Set Phasers to “Yum” for this Star Trek themed episode of the Pinch of Nerd podcast. Special Guest Tim Nelson joins Mark, J. Allen, and Chef Aaron to discuss Star Trek. Over the course of the episode the gang debates phaser technology, who they would take to the Holodeck, and space bitches. There is also a fair amount of reminiscing about watching Star Trek the Next Generation, Las Vegas, and Data’s poem about his cat. Chef Aaron offers a delicious, Star Trek inspired recipe for Pineapple Coconut Cookies.
Holy cow, loved your episode on Star Trek. I’ve watched every episode and movie of every Star Trek except for the latest seasons of the four shows on Paramount. In my head, I have written myself in as a character in to every incarnation and episode. Like I get crazy about it, looking at Star Trek technical sites and stuff like that so I can problem solve and be a productive member of the crew in my head. Just wanna share four thoughts:
1. Greatest movie was Wrath of Khan because it had a legitimate cat and mouse naval battle in space. I mean, the Enterprise didn’t just show up to battle, shoot a bunch of lasers, and have to deal with some smoke and sparks. No, every member of the crew had to work together in the Mutara Nebula to stay alive and cripple Khan’s starship. I imagine most of the time starship battles would have a similar quality, with captains relying on boosting sensors to find the enemy first and using things like local sunspots and sensor shadows to hide their ship.
2. “Faith of the Heart” is the best Star Trek intro song of all the shows. To be clear I’m not dissing any of the intro tunes – they all give me chills in the right places when I hear the opening notes. But, screw you guys, sometimes you have to go to the dark places and touch it for some love. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SQvZGkydyQ
3. It always bugged me that the captains stayed on the bridge during the battles. I mean. These are space battles taking place in three dimensions with asteroids, singularities, anomalies, and starships all over the place. How can any captain except Data possibly be able to orient him/her/itself, process the overall situation, and develop complex maneuvers while dealing with reports from all over the ship? When my character took command of a Nova-class starship in season 4 of DS9, I had the emitters ripped out of one of the holodecks and installed them in the ready room. I could walk in there and turn the place into battle bridge with an interactive 3-D display of everything within a few light years so I could run the battles and the cat & mouse action from there while my Number One (Tauriel the Vulcan from Peter Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy) kept the starship from falling apart. You guys probably would have ruined that holodeck one way or another in Season 6 DS9 when I had to go back in time to get you and bring you forward in time to talk to some aliens about a Nickeljack or something.
4. The Star Trek Experience is also one of my top life moments.
He rode a blazing saddle!