All Access Star Trek Talks Janeway On ‘Prodigy,’ New ‘Discovery’ Characters, And The Federation’s Future

All Access Star Trek podcast episode 13

The Shuttle Pod’s Kayla joins Tony and Laurie to talk about the new Captain Janeway statue in Bloomington, Kate Mulgrew’s new role in Star Trek: Prodigy, and the recently announced Star Trek: Picard prequel novel about Riker and Troi. They share an excerpt from Laurie’s interview with author Una McCormack, and review “People of Earth,” the third episode of Star Trek: Discovery‘s season 3, taking special note of its new characters and the sizzling hot chemistry between Michael Burnham and Book.

Links to topics discussed in the pod

Kate Mulgrew Talks ‘Star Trek: Prodigy’ And ‘Voyager’ Legacy At Captain Janeway Monument Unveiling

Next ‘Star Trek: Picard’ Novel Is A Prequel Set On USS Titan With Riker And Troi

Exclusive: Gates McFadden Says There Is A “Good Chance” She Will Appear In ‘Star Trek: Picard’

Interview: Una McCormack On Going Beyond ‘Voyager’ For ‘The Autobiography Of Kathryn Janeway’

‘Star Trek: Discovery’ Season 3 Analysis: Rounding Up The Prime Suspects Behind The Burn

‘Star Trek: Discovery’: Doug Jones on Season 3’s “Permanent Jump to the Future” (at Collider)

Other mentions:

Blue milk: all of its appearances in Star Wars

Jonathan Frakes interview about directing episode 3 

CBS announcement about Adira as non-binary character (and actor) 

Goofy Star Trek music stings: “The Changeling,” “Wolf in the Fold,” and “Amok Time

Composer Ron Jones interview that includes a discussion of TNG’s “sonic wallpaper”

Kenneth Welsh as Windom Earle on Twin Peaks

Battlestar Galactica‘s memorial hallway

Trekbits:

Laurie: Swear Trek  (Phillipa Louvois tweet)

Kayla: Marshmallow dispenser from Star Trek V (and buying options on eBay)

The Shuttle Pod’s Halloween episode and “Sub Rosa” commentary

Let us know what you think of the episode in the comments.


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The Mandalorian was on this morning and I watched that. No spoilers but to be honest, The Mandalorian is the only show on TV I care about right now.

Star Trek: Discovery is nothing like The Mandalorian. I love Star Trek shows like Discovery but The Mandalorian is a better experience for me.

Star Wars has not had a good track record lately but The Mandalorian is what I’m looking forward to the most now. Disney gets Star Wars now, hopefully CBS starts to understand Star Trek in a similar way.

I didn’t watch the new Discovery episode but I saw the review you guys did. It sounds uneventful and meh in my opinion. Discovery is losing my interest.

!?

The algorithm needs some tuning ;)

How many personalities have you got? You are the most inconsistent and contradictory person on this site.

Why are you even on here?

It’s a western

FYI there was an interview with Blu detailing why they are using she instead of them/they. I think Blu was not ready to come out to family and friends when this was shot and they will introduce it as the season continues.

What I love about your character’s introduction is that we don’t find out that Adira is non-binary right off the bat. It isn’t even part of a conversation really. Was that important for you?

Yeah, that was really important for me. I care a lot about an accurate representation of Adira and trans representation, especially. Because I wasn’t yet fully out to a lot of my family and some of my friends still, I didn’t feel comfortable right off the bat having everyone use they/them pronouns for Adira because I wasn’t out to everyone yet. So I wanted to wait until really I was, until I was in a place where I could talk to my family and my friends and tell them who I was. At that point I could then feel that this is now an accurate way for me to represent Adira onscreen as well because I’m there too. I didn’t want to rush it. I didn’t want to put pressure on myself. I just wanted it to be as honest as possible because there are so few trans characters onscreen and I wanted to make this character as transparent to my own experience as possible because we don’t see a lot of trans characters onscreen who are questioning, who are maybe not completely out talking to everyone about how they’re feeling about themselves. There’s so much pressure in the media for us to be 100 percent confident and really sure about ourselves so that people watching the shows don’t question us. But there are so many people who struggle with their identity and I wanted to at least have one character onscreen do that. Be able to see someone go from keeping everything inside to them sharing because that’s what everyone has to do.

https://www.etonline.com/star-trek-discovery-blu-del-barrio-on-playing-franchises-first-non-binary-character-exclusive

We didn’t see that article until after we recorded. It will be interesting to see this play out!

You can start throwing all your laptops out of the window as of now. It is going to happen. Burnham, Burn… It’s a save bet :-)

Its possible, but I don’t think that’s where they’re going with this

Here’s hoping that you’re right.

I think there is a lesson to be learned that the frontier exploration filled with hardship in TOS lead to growth and cooperation where as the stagnation and inward focus of TNG where everything is easy led to a decline and fracturing. Here is to a 22/23rd century style rebirth!

The Federation lasted for 600 years after the TNG era. The problem was the Burn, which nobody could have seen coming.

Yes it had nothing to do with ‘decline’ lol. The Federation was as strong as ever in the 31st century. We knew that thanks to Enterprise. Dilithium blowing up (or whatever) has nothing to do with that. We have no idea what that is about yet.

This podcast is such a great part of my Friday routine. I hope it never ends, even when Discovery S03 ends. I could listen to Laurie and Tony talk Trek all day

Well thank you! We will keep going after the end of season 3. Until we have new episodes to review, we will still cover Star Trek news, plus whatever else we come up with.

Great news! Huzzah!

I have a suggestion for a podcast episode or joint interview once Discovery wraps.

As mentioned your discussion this week about Una McCormack’s “Autobiography of Katherine Janeway” , the Relaunch post-Nemesis novels seem to have become a third continuity in the Star Trek mulitverse.

However, we haven’t had a clear discussion of this with either Kirsten Beyer, who is connecting Secret Hideout to the tie-in writers for both novels and comics, or from the publishers. The last panel on the novels was with Simon & Schuster reps at STLV 2019. It’s a real gap such that a group interview with Kirsten and the head editor at the publisher would be really welcome.

For whatever reason, the various virtual panels haven’t covered this off either although there have been panels with regular Trek-lit authors, but they can’t speak officially about the go-forward plan.

I hear you Laurie that you haven’t been following the books for some time, but perhaps Dénes House could join for that one…

As we’ve said we will definitely continue the pod on a weekly basis even after Discovery wraps up. Every week we will cover the news we’ll have our track bits and for any week that there isn’t something to review we will have some other topic.

And the extended universe of the new Star Trek TV universe is a good topic both the books and the comics.

Agreed. I did finally read The Last Best Hope and I could find some time to read the Discovery novels. Good idea.

Worf was mentioned on Picard. Picard’s Romulan friends suggest that he should reach out to Geordi or Worf for help. There was zero mention of Beverly Crusher.

I think we also saw a picture of Worf on the news program. The Crushers and Tasha are the only major TNG characters who haven’t been mentioned.

Hi All Access ST Podcasters! Regarding Anthony’s comment about matter/antimatter reactors on planetary surfaces exploding because of The Burn, if you recall Star Trek IV The Voyage Home, The Probe was vaporizing Earth’s oceans and blotting out the Sun. There was some dialog between the President and Admiral Cartwright about them not surviving without the Sun, i.e., solar energy. So I think by that time solar energy was an important energy source for planets. Also, nuclear fusion reactors (which power impulse engines) would have probably been an important Earth-bound power source. Because of the danger of antimatter explosions in Federation history (e.g., Kirk’s antimatter bomb that destroyed the Vampire Cloud and a large part of the planet’s surface in TOS “Obsession”), I think matter/antimatter reactors would have been forbidden on planetary surfaces, just because of the possibility of catastrophic accidents. I think this is stated in non-canon novels. So my take was The Burn just destroyed dilithium in working reactors on starships, but not dilithium that was in storage for future use. Hopefully future episodes will elucidate the story.

Keep up the good work! Dr. Dave, ASU planetary science professor, Phoenix Star Trek fan club

Nerd Alert! Actually, all very well reasoned. Thanks for listening and dropping by Dr. Dave!

I was going to say that although my post wouldn’t have been nearly as articulate as yours.

The hosts calling the UEDF “xenophobic” is improper and shows they don’t know what the word means IMO. Based on what we know(which isn’t everything) they have good reasons to be very protective of the unknown. They haven’t just turned into a bunch of intergalactic ‘rednecks’.

Xenophobic doesn’t mean redneck… it basically means fearful of those who are foreign. Earth seemed to be xenophobic and isolationist (no visitors, shield around the planet, telling people to stay away, firing at ships that approach as Wen described). They were protective, yes, but assumed that everyone approaching was hostile, and the top priority was to protect themselves and their resources. .

Thank you for your feedback. In the latest episode of the Ready Room, the writers of the episode talk about the xenophobia (using that term) on Earth after The Burn, due to succumbing to the fear of others.

I just finished listening to the podcast and I’m afraid I have a complaint. Hey, you asked for feedback! I absolutely love everything about the podcast except it just really bugged me when Laurie spelled out the name of the actress who played the Earth Defence Force commander and Laurie pronounced the letter Z as Zee. She’s Canadian so she should know it’s pronounced Zed! Yes, I understand she is living in America now but it just saddens me that she’s being assimilated into the melting pot like this. Stay strong, Laurie! There are four lights! It’s pronounced Zed!

Ha! First of all… every time I have to say that letter, I do have to stop and think about it. But I have been here for a very long time and have two kids in the school system. I’m surrounded by Americans, including my own offspring! I’ve written episodes for a Canadian podcast, chapters for a British book, and articles for dozens of American websites… nice to know someone understands my struggle. I’ve been here for more than half my life at this point, but I am still something of a stranger in a strange land. (That said, I haven’t said “Zed” in a couple of decades. Don’t tell my Canadian siblings.)

Hi Laurie, I struggle with this too, and I’ve been back in Canada since before we had kids.

Even in Canadian television programs for kids, American distribution partnerships often lead to Zee being used or the old-fashioned non metric measures. I have have had to stop and check myself often to get it right.

I feel like the pressure to conform to either American or British pronunciations, spelling, grammar, punctuation etc. is ever the stronger. While we can at least now get Canadian English spelling and grammar as an option for our word processors, when we write for publication, we get hit with American or British editors pushing us to one or the other.

It’s a challenge! I had some very funny misunderstandings when I first moved here due to some subtle differences in Canadian and American expressions.

Regarding Detmer: I would really love it if the show could just, for once, give an authentic and unmuddied case of PTSD its due.

Detmer would be a good choice for this because she had already suffered a major trauma when the Shenzhou was destroyed and her close friend who supported her through that (based on her goodbye letter in the S2 finale) was left behind in the 23rd century.

However…

I have a new alternative theory that I don’t think I’ve seen anyone put forward as yet.

What if Detmer is connected to the ship and the AI embedded in the sphere data?

As pilot, Detmer works closely with the ship and she has an implant the may provide an interface. More, the sphere data has already shown self-determination and self-protection to prevent its destruction after the sphere itself was destroyed.

The transit through the time wormhole and the crash on the colony planet were traumatic not just for Detmer as the pilot, but also for the emerging sentient AI within the ship due to the merging with the sphere data.

So, my current best hypothesis is that Detmer has some kind of link to the awakening intelligence of the ship and is experiencing a resonance of shared trauma.

Rewatching 303, it occurred to me that with Discovery exploring a new era, it’s time to revive the “it looks like some sort of…” tracker.

This episode featured Rhys saying “It looks like a sort of advanced” shield generator technology when they arrived at Earth.

I still love the “some sort of” Voyager super-cut.

It’s glad that the Discovery writers are leaning into it.

In other words, it looks like they’re doing some sort of “it looks like some sort of” homage!

Here’s hoping for 46 more such references this season :)

Hey Laurie, hey Anthony,

I like your Discovery reviews and discussions, so thanks for your time and work you put in.

I also have a question / request: Would it be possible to add chapter marks to future podcast episodes? People could skip the news parts and go straight to the review, because. For me it would also be a good thing to avoid spoilers (like recently where you discussed news about Lower Decks and accidentally spoiled

Spoiler
the Titan thing
for us non-US-people who hadn’t had a chance to watch Lower Decks yet).

Thanks for considering and again thanks for your efforts.

Hi, and thank you both for listening and for the suggestion. We can definitely let people know in the show notes where the review begins, for those who want to avoid spoilers in the news. I’ll add it to the copy. Good idea!