The Mirror Universe Star Trek podcast

Episode 6: The Planet of Hats

Aliens! They're a big part of the reason we watch SF shows in the first place, and some of the most iconic aliens in pop culture reside on Star Trek. But Trek has a very specific approach to its aliens, one that provides both opportunities and limitations. In this episode we look at Trek's approach to building alien cultures and their relationships with humanity and the Federation.

Episide 5: Tomorrow Is Yesterday

We've talked about how our history impacted Star Trek. But what about Star Trek's own history? The multiple Star Trek series have outlined a future history spanning over a millennia, and that arc is just as contradictory and conflicting as anything else about Star Trek. In its way, though, the rough, awkward, ill-fitting narrative Trek has created for the future touches on some surprising truths about history, and how it progresses...

Episode 4: Commercial Enterprise

Star Trek is a show about big dreams, that looks to the best and purest impulses of human nature, and a future without material needs...but it's also a owned by a major studio, and its artistic impulses are tempered by capitalism as much as anything. In this episode we look at how Trek has struggled with the demands of being a major, big-budget franchise that's owned by a corporation, and how the movies in particular have always attempted to be "Trek's big break" but never quite got there (and maybe that's for the best). 

Note: we're going to be updating every Monday for nine weeks, but you can listen to more episodes RIGHT NOW by subscribing to Adam's Patreon! The entire run of the show will be available there within a week or two (as soon as we finish editing them).

Episode 3: 'Watch Your Futures End'

In this crucial episode we take a look at the Rick Berman and JJ Abrams eras of Star Trek and how they were shaped by the politics of the era. The end of the Cold War brought a new age of supposed peace and stability, neoliberalism, and political stagnation that had a major impact on Star Trek's worldview during the peak of its popularity. Then 9/11 threw all of its assumptions into turmoil, and Trek has struggled to find its feet, thematically, ever since. 

Note: we're going to be updating every Monday for nine weeks, but you can listen to more episodes RIGHT NOW by subscribing to Adam's Patreon! The entire run of the show will be available there within a week or two (as soon as we finish editing them).

 

Episode 2: A Trek For The People

This week Douglas and Adam tackle one of the most fascinating aspects of Trek, the fact that so much of it--even more than most genre fandoms--was and is kept alive by the fans. In particular, the decade after the cancellation of the original show saw an explosion of fascinating digressions and ideas added to Trek from fanzines, RPGs, comics, spinoff novels, and helped shape our idea of what Star Trek was as much as any of the "canonical" movies and TV shows. 

Note: we're going to be updating every Monday for nine weeks, but you can listen to more episodes RIGHT NOW by subscribing to Adam's Patreon! The entire run of the show will be available there within a week or two (as soon as we finish editing them).

 

Episode 1: Through A Trek, Darkly

In our first episode, we look at the origins of Star Trek, the competing voices that went into creating and shaping it (of whom Roddenberry was just one) and what it was intended to be vs. what it became. The original series was shaped heavily by the era--the 1960s--in which it was created, and that had an impact on its politics, its views towards society, and even its format. We look at "The Cage" and what it may have said about Roddenberry (and the rest)'s intentions, and how it reflects the classic take on SF, vs. how Trek adapted itself to new views of genre and American storytelling as it went on. Plus how Trek reflects ongoing conversations (some might say, arguments) among its various writers and creators.