*Uploads podcast on The Road to DS9*

*Runs back to the episode on Netflix and kicks it with each line*

HOW!

IS HE!

A MAN!

OF!

THE PEOPLE!?

The Beige and The Bold is hosted on Anchor and is available on most podcasting platforms. New episodes go live on Sunday nights at 10:00 PM CST.

The Road to DS9 continues and I think it's one of those roads where it gets longer every time you take a step on it.

There's this yin and yang to The Beige and The Bold. A balance. A comme ci, and a comme ça, if you get what I'm saying. What I'm saying is...enjoy this solo episode.

Also, when I say "crazy" here, I mean it in a way that we accept Barclay has a host of problems but we still accept him. The problem in his first appearance wasn't really his problems, but everyone else on the ship being unable to work around them. And now, despite everything I say about "Realm of Fear," Barclay isn't any less anxious, really; the crew of the Enterprise--and I hope the viewer at home--has learned to accept that about him.

But I say a lot of stuff in here, so maybe forget me?

The Beige and The Bold is hosted on Anchor and is available on most podcasting platforms. New episodes go live on Sunday nights at 10:00 PM CST.

There's so much stuff this episode wants to do that I feel we aren't spending the time to do it well. 

We do have fun though. It's an enjoyable episode, even if it loses focus on our central theme of...wait, what's our central theme again?

The Beige and The Bold is hosted on Anchor and is available on most podcasting platforms. New episodes go live on Sunday nights at 10:00 PM CST.

There's no better benchmark of TNG's slide from "not so cerebral, but still serious" show to "situation drama" show than the season five closer, "Time's Arrow." 

It's a fun show, but it's clearly lost so many, er, ferrets that it's stopped altogether looking for its lost ferrets. Where's Riker coming from? Where's the 'only Data can do this'-to-'now we can do this' thread of logic? Where's the cultural traction?

Also, props to Derek for asking about holocommunicators before Star Trek figured out it could do holocommunicators. They were right about those bones though; the bones we have from more than 500 years ago were specially preserved, which makes sense because we'd have a lot of bones otherwise.

The Beige and The Bold is hosted on Anchor and is available on most podcasting platforms. New episodes (usually) go live on Sunday nights at 10:00 PM  CST. I've been having some computer problems lately and I apologize for the inconvenience.

The Road to Deep Space Nine continues as I try to understand how Derek picked "The Next Phase" over "The Inner Light." I don't know why this episode works and I feel like it's down to an ineffable combination of pacing and acting. 

Is it weird that this episode and Deep Space Nine's "Far Beyond the Stars" are considered among the best episodes of Star Trek DESPITE not being episodes which really function like Star Trek episodes?

The Beige and The Bold is hosted on Anchor and is available on most podcasting platforms. New episodes go live on Sunday nights at 10:00 PM CST.

This episode's path to glory was creating a good drama to distract us from the bad science or to make the science good, and therefore compelling and worth thinking about. All it really did was show that when you try hard for the Picard episodes and punt your Geordi/Ro episodes, the Geordi/Ro episodes will suck for completely non-mysterious reasons. 

Also, with the mind-swapping episodes and the reverse aging episode (it's coming) and the hyper-aging episodes and the shrinking episode (it's coming) are there any broad, sci-fi ideas that Star Trek hasn't done that need to be unraveled as we do? I feel like there's gotta be a few.

The Beige and The Bold is hosted on Anchor and is available on most podcasting platforms. New episodes go live on Sunday nights at 10:00 PM CST.

It's a classic, apparently.  It's weird how neither I nor Derek expected to see Hugh again. The...inertia of the series is pretty well-developed by this point.

The less-obvious lesson you could draw from this episode is one about Doctor Crusher. Is it better for her to cooperate with an unethical, although perhaps justified, operation because she has the opportunity to soften that operation? Or is it preferable that she preserve her own moral cleanliness and walk away?

I'm 100% sure what the correct thing to do in real life is. As a rule, at least. But damn, I'm trying to ask questions here, y'know?

Because that "ShOuLd PiCaRD hAvE uSeD tHe CyBeRwEaPoN?" question is a non-starter.

The Beige and The Bold is hosted on Anchor and is available on most podcasting platforms. New episodes go live on Sunday nights at 10:00 PM CST.

This is the first episode of The Road to Deep Space Nine, where Derek and I pick up the pace and skip a few episodes of Derek's choice. You don't skip them; you get a solo adventure.

I don't know how I mixed up "Peggy Sue Got Married," a 1986 Back-to-the-Future-by-way-of-Somewhere-in-Time drama with "Drop Dead Fred," a 1991 black comedy about an imaginary friend and psychological healing.

I feel like Imaginary Friend is just a few degrees off from making sense, but nothing can redeem an episode where an obvious Troi speech is punted to Picard...for some reason. It's the misogyny, right? Can we agree on that?

The Beige and The Bold is hosted on Anchor and is available on most podcasting platforms. New episodes go live on Sunday nights at 10:00 PM CST.

I feel like doing an episode which accepted so many messed-up assumptions could have worked in service to so many other great ideas. Whats up with the male social push to engage the the performances which allow us the chance to engage in intercourse...but a woman? That's a great angle for an episode of Star Trek. What about the examination of traditional, Western ritual monogamy through marriage as viewed through a lens of a bona fide people-pleaser who DOESN'T have a convenient monogamy lock-down timer installed in her uterus? Not great, but still a concept worth examining.

I was so looking forward to sharing this classic episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation with Derek, but the I watched it. I would apologize for Star Trek: Picard ruining my enjoyment of TNG, but your apologies should come from the STP production staff. I think it is the best option for us to just cut through this to get to Deep Space Nine.

After all, it's not like watching a classic series like DS9 could disappoint.

Surely. Right?

The Beige and The Bold is hosted on Anchor and is available on most podcasting platforms. New episodes go live on Sunday nights at 10:00 PM CST.

This could--nay SHOULD--be a straight-up dramatic episode, but instead we get metal parasites and two stories mated as smoothly as the gears in my truck's busted transmission.

I know I talk a lot of trash about the novels, but surely in the novels Lwaxana and Alexander had a bit more of a relationship with each other. Granted, if they did Deep Space Nine would have been different.

Also, props to Derek for calling out two or three episodes. Does the Thomas Riker episode count? Did I miss any?

The Beige and The Bold is hosted on Anchor and is available on most podcasting platforms. New episodes go live on Sunday nights at 10:00 PM CST.