The Bicks Pod

This time our lovely Twitter voters (follow us on there if you want to decide future watchalongs!) chose one of Aidan's all-time favourite Trek episodes "The Tholian Web" to enjoy alongside you, dear listeners! In one of the few high points of Season 3, this episode had it all: a great sci-fi premise, interesting character moments, and most importantly, a break for dear William Shatner.

Join us to hear every inane thought about the episode that enters our heads, including our takes on just why the USS Defiant glowed green, and what makes this episode work so well among all TOS standouts. 

Notes and Recognitions:

• Intro Music: Chasing Stars by AG Music

If you've ever wondered what frustration sounds like - congratulations, you've found it in this episode of The Bicks Do Star Trek! Season 3 of The Original Series is one of the more frustrating seasons in Star Trek history - for producers, writers, actors, and even the creator - and that frustration seeps into the episodes themselves, and by conduit, your hosts. In a season filled with episodes that pale in comparison to what came before, we found a few nuggets of joy and a whole lot of... other nuggets.

Join us for a chat about why these episodes fail to impress, the few highlights we could pull out, and the numerous specific problems *cough*sexism*cough* that plague the show this year. Also a brief chat about the production and what the potential legacy of the show could have looked like if this was indeed the final piece of Star Trek to ever exist.

Episode Sponsor: Eden's Enterprises! Whatever joyous road you're taking, man, you can get there with Eden's Enterprises!

Bicks Log: With the crew on light duty rotations, we had time to ponder whether "Turnabout Intruder" - one of the most detested episodes of TOS - was salvageable.

Notes:

• We are so very dumb and confused "Spock's Brain" and "For The World Is Hollow And I Have Touched The Sky". However this is kind of indicative of our level of devotion and love for this season as a whole.

In which we sit down and watch through the classic Season 2 episode "The Trouble With Tribbles" with you, dear listeners! So cue it up and boldly go with us as we learn about just why, in fact, the Klingons and the Tribbles have such a rich history of animosity...(jk we don't know why and no one ever really explains it in this episode, it's just a thing that is and we have to learn to accept it...)

We look forward to more watchalongs in the future, and will probably be having semi-regular polls to help us decide which episodes to cover in our watchalongs on our Twitter, so follow us there and please do let us know if there's an episode you'd love to watch with us!

Notes and Recognitions:

• Intro Music: Chasing Stars by AG Music

In this foray into pretty well known, we're examining the second season of The Original Series in all its didactic glory. Whether your joy is faraway trips to places that feel very much like home, or a few light-hearted romps through the less serious parts of the galaxy, the second season has a lot to offer, and a fair bit for us to talk about. So sit back (or walk, or commute, or do whatever you want really we're not your parents) and listen in as we chat about the second season of Star Trek.

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Bicks Log: Today we discussed which style of episode best fits Star Trek as a whole: the serious, deep, sci-fi or character heavy ones, or the lighthearted, comedic ones that have a bit more fun with the possibilities of a sci-fi universe?

Notes:

• For those who are not familiar with Sonic Screwdrivers or Doctor Who generally... Assignment Earth is pretty much an outright theft of the idea, with the addition of a cat!

Friends of the podcast, welcome to something new from The Bicks. A watch along episode! Join us for a viewing of one of the most acclaimed Star Trek episodes of all time: The City on the Edge of Forever. As our first watch along, our apologies if it's a little rough, but we were just excited by the thought of plunging our voices into your eardrums as you watch an episode of Trek. So throw us on in the background and listen as we blabber about whatever comes to mind during one of our favourite episodes from TOS.

We look forward to more watch alongs in the future, and will probably be having semi-regular polls to help us decide which episodes to cover in our watch alongs on our Twitter, so follow us there and please do let us know if there's an episode you'd love to watch with us!

Notes and Recognitions:

• Intro Music: Chasing Stars by AG Music

...in which your stalwart Ensigns Aidan and Lindsay take you on a tour of Star Trek's very first blockbuster season. The one that started it all! Join us for a retrospective look at the origin of the series, the ups and downs of getting it on the air (with a little help from America's favourite redhead!), highlights and lowlights of the episodes and story arcs, as well as our...

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Bicks Log: Who is the best villain from The Original Series?

Notes and Recognitions:

• Mea culpas: "The City on the Edge of Forever" was the second-last episode of the first season, not the last. Silly us!

Earth date September 8, 2022. Happy Star Trek Day to one and all! To commemorate this once-a-year occasion, we'd like to welcome listeners both new and old to this podcast with a (re)introduction to The Bicks. After plumbing the depths of Mark Frost and David Lynch, then William Shakespeare, we're back to talk about Star Trek in all its many forms: the TV series, the films, the universe, and the fandom. This episode we go over our personal history and experiences with Trek, talk about what you can expect in our podcast, and what we may do a little differently compared to other podcasts. Join us for the first of many discussions to come!

Episode Sponsor: Holonovels R Us - Don't forget to use Promocode "BicksPod" to get your already free holonovels for more free!

Bicks Log: We decided to start off easy with a simple question that has not preoccupied anyone's thoughts at all on the internet: who is Star Trek's greatest captain?

Notes and Recognitions:

• Intro Music: Chasing Stars by AG Music

We've always appreciated the saying, "Save the Best for Last" and we followed it for this Shakespeare podcast. Nothing may draw more interest in the popular imagination of Shakespeare than whether or not he was actually the author of the works ascribed to him. So we wanted to send off our little podcast with a big topic: who was Shakespeare, if it wasn't Shakespeare?

Notes:

• The Wikipedia master list of possible Shakespeare authorship candidates is... exhaustive.

Ancient Bickerings:

If Shakespeare wasn't the author of Shakespeare's works - who would you want it to be?

“Our revels now are ended. These our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits and Are melted into air, into thin air: And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff As dreams are made on, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep.”

In almost every way this play is Shakespeare's swan song, and a heartfelt goodbye to his time spent crafting entertainment and poetry for the people of London. Consequently, the play is very concerned with legacies, family, time, supremacy, and - perhaps most interestingly of all - colonialism. Despite being one of Shakespeare's shortest and most easily accessible plays, it manages to jam pack a whole lot of thought into the topics it does weave its magic on, so join us for a discussion about all things The Tempest in this, our final episode devoted to Shakespeare's work.

Notes:

• Aidan incorrectly named the date the play was performed in front of King James - it was actually done on November 1, 1611.

• He also incorrectly identified the date the play was put back into production - it was actually 1667, albeit under a different name with heavy adaptations.

Ancient Bickerings:

• If you were shipwrecked on an abandoned island and had to take 5 Shakespeare plays with you, does this one crack the list?

The incomparably funny and poignant comedian Hannah Gadsby said it best: “This adoration of the artist as a lone genius is quite misled, I think, because they are very much a part of their time and their community.”

Sometimes we all need a community. Whether it’s because our own expertise has fallen short or because two heads are better than one, no one among us can say that we are perfectly capable of living life without the help of our friends.

Not even William Shakespeare.

Join us as we examine Shakespeare's Apocrypha, a series of plays, poems, and other writings variously attributed to the Bard as well as a whole host of other Tudor/Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatists. It's a veritable who's-who of the extended theatre community to which Shakespeare undoubtedly would have belonged in late 16th/early 17th century London, which leads us to question: just how many people had a hand in writing the Shakespearean canon? Along the way, we'll explain some of the handwriting analysis and stylometry results that recent researchers have used to point to their favoured candidates for the authorship of this collection of works. 

It's a jam-packed episode. We hope you'll enjoy!

Notes:

• Folio, Quarto, and Octavo bookmaking techniques, as depicted on Wikipedia:

• Full text of The Shakespeare Apocrypha by C.F. Tucker Brooke

• YouTube clip of a one-man play by Keir Cutler about Shakespeare and the authorship question

Ancient Bickerings: Which play would you most like to revise alongside Shakespeare?