Happy Monday, everyone! To celebrate the start of the working week, we’re looking at Star Trek episodes where people mess with the memories of our cast and put them through menial, awful work.

O’Brien must continue to suffer in Hard Time, where he’s lived through decades of prison time just for being a bit nosey. Can he deal with the mind-shattering prison sentence, or will he still be traumatised and we’ll never speak of this after the episode’s end?

Then our main feature is a two-parter where the crew of Voyager are brainwashed into factory jobs (apart from Paris who couldn’t even manage that). Watch the rivalry between the Emergency Command Hologram and Harry Kim! Janeway has a romance plot and there’s some bad CGI!

03:30 What Non-Star Trek Thing We’ve Been Enjoying: An anti-recommendation for Atlas Shrugged, recommendations for Bioshock, Charlie editing the Grand Comic Database

09:02 Star Trek: Deep Space Nine “Hard Time”

41:43 Star Trek: Voyager “Workforce”

Talking points include: Poirot’s facial hair, talking Miles down from reading Ayn Rand, Mark Morrison, No Gods No Mayors, a harsh burn from Miles, DS9 has a counsellor? What is Miles’ middle name anyway? A bee gets loose in Charlie’s room. Buffy. Farscape. Tek War. Isn’t it good that prisons aren’t run for profit in the real world? Prestige TV ghosts of the mind. David Cage wishes he could get this emotional. Bryan Fuller doesn’t get weird with it. Tom can’t even hack being a brainwashed labourer. Just be Janeway’s consort, Jaffen! Charlie’s upsetting second Voyager: Across the Universe playthrough. Anything can pull rank on Harry. Charlie got contacted by Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Oh, and occasionally Star Trek.

Casual Trek is by Charlie Etheridge-Nunn and Miles Reid-Lobatto

Music by Alfred Etheridge-Nunn

Casual Trek is a part of the Nerd & Tie Network

https://ko-fi.com/casualtrek

Miles’ blog: http://www.mareidlobatto.wordpress.com

Charlie’s blog: http://www.fakedtales.com

Welcome to a classic episode of Casual Trek, featuring Matt Hardy!

Matt's upcoming project can be found here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/kryptothera-a-hunter/kryptothera-a-hunters-tale

We’ve got our first guest star in today’s episode as we get the nonstop machine of comics crowdfunding Matthew Hardy to join us in talking about the First Lady of Star Trek: Majel Barrett!

Majel’s been in so many episodes, hell, so many SERIES of Star Trek over the years, so there’s a lot to work with here. We’ve got shockingly little Majel in the TOS episode that ostensibly is a spotlight focus on her. Then we’re in to the wild world of Lwaxana Troi as she gets kidnapped by Ferengi in TNG and that version of the Ferengi are the absolute worst. Like Internet Guy worst. Finally we get a surprisingly nice pairing of Lwaxana and Odo stuck in a lift together as a weird life form from the Gamma Quadrant has got into the computers.

TOS: What Are Little Girls Made of?

TNG: Ménage a Troi

DS9: The Forsaken

Talking points include: Westworld (both flavours), Babylon 5, Only Murders in the Building, Righteous Gemstones, Adam X the X-Treme, Ahsoka, Classic Dr Who, FMV PC games, Charlie’s back on his Lost bullshit, From, Amnesiac City, Two time GLAAD award winner Peter Allan David, The Matrix, Terminator, I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, The UK Office amount of awkwardness, Shoggoths, Tiny Clangers, The Prisoner, Legion of Super-Heroes fashion, Mario Kart-based declarations of love, Vampire: The Masquerade, The Mos Eisley Cantina Band, Lucille Bluth, Lwaxana Troi going full Mrs Bennet, Picard giving it all Shakespeare, More Classic Dr Who, Lord of the Rings for the SNES, Gilmore Girls, Tamagochi, War of the Worlds. Oh, and occasionally Star Trek. A surprising amount of Star Trek this time…

Casual Trek is by Charlie Etheridge-Nunn and Miles Reid-Lobatto, our guest star was Matt Hardy.

Music by Alfred Etheridge-Nunn

Casual Trek is a part of the Nerd & Tie Network

https://ko-fi.com/casualtrek

Miles’ blog: http://www.mareidlobatto.wordpress.com

Charlie’s blog: http://www.fakedtales.com

Pedant’s Corner:

• Gap-wise, the gap between TOS finishing & TNG airing was 18 years, the gap between Enterprise finishing and Discovery airing was 13 years

• “Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so” is the actual quote

• Charlie couldn’t think of the word “camper van” when describing From

• Memory Alpha’s reference to Lwaxana Troi saying she ‘made love’ to DaiMon Tog, has a link to an article on Oo-mox

Miles and Charlie have come down with a case of the ‘too British for Star Trek’ and are coping with it the only way they know how, by once more becoming Space Scamps and hopping over to Moonbase Alpha for three more episodes of Space 1999! We’ve an unintentional theme of guest stars here as ‘Force of Life’ gives us a young Ian McShane coming down with a bad case of heat vamperism while ‘Alpha Child’ gives us evil children, weird cosmic space incest with Julian Glover (he’s been in a lot of stuff) and then finally, ‘Missing Link‘ gives us a guest turn by Peter Cushing in a costume choice slightly more dignified than Christopher Lee back in Space Scamps II and Charlie asks us a terrifying question… why have we not watched any season 2 yet…

EPISODES MENTIONED: Force of Life (09:14) Alpha Child (28:58) Missing Link (50:53)




TALKING POINTS: The Abominable Dr. Phibes, New Classic Doctor Who, The Employees, The House on the Borderland, Sailing, Rhinestone Cowboy, a very young Ian McShane who to Miles’ surprise is NOT playing a scumbag, coworkers coming into work while sick, Space 1999’s production values ALWAYS impress, Sunshine is a great movie, is this incest? Maybe. Avengers Issue 200 style shennanigans, Julian Glover, the Man the Myth the Legend, Alpha Child does TNG’s The Child CORRECTLY, what the hell was TV Show ‘Swat?’ also… who is second in command on Moonbase Alpha? Space-Rationalists are the worst. Space 1999 is the wrong show to be doing Logic vs. Emotion, this is why we have a stunt crew, Space 1999 would have made a great season of The Terror, we feel sorry for Moonbase Alpha’s catering department

A conversation cut from Casual Trek 81. See, we do some edits!

Casual Trek’s month celebrating Red Shirts continues as we have a look at Star Trek episodes which have thrown away the lives of extras in order to raise the stakes.

In “The Apple”, we get the highest red shirt body count as a planet wants people to die which is sad, as they won’t get to live long enough to see the most D&D cartoon-looking cave mouth ever!

In “The Bonding” one extra dies, which hits everyone really hard, especially her son and The Boy, who went through this before.

Finally “Now the Battle to the Strong” gives Miles another opportunity to sing the M.A.S.H. theme tune as Bashir and Jake Sisko encounter the horrors of war!

00:01:26 What Non-Star Trek Thing We’ve Been Enjoying: Disney’s Pixar’s Hoppers & Pokopia

00:12:40 Star Trek: The Original Series “The Apple”

00:47:12 Star Trek: The Next Generation “The Bonding”

01:20:25 Star Trek: Deep Space Nine “Now the Battle to the Strong”

Talking points include: Miles is not a fan of imperialist colonialism, Disney’s Pixar’s Hoppers is NOT Avatar, the Watership Down experience, traumatic cartoons, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory where it’s all Saw Traps, Charlie does NOT have a Pokopia problem, Professor Tangrowth is a clueless busybody, the first time Charlie shaved his hair, the hot new character finds of 1967, Chekhov’s whole Russia bit, the most Dungeons & Dragons-ass prop ever, watching Star Trek for educational purposes, The Apple is really colonialist even for early Star Trek, Dr Who, Space: 1999, Chekhov was just on the away team to pull, JL’s your dad now, Worf only just now realises what Troi’s job is, some good acting from a young Wil Wheaton, Alexander has a new uncle?, Tony Todd is Worf’s more interesting brother, the Macarena, M.A.S.H. references & the futility of war, a grim Wonder Years, Stargate: The Militarism Star Trek, Charlie does a reading from Bible, . Oh, and occasionally Star Trek.

Casual Trek is by Charlie Etheridge-Nunn and Miles Reid-Lobatto

Music by Alfred Etheridge-Nunn

Casual Trek is a part of the Nerd & Tie Network

https://ko-fi.com/casualtrek

Miles’ blog: http://www.mareidlobatto.wordpress.com

Charlie’s blog: http://www.fakedtales.com

Red shirts might be one of the biggest pop-cultural tropes given to us by Star Trek, but what does it mean, in-universe and out, the first of our two part look actually gives us both as Miles describes the IDW miniseries ‘Star Trek: Red Shirts’ to Charlie and neither can hide their dissatisfaction while following up with a brief discussion of the John Scalzi novel ‘Redshirts.’ Next episode, we’ll actually be talking about episodes of Star Trek which feature examples of Red Shirts themselves. DISCLAIMER: NO RED SHIRTS WERE WORN DURING THE RECORDING OF THIS PODCAST!


SHOW NOTES: ‘Star Trek: Red Shirts’ (16:25) and John Scalzi’s ‘Redshirts’ (01:02:26)

TALKING POINTS: Miles has to carry nitroglycerin in case his heart stops and he finds that metal, The Legend of Luther Arkwright, Star Trek Voyager: Across the Universe, it makes a weird sense that Spock and Worf would be mates, Star Trek: Defiant is a much better comic, Lower Decks’ potential cynicism is canceled out by Tendi being a goddamn delight, Strikeforce Moritori, Avengers Arena and the Battle Royale manga, this might be the one Star Trek ‘thing’ that convinces Miles that Section 31 should exist, making meta-jokes and parodies canonical to the universe is not always a good idea, why send these losers on a covert mission? Miles uses the term ‘Cronenberged’ and hates himself for it, uncertain tonal shifts, Miles and Charlie try and thrash out what they think would be a better treatment of the same material, John Scalzi’s types of novels, the differences and similarities between Red Shirts and Redshirts (aside from the space), Charlie is very happy John Scalzi didn’t appear in his own novel, what happens to Redshirts after the episode is over? A Doctor Who reference to please Miles, that very 2012 feeling of the book, how post-modern self-awareness can sometimes get irritiating, if you approach every situation like you’re actually in a horror movie- get help, Stargate Universe was underrated, Space Scamps III is inevitable.

Show Notes: Miles and Charlie are climbing a mountain, why are they climbing a mountain? Is it to meet God? The Devil? Their approaching mid-life crises? Whichever, we have now approached the 199th and 200th episodes of Trek on Our Big List and we are celebrating, if not in style, then with a movie- Star Trek V The Final Frontier to be exact. But before that, we have a little animated amuse-bouche with ‘The Magicks of Megas-Tu’ where the Enterprise meets the Devil and Miles realises that for him, his adventure with Trek has brought him back to the beginning. Will he confront his pain or does he need his pain? Row Row Row your Boat.

Episodes Discussed: Mystics of Megas-Tu (17:50) and Star Trek V-The Final Frontier (44:52)

TALKING POINTS INCLUDE: The Scrubs reboot, Spider-Man 2, the issues with Marvel’s use of Ultraman, why did Miles’ mum have a crush on David Cassidy? Ed Bishop, the weird mystical stuff of Star Trek, Spock’s nerdy use of magick, Bones’ probably would go Matthew Hopkins in this situation, Miles’ early memories of Star Trek was weird, how did this get past the US censors? The Shatnerverse starts here, Klaa looks like a Klingon Bill Bailey, a criminal waste of David Warner, when the comedy does and doesn’t work, Shatner just having a nice little run around, do Vulcans have goths? Sybok is too pathetic to be played by Connery, you sometimes need to tell your audience if you’re doing a subtext, was Uhura brought along specifically for naked fan dance? Charlie talks about his root canal, Why did the audience not like this film? Thankfully Sybok was not made the next Khan, familial cannibalism, is our 200th episode of Trek covered better or worse than our 1st, The Cage? How has John Lithgow not been in Star Trek? (Especially instead of that wizard show)

Hark, what podcast through yonder window breaks?

It’s Casual Trek! We have a fun topic today with Star Trek episodes with titles which are Shakespeare quotes!

Listen to Charlie’s terrible attempt at acting, followed by our James Van Der Beek memorial and three fun episodes of Star Trek!

Dagger of the Mind has Kirk and a doctor arrive in a mind-fixing bunker which would feel at home in Space: 1999 and somehow, Kirk willingly gets in the machine that messes with your brain.

Thine Own Self has a crumpled Data show up in a Ren Faire village with amnesia and a deadly package.

Mortal Coil lets us see Neelix die AND Ethan Phillips act up a storm as he has to confront the lack of a bit Avatar tree.

Then in writing the show notes, Charlie realises we never actually confronted how Shakespearean the plots were, so you’ll have to do that yourself after you listen to the show!

00:05:02 What Non-Star Trek Things We’ve Been Enjoying: The Dead Zone (book), Wuthering Heights (2026)

00:13:46 James Van Der Beek Memorial Segment

00:17:29 Star Trek: The Original Series: Dagger of the Mind

00:46:55 Star Trek: The Next Generation: Thine Own Self

01:13:33 Star Trek: Voyager: Mortal Coil (CW: suicidal ideation)

Talking points include: The time that Miles ‘trod the boards’, the various incarnations of The Dead Zone, various old SyFy shows, Wuthering Heights, James Van Der Beek, Charlie poorly tries to quote Shakespeare, Talur would believe in QAnon, jobbing actors, Miles is off on another one about Doctor Who, the cosmic horror of the Teletubbies, Neelix is a man about town, Chakotay ‘helps’ Neelix, Silicon Heaven, you can hear when Charlie finds out that Neelix leaves Voyager right near the end, . Oh, and occasionally Star Trek.

Casual Trek is by Charlie Etheridge-Nunn and Miles Reid-Lobatto

Music by Alfred Etheridge-Nunn

Casual Trek is a part of the Nerd & Tie Network

https://ko-fi.com/casualtrek

Miles’ blog: http://www.mareidlobatto.wordpress.com

Charlie’s blog: http://www.fakedtales.com