re:Discovery

It’s Discovery’s season two finale! After some heart stopping battles and combat scenes, we see her crew sail off into the future (or is it?). Who will you miss the most? Will it be us? We’d love to hear all your thoughts about season two as a whole and where it is going in the future. Thanks for listening, contributing and welcoming us into the Star Trek fan community! Stay tuned, we will have a wrap up episode soon.

Connect with us and let us know your thoughts via Twitter, Facebook or our website. A transcript of this episode is now available.

• Ben and Carla really enjoyed this Hollywood Reporter interview with Alex Kurtzman about the Discovery finale and the future of Star Trek.
• As discussed in episode 10 of Pratchat, Fred Astaire’s amazing dance from 1951’s Royal Wedding uses a rotating set to achieve similar effects to the Georgiou-Nhan-Leland fight sequence. It can be found on YouTube here, and you can also watch this fan-altered version that shows you how it was done.
• The Star Trek: Voyager episode “Living Witness” is set approximately 700 years in the future of the Delta Quadrant, and features a copy of the Doctor’s program being activated and disputing the twisted history told of Voyager’s encounter with the Kyrians.
• A Starfleet Academy series was reportedly being developed by Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage as far back as June 2018, though its current status is unknown. Schwartz and Savage created and/or produced teen dramas The O.C., Gossip Girl and Runaways. The O.C., coincidentally, starred the other, more famous Ben McKenzie, now better known for playing James Gordon on Gotham.
• The first indiepodfest will be held over the weekend of July 12-14 at the Brunswick Mechanics Institute in Brunswick, Melbourne. Watch out for notice of the festival’s crowdfunding campaign coming to Pozible in the near future!
• Carla’s other podcasts are Club Soderbergh and Across the Aisle.
• Ben’s main other podcast is Pratchat.
• Splendid Chaps Productions’ time travel comedy Night Terrace is currently on BBC Radio 4 Extra.The behind the scenes after-show podcast is On the Terrace.
• Star Trek: Discovery’s companion show for season two was The Ready Room, in which host Naomi Kyle interviewed members of the cast and crew. It aired on CBS All Access, and was also made available on the official Star Trek Facebook page.

Parting is “Such Sweet Sorrow” and in the penultimate episode of season two we see everyone say goodbye to… everyone! Pike and Culber are joining the Enterprise, Georgiou is now Captain of Section 31 (and getting her own show), Stamets is leaving Starfleet and what’s left of the bridge crew are going 1,000 years into the future. WHAT! It’s getting so so real. Do you think they’ll actually go? We’d love to hear your theories!

Connect with us and let us know your thoughts via Twitter, Facebook or our website. A transcript of this episode is now available.

• The time loop episode that keeps ending in death is Coda, from Star Trek: Voyager’s third season.
• The Tenth Doctor and Rose are separated against their will at the end of Doomsday, the finale of the second series of modern Doctor Who, broadcast in 2006.
• After we stopped recording, Ben had the idea that perhaps the thing that Tyler needed to do was to find Harry Mudd and get a time travel suit like the one in Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad. Carla considered that Mudd might well be on Section 31’s payroll – or at least a contact in their little black book. We just wanted that on record in case we are geniuses.

The Red Bursts have lead Discovery to Boreth, the Klingon planet that houses Tyler and L’Rell’s baby but also TIME CRYSTALS. Fate leads the latest episode “Through the Valley of Shadows” and we indeed get a glimpse of things to come. Everyone has their allegiance to humanity and Star Fleet called into question. No biggy. We discuss fan theories, Spock’s butt and much more. Join us.

Connect with us and let us know your thoughts via Twitter, Facebook or our website. A transcript of this episode is now available.

• The Gantt chart, invented by American engineer Henry Gantt a little over a century ago, is a widely-used planning tool in which horizontal bars show the dependencies, processes and tasks on a timeline for a large project. You’ve probably seen one.
• The kind of cut Ben is talking about between Saru’s face and the Boreth monastery is a “match cut“.
• Adventure Time is a Cartoon Network show following the adventures of Finn, the last human alive on a magical post-apocalyptic Earth, and his best friend Jake, a magical talking dog. The Ice King is one of their main antagonists (and sometimes a tragic figure they try to befriend); he has blue skin, white hair and a white beard, and rules the Ice Kingdom with magical ice powers granted to him by his crown. (Carla and Ben both love Adventure Time.)
• The Adventure Zone is a big famous Dungeons & Dragons podcast. In the comic books adapting their first story arc “Balance”, the character of Taako the elf wizard is depicted with blue skin.
• Narnia is the magical kingdom in C S Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia books, beginning with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Narnia is reached from our world through various magical portals and doorways, and it’s established that time there flows much faster than on Earth.
• The Gay Magical Elf is a riff on the Magical Negro trope – described by Bret Easton Ellis in his essay of the same name. The Gay Magical Elf’s sexuality is unchallenging and usually serves to progress the straight characters plot line.
• B’Elanna Torres is the half-human, half-Klingon former Maquis and engineer aboard the USS Voyager. She’s great.
• In the fiction of Doctor Who, Davros is the creator of the Daleks, the race of mutants in advanced “travel machines” who constantly try to dominate the universe. He was introduced in the 1975 serial Genesis of the Daleks, which established the pre-Dalek culture of the Kaleds as being basically nazis. His motorised wheelchair, which also provides him with life support, is basically the bottom half of a Dalek.

In Discovery’s latest episode “Perpetual Infinity” many questions are answered but more are posed; however, all are leading to the season wrap up – how does Gabrielle Burnham and the Discovery crew stop #Controleland getting the sphere data and save the universe? Much confusion abounds. We would love to know your thoughts and theories on how this will end! 

Connect with us and let us know your thoughts via Twitter, Facebook or our website. A transcript of this episode is available.

• Mitochondria are “organelles” – self-contained sub-units within a cell – which create adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the main energy-storing chemical which provides energy for cell functions. Most but not all kinds of human cells have mitochondria, including neurons, the cells which carry electrical messages through the nervous system and in the brain. (In the Star Trek universe, mitochondria is present in many lifeforms throughout the galaxy.) Mitochondrial DNA is usually inherited entirely from the mother.
• The Virgin New Adventures, or NAs for short, were a series of 61 original Doctor Who novels published by Virgin Publishing. They continue the adventures of the Seventh Doctor (played by Sylvester McCoy) after his final televised story, 1989’s Survival. Story elements created by producer Andrew Cartmell for his planned 27th season of the television programme made their way into the series, including a new mysterious past and possible “true identity” for the Doctor. They also introduced the popular companion Bernice “Benny” Summerfield, an archaeologist from the 26th century who once mistook an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation for a documentary. After the 1996 Doctor Who telemovie, which introduced Paul McGann’s Eighth Doctor, the BBC did not renew Virgin’s license in favour of publishing their own range of original novels, but the NAs continued for another two years and 23 books with Benny as the main character. Notable authors included Ben Aaronovitch, Paul Cornell, Russell T Davies and Australian Kate Orman. (Ben would like to add that, despite his joking criticism in the episode, he loved them at the time and still thinks of many of the books fondly now.)
• Ben couldn’t find any specific quotes from either the NAs or the Ninth Doctor era as examples of the above; if you find one, let us know!
• In the 1985 film Back to the Future, high school student Marty McFly accidentally travels back in time thirty years in his mad scientist friend’s time travelling car. The “flux capacitor” which makes time travel possible requires “1.21 jigowatts” of power, and in 1955 the only thing readily available which can provide that much power is a bolt of lightning. Luckily Marty was handed a leaflet in 1985 by locals trying to save the local historic clock tower, which was struck by lightning…in 1955.
• These are a couple of great interviews with Gersha Phillips on her design process for Discovery.There are many more if you give it a Google.
• Ben’s comedy festival show, You Chose Poorly with Alanta Colley, runs from the 1st to the 7th of April 2019 at Campari House in Hardware Lane, Melbourne. Find out more and book tickets here.

In “The Red Angel” we finally meet… the Red Angel! But not before a moving funeral for Airiam and an episode heavy on reconciliation and reveals. It’s an episode full of heavy lifting and angst for Michael as she reconciles with Spock, Tyler, Georgiou, her parents death and her mother. Phew, some full circle stuff happening here and much for team re:Discovery to discuss – especially the most controversial moment in “The Red Angel”: Spock’s EV-suited butt. Join us in the healing.

Connect with us and let us know your thoughts via Twitter, Facebook or our website. A transcript of this episode is available.

And as Ben almost forgot to mention this episode, you can catch his new comedy show You Chose Poorly at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival! It’s on from April 1 to 7 at Campari House in Hardware Lane in Melbourne. Get more info and tickets at the comedy festival web site.

• A lobotomy is a form of psychosurgery, a neurosurgical treatment of a mental disorder that involves severing connections in the brain’s prefrontal cortex. A transorbital lobotomy (not “sub-orbital”, as Ben describes it) is performed without making a hole in the skull, by insertion of a sharp instrument through the eye socket, above the eye. It was popularised by the American Dr Walter Freeman, who originally performed them with an icepick before developing a tool specifically for the task. Fun fact: Ben once played a psychiatrist haunted by the ghost of Walter Freeman in a five-minute musical titled The Lobotomist.
• It was in “Light and Shadows” (S02E07) that we first discovered Leland is responsible for Michael’s parents death. Our recap is here.
• MMA is short for mixed martial arts, a brutal full-contact fighting competition which allows fighters to use any martial arts style they like.
• According to Memory Alpha Pike joined the Enterprise as Captain Robert April’s first officer before being promoted to Captain and commanding the ship for five years before joining the crew of Discovery. He’ll be captain of the Enterprise for almost another decade, when Kirk takes the helm in 2265.
• We first find out that Admiral Cornwell is a therapist in the episode “Lethe” (S01E06) when, already concerned over Lorca’s behaviour, she sleeps with him and wakes up to a phaser pistol at her throat. She deems Lorca too far gone to remain captain and recommends he be suspended immediately for psychiatric evaluation.
• Scotty is around 35 at the time of Discovery. He began his Starfleet career in 2241 and by the time of Star Trek: Discovery season two it’s 2257. He could and would be a great addition to Discovery.
• Sulu’s sexuality, like that of many of the original series crew, is rarely addressed. There are however several hints that he is attracted to women, most notably his interest in Uhura while under the influence of polywater intoxication in “The Naked Now”. He later has a daughter who serves as the helm officer aboard the Enterprise-B, though it’s never revealed if she has other parents, or who they are. In 2257, Sulu would have been at Starfleet Academy completing his flight training.
• There is no age information for Yeoman Janice Rand – as she was a Lieutenant (Junior Grade) aboard the Enterprise it is highly unlikely that should would have even been in Starfleet Academy during the time of Discovery.
• Carla attended “Star Fleet Academy Experience” in New York City in September 2016 during the 50th year anniversary celebrations.

Set your face to ugly cry (again) for Project Daedalus, where we inch so close to the mystery of the Red Angel we could mind meld with it. Discovery is on the run with an innocent Spock aboard. Admiral Cornwall secretly rendezvous with them and they join forces against a suspect Section 31. An away mission goes very, very bad. We lose a crew member we had only begun to know. 

Connect with us and let us know your thoughts via Twitter, Facebook or our website. A transcript of this episode is available.

• A “bootstrap paradox”, also known as a causal loop, is a popular and mind-bending form of temporal paradox. There are many good examples in fiction, and its explained directly by the Twelfth Doctor in the preamble to the 2017 Doctor Who episode “Before the Flood”.
• The Barzan were first introduced in the TNG episode “The Price“. We never learn exactly how their breathing implants work, only that they supply gases found on their homeworld, Barzan II, which are toxic to other species.
• Spock and Michael play three-dimensional chess, a variant of the traditional Earth game first seen played by Spock and Kirk in many episodes of the original series. The prime universe Philipa Georgiou was seen to have a set in her quarters aboard the USS Shenzou.
• This recent video from The Guardian featuring Dr Julia Shaw and Prof Elizabeth Loftus is a great introduction to how memory actually works.
• Dunbar’s Number is a cognitive social network theory that suggests a limit to the number of people humans can maintain stable social relationships with. This is around 150 people.
• In the sci-fi series Stargate SG-1, where the US military explore other worlds through a wormhole device called a Stargate, the US government maintains a secret “Alpha Site” on another planet, moving key personnel there when there’s a threat to the safety of Earth.
  
• In the Star Trek version of history, Khan Noonien Singh and other genetically engineered “supermen” known as Augments seized power over much of Earth, causing the Eugenics Wars of the 1990s and the deaths of millions. Later consequences of the wars are explored in the original series episode “Space Seed” and its sequel film Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, and several episodes of Star Trek: Enterprise’s fourth season.
  
• Michael was indeed wearing a silver EV suit in Brother. On that occasion, the other officers wearing the colourful suits were all from Enterprise, which has the newer more colourful uniforms, so it makes sense for Nhan to wear a red one; it’s not clear why Airiam is wearing a blue one, last seen on Science Officer Mansplain.
  
• Coronation Street is a long-running and popular soap opera set in the fictional English town of Weatherfield, produced by ITV.
  
• The Doctor Who story in which Adric dies is 1982’s Earthshock.
  
• The fourth series of the sit-com Blackadder, Blackadder Goes Forth takes place in the trenches of World War I. While it cracked a lot of jokes, it never treated the war lightly, and is justly famous for ending with the death of all its major characters.
  
• “The Thaw” is an episode from near the end of Star Trek: Voyager’s second season.
  
• We discussed Zora, the AI left in charge of a far future Discovery, in our first season and Short Treks recap.
  
• The Terminator series begins with James Cameron’s 1984 film The Terminator, to which three sequels and a prequel have been made, as well as a television series.
  
• Chancellor Gorkon is assassinated early on, in zero gravity, in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.
  
• Thanks to redditor ianjm for this great screencap of the Airiam-like cyborg from Star Trek III: The Search for Spock.
  
• The “crab-headed alien” bridge officer has been seen in several episodes in both seasons of Discovery. They have no official name, but have been called “Osnullus” by the makeup and design crew.
  
• Ben’s retelling of the story of Daedalus is pretty much accurate, though its worth mentioning its based on the later version of the myth as told by Ovid; earlier ones are much simpler.

“If Memory Serves” makes television history by creating the longest arc between two aired television episodes, spanning 53 years. Three years after the events of the “The Cage”, Star Trek’s original pilot, Captain Pike is brought back to Talos IV and his love interest Vina, and casting a shadow over Pike’s future. Spock has brought Michael to Talos IV as he knows the Talosians – with her help – can bring his mind back into a linear experience of time. Team re:Discovery discuss memories of “our” Melissa George, parallels with Doctor Who and the new Hulu show PEN15. How’s this related to Star Trek? You’ll have to listen to find out!

Connect with us and let us know your thoughts via Twitter, Facebook or our website. A transcript of this episode is available.

• Doctor Who has used archive footage from much earlier in its history for a “previously on” style recap twice: once in the twentieth anniversary special The Five Doctors (1983), which used footage of William Hartnell from The Dalek Invasion of Earth (1964), and then again in Peter Capaldi’s final story, “Twice Upon a Time” (2017), which used footage from William Hartnell’s final story, The Tenth Planet (1966), blending it into footage of a new actor, David Bradley, who played the character in that episode. The fiftieth anniversary special “The Day of the Doctor” (2013) uses part of the series’ original 1963 intro sequence, but no footage of previous events, though clips from various earlier stories were used in the preceding episode “The Name of the Doctor“.
• According to the original series episode “The Devil in the Dark”, touch is not strictly necessary for a mind meld, but does make it more effective.
• We had a note about Buffy Summers’ death and resurrection in our recap for “The Sounds of Thunder”.
• In Kurt Vonnegut’s most well-known novel, Slaughterhouse-Five, protagonist Billy Pilgrim becomes “unstuck in time”, experiencing his life out of sequence.
• Hulu’s PEN15 is a comedy series created by and starring Maya Erskine and Anna Konkle playing themselves as teenagers. Strangers with Candy (1999) was a Comedy Central series created by Amy Sedaris, Stephen Colbert and a couple of their comedy mates. It stars Sedaris as Jerri Blank, a high school dropout who has led a life of crime, who goes back to school at the age of 46. It was followed by a prequel film in 2005.
• Tim Russ is best known as the Vulcan Commander Tuvok, Janeway’s loyal friend and tactical officer aboard the USS Voyager. Among many other projects, he has appeared in Renegades, originally a Star Trek fan spin-off before having all the serial numbers filed off. He appears as Tuvok in the original fan film, and as another Vulcan-like character, Commander Kovok, in the ongoing web series. Both also feature the original Chekov, Walter Koenig.
• Melissa George’s credits include Charmed, Alias, Grey’s Anatomy, The Good Wife and both the Australian and American television adaptations of Christos Tsolkas’ novel The Slap.
• Home and Away (1988) and Neighbours (1985) are Australia’s two biggest soap operas. Home and Away is set in the fictional New South Wales coastal town of Summer Bay, and often has scenes on the beach. Neighbours is set in Erinsborough, a fictional suburb of Melbourne, Victoria’s capital city. There’s a sort of unofficial rivalry between the two, no doubt fuelled by the traditional rivalry between Sydney and Melbourne. Both are popular in the UK.
• You can learn all about Steven Soderbergh’s 1999 film The Limey in episode four of Carla’s other podcast, Club Soderbergh.
• Originally Australian regional areas were serviced by two television stations: the national broadcaster (the ABC), and a local commercial station (like Northern Rivers Television). Then the federal government introduced a program of aggregation (or deregulation, as Ben called it), which allowed the three major networks – Seven, Nine and Ten – to expand their signals into country areas, and for more distant local commercial stations to broadcast into each other’s regions. This led to the affiliation (and in many cases acquisition and rebranding) of each smaller station to one of the major networks, and subsequently the loss of most local content. This 1994 report from the last instalment of SCN local news in Victoria summarises the process and concerns of the time.
• Sophie’s Choice is a novel by American author William Styron, in which the protagonist reveals that she was forced by Nazis to choose which of her two children would be killed. It’s since become a euphemism for an impossible decision.
• Dark City (1998) is a sci-fi neo-noir film by Australian director Alex Proyas, following his break out hit The Crow. It stars Rufus Sewell, Kiefer Sutherland, Jennifer Connelly and William Hurt, and also features Melissa George, Richard O’Brien (of Rocky Horror fame), Ian Richardson and Australian icons Bruce Spence, Colin Friels and David Wenham.
• Though Susan Oliver is still best remembered for playing Vina in the original series of Star Trek, she led an extraordinary life, as chronicled in the 2014 documentary The Green Girl. (The documentary takes its name from the fact that she was the first to wear the green makeup of an “Orion animal woman”, albeit as an alternate version of Vina in a Talosian fantasy for Pike.)

In “Light and Shadows”, the search for Spock is finally over as Michael has an emotional reunion with her brother. Meanwhile Discovery finds a time rift whilst investigating the tachyon particles left behind near Kaminar, with Pike and Tyler bonding through space, time, robot octopi and touching fingers. This was an action-packed episode with a forward thrust, temporally, through all versions of Star Trek – re:Discovery is living for this episode and the rest of the season!

Connect with us and let us know your thoughts via Twitter, Facebook or our website. A transcript of this episode is available.

• The “wipe” is a method of transitioning one shot into another in film; there are various kinds but vertical wipes – where one shot is vertically removed to reveal the next – are best known to English-speaking audiences in George Lucas’ Star Wars films. He was inspired by Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa, who used them extensively, but they’re now associated strongly with Star Wars.
• Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus is a terrible 2009 film made by “mockbuster” production house The Asylum and starring 80s teen sensation Debbie Gibson. It’s almost worth watching for the scene in which the titular shark leaps out of the ocean to eat a passing jetliner. Almost.
• Arrival is Denis Villeneuve‘s 2016 film about linguist Amy Adams trying to communicate with giant mysterious multi-limbed aliens. (By contrast, The Arrival is a 1996 American-Mexican sci-fi film about a stealthy alien invasion, starring Charlie Sheen and directed by David Twohy. Ben also liked that one.) Villeneuve did indeed direct Blade Runner 2049, the 2017 sequel to Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982), and is currently writing and directing a new film adaptation of Frank Herbert’s novel Dune, due for release in 2020.
• It’s worth mentioning that there is another Star Trek captain who constantly puts himself on the line, potentially leaving his crew with no leader: the otherwise affable Jonathan Archer! Considering we’re both watching Enterprise at the moment, we don’t know how Ben missed that one.
• “Future Echoes” an episode of Red Dwarf where the crew break the light barrier and experience events that will occur in the future that can be seen in the present.
• Dyslexia is a difficulty with reading, thought to have a genetic and neurological cause, and affects as much as 7% of the world’s population, usually diagnosed while in school. It’s not treated medically, but through alternate teaching methods for those affected.
• In the future universe of Dune, sophisticated computers are outlawed, so complex calculations are performed by humans known as Mentats who are trained to think logically to efficiently process and analyse information. In David Lynch’s 1984 film version, Mentat Piter de Vries (played by Brad Dourif) chants: “It is by will alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the juice of sapho that thoughts acquire speed, the lips acquire stains, the stains become a warning. It is by will alone I set my mind in motion.“
• Sarek finally speaks to Spock (and holds fingers with Amanda) in the second season Star Trek episode Journey to Babel, which is set in 2268 – eleven years after the events of Light and Shadows. This is Sarek’s only appearance in the original series, though Mark Lenard would return in the role for Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, a brief appearance in Star Trek IV, and several episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
• Hiding in an asteroid was made a “classic of the genre” by Han Solo when he used this trick to hide from an Imperial fleet in the 1983 Star Wars sequel The Empire Strikes Back.
• As you probably know, we do our “little recaps” at the start, not the end as Ben suggests. (Our lovely reviewer did not make the same mistake.)
• Props to redditor VistaVizion who spotted the cute labels on the shuttle controls; here’s the still on imgur.
• It turns out Spock’s number is from the original FASA Star Trek roleplaying game, where the coordinates of Talos IV were given as 7.49S 1.48E – galactic latitude and longitude coordinates, expressed in parsecs. That’s still kind of ridiculous, but we do love that the writing team are such nerds that they looked this up. (A parsec is a measurement of distance equal to about 3.26 light years.)
• A google search with exactly one search result is known as a “googlewhack“, and traditionally has to be made up of only two words. The term was coined by Gary Stock in 2002, but popularised by UK comedian Dave Gorman in his 2003 live show, Dave Gorman’s Googlewhack Adventure, in which he goes looking for a sequence of ten googlewhacks instead of writing a novel.
• The first Star Trek episode (discounting excellent pilot “The Cage“), in which everyone loses their inhibitions – including Sulu taking his shirt off, getting oiled up and running about the Enterprise with a fencing foil, and Spock struggling to control his emotions – is “The Naked Time”. It was more or less remade as “The Naked Now”, the second episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, in which we first discover that Data is “fully functional”.
• The “rule of three” is that three is the minimum number of things you need to set up and then disrupt a pattern, a basic technique of comedy. (The “rule of threes”, which is what Ben says but doesn’t mean, is closer to what Amanda says – in the Planescape campaign setting for Dungeons & Dragons, the “rule of threes” is literally that everything comes in threes.)

This week’s episode “The Sounds of Thunder” returns Saru to his homeworld Kaminar. The Red Angel has directed Discovery there – but why? We finally meet the Ba’ul – the mysterious oppressors of the Kelpiens – and ponder what level of action is ethical to stop genocide (you know, just regular Star Trek stuff). Team re:Discovery return to “that episode” to discuss the huge amount of listener feedback we received, and cheekily deliver our audit of #startreknudebutts. Thanks for listening!

Connect with us and let us know your thoughts via Twitter, Facebook or our website. A transcript of this episode is available.

• Netflix (or at least Australian Netflix) lists this episode as “The Sound of Thunder”, but everywhere else has “Sounds”, plural. We’re running with the majority on this one, but we might have used both titles in our discussion.
• “Skin of Evil” is the first season episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation in which Enterprise security chief Tasha Yar is killed – halfway through! – by Armus, a creature manifesting as a thick, black oily liquid which could move and change into a vaguely humanoid shape.
• Odo, chief of security on the starbase Deep Space 9 in…er…Star Trek: Deep Space 9, is a shapechanger who normally appears humanoid, but must revert back to his natural liquid form every 18 hours or so to rest. For most of the series, he does this in a special bucket.
• “Soylent Green” is a bland but nutrient-rich foodstuff made by the Soylent Corporation, supposedly from plankton, in the dystopian future of 2022 depicted in the 1977 film Soylent Green. As revealed in the film it’s made from…well, not plankton. (The film is loosely based on Harry Harrison’s 1966 novel Make Room! Make Room!)
• Traditional Betazoid wedding ceremonies – as we are informed by Ambassador Lwaxana Troi – are performed in the nude.
• In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Buffy dies and is magically resurrected by her friends, but struggles to adjust to being alive again. (We’re being deliberately vague on the details; while we’ll no doubt bring it up again, it’s a great storyline and we don’t want to spoil it too much if you haven’t seen it.)
• In the long-running British sci-fi sit-com Red Dwarf, David Lister is the sole surviving human being, lost three million years in the future aboard the massive mining ship Red Dwarf. The series two episode “Thanks For the Memory” revealed Lister had his appendix out many years earlier, but in the series six episode Legion, he has his appendix taken out again! Lister’s weird life offers several fixes for this continuity error; the standard fan explanation is that in the series four episode “DNA”, when he is transformed and then restored to his original self by a DNA altering machine, the machine remade his body complete with a new appendix.
• Watch out for our round up of Star Trek‘s nude butts in a separate post soon. (We’ll add a link to these notes when it’s ready!)

In this week’s episode “Saints of Imperfection” the Discovery crew launch a mission to rescue Tilly from the mycelial network and pursue Spock’s shuttle craft. This episode is heavy with entities existing where they shouldn’t – Phillipa Georgiou on Spock’s shuttle, Pike’s old friend Leland running Section 31, and in the season’s first (expected) whoa moment, the highly problematic return of Hugh. Team re:Discovery discuss the history of the theoretical tachyon particle, body diversity in the crew, the queer significance of Discovery and the technology of transporters. Like everything in this episode, it doesn’t work how you think it does!

Connect with us and let us know your thoughts via Twitter, Facebook or our website. A transcript of this episode is available.

• TV Tropes covers “Bury Your Gays” in detail; basically it’s when LGBT characters are killed off in a way that makes them feel more expendable than the non-queer cast. The TV Tropes entry for Discovery notes that the producers – and Wilson Cruz! – talked about the trope immediately after Culber’s death went to air, promising this wasn’t like that. Time will tell.
• Spock’s death and resurrection traverses the films Star Trek II – The Wrath of Khan, Star Trek III – The Search for Spock and Star Trek IV – The Voyage Home. They’re all great!
• Mycelium Running is a book written by real mycologist Paul Stamets, and was a huge influence on Discovery’s spore technology. You can read more about it in this article, published soon after season one, which has a few guesses about the future of the show…
• Psychotropic drug enthusiast and artist Alex Gray makes art that encapsulates the feeling and experience of being on mushrooms. See some his art works here.
• The CIA has a long, documented history of murdering political leaders, killing civilians, interfering with foreign elections and performing highly unethical and illegal drug experiments on vulnerable and unknowing civilians.
• As well as Spock Must Die!, James Blish also wrote novelisations of several Star Trek episodes. This article by Colin Milburn goes into more detail about tachyons, Blish’s 1954 short story “Beep” and Gerald Feinberg’s writing on the subject.
• RENT is a rock musical loosely based on the opera La Boheme surrounding the AIDS epidemic in New York in the 1990s. It debuted in 1996.
• Wilson Cruz was the first openly gay person to play a gay character on TV: Enrique “Rickie” Vasquez in My So Called Life, a high school drama which also starred Claire Danes and Jared Leto. Carla was close with 1996, but the show actually debuted in 1994.
• Jenny Schecter of The L Word, played by Mia Kirshner, is possibly the most hated queer TV character of all time.
• Anthony Rapp was the first person to accuse Kevin Spacey of sexual misconduct, claiming Spacey was sexually inappropriate with him when was 14 years old. (He had first voiced his allegations many years earlier, but not named the actor involved.) This created the first cascade of accusations and was the first gay #metoo moment.
• Jane Lynch is a national treasure.
• Portia de Rossi is also a national treasure, but in this case, it’s the nation where Carla and Ben live.
• The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “The Outcast” featured Commander Riker having a romantic liaison with a member of the “genderless” J’naii species. Jonathan Frakes thought the episode “wasn’t “gutsy” enough” and should have cast a man as his J’naii counterpart, but producer Rick Berman shied away from doing so because he felt that Frakes kissing a male actor “might have been a little unpalatable to viewers”.