Sasha: I'm literally so confused.
Ariel: I'm so confused, it's like there was a whole liter of confusion and I drank it all. Why???
Sasha: Do we need to tell people to put their spoiler blankets over their heads?
Ariel: Maybe we need to tell them to put a literal blanket over their heads.
Sasha: What is up with Star Trek!
Ariel: It's like a rollercoaster going through a fun-house on drugs.
Sasha: How would you know what being on drugs is like? You've never had any drugs.
Ariel: I've never been on a rollercoaster either, or in a fun-house! You're so confused you're being all literal.
Sasha: That's probably true. But seriously, this show!
Ariel: These shows. This is way not just one thing. It's like a split-personality with ham soup of shows.
Sasha: We're probably making everyone else just as confused as we are. Maybe let's tell them what happened?
Ariel: I don't know if that's a good idea or a bad idea, but it's an idea.
Sasha: Whoosh. So ... last time we talked about watching some Star Treks and how they were mostly really good.
Ariel: But how we were confused because there were so many things we didn't understand from not watching the earlier shows.
Sasha: If only we had known how much more confused we could be!
Ariel: Plenty confuseder.
Sasha: I mean, it seemed like a good idea at the time to kind of sample the shows we never saw and figure out which ones we might want to watch to unconfuse ourselves.
Ariel: And we were mostly expecting them to be kinda in the ballpark of the ones we already watched ... Star Trek: That Bald Guy, Star Trek: Cartoon Nobodies, and Star Trek: Very Disco.
Sasha: Which ... a couple were!
Ariel: Uh-huh. That oldest one was surprisingly cool. And since it was the very very very very first one, it was super-easy to understand. Like, when I was thinking, "Who's this guy?" the show was like, "Look, he's the captain." And when I was like, "Now who's that guy?" the show was like, "Here, listen, the captain calls him 'Doc.' Must be the doctor, right?"
Sasha: Easy peasy to understand. Not the super-best special effects, though.
Ariel: But who cares? The characters were smart! And the bad guys were creepy ...
Sasha: And that "Number One" chick -- bad ass!
Ariel: I kept waiting for them to say who Number Two was, but I guess nobody wanted that job.
Sasha: So we were like, cool. It's kind of an antique, but it still works and it's got a lot of personality.
Ariel: Off to a good start.
Sasha: Which, I'm going to say ... well, I would never say anything bad about Claire, who is our role model, but we knew the next one is her favorite show, and maybe that gave us too high of expectations.
Ariel: It was okay, but so much less smart!
Sasha: Not exactly dumb ...
Ariel: Maybe toward the end it got a little dumb.
Sasha: Yeah, like in the first show, the doctor was smart. The Big Brain Aliens have kidnapped the captain and taken him into their secret underground lair with an elevator that's a little bit disguised like a giant rock but not all that well disguised, so the crew gets their laser cannon and zaps the rock, and it does nothing, and I'm thinking, "Ooh, at the end, they're going to see that they really did blow up the elevator, the aliens just used their mind powers to make it look like they didn't." And then like two seconds after I thought that, somebody says, "Damn, our laser cannon isn't doing shit to this rock elevator!" And the doctor is immediately like, "Maybe it is, and they're just using their mind powers to make it look like it isn't."
Ariel: I wasn't expecting the characters on an ancient TV show to be as smart as you!
Sasha: Me either ... oh, and thank you!
Ariel: Sure thing.
Sasha: But then, in the second version of the show, the new doctor is like, mister clueless.
Ariel: That's "doctor clueless."
Sasha: I have my doubts he got a degree, but whatever. Here they are in his room, and a monster that's made itself look like Doctor Clueless's ex is sucking the salt out of the new captain, and in comes Mr. Pointy Ears saying, "That's not your ex, it's a monster and it's sucking the salt out of the captain," and he's like, "What? That can't be true."
Ariel: I mean, he was hopped up on sleeping pills ...
Sasha: Sure, but people have been dying the whole episode of pucker-marks to the face where this thing's been sucking the salty goodness out of them, so you'd think if he sees his ex with her fingers all over the captain's face and the captain's standing there totally zonked out, and Mr. Ears says, "That's not your ex, it's a monster that's killing the captain," maybe he'd consider his ex never stuck her fingers on his face and paralyzed him while they were an item, so maybe Mr. Ears is right and this isn't his ex.
Ariel: At the very least, he could have said, "Hey, babe, could you maybe un-stick your fingers from the captain's face and let's talk through this misunderstanding about you being a monster?"
Sasha: But nope. Mr. Ears starts pounding on the Salt-Sucking Ex and saying, "Look, if she was your ex, wouldn't this this two-fisted smackdown move make her think twice instead of flinging me across the room with a backhand slap -- oof!" And Doc Sleeping Pills is like, "Well ... I mean, I don't know ..."
Ariel: Which, geez, I've never taken sleeping pills, but then the monster actually turns into a monster and he sees it!
Sasha: I know, right??? I'm like, holy shit, Doc Sleeping Pills, your girlfriend just got uhhhh-uhhhh-uhgly. Only he still stands there with this, "Huh ... that doesn't seem right" look on his face and Mr. Ears has to tell him again, "Shoot it, doofus, it's a monster!"
Ariel: There was some good stuff in the episode, but it definitely ended on a low note.
Sasha: Claire says other episodes are better, so we'll have to try some sometime, but right then, I wanted to keep trying other shows in the series.
Ariel: Oh god, we should not have gone in order.
Sasha: No, that was a mistake.
Ariel: The next show ... how does something like that even happen?
Sasha: I was looking forward to it, because Star Trek: That Bald Guy was pretty good, so I figured his original show, Star Trek: That Not-bald Guy had to be at least okay.
Ariel: And then it turned out he was bald in the original show too.
Sasha: Not that that was the worst of its problems.
Ariel: No, even a hair-headed captain couldn't have saved this one.
Sasha: You're right about that.
Ariel: Somebody needs to explain to me how that first Smart Trek pilot apparently wasn't good enough for them to make a show out of it without recasting everyone except Mr. Ears, but this "Encounter at No Point" episode took off into a show that lasted seven years?
Sasha: There's no explanation.
Ariel: It was ... I mean, I spent the whole two hours feeling bad for the cast of this show.
Sasha: It was embarrassing.
Ariel: That's the word I was looking for. They start off with, "Oh, we're going on a mission to solve the mystery of No Point Station."
Sasha: Sounded good so far ...
Ariel: But then, a giant space fence out of nowhere stops them from going to solve the mystery!
Sasha: Nothing like having your new crew of good guys get stopped by a fence to make you really excited about watching them in action.
Ariel: I figured the space fence had something to do with the mystery, though. I mean, it was kind of a mysterious space fence, and there had to be a connection, right? There couldn't be a mystery going on at No Point Station and then also just by coincidence a mysterious space fence stopping them from getting to the mystery, could there?
Sasha: Oh, boy, could there ever!
Ariel: Yeah.
Sasha: Turns out there's a super-powerful space alien in charge of the space fence, and the dude just loves to change costumes.
Ariel: And accents.
Sasha: And he thinks humans are awful, so he's stopping them from going to No Point Station.
Ariel: But to his super-powerful surprise, That Bald Guy says, "No, wait, we're not awful."
Sasha: So then they have to argue about it. "Yes, you are!"
Ariel: "No we're not!"
Sasha: "Are too!"
Ariel: "Are not!"
Sasha: "But look at your history!"
Ariel: "Well that's, like, history. You know, in the past?"
Sasha: "But I'm going to keep talking about how bad you used to be, as though I'm not super-powerful enough to look around and see whether you're still doing bad things these days."
Ariel: "Look, just give us a chance and we'll prove we're not awful."
Sasha: "I dunno, I think I'd rather keep chewing up time talking about how awful you are."
Ariel: "Only we're not, we promise! Let us prove it!"
Sasha: So the setup of the show is, the crew is literally just supposed to prove they're not awful.
Ariel: Fail.
Sasha: Such a low bar ... don't be awful. And the show couldn't clear it.
Ariel: Total fail. How did this happen?
Sasha: Even Doctor Dumbass McSleepingPills wasn't as dumb as this show.
Ariel: Only he was, because he was in it!
Sasha: Whoa, that's right, I forgot about that part.
Ariel: Star Trek: Trust us, we're Not Godawful, with special guest star, Doctor Dumbass McSaltSuckerBoyfriend, age a hundred and twenty!
Sasha: It did start to make sense that this show takes place in a universe where the bone-headed doctor is the last one alive out of that whole crew.
Ariel: And can you imagine if you waited almost 20 years between watching That Old Show and These New Goofballs, and this is what you got?
Sasha:We only had to wait long enough for Claire to search through the streaming service menu.
Ariel: We literally waited 20 seconds, and some people waited 20 years.
Sasha: Those poor fools.
Ariel: Maybe their secret plan was, if we make this one episode bad enough, everything after this will seem like it's great.
Sasha: If it was, that's the only part of it that worked. I do have to admit all the other ones we watched were miles better.
Ariel: Wasn't that one of the characters in the next one? Miles O'Better?
Sasha: Too many characters in all these shows for me to remember all their names. I didn't even try.
Ariel: And you say I'm lazy!
Sasha:Anywayyy ... the next one definitely was miles better, even though it didn't seem like it should be. So the show is called "Star Trek," but this one takes place on a space station that's just stuck in one part of the galaxy?
Ariel: I was joking they should call it "Stuck Trek." And after that last one, I was prepared to feel like I was watching "Suck Trek."
Sasha: But it was really good!
Ariel: They totally redeemed themselves. Well, maybe not totally. You can't ever make up for something like "Encounter at Yark Point."
Sasha: "Encounter at Fart Point."
Ariel: "Encounter at Fart Oink."
Sasha: Okay, that one's a keeper.
Ariel: And so was Station Trek: Stuck by a Wormhole. I liked it!
Sasha: Which is why we shouldn't talk about it in this post, since this post is about all the whacked out parts of this franchise.
Ariel: I didn't think most of the rest were that whacked out.
Sasha: Are you kidding me? The very next one had the worst captain of all!
Ariel: You mean Captain Schoolmarm?
Sasha: Captain Schoolmarm, Captain Hairbun, Captain Lameway ... wow, I did not like her!
Ariel: I think maybe we were spoiled? Because we started from the other end and saw that great lady captain on Star Trek: Cartoon Nobodies? Maybe imagine you started watching the shows in order instead of starting near the end and then jumping way back. Then she'd be the very first female captain, which is something, right?
Sasha: I dunno. Are we supposed to give her points because five captains and almost 30 years in, they finally had one be a lady? Seems like if they were going to wait that long, they could have taken just a little more time and made her interesting in some way besides not being a man.
Ariel: Well, I didn't mind her that much, even if she did seem kinda schoolmarmy. I thought the whacked out part of the show was ... well, there were two, really.
Sasha: Are you counting the people who have starships but don't know that you can put hydrogen and oxygen together to make water?
Ariel: No, because I didn't know that until Elle started complaining about it.
Sasha: Okay, so what are your two?
Ariel: Um, I'll start with the less worse one, which was when they got to that giant alien satellite or whatever and they go inside and it's full of banjo-playing yokels.
Sasha: Oooh, that's right! That was one of the big things I didn't like about Captain Sprainbrains.
Ariel: What? It wasn't her fault the alien satellite read their minds or something and decided to make holograms of a hicksville picnic in banjo-town.
Sasha: No, but it was somebody's fault. If she was any kind of captain at all, she would have been like, "Dammit! Who was thinking about banjo-playing yokels when they started reading our minds? I want that person off my ship!"
Ariel: That's a good point. The whole scene was giving me flashbacks to "Encounter at Mentally Scarred Point."
Sasha: This one was like "Encounter at Barn Point."
Ariel: There was literally a barn!
Sasha: Why??? Why do you have to start your science fiction show off with a major sequence of people wearing old-timey costumes and serving up coleslaw?
Ariel: It's like they just said, "Is there another show or movie filming that week with a bunch of extras dressed up in costumes we could bring over?"
Sasha: I bet that's exactly what happened.
Ariel: So stupid.
Sasha: Well anyway, if that was the less bad of your two complaints, what was the other one?
Ariel: The racism.
Sasha: What? There were Black and Asian and Hispanic and even Native American crew members on the show. I thought it was pretty diverse.
Ariel: Maybe, but it was still so racist! Like they start off on the Stuck Trek space station, where the giant ears guy --
Sasha: Quark, right?
Ariel: I guess. Anyway, where that guy runs a gambling joint --
Sasha: "Encounter at Quark's Joint."
Ariel: Haha, that was actually a really good one. But what I'm trying to get to is, the new Star Fleet dude is in Quark's Joint, and he tells Quark, get this, "They warned us about you people at the Academy."
Sasha: I don't think he said, "you people."
Ariel: He might as well have! Look, by this point we've watched episodes from, um, one ... two ... three ... okay, like seven different Star Trek shows. And you're telling me the people at Star Fleet Academy are "warning" their cadets that this whole race of people is a bunch of cheats?
Sasha: Well, we've only seen two episodes with those big-ear guys in them. Maybe they are a bunch of cheats.
Ariel: That would be even worse! How can a show that's supposed to be about people coming together from different backgrounds and cooperating to make a better universe have a whole race who are all sleazy bad guys? It's against the whole idea of this Star Fleet outfit in the first place!
Sasha: Okay, I guess you've got a point there. But that one scene doesn't mean the show is --
Ariel: "Don't you Indians have some way you can turn into a bird and fly away or something?"
Sasha: Ewww, yeah, I'd forgotten about that line.
Ariel: Like, right to the Native American guy's face. And then a couple lines later he says something just as bad, and the Native American guy is like, "That's a different tribe." No! He should have been all, "Dude, if you call me 'Indian' one more time instead of using my tribe's name, I will frickin' scalp you."
Sasha: Wait, aren't you being racist to make a scalping joke?
Ariel: Oh my god, I'm so sorry.
Sasha: So maybe you shouldn't be the one to throw the first stone. And just because there were two scenes --
Ariel: I'm not done!
Sasha: You're not?
Ariel: No, there's also the chick who's half Klingon, and she's all, "Sorry I went off on you, it's my Klingon half. Sometimes I just can't control my emotions." What?! She might as well have said, "Sorry, it's my time of the month. I can't be held responsible for my hormones."
Sasha: You're starting to make a pretty good case. Anything else?
Ariel: Just the captain's final speech about them being stuck so far from home. She's like, "Well everybody, we're stuck here, all alone in an uncharted part of the galaxy."
Sasha: What's so bad about that?
Ariel: I mean, is she Captain Christopher Columbusway or something? It's not uncharted, and they're not alone ... they meet like three or four different intelligent species in the very first day they're there! All these hundreds of years in the future, are you telling me the Federation is still going around basically saying, "Hey, look! We discovered this place! No one's ever been here before! And look at all the weird people who live here!"
Sasha: Don't you think that's pretty nit-picky compared to "Can't you Indians turn yourselves into birds?"
Ariel: Sorry, once I started noticing stuff I couldn't help myself.
Sasha: Well, I'm sure it's just a fluke. There are all these diverse people on the ship ... I mean, the security officer is Black and a Vulcan. I'm sure we'll see as the series goes on that people treat him and the half-Klingon lady just like anybody else, with respect and understanding.
Ariel: I sure hope so!
Sasha: So are we out of whacko things to talk about that we never expected to turn up in Star Trek?
Ariel: Probably not. There's probably about as many of those as there are episodes of the show, if I'm being honest.
Sasha: That's the impression I'm getting too.
Ariel: Hopefully that's the last of the banjo-playing, though.
Sasha: Fingers crossed.
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