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