Transporter Room 3, Episode 97
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We also delve into the recent news that Star Trek: Discovery showrunner Bryan Fuller… is not the showrunner of Star Trek: Discovery anymore. We find this news most distressing, and we’re not entirely convinced that the official reasoning for his taking a step back (but not completely a step away, as he’ll still be involved with the show) is the full story. Is it ever?And then of course we’ve got another Red Shirt of the week. A whole planet of ‘em, in fact. But we bring it all back to the election, so don’t let anyone ever say we aren’t heavy-handed!
So put on your Federation President John Lennon shades, turn off the cable news for a spell, and listen to the latest episode of Transporter Room 3…
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Listen to Episode 97 of Transporter Room 3 right here:
Thanks for the episode! I appreciate the theme and the reminder that the messages in Star Trek are just as important as ever. With that in mind, I wish you guys had spent more time on the episodes which truly embody those themes--and not been bogged down by too many tribbles! As for one you did discuss, "Darmok" has a great message but feels a bit too on board with the "forgive and forget" attitude that many socially liberal people, myself included, find frustrating and problematic. Anyway, I wanted to give a nod to "The Void," a Season 7 episode of Voyager in which Janeway and crew forge an alliance through pragmatic diplomacy, a miniature Federation in a microcosm of hostile space. It illustrates that the high-minded morals of Starfleet are actually a virtue and not a hindrance, even in an environment of selfish agents. Human beings evolve in ways that trend toward being selfish or altruistic (correlated to things like cultural norms and trait-level empathy) and altruists are not the natural majority. It takes a leap of humanist faith to tip the scales, repeated acts of cooperation in spite of selfishness--a willingness to give while being punished for it--in order to signal the change to the group. "The Void" serves as yet another reminder in Trek that humanity must will itself to evolve (using cultural "software" to "update" our morally simplistic "hardware"). Also, I'm pretty sure there's a good Enterprise episode that hits most of the same notes as "The Void."
ReplyDeleteThanks again,
Ken Rosenberg
Hey Ken -- thanks for the great message! I need to go back to "The Void" as I don't remember it that well, but you're right -- we barely scraped the surface of episodes we could've covered. We'll plan to talk about more of these in the future!
ReplyDeleteBest,
Scott