified, Marvel’s post-Comics Code Teenage Years, Bryan Fuller, our first song mentioned with a Weird Al parody, hologram trading cards, Spaced, Terminator 2: Judgement Day, a passing mention of Babylon 5 & Blake’s 7, a game of ‘who has the worse fans online?’, the Star Wars film you don’t mention online, Charlie can’t think of “Whirlipede” from Pokémon, a rhino man borg!, Avatar (guess which one), Transformers Earthspark, . Oh, and occasionally Star Trek.

Casual Trek is by Charlie Etheridge-Nunn and Miles Reid-Lobatto

Music by Alfred Etheridge-Nunn

Casual Trek is a part of the Nerd & Tie Network

https://ko-fi.com/casualtrek

Miles’ blog: http://www.mareidlobatto.wordpress.com

Charlie’s blog: http://www.fakedtales.com

Next episode: Badmirals!

What’s less casual than the Maquis? This episode we’re watching our first non-pilot two-parter with “The Maquis” which introduces some Federation rebels, something you didn’t often see apart from in the occasional colony as a one-off problem. Well, these folks are going to be a bit tricky both as a problem and an existential threat to the concept of the Federation. At least, that’s the potential of them. We watch a couple of episodes which aired around a fortnight apart and had different levels of effectiveness at showing the Maquis.

06:48 Star Trek: Deep Space Nine “The Maquis”

43:21 Star Trek: The Next Generation “Pre-Emptive Strike”

Talking points include: WM Akers’ roleplaying game “Comrades” which Charlie ran in the Age of Apocalypse one time, Blake’s 7 (a lot), doing a Starfleet irl, BBC’s Ghosts, The French Resistance, Falcon & The Winter Soldier, The Krakoan Age of X-Men, Boris Johnson’s undisclosed amount of children, Succession but with Gul Dukat, Phantom Menace Trade Route Chat, Babylon 5, ruining your 90’s pop childhood by looking into Ace of Base, Mandalorian Season Three, Farscape, the ‘five years later’ Legion of Super-Heroes, Lovely Bryan Fuller, oh, and occasionally Star Trek.

Casual Trek is by Charlie Etheridge-Nunn and Miles Reid-Lobatto

Music by Alfred Etheridge-Nunn

Casual Trek is a part of the Nerd & Tie Network

https://ko-fi.com/casualtrek

Miles’ blog: http://www.mareidlobatto.wordpress.com

Charlie’s blog: http://www.fakedtales.com

After having to sit through Tuvix, Miles and Charlie are feeling a little burnt out on Star Trek, so decided to talk about a book beloved to both of them- Lord of the Rings and they don't care how much they offend Tom Bombadil to do it! An attempt to talk about the book seriously briefly occurs before it devolves into the pleasures of saying the name 'Fatty Bolger,' Miles' school having a Tolkien Society (although as he's older, Miles is starting to think that was a ploy by his parents so he didn't want to go to the 'Common' school all his friends were going to), Charlie's adventures in both boardgame and RPG games in the Tolkien world and Miles revisiting childhood trauma with the SNES Attempt to translate the books. Warning: Episode does not contain Star Trek!

Welcome to this inaugural meeting of the Brad Dourif Appreciation Society. Today we’re… wait, wait, that’s a different podcast. A private podcast.

We will be talking about Brad Dourif here, but we’ll also be talking about a number of other things including war criminals and Tuvix! Yes, we’re ripping that plaster off and talking about the merging of a good and awful character into a somehow worse character and what to do with him!

We’ve got it all though, a Neelix episode which might actually make you like Neelix, a Tuvok episode starring Brad Dourif and then finally we merge together into Tuvix!

13:39 Star Trek: Voyager “Jetrel”

40:26 Star Trek: Voyager “Meld”

1:09:34 Star Trek: Voyager “Tuvix”

Talking points include: Space 1999, Lost in Space (all version), You, Dexter, Resident Evil VII, The Dungeons & Dragons Movie, Charlie plugging his comic Kickstarter, Neelix is not anything like Captain Britain but Kes is like a bad Meggan, Alan Davis’ wonderful hair art, Oppenheimer, Disney’s ABC’s Marvel’s The Inhumans, Babylon 5 (a couple of times), Blake’s 7 but only in passing, the oeuvre of Bradford Claude Dourif, Chuck Austen (who I realise now is also a big humanist like JM Straczynski), Hannibal, Naoki Urasawa’s Monster, ugh the trolley problem, Sliders, Madelyne Pryor, Miles brings up the time he went off on one about Moriarty. Oh, and occasionally Star Trek.

Casual Trek is by Charlie Etheridge-Nunn and Miles Reid-Lobatto

Music by Alfred Etheridge-Nunn

Casual Trek is a part of the Nerd & Tie Network

Explosion High #2: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/exposionhigh/explosion-high-1-and-2

https://ko-fi.com/casualtrek

Miles’ blog: http://www.mareidlobatto.wordpress.com

Charlie’s blog: http://www.fakedtales.com

Hello and welcome to a very special episode of Casual Trek! We talked about games in Star Trek last episode, now we’re playing a Star Trek choose your own adventure style game!

Voyage to Adventure is an old book and quite a weird one, being not one adventure but several short ones in different duty stations on the Enterprise.

Revel in my bad choices and Miles’ bad accents in this episode!

08:57 - The start of the book

11:28 - The first playthrough - Charlie on the bridge!

21:53 - The second playthrough - Charlie in science!

32:33 - The third playthrough - Charlie in engineering!

41:31 - The third and a halfth playthrough - Charlie in engineering!

42:51 - The fourth playthrough - the second playthrough revisited - Charlie in science again!

Talking points include: a Star Wars Choose Your Own Adventure, Metal Showcase 11pm by Jason Morningstar, Cheat Your Own Adventure, dry heaving at unironically using the word ‘content’, Fighting Fantasy books, The Author Kim Newman, the 23rd century Monkees revival, skutters, Mo Howard, Slaughterhouse Five... Oh, and occasionally Star Trek.

My Kickstarter for Explosion High issue two is found here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/exposionhigh/explosion-high-1-and-2

My review and playthrough of Metal Showcase 11pm as the band Death Hammerdeath - https://whodaresrolls.com/rpgs/metal-showcase-11pm/

Casual Trek is by Charlie Etheridge-Nunn and Miles Reid-Lobatto

Music by Alfred Etheridge-Nunn

Casual Trek is a part of the Nerd & Tie Network

https://ko-fi.com/casualtrek

Miles’ blog: http://www.mareidlobatto.wordpress.com

Charlie’s blog: http://www.fakedtales.com

Show Notes

***Properly Fixed Edition! Damn you AGIMUS for sabotaging our show!***

It’s games night here at Casual Trek! Crack open a steaming tin of gamer fuel and stretch those controller-twiddling thumbs!

We’ve got three episodes all about games today.

The Ktarian Game - A free to play puzzle game which looks very simple but is worryingly addictive

Chula - We get so annoying about this one and I can only apologise. Allamaraine!

Bat'leths & BiHnuchs was probably sold as an RPG but is more of a board game with purchasable DLC

Springball - Space Squash

We get into all of those games and some wacky nonsense of the first degree with DS9 going through toothing problems and our first Wesley Crusher focused episode.

11:06 Star Trek: The Next Generation - The Game

33:14 Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - Move Along Home

58:11 Star Trek: Lower Decks - The Least Dangerous Game

Talking points include: Experiencing BiJ, Rock Band, Portal 2, The Gamers, Sean’s Zelda II playthrough, Fire Emblem Engage, Oath, Battlestar Galactica/Unfathomable, Reaganomics, video game addiction, Wesley Crusher-themed emo band names, an easy 2 Unlimited dunk, Metal Gear Solid, the cube from the film The Cube, Dread, Cluedon’t, the Norwegian LARP scene, The Mountain Goats, I Only Listen To The Mountain Goats, Charlie Goes Off On One About OneD&D, Fucking Drizzt. Oh, and occasionally Star Trek.

Casual Trek is by Charlie Etheridge-Nunn and Miles Reid-Lobatto

Music by Alfred Etheridge-Nunn

Casual Trek is a part of the Nerd & Tie Network

https://ko-fi.com/casualtrek

Miles’ blog: http://www.mareidlobatto.wordpress.com

Charlie’s blog: http://www.fakedtales.com

Whether played by Leonard Nimoy, Ethan Peck or even Zachary Quinto, The fantastic Mr Spock is one of the most popular characters in all of Star Trek. This episode we’re celebrating Spock by showing all manner of shenanigans; Angrily Horny Spock, Giant Spock and Freaky Friday Spock!

A quick note for the pedants: we forgot Jack Harlow’s song and talked about Harry Styles’ one again at the start of the SNW conversation which is probably all the statement you need on Jack Harlow’s song. Yes, this is a Star Trek podcast.

12:30 Star Trek: The Original Series - Amok Time

38:09 Star Trek: The Animated Series - The Infinite Vulcan

1:00:49 Star Trek: Strange New Worlds - Spock Amok

Talking points include: The Great Tolkien/Moorcock Fan Fight, The Blade Runner Roleplaying Game, Starship Troopers RPG, GURPS, Rifts (you can tell Charlie went on a tear about RPGS), Poker Face, I am The Law, Thatcher’s still dead (woo!), T’Pau, Last Unicorn Games’ Star Trek: The Next Generation: The Roleplaying Game, Futurama, Walter Koenig from the Babylon 5, Billiam Shatner from TekWar, Stephen Universe, The Day The Earth Stood Still, Giant Vulcan from the X-Men, Freaky Friday, Farscape’s body swap episode. Oh, and occasionally Star Trek.

Casual Trek is by Charlie Etheridge-Nunn and Miles Reid-Lobatto

Music by Alfred Etheridge-Nunn

Casual Trek is a part of the Nerd & Tie Network

https://ko-fi.com/casualtrek

Miles’ blog: http://www.mareidlobatto.wordpress.com

Charlie’s blog: http://www.fakedtales.com

Charlie’s Kickstarter notification page: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/exposionhigh/explosion-high-1-and-2

Synergy! It’s what got me to force Miles to finally watch and rank the pilot episode of Picard!

We recorded this episode before watching the first episode of Picard season three, so we’ve picked the other two episodes based on guessing what’s going to happen thanks to the trailer. That means we’re covering the first appearance of Lore and of Evil Hologram Moriarty!

00:00:00 Opening

00:14:21 Star Trek TNG - Datalore

00:45:50 Star Trek TNG - Elementary, Dear Data

00:58:46 Miles enters ‘Sherlock Holmes pedant mode’

01:11:55 Picard - Remembrance

Miles is on the Breakfast In The Ruins podcast talking about some Marenghi-ish horror!

He also wrote a review of Picard season three, episode one: https://mareidlobatto.wordpress.com/2023/02/16/review-star-trek-picard-season-3-episode-1-the-next-generation/

Talking points include: Dune (specifically the 1984 classic film version), Vampire Survivors, Treebeard, James Herbert, Elden Ring, Doki-Doki Literature Club, Portal 2, Adric in Dr Who, Robby the Robot style droids in Star Trek, Dr Hank Philip McCoy and his many war crimes, Data is an AI artist, Miles gets to be a big nerd about Sherlock Holmes, getting erased Reboot-style, Professor X’s ability to get over pretty much anything, prestige television fatigue, Logan, the works of Michael Chabon, Alias, Eternal Law. Oh, and occasionally we talk about Star Trek.

That Tor article Miles mentioned: https://www.tor.com/2023/02/06/space-opera-horror-and-the-endless-void-of-space/

Casual Trek is by Charlie Etheridge-Nunn and Miles Reid-Lobatto

Music by Alfred Etheridge-Nunn

Casual Trek is a part of the Nerd & Tie Network

https://ko-fi.com/casualtrek

Miles’ blog: http://www.mareidlobatto.wordpress.com

Charlie’s blog: http://www.fakedtales.com

Miles writes about Dr Who here: http://timeandrelative.uk

We’ve got our first Ko-Fi donor request today! It’s time for time loops! How annoying can we make this for everyone including each other? We’ve got three very good episodes from different Star Treks, and even better, we’ve got our first Ko-Fi donor request today! It’s time for time loops!

11:29 Star Trek Voyager - Coda

31:03 Star Trek: The Next Generation - Cause & Effect

54:34 Star Trek Discovery - Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad

Charlie’s Kickstarter for Explosion High 2 can be found here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/exposionhigh/explosion-high-1-and-2

Talking points include: Happy Death Day, Dr Who (specifically Eve of the Daleks), Immortal X-Men issue nine (the time loop one where Sinister keeps trying to kill the Quiet Council), Red Dwarf (specifically White Hole), The Invisibles, Poker Face, The Menu, Pig, The oeuvre of Nicholas Cage, Gorillaz, Todd in the Shadows, Stephen Fry on ‘don’t you die on me’ cliches, Stargate SG-1’s time loop episode, Frasier Crane, Groundhog Day, Dr Who Adventures in Time and Space RPG, Supernatural’s time loop episode, Fiasco, The Iliad, Wycleff Jean’s 1997 classic, “We Trying to Stay Alive”, Fallout 3 killsprees, (sigh…) Blake’s 7. Oh, and occasionally Star Trek.

The Overthinking It write-up on the Discovery episode: https://www.overthinkingit.com/2017/11/04/star-trek-discovery-season-1-episode-7/

The GTA 5 playlist from D+Pad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fziXvBA59zU&list=PLrYVddHWttVTx_aTjO9B9eYeF60Z6imWV

Casual Trek is by Charlie Etheridge-Nunn and Miles Reid-Lobatto

Music by Alfred Etheridge-Nunn

Casual Trek is a part of the Nerd & Tie Network

https://ko-fi.com/casualtrek

Miles’ blog: http://www.mareidlobatto.wordpress.com

Charlie’s blog: http://www.fakedtales.com

It’s time to go to the movies! Yes, we’re covering Star Trek: The Motion Picture! We’re also watching The Changeling which is a very comparable episode to the movie. It’s an episode where a giant floating electric toothbrush threatens the ship, Earth and causes the first redshirt deaths we’ve seen on the podcast so far!

00:00 Opening

07:12 The Original Series: The Changeling

35:58 Star Trek: The Motion Picture

1:30:36 Miles singing when we got separated on the call

Talking points include: Alien, Flash Gordon, presenting the podcast in widescreen or pan & scan depending on your podcatcher, the Eccleston Doctor Who, The Invisibles, Everything Everywhere All At Once, GI Joe Origins: Snake Eyes Origins (which I stress was NOT a recommendation), maths (ugh), whether Nomad is Doctor Who cheap or Tomorrow People cheap, Professor X’s callous disregard for human life, the Clangers reboot, Guillermo Del Toro’s Raggydolls, a gritty Bill & Ben reboot, Pinky & Perky, Alien franchise novelisation writer Alan Dean Foster, Charlie was (and is) a big nerd, West Side Story, Blake’s 7, Yacht Captain Kirk, that time Chris Claremont came back to the X-Men, a casual appreciation of Star Wars, Interstellar, 2001: A Space Odyssey, comparisons to Green Lantern and Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, . Oh, and occasionally Star Trek.

Miles also appeared on Two Boobs Watch the Tube for an epic episode about the Christopher Eccleston Doctor Who. If you want to hear him getting very un-casual about a thing he loves, it can be found there.

Casual Trek is by Charlie Etheridge-Nunn and Miles Reid-Lobatto

Music by Alfred Etheridge-Nunn

Casual Trek is a part of the Nerd & Tie Network

https://ko-fi.com/casualtrek

Miles has a blog! http://www.mareidlobatto.wordpress.com

Charlie has a blog! http://www.fakedtales.com