Thursday, December 10, 2015

17 to 01: Patterns of Force


Due to ongoing audio issues, here's a very early "Patterns of Force." It's unanimous this episode doesn't go hard enough against Nazis, but it does provide a great pretext to discuss current events. 

So is Star Trek progressive because it doesn't go in on Nazis, or is that where it fails in its generally progressive tone? If this is a failing, is Star Trek's greatest strength in just having these conversations so that, 48 years later, we can still talk about it and make it relevant? "Starting a conversation" is often the pretext desperately grasped when a career based on being inflammatory starts sinking; is Star Trek any different?

17 to 01 is available on iTunes. It updates Thursdays at 01:00 AM CT and Friday nights at 8:30 PM ET / 9:30 CT. We're also amazingly on Stitcher.

5 comments:

SkilTao said...

Commentary is spot-on.

I want to say it's weird how the main villain, the deputy fuhrer, gets so little characterization and so little action, but maybe that's intentional; maybe the less direct action we see him take, the easier it is for the audience to see him as the force behind all the sins of his faceless goons. The happy ending kind of hinges on him being solely responsible--the Enterprise doesn't really leave the three rebels in a position to oppose any cronies or co-conspirators.

The file cuts off midway through you reading the next episode's description.

I'm amused by Derek's reverse-echo. Acoustically, the delay between him and his echo would correspond to the size of the room he's in, so a negative delay means his room occupies negative space, right? (What? That technobabble wouldn't fly even on Voyager, you say?)

Oh yeah, I've now watched Chaos on the Bridge, and it doesn't have anything you don't already know.

VanVelding said...

He is kind of a cipher. Like, because he's been running things, the terrible things that the Ekosians have done can be attributed to him. He's just a Nazi. The focus of the story is on the effects of Gil's actions and it kinda acts like his death and repudiation are going to fix everything. Perhaps we're meant to assume that all of the Ekosians felt really guilty and just shook it off...despite the fact that from a historical perspective, their civilization's golden age coincided so closely with their persecution of the Zeons.

That'll leave a mark.

We actually, today just changed up Derek's recording setup so that--and a number of audio issues--should dramatically improve in about...five weeks. Yikes, I need to get our buffer up.

I think the issue with the recording length is storage on m'site. I didn't think we were cutting it so close with storage. I gotta look into hosting for that and recut the episode in the meantime.

I feel fully vindicated that Chaos on the Bridge wasn't substantive. I'm getting a good head of steam going on being angry at Shatner and between that and the book he's writing about Leonard Nimoy...I need to take some ballpit time.

SkilTao said...

"Production just got easier" is always pleasant news.

I didn't consider the long-term cultural effects, good call. (Can't believe I forgot the word "cipher.")

Oh yeah, I meant to say, I could swear the "use a film crew as cover to assassinate the Fuhrer at an evening party" was in a recent-ish comedy movie, based on true events. I must have some wires crossed though because I can't track it down.

VanVelding said...

You might be thinking about the stoner flick starring the two stoners about killing the leader of North Korea. Forget what it was called. From what I heard it might not have been a comedy though.

Ba-dum-tish!

SkilTao said...

Heh. Yeah, that might be it.