Nate & Brian leave space dock on a five week mission. Star Trek Month starts off in a battle of wits with the Guardian of Forever.
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Oh Boy: A Time Travel Podcast
Oh Boy! Edith Keeler Must Die - Star Trek Month Wk 1
There could be some logic to the belief that time is fluid, like a river with currents, eddies, backwash. And the same currents that swept McCoy to a certain time and place might sweep us there, too. That is true, Captain. We have no hope. Oh boy, it's a time travel podcast. My name is Nate, and boldly going wherever this conversation takes us is Brian Martin. Like we don't have control over it. Well, do we, though, I am the guardian of podcasts, your feeble mind can't comprehend where we're going. It's condescending asshole. I mean, as rock formations go, I think the guardian of forever is kind of an ass. Anyway, hi, everybody. Star Trek months, Brian. Hell yeah. By popular demand. Well, kind of. By demand. By a demand, a single loan demand. Yeah, just in case you hadn't been listening to prior episodes, first of all, go back and listen to them. And second of all, wait a minute, if you did listen to the last episode, there's something I really want to clear up as I'm listening to the previous episode, the Back to the Future musical episode. That was a good episode. It turned out great, Nate, but it occurred to me that I spoke about events that were happening on at least two different weekends. Oh, it is out of order. It sounded like I was doing five things at once. I was like, yeah, this weekend, I'm going to GalaxyCon. And I'm also going to see Wizard of Oz. And I'm also going to. It was like, there's so much, I was like, boy, that's like, as Easter eggs go, that's kind of fun. If you're trying to plot out Brian's weekend, you're like, what? This guy's full of shit. Like he's not doing any of this, right? Well, it was recorded out of order a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. It was a real patchwork abomination of an episode, but it turned out great. Yeah, it came together. All right. Just just a couple of continuity errors for the eagle-eyed listener. And if you did happen to hear it, then you know that we are kicking off Star Trek month in September. This being the first Monday, we are going to cover a time travel centric episode from each of the first four series. Right. TOS, Next Gen, DS9, and Voyager. Maybe something fun with the fifth Monday. I believe there's a fifth Monday in this month, but. Yeah, we do get five home Mondays and it's Garfield's least favorite month, right? But we'll try to make it nice for you. Yeah. So we bring up Star Trek all the time on this podcast. Oh, sure. Like all the time. This was just a strictly quantum leap podcast. We were talking about Star Trek. Yeah. I reference Star Trek all the time. I know most of Next Gen forwards and backwards. Sure. You would consider yourself a Star Trek fan, but what level are we talking about here? Are you a Star Wars or are you a Star Trek? They both mean a lot to me for a different reason. There's no reason you can't like both. I've always compared this argument to the Beatles Rolling Stones argument. The Beatles as influential as they were. They were really a flash in the pan. They recorded for like, what, seven, eight years? And then that was it. That was the whole body of work you got. The stones have been around since Methuselah walked the earth, right? Like since the days of Christ, the stones have existed. And it's unfair, I think, to compare, are you a Beatles guy or a Stones guy? Because the stones have had a much broader era and period of making music and they've had ups and downs and their sound has changed and their vibe has changed and everything. And like Star Trek to me is like the stones. There are highs, there are lows. The best way to compare the two is to take the best and compare it to the best. And you can't really just take it as like a broad idea. Is Star Wars better or Star Trek better? It's like, it's not really a fair argument for a long time because now we are inundated with Star Wars. Yeah, it's all over the place. Yeah. So when this argument was at its peak in the 80s and 90s, it just wasn't a fair comparison. Yeah. There were a total of six hours of Star Wars. That was it. That's true. And within Star Trek, there's its own infighting. Are you a Kirk guy or a Picard guy? Now that makes more sense to me because you can have a very stimulating argument about that. And maybe we will at some point. I think given now that so many people have played Kirk kind of dilutes that argument a little bit. Yeah, maybe a little bit. Are you a TOS Kirk or are you a Kelvin timeline Kirk? No, everybody should be TOS. Or are you a Strange New World's Kirk? No. Well, you know what, Strange New Worlds is like the only Trek of the new generation that I like okay. I call it the AK period after Kurtzman. That's fair. Yeah. That's fair. Talk about gatekeeping. Anybody that's out there listening, I'm going to be one of those, I don't like new Trek guys. That's okay. You should go to the subreddit. But we're not talking about new Trek. We're talking about old Trek. Like specifically original Trek. What is your relationship with that? This is your grandma's Trek guys. Exactly. This particular episode that we're going to cover tonight, much better than I was anticipating. There is some goofy shit that goes on during TOS. Oh, so much goofy shit. It's a small miracle that it's not one of those two. This episode of Star Trek should have been the first time travel episode they ever had. But it took 10 months to get the script finalized. So they actually made one before this episode. Tomorrow is yesterday. The one where they go back to the 60s. There's like Air Force intrigue and stuff. And it was a backdoor pilot for another TV show actually. Oh my god. Who you should cover that one too. Notoriously terrible. Yeah. Yeah. This episode of course, maybe the most famous episode of the original series. That didn't involve small furry multiplying critters. Sitting on the edge of forever. This is the 28th episode of season one of Star Trek at 28th. April 6th of 1967. Written by Harlan Ellison. Asterisk. Going to get back to that later. Directed by Joseph Pevney. Gosh, I mean, if you know Star Trek, you know this episode. If you don't know Star Trek, Brian. What is this episode about? Whoa, wait a minute. Talk. Are you trying to tell me that my mother has got the hots for me? Precisely. So the Enterprise encounters some strange temporal disturbances in space emanating from a planet. Ripples that are shaking the whole ship. And as is the case on most episodes, the action in this story is instigated when Sulu's console explodes in his face. And some of the rocks do not fall from the ceiling. Yeah, Sulu falls to the ground and is gravely injured. McCoy is summoned to the bridge with a hypo full of cortisine, which is a dangerous stimulant. That if you use just a little bit, should wake him up, should be a-okay. If you use too much, he might turn into a raving lunatic. Fortunately McCoy knows exactly what he's doing and gives Sulu all he needs to wake up beaming with the biggest smile in television. A George to K smile. Oh my. Unfortunately, the ripples continue, and McCoy, in possibly the most horrendous instance of self-induced medical malpractice in history, falls on his own hypo spray, injects himself with way too much of this coordination. Right in the stomach. Yeah, and just goes bat shit crazy. Runnin' around the Enterprise, calling everybody murderers, saying they're coming to get you. Eventually, he makes it to the transporter room and beams down to the surface of this planet where the time ripples are coming from. Kirk and his away team follow him down to the planet's surface, and on the surface they discover a big stone donut that appears to be the source of this time disturbance. This talking and frankly condescending rock formation identifies itself as the guardian of forever, an entity that has existed since time began and will see it to its bitter end. Oh, it's also a pretty cool television because it displays centuries of human history in the span of a few minutes, but it's more than just a window to the past. It's also a doorway, and it isn't long before the craze Dr. McCoy leaps through to parts and times unknown, forcing Spock and Kirk to follow and prevent catastrophic changes to their timeline. And that's all I'm going to get into for now. So first question for you, Nate, is have you seen any of these remastered episodes of the original series before? Remastered, yeah, with the new special effects and stuff like that. The version of this that's on Paramount Plus, and this is true of the entire scope of the original series, those remastered episodes look great. It's just amazing how good they look. This episode, it's one of the best for a reason, I think. Really good story. It boils down and focuses on just Kirk and Spock. They're all kind of single episode contained stories. But yes, this is a little bit different because what this gives you is a story with its own beginning, middle, and definitive end. And most Star Trek episodes, most regular episodes of television, would end with the characters back in the same place as where they started, off to a new adventure next week. Back to the status quo. This is a little bit rare because Kirk in this episode ends in a very different place than where he started, emotionally. It's a very interesting hour of television, and it hits so many emotional notes, and to me, the comparison to this next generation-wise is probably the inter-light, which is one of the best episodes of the next generation. Picard lives an entire lifetime in the span of about 40 minutes. I was questioning whether we'd consider that time travel or not. It's not technically, it just happens to be one of my favorite Star Trek's ever. But it captures the same sort of feeling where you get to the end, and the journey you've been on is so deeply personal and affecting. We don't know who Edith Keeler is at the beginning of this hour, but by the end of the hour, we're feeling this. The same is true of Picard and the world and the family that he builds in the inter-light, right? That episode leaves Picard in a different place. For sure. Borg assimilation was probably the biggest thing he went through on that show, but so often in episodic television, we're back at the status quo by the end. We'll see you next week. So that people will come back. I 100% agree with you. It is so hard, even just in a romantic movie, like a two-hour movie, to write a relationship that really feels like it's coming together, and is a believable pairing or something like that, right? There's a talent to doing that. To do it in 42 minutes, introducing an entirely new character is really impressive, and it's not like you can devote all 42 minutes of it to that relationship either. But the time that they do spend together, the chemistry of the actors, it's a believable relationship that Kirk is building with this Edith Keeler. So he travels back in time and meets a woman in the 1930s, which, I mean, think about it from the 23rd century all the way back to the 30s. When they're airing this television show, the audience can think of the 30s as 30 years ago. I remember that, yet it was 30 years ago. It was like, it's familiar to the audience. It is as close to the audience as Star Trek Generations' release is to us. You say history considers me dead. Who am I to argue with history? You're a Starfleet officer. You have a duty. I don't need to be lectured by you. I was out saving the galaxy when your grandfather was in diapers. Right, exactly. So, like, they're going to feel like 30s. That wasn't so long ago, but if you think about it in terms of the enterprises flying through space in the 23rd century, and they go all the way back to the 30s where he's able to find somebody that he can relate to on an intellectual level, that's a bit of a stretch to be. Well, she's got big ideas. She's got big ideas about the possibilities of humanity and the potential for where the human race is going, and it's really amazing to Kirk, who knows his history to experience somebody like that so many years before humanity actually achieved anything remotely resembling that. It's easy to see how Kirk would become smitten with somebody with big ideas, and it's so often Kirk is visualized as the Lathario, who's just like, "Hey, which one of you guys has boobs? All right, you." Yeah, I don't buy into that too much. But here, there's real emotion. There's a legitimate attraction behind it. This isn't just a woman of the week. This is somebody, Kirk really actively starts thinking about, "You know, what if I bring her back to the 23rd century with a spark?" He's really thinking about it. Yeah, and it's believable as I guess where I was going with this, and that in and of itself is pretty impressive. In this short amount of time, we get to know Edith Keeler, care about Edith Keeler, care about the relationship, and know what she means to Kirk. And ultimately, spoilers, Edith Keeler must die. Yes, that's what we come to understand about Edith. So, one of the coolest things in this episode, I mentioned that McCoy comes down to the planet, jumps into the Garden of Forever, travels back in time, and the moment he does. Yeah, this is neat. Yeah, the butterfly effect. Yes, exactly. The way it's portrayed here is almost like looper in the sort of blink and everything's gone. You don't see any effect, really. McCoy just jumps into the Guardian, and suddenly, the Enterprise can't be hailed. Suddenly, there's no transmissions in the sector. There's no Starfleet. Everything's just gone. This is the butterfly effect, and all butterfly effects are... The landing party. The landing party, they're still there because of the proximity, of course, to the Guardian himself, itself, whatever. Yeah, what's its pronoun? It's such a neat idea. I guess, rock. I don't know. That's the Guardian's pronoun. They, them. Hey, speaking of the Guardian of Forever, did you see the Discovery episode of the Guardian of Forever in it? No, I don't. There is a new track. Yeah, the Guardian of Forever does come back in a season three episode... Oh, no. ...of Discovery, in the far, far future. Oh, no. It's an interesting one. Interesting, and... I kind of dug the reveal. Really? When you find out, "Oh, that's what this is." It is a little weird, though. Yeah, that's one of the problems with new track is how often it dips into old track. Mm-hmm. Just to do it. All that says to me is that you can't stand on your own. But, nevertheless, let's not go down that road. So, the Enterprise is gone. Kirk and Spock have to dive into the Guardian. This is an imprecise method. They don't know if they're going to arrive a year before McCoy. They don't know if they're going to arrive a week before McCoy. Ultimately, it's about a week. There are a few things I want to touch on around this moment. The moment they decide that they're going to travel back, and Kirk tells Scotty, "Wait as long as you think you need to." Yeah. One of you is going to have to try again. And each one of you at some point is going to have to jump through and try. Scotty. When you think you've waited long enough, each of you will have to try it. Even if you fail, at least you'll be alive in some past world somewhere. That, to me, had so much weight, even just a short little comment. But, kind of the gravity of the situation is all wrapped up in that one comment. Yeah. It's such an effective line. Such an effective delivery. It's so great. And on the somewhat silly side is when they beam down to the planet and they're looking for McCoy. McCoy is hiding behind these little rocks. Yeah. You'll pop up in the background like that creature you look for in the background of a She-Ra episode. Yeah, the oleuki was his name. I think the one that hid in the She-Ra episodes. Oh, there he is. He pops up from behind the rock and then the camera pulls a girl. And then the camera pans the other way and McCoy's in the foreground like with these crazy wild eyes and the people searching for him in the background. And it's just kind of bouncing around this small little set they have. And it just struck me. It's so funny. I don't think that's what they were going for. But it was an enjoyable moment. Speaking of not what they were going for, can I give you the first of several little behind-the-scenes tidbits about the production of this episode? I'd love to hear it because I did no research. So, the Guardian of Forever, the set there, there's a lot of like broken pillars around it. Right. It looks ancient. Like it's very effective. The production designer thought that the script said ruins, but it actually said ruins. So, they were supposed to be intact stones encircling this thing. Oh, no. These ruins extend to the horizon. So, that's the first little tidbit I'm going to give you. That's actually really cool. We'll revisit this again because there were a lot of things that changed and evolved both deliberately and by accident as this script went through production. You know, that's really fascinating because ruins makes it a lot more interesting. It makes it pretty cool contextually, right? This is just this empty planet. Here's this thing. How the hell did this get here? Where is it from? And the crumbled ruins convey immediately a sense of ancient, right? Like this is old. Civilizations have collapsed around it. Yeah. Right. Exactly. And like, are these the people that created it? Was there an architect of this or was there a society that revered it? There's so much mystery to this. The other thing that I want to say about this before I forget, Kirk and Spock and the crew in this episode are so naval. Yes. In a great way. They kind of get away from this over the course of doing Star Trek. But as this episode opens, they're basically in choppy waters, right? They're in danger. And the captain's order is to transmit his log back to Starfleet. Recretionary measure, Lieutenant. Broadcast to Starfleet Command, my past week's log entry. Starting with the neutral rings we had on the instruments and how they let us here. Inform Starfleet Command that apparently something or someone down on this planet can affect changes in time causing turbulent waves of space displacement. Why they're out there, how they got here, what they're facing. And I found that really fascinating because it's like, of course, that's what you do, right? Transmit your logs back to home base. They don't do that anymore. Very rarely do you ever see the minutiae of running a ship in a fleet. And it's right up front in the first season of the show, granted the 28th episode. I found that really cool. In addition to this way they're portraying the Federation as like a naval fleet, I think people forget how good a captain Shatner is. And I don't mean curse. Yes. I mean, Shatner. He is definitely a guy you would follow. Yeah. Absolutely. And beyond that, he's a much better actor than people give him credit for. Oh, he absolutely is. Like, I mean, he became kind of a punchline or whatever. Which I don't understand. He's so good in this. I'm falling on these people are perfectly free to do anything they learn. Let's just cut out everything else. All the great stuff he does throughout this series. And you just look at the last three minutes of this specific episode. Yeah. And then come back to me and then come back to me and say, "No, Shatner sucks. I'm sorry. He doesn't." What he does at the end of this episode is just remarkable. Yeah. You say he's a punchline. He gets mimicked a lot because he has a very unique cadence to the way that he delivers lines and speaks. That's what war is, Councilman. That's what makes it a thing to be avoided. You've made it neat and simple. So neat and simple. That you've had no reason to stop it. And you've had it for 500 years. Doesn't make it bad. I think people make fun of it, but is Christopher Walken a bad actor? No. People mimic Christopher Walken all the time. But nobody gives him this stigma of, well, he sucks. But everybody gives Shatner a stigma of, oh, well, it's because he was a bad actor. Listen to the way he delivers his lines. I gotta think part of that is that he's always been kind of a TV actor. You're not like Brando. You're not like Walken. You're not like these other guys who have very memorable. He's also from an era where a lot of acting was overacting. I mean, that was just kind of the way. Sure. But he gets into Boston legal. This entire career is Jake Booker. I mean, this guy... Explain. This guy has a healthy... Uvra. Philmography. There you go. This guy has a healthy filmography and a long-storied career. Can't really speak to whether he's actually a good guy or not. Things go back and forth. Look, all I know is when I met him, he was excellent. Just terrific. It was when Miles was a few months old. And Miles was nestled down in his stroller asleep. And he stood and kind of creamed over the table and like, "Ah, who is this?" And I was like, "Oh, this is Miles." And he's like, "Wow. I wish I had slept like that last night." And I said, "Well, to be fair, he's sleeping like this now because he didn't sleep like this last night either." And, you know, he's about to chat for a second. And he was like, "Ah, well, give Miles my regards." Like that. And I was like, "I will. I absolutely will." And Jack and I were walking away from him and I was like, "Oh my God. Oh my God. It was like being blessed by the Pope." You know? Like it was wonderful. Just a wonderful moment. That's awesome. Was that a galaxy con? It was a galaxy con. Yeah. It was a galaxy con back in 18, 2018. I've been to a Star Trek convention that Shatner was the headliner at. Seems like a genuine guy. It's just personalities. People rub on each other the wrong way. I don't think George D'K is a bad guy. I don't think Shatner is probably not that bad a guy either. George D'K was a great guy when I met him at a galaxy con a year later. Yeah. Because they can't be at the same show. No, they don't come to the same show. Koenig's the only one who shows up at all of them. I told you we couldn't stay on topic. Who knows where this conversation boldly takes us. Thinking of like Shatner's greatest moments. Uh huh. The moment where he's eulogizing Spock in Star Trek II. Oh yeah. And he jokes up. Just barely gets that last word out. Come on. I know. He's great. He's great. And he's absolutely great in this episode. But the Enterprise disappears. Right. Because as soon as Bones traveled back in time, history was altered. Bones has done something in the past that has resulted in the Enterprise not being there. Perhaps the Federation not existing. It's hard to say because they're just stranded on this planet. So Kirk and Spock have to go back in time to set things right. And as you say, they gradually learn what must happen that Bones somehow prevented was the death of Edith Keeler. The social worker that Kirk meets and falls for when he and Spock are posing as hobos in the 1930s. Spock posing as a Chinese hobo who has been horrifically mangled by an electronic rice picker. If this episode does anything that's a little bit questionable, it's Kirk's immediate jump. As a man of the 23rd goddamn century to... My friend is obviously Chinese. I see you've noticed the years. They're actually easy to explain. Perhaps the unfortunate accident I had as a child. The unfortunate accident he had as a child. He caught his head in a mechanical rice picker. You can tell my friend with the slanty eyes is shiny. Right. It's still a product of the 60s. You know, like it's about as progressive as television could be in the 1960s. But you know, the girls are still wearing short skirts. And what is it? You know, when the ship disappears, the woman has to be afraid. You mean we're stranded down here? With no past, no future. Captain, I'm frightened. And look for comfort from her captain. Scotty would be like, "Captain, I'm sober! Who's sober for this? I tell ya!" Yeah, but outside of that, very progressive for his time Star Trek. I mean, we don't even really need to go into that. But yeah, so they've got to stop McCoy from saving Edith Keeler's life. From saving a life, yeah. Her surviving prevents us from defeating the Nazis in World War II. And you might be thinking like, "Okay, how can that be possible? How can one social worker..." And where does this take place, like Chicago? Yeah, right. How can that impact it? Well, okay. I'll ask you, that homeless dude who phasers himself to death didn't mean shit to the timeline. I love that. I love that. Oh my God, that was one of my favorite things. When me and my buddy first saw this episode, when we were like eleven years old probably, we rewound that part over and over and over again and just watched it and laughed our asses off. This homeless guy just comes across McCoy. Pickpockets him. Yeah. Pickpockets McCoy, takes the phaser and looks directly into it and vaporizes himself. It's so great. Like, what a great little touch, but yeah. No impact on the timeline whatsoever. He didn't matter at all. That guy didn't matter. Edith Keeler on the other hand. Keeler's work with homeless people eventually leads her to the White House as an advisor to FDR. Right. And it is in that place that she preaches the Gospel of pacifism, I suppose. And it delays the US's entrance into World War II and Germany develops the atomic bomb first and wins the war. As Kirk observes, she was right. Peace was the way. And Spock said yes, but at the wrong time. This wasn't the time for it. This was the time for dropping a train on him. Yeah. Yeah. We needed hawks, not doves. Exactly. So that's what has caused this meteoric shift to the timeline. It's amazing. The worst part is that upon finding this out, Jim reveals like Spock. I believe I'm in love with Edith Keeler. And Spock says plain of Lee, Jim, Edith Keeler must die. Like what a situation to be in. And what a believable chain of events. It's beautifully written. We joke about the homeless guy and his life meaning nothing. But an actual chain of events where one person's life could change the course of history on such a massive scale. Right. The butterfly effect to end all butterfly effects. This is the butterfly effect to end all butterfly effects. Thank you, Jim. But you know what? Something that's fun though, we're on that subject is that when Kirk is doing his captain's log after the enterprise has disappeared and he's like. Captain's log, no start date. For us, time does not exist. McCoy, back somewhere in the past, hasn't affected a change in the course of time. All Earth history has been changed. There is no starship enterprise. We have only one chance. We have asked the Guardian to show us Earth's history again. Spock and I will go back into time ourselves and attempt to set right whatever it was that McCoy changed. No start date, which is great. One of the things he says in that log is Spock and I will go back in time ourselves and attempt to put right whatever Dr. McCoy changed. Like the quantum leap mission statements right there. You know, put right what went wrong. The other thing I want to mention is the captain's logs as a framing device. Any episode can be your first episode of Star Trek because of the captain's log. And you could even miss 15 minutes of it and still come in and the captain's log is there after the commercial break. You know, they expand that as the series go on. First officer's log, counselor's log. Chief science officer's log. Yeah, exactly. Whatever is necessary to narrate something for the audience. The time that they spend in the 1930s. A lot of fun talking about it being primitive and Spock building all that crazy technology with cathode ray tubes. And he's being such a bitch about it. What does he say? Oh, I'm attempting to construct a pneumatic circuit using stone knives and bear skins. Yeah, I made a comment that the Guardian of Forever wasn't the only wise acre in this episode. They're both kind of douchebags. And they have a little back and forth in that regard too. Yes. The Guardian calls in questions. Spock's intelligence. It's so great. A time portal captain. A gateway to other times and dimensions. If I'm correct. As correct as possible for you. Your science knowledge is obviously primitive. Really. Yeah, I love the way the Guardian speaks. You know, you made jokes about it right up front. But the writer uses such verbose language and on an intellectual level that puts the Guardian up on a pedestal. Since before your son burned hot in space and before your race was born. I have awaited a question. What are you? I am the Guardian of Forever. Are you machine or being? I am both. And neither. I am my own beginning. My own ending. I see no reason for answers to be couched in riddles. My answer is simply as your level of understanding makes possible. Speaking of voices that have been parodied though. The Guardian's voice is parodied in future drama and stuff like that. You can find echoes of that throughout shows like working more and stuff like that. There's that sort of superior, you know, my intellect is far above yours. That sort of talk is like a pervasive in shows like that. And I think in a lot of ways traces back to more Guardian here. This is a pretty impactful episode on the series. The Guardian calls Spock's intelligence into question and Kirk has to do kind of the same thing. You know what I mean? He has to prod him into try and get their tricorder to actually play back history and give him some frame of reference on when and what to do. There's a little element that I really liked in this episode that you just mentioned. As the Guardian of Forever is first presenting themselves to them and they're kind of showcasing the breadth of human history. There's a point at which Spock suddenly realizes, "Ah, I'm such a fool. I should have been recording this." That's not only how they determine when they need to jump to catch up with McCoy. But it's also what they use to determine what happened and how the timeline might have changed because it's a relic from the previous timeline, right? Yeah, yeah. So, such a neat little moment to think of to create this device that allows them to ultimately achieve getting to the past and what they're there for. Yeah, absolutely. Writing 101. Got a little foreshadowing there. Got to reach back. But it does go hand in hand with what I was speaking about the opening of the episode because as the landing party beams down, Kirk also orders Uhura to start recording things. Yes. Standard operating procedure where on a landing party, start recording our activities. I just found that stuff really cool. Very cool. The contraption that Spock builds. It's so great. It's so ramshackle. It's like times arrow when data is building a horseless carriage engine. Yeah. And it explodes at one point. Yeah, it overloads. Yeah, it overloads. Very easily. It's so great. And then Kirk's like, "Get it back!" Spock's like, "It's took days to put this together and we fried all the circuits I was able to put together." It's like Loki when Obi was building that ramshackle tape pad. Meanwhile, Kirk is like buying baloney with their 15 cents a day. Like, where am I supposed to get pulled? Comes in with a bag, getting a bag full. Yeah. I got some vegetables for you and some baloney for me. I'll get that platinum you need later. Good old 1930s baloney. Only 40% sawdust. Yeah. It's great. So, I do want to talk a little bit about the character in this episode who is not part of the principal cast and we only see one. So, Edith Keeler. We're portrayed here by Joan Collins, who is just remarkable in the role. Absolutely terrific. Lovely. It's not enough just to be pretty. I mean, obviously they're going to get somebody beautiful, but Dame Joan here is able to deliver fairly silly lines that the viewers got. There's that monologue where she speaks to the whole group of homeless guys. Right. I'm going to check that off my list here. One day soon, man is going to be able to harness incredible energies, maybe even the atom, energies that could ultimately harness to other worlds in some sort of spaceship. And the men that reach out into space will be able to find ways to feed the hungry millions of the world and to cure their diseases. They will be able to find a way to give each man hope and a common future and those are the days worth living for. Development of atomic powers years away. Spaceflight years after that. Speculation. Gift of insight. But it will come. I find her most uncommon, Mr. Spock. They're eating and Kirk is like, "Shut up, shut up!" to the homeless guy sitting next to him, like, "Stop talking. I want to hear what this crazy lady has to say." And she just immediately is like, "Well, while I'll have you all here, I want to talk to you about space. Spacemen. What?" I will admit, at that point, I would like... On some sort of Star Trek. Right. Yeah. That was a stretch. That was an attempt to get to a place that the story needed to go quickly. Mm-hmm. Need to point out that this lady is very forward-thinking. And at the time, airing this episode, it's kind of like, "Why don't we go to the moon?" And that type of dialogue probably rang a lot more true back then when humanity was kind of on the cusp of making these types of leaps. Sure. But it just rings really, really silly now when you're going to address the occupants of a homeless shelter. Well, who's going to believe any of them? If they go out and say, "Hey, the lady running that homeless shelter, she's crazy." They're going to be like, "Okay, buddy. Get yourself in the drunk tank." I get that, but I think if you've put all your energy into helping humanity in this fashion running a homeless shelter like this, I feel like the speech that you give is going to be more... About social justice. Yeah, social justice, grab yourself up by your bootstraps or some kind of societal safety net that you would talk to them about or get rid of your vices. What can we do to help? Now, spaceman, "Hey, guys, things may suck for you right now, but one day we're going to leave the solar system." Like, "Yeah, what does that do for me now?" What are you talking about, lady? Just play the piano. Hey, you got a captive audience? Like, where are these guys in the soup kitchen going to go? So, that first leap is huge to have her start talking like that. But then later in the episode, now that you've already established that she thinks this way, the littler comments that she can make in general conversation with Kirk, those work much, much better. Of course, yeah. And her exploration about who he and Spock are and where they come from and what's their deal? What's the mystery behind these two who clearly don't fit? She makes this observation of the way Spock interacts with Kirk and calls him Captain. Even when he's not saying it, he says it, "Yeah." You don't get there without that first silly leap. I still have a few questions I'd like to ask about you two. And don't give me that questions about little old us, look. You know as well as I do how I'd place you two are around here. Interesting. Where would you estimate with a long mosquito? You, at his side, as if you've always been there and always will. And you. You belong in another place. I don't know where or how. I figured out eventually. I'll finish with the furnace. Captain. Even when he doesn't say it, he does. You get there and then they start talking about Jean Roddenberry's basic goal for Star Trek. Getting rid of famine and disease and hatred and bigotry because we're better than that. And one day we will be beyond it and it won't even be something that we consider. And she talks about all the money that we spend on war and death. I just know that's all. I feel it. And more, I think that one day they're going to take all the money that they spend now on war and death. Make them spend it online. Yes. Yeah. Powerful stuff and really good thematically speaking. Yeah. In addition to the interest of a time travel story. And again, this is great television. This is what enables Kirk to fall for her in a believable way, right? Like I think again, that speech is kind of what hooks him as odd as it might be. Right. But you're right. It's all the little interactions they have afterwards that are facilitated by that initial speech. Yeah. That make the ending so impactful, right? Right. As long as we're talking about Edith Keeler, she has another very genuine relationship with McCoy. Mm-hmm. When McCoy comes on, you believe that as well. Her heart has no walls as she takes McCoy in, nurses him back to health, even though he views her as a hallucination. Right. Well, he's so great once he shows up in this. Once he shows up in the thirties, the hobo's running away from him and he's like, "Don't run. I won't kill you." And I'm like, "What's very convincing? Sounds good." Yeah. He starts freaking out about hospitals of the era crying because it's like how barbaric they are. And he said they'd sew people like garments. Yes. I actually jotted that down too. I made a comment in here way up after they first get to the thirties, Spock and Kirk, that there's no double dumb ass on you comments in this episode. Yeah. You know, Star Trek 4 is largely played for laughs. Oh, it's a comedy, yeah, for sure. The interplay between the era and our cast. This is like the tonal opposite of that, right? There's so much more gravity and weight to everything, you know? Yeah. And not that I don't love one more than the other. No, they both work. But McCoy's kind of breakdown in his encounter with Keeler and all of that is just so, so good. It really is. And there's a parallel to Star Trek 4. They go to a hospital in the 80s and McCoy's walking around curing people on dialysis. It's like the goddamn dark ages. Dark ages. I got a new heart. And here he's, you know, and here he's just like horrified at the notion that we would use a needle and thread to suture up a wound. He's bad at so people like garments. Needles is so juicy. Think about Roddenberry, or I guess in this case Harlan Ellison, thinking about the future that way. Right. Isn't it barbaric that we sew our skin back together? It's pretty fucked up. When you put it that way, right? Yeah. I never really thought about it, but yeah. And then he's got to let her go at the end. Yeah. And it's funny because once Kirk realizes that she has to die, there's a moment where she stumbles on the staircase. Oh, yeah. And Kirk catches her and then immediately looks at Spock. And Spock's looking at him and is like, "Bro." Yeah. Like, fuck as you're doing. But I was like, "Oh, this is like some final destination shit." She's going to die one way or the other. Like, is it falling out of stairs, getting hit by a milk truck, whatever it is, you know? Yeah, except that we know she doesn't. She just becomes like the Mr. Magoo of FDR's administration, just barely stumbling past fate. And dooming us all. Right. I wonder if that could have led to the mirror universe. Ooh, wouldn't that have been great? Yeah. Oh, man. Spock says to Kirk after the fall on the stairs, "Do as your heart tells you to do, and millions will die, who did not die before." Ow. Oof. Yeah. Heavy, man. So Kirk and Keeler go to see a Clark Gable movie. Probably gone with the wind. No. No, it would have been before gone with the wind. It's the early 30s, isn't it? Yeah. Anyway. So they go to see a Clark Gable movie. And she is shocked that McCoy doesn't know who Clark Gable is. That's the weirdest thing. Out of all the behavior that McCoy has exhibited, the weirdest thing is that he doesn't know who Clark Gable is. Right. But while they're walking, Edith name drops McCoy, and Kirk is like McCoy. Yeah. And then Bones comes out of a mission. They see each other. Kirk runs across the street. And that's when the truck comes. Yeah. And what a moment. Because Spock has to stop Kirk, and then Kirk has to stop McCoy. He has to hold McCoy back, and he just kind of buries his head in McCoy's shoulder. Yeah. Knowing what's happening behind him, and not being able to look. Yeah. That's the moment we were speaking about earlier, where it's just like Shatner, given it is all. Just total breakdown. And then you get the line, the line where Bones is just in disbelief. Do you know what you just did? And Spock says he knows doctor. He knows. That's a conversation the two of them are going to have in the galley when they get back, aren't they? Yeah. And then they don't really show how they get back. We just see them exiting the Guardians portal back in the future. Everything is restored, they've fixed everything. They've only been gone a few seconds. Right. According to Scotty. Kirk is almost resentful of the Guardian as a construct at that point. He's basically like, "Let's get the hell out of here." And that's the first time an expletive was used on television. No kidding. Let's get the hell out of here. That was the first time anybody on network television said hell. Jeez. How about that? I mean, bear in mind, this is only a few years removed from when Lucy and Ricky were sleeping in separate beds, you know? Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore also. Man, if I lived with Mary Tyler Moore, we would not be in two separate ways. You know what? That's okay. ♪ You can turn the world on with the sun ♪ All right, Brian. Moving on. The emphasis is needed there. That's a moment for the F word these days. Get the fuck out of here. You know what I mean? Yeah. He just spits that last line. Emma has resumed its shape, all his, as it was before. Many such journeys are possible. Let me be your gateway. Captain, the Enterprise is up there. They're asking if we want to beam up. Let's get the hell out of here. That's a testament to how it affected him, but in a larger, somewhat more scientific angle, maybe you don't just leave a time machine flying around. It's pretty fucking dangerous. Yeah, that is the discovery of the century. Well, I will tell you that the Guardian relocates itself periodically. Oh, according to... When we find it again in discovery, it's on a different planet. Okay. And it's because it was afraid that it would be exploited during the temporal wars. Uh, from Enterprise. Yes, so it kept shifting around and hiding itself, concealing itself through the centuries. Okay. I think the Enterprise found it because the Enterprise had to find it. Yeah, I think that as interesting as that little tidbit is, for a second there, that's actually really kind of cool. I prefer what we touched on earlier in this episode. Mm-hmm. The notion that these ruins are around this thing. Not the other way around. Yeah, it has been there forever. Civilizations have risen and fallen all around this thing. And it alluded to the notion that it would be there forever. Mm-hmm. I like that a lot more than it can just leave. I like the notion that this thing has always been here, will always be here. And it's almost like the ripples in time and the time effects on the outside of the planet have been what are preventing ships and people from finding this thing. Sure. All that often. I imagine it's happened before and will happen again. But at the same time, like, I like this story better than I didn't see the episode of Discovery, but it reads to me like, "Oh, hey, remember this? Remember this thing that people like? Plus this other thing that people only kind of liked? And it's all tied together? See, we're touching Star Trek, the original series, and we're touching Star Trek Enterprise, and it's all connected folks. You love this shit." Right, well, yeah. They're not always wrong about that. I know. In this regard. You can't have anything too good and not have it be used to death. To that end, I think we're lucky that we've only seen the Guardian of Forever a handful of times. You'd think at some point it would have been the focus of an entire season of one of these new shows. Yeah, you're right. You're right. And it's kind of what I was alluding to by saying, "How do you just leave this thing?" For him to just say, "Let's get the fuck out of here and leave." What? There's so much more to do with this thing. There's no way Starfleet just leaves this behind. There's clearly going to be more story with this thing. So, I see that, but also, leave it alone. You know what I mean? Like, I understand there's way more story to be told with the Guardian, but don't tell it. Speaking of that, though, you mentioned it a second ago. The City on the Edge of Forever. What is with that title? I mean, it's cool. It's interesting to me because it is a very cool title. Yeah. What is the City on the Edge of Forever? I don't know, right? This episode doesn't really explain that. Here's the deal. The initial pitch and original draft of this had the crew beaming down to this planet, and there were an entire race of ancient beings living there. With their runes? Yes. And where they lived, that was the "City on the Edge of Forever". And they protected a time device. And over the course of 10 months of rewrites, eventually, that ancient syllabilization was removed entirely, and the portal itself was given a personality. Since before your son burned hot in space, and before your race was born, I have awaited a question. A lot of it was budgetary. This episode went way, way over budget, and took a long time. By the end of it, Alison was extraordinarily unhappy with it. He felt like his original intention had been just butchered into nothing, even though a lot of the early concepts are still there. The crux of it was that Kirk was going to fall in love with someone who had to die. And so that was always the point of this show. But so many little elements got trimmed out. One of the most interesting ones is that Alison was brought on to the writing team early in Star Trek's conception because he was such a recognizable science fiction writer. And Roddenberry wanted names like his to lend credibility to his show. Sure. Right. Sure. And so that's why Alison remains the only credit writer on this episode, also DC Fontana and Jean Elcoon did rewrites, heavy rewrites later on. Like a lot of ideas got compressed, but one of the coolest ideas are most interesting ideas because Alison started writing this episode before the story Bible for the show was even written. Oh, really? And so he envisioned Starfleet officers as, you know, some of them would be upstanding, some of them would be morally questionable, and there was an entire subplot about one of the officers on the Enterprise being involved in an illegal drug trade. What? And they pursue this character down to the surface of the planet, and he's the one that jumps into the portal. Oh. So eventually they were like, okay, well, let's take that out of it because that's not what Starfleet is. Of course, Roddenberry's Starfleet is all polished and free of this sort of conflict, right? It's like everybody there is altruistic. And so it was made into this plot with McCoy, which Alison hated for the reason I pointed out earlier, that it's pretty fucking dumb to have your chief medical officer make such a boneheaded mistake. Yeah, when I saw that, I thought it would make so much more sense for himself to get stabbed with the thing if the ship got rocked as he was administering it to Sulu. Rather than just standing there for minutes. He's got his hands right there. Like you hit a hock at a time right there, shake, boom, stab yourself in the wrist by accident with the hyperspray. Makes so much more sense than like falling on the console and stabbing yourself in the stomach. So I don't disagree with Mr. Alison on that. It did look awfully silly. But at the same time, seems like some of these changes are a good idea. But you don't have time to do an entire civilization before you even get into the traveling back. It's a lot. We just talked about it taking 42 minutes to get a relationship between Edith Keeler and Kirk. Like if you got to spend, what, 10 minutes of that time setting up a civilization. One of Alison's comments with the later draft, the one that we actually see now is he called the dialogue "precisely the kind of dopey utopian bullshit that Roddenberry loved." And also mentioned that Roddenberry had about as much writing ability as the lowest industry hack. I think there are a lot of writers on TNG that would agree with that. Yeah, obviously. Utopia was a big thing for Roddenberry. A civilization free of conflict. And it really was felt on the next generation. In fact, it wasn't being honest until after Roddenberry passed that that show was able to come into its own. Yeah. Yeah. He was kind of holding the writing staff back by all accounts. But the germ of the idea is really what Star Trek is to me. Yes. Yeah. And it turns a corner when Kurtzman gets involved and the next gen movies start getting made and stuff like this. It starts to make a turn there. And then just all this new Trek has lost that vision that all the other series, even DS9 to an extent, they all play on this potential for a better future. DS9 in particular. I mean, DS9 kind of presents it in the most interesting way of any of the series. In any of those original five series anyway. Even though they have a war, they have an ongoing war in that series. There's an ongoing war. But I mean, this is about a station where a bunch of refugees have to learn to live together. You've got Ferengi, you've got humans, you've got the militaristic Bajorans. Right. And that's where all the conflict comes from is the aliens and the humanity is beyond that. We are supposed to, we're like the guardians, we're way above all of these people and they're petty bickerings. And that's how they view Cisco as he arrives on the station, right? Oh, look at the golden boy. Too afraid to get his hands dirty, you know? DS9, once it comes into its own, it really takes off into something unique and special. And it's weird to me that after 30 years, it still kind of stands alone in that regard. Yeah. But at its core, it's one of those sci-fi stories that dreams of a better tomorrow. Yeah. It's hopeful. It's not dystopian. There's so much dystopian sci-fi out there. Yeah. I don't like when Star Trek becomes that dystopian sci-fi. It's what sets it apart. It feels disingenuous. What happens? Share fucking hubris. The Federation does not get to decide if a species lives or dies. Yes, we do. We absolutely do. I was standing up for the Federation for what it represents, for what it should still represent. How dare you lecture me? Don't get me started. So a couple of things I do want to touch on and get your thoughts about with relation to the time travel itself. One of them is just more of an observation. I think it's really cool talking of sort of how the script works and how this episode just functions. Something that's really neat to me and non-linear in this episode is that McCoy travels back in time first but arrives last. Yeah. Yeah. It seems like a really novel concept in the early days of TV and I wonder if that was tough for audiences to wrap their heads around. I mean, the show goes above and beyond in terms of explaining to you the what and why of how this is happening. They mentioned it a couple of times that it could be weeks before he gets here. It could be days, you know, he may have already been here. What an interesting idea though. Yeah. Who knows where he will show up. He could be in outer Mongolia. Yeah. Then they introduced this idea of the currents of time directing people to a single moment. That's an interesting more philosophical concept than the scientific notion of, regardless of when you leave, it has no bearing on when you arrive. That's more of a scientific, heady thought of how time travel works. Whereas this other notion of like, "Oh, time is like a river." Then the currents will take you from one place to another. That's more like a philosophical side. So it's kind of attacking time travel from two angles. Yeah. And they both work. So Edith's death is the other thing I want to mention. She was struck by a car in the original history. Right. But here we see that those circumstances only arose because Kirk was present and she was walking across the street to him. Right? Yeah. There's a sense that this is sort of destined, or at least as much as Star Trek might entertain the idea of destiny, right? Yeah. I wonder if Kirk's clock goes. Your clock does not go. Does it ever go? Does his clock does go? Does his clock go? Yeah. So how exactly did this play out both in the original history and in the revised history where Bones saved her? Interesting to be like, "We don't get to see that at all. We just know that it happened." Yeah. No, it doesn't even work as final destination, though. In my opinion, because the conceit is that she will survive. If this one moment doesn't get her, she's going to survive and change history. Like, she's somehow avoiding death at every turn. You do bring up a really good point, though. I hadn't really thought, like, every circumstance of her getting hit by that particular car has to do with the interaction of somebody from the 23rd century. So did it always, was it always supposed to happen precisely this way? Yeah. It's always supposed to go back in time and fall for Edith Keeler. Can I hit you with one more thing? I'm still recovering from that one. Honestly, that hadn't really thought about it on that level. Well, here's something you might feel frustrated about. Okay. Good. Let's turn a corner. I'm building on that same idea. Star Trek Generations. Kirk has been in the Nexus for 70 years, right? Yeah. Do you remember who he's with in the Nexus? The mother of his son David, right? No. The woman that Kirk is there with is named Antonia. She is a woman we've never heard of. She's a woman we don't see in the movie. We see her in the distance on a horse. We do not know who this woman is. And get ready because that character was originally going to be Edith Keeler or Carol Marcus. Those were the two names floated around by Ronald D. Moore. I always just assumed it was Carol Marcus. But now that I'm thinking about it, if I liked that movie, I would have liked it to be Edith Keeler. That would have been really interesting. Wouldn't that have been great? Yeah. Paramount shot it down. Because you can just watch the next generation movies and kind of suss this out. They're like, we don't want to make a movie for the fans. We want to make a general audience movie. Yeah. So we don't want to lean on all this continuity and all of this stuff. We want it to be its own thing that you can just go and watch. And so having a one-off character from an episode from 30 years prior got mixed. I was out saving the galaxy when your grandfather was in diapers. That's so stupid. Isn't that terrible? Because who's it hurting? Think of what it does to the end of this episode. If Kirk, at the end of his life, that's the person he goes back to. That's the moment that he's stuck with. Forever. A city on the edge. Not forever. But to be fair, a nameless character like Antonia really fits much better in that shit movie. That's true, that's true. So it makes much more sense for that to have no real weight to it at all. Because you know what I mean? Like it makes way more sense for Kirk to be wrapped up in some character we don't care about. The joke I always make about generations is that like there's like a week on the enterprise between the end of all good things and Star Trek generations doing their normal thing, having their meetings and stuff. And suddenly some dude comes in the room and unscrews half of the life bulbs and just leaves. Oh. And he does that throughout the entire ship. That's right, it has to be cinematically lit. It's all fucking dark. Fuck that movie. God damn it. Yeah, anyways. Man, you could just get me started on the next-gen movies. They're all garbage. Yes, first contact also folks. Man, we'll have to do that one at one point. People will hate me so much. Look, I've tried to do this on paprika for a while. Look, this movie's not perfect by any stretch of the imagination. But I get shut down real quickly on that. People love that movie. Crazy how people like that movie. Oh, brother. What I've gotten used to saying about it, I put it like this. It is easily the best of the next generation movies. And that's what I will say. Because I think it is easily the best of the next generation movies. But it is very imperfect. But there's more in it that I like than some of the other ones. Yeah, we're going to have to switch paths. We'll go on- I also usually say- I also usually say my favorite next generation movie is all good things. Right. That's where that continuity ends for me. We can get this out if and when we do first contact. And we'll get a lot of letters for that one as well. Oh man. Yeah. Anyway, our listens are going to sink. It's like a rock. So the last thing I want to ask- Sorry, folks. Before we get to our ranking of time travel is- This is continuously ranked throughout the decades as one of the finest episodes of Star Trek. It's not the best episode of the original series. Right. Is this the best episode of Star Trek the original series? If we're asking me at this very moment, I'd probably say yes. Just by virtue of it being fresh in my mind and just how good I really felt like it was. This was good TV. This is a good hour of television. It's a really good hour of television. What's up there with it? To me? The one where Spock's brain gets transplanted? I'm not Spock's brain. The one where Kirk dresses like an Indian. That's a bad one. Kirak. Oh, also pretty bad is the Savage Curtain with Abraham Lincoln in it. There are some stinkers. For my money, that's two episodes I go back and forth. The Pawn Farr, Spock's got a main episode. Terrific. Great music in that one too that was aped in the cable guy. That's the best part of the cable guy, the Jim Carrey movie where they're in medieval times sand pit. And they're dueling and he's singing that music because he's attacking Matthew Broderick. But the other one is Balance of Terror. The first episode with the Romulans. Oh, yeah. Yep. That's another one. Like in another time we might have called each other friend. It's another one that just hits. By the end, you've really been on a journey with these people. And the only thing that edges this in that regard from like Balance of Terror is the fact that that one actually takes place in space for the most part. As far as just the feels and the feeling of what Star Trek can capture and represent and provide in terms of like heady science fiction. You know, talking about the non-linear time traveling and stuff. It's hard to get a better hour of Star Trek than that. You're completely right. Yeah, I do love those episodes that are like political in Next Gen. There's one called the Defector. It's really good with a Romulan defecting the enemy where Geordie is trapped on a stormy planet with a Romulan. Yeah. And they have to work together to get out of it. Yeah. The best episodes of Next Generation are always ones where they're trapped on a planet with another guy and they've got to work together. Darmock. That's a great one. Yeah. Well, let's do TNG when we do TNG. Oh, Jesus, boy. Buckle up, guys. Next week, it's going to be like a four-hour episode. You thought we went off on tangents this week. [Laughs] If you're going to build a time machine into a car, why not do it some style? Yeah, so time travel methods. This is episode 10 of the Bold New Era. It is. It's episode 60 we've reached. And last week we put the DeLorean at the top. Correct. Where are we putting the Guardian? I think the Guardian's got to be up there. It's high. I think the Guardian is just below the DeLorean. Over time, cop. Over time, cop, and I'll tell you why. The thing that sets the Guardian of forever... [Laughs] Other than just having a sweet-ass fucking name. [Laughs] You know, I want to spray coffee. [Laughs] Over the time, cop, train-track thing, is that it trashed talks you. It's the voice. It's the whole personality. It's a time machine that is just like your feeble minds. Can't possibly comprehend those spans of time, you know? He's great. And he doesn't help you. He's just like, "Here's everything. Dive in whenever you want. You never know what's going to happen." [Laughs] It's like a time travel slot machine. Yeah. Maybe you get nothing but lemons. [Laughs] Yeah. I think that part of it gets ruined a little bit for me by discovery's use of it. Because one of the things that I thought was so cool was the fact that it was just kind of... I mean, it's in the name forever. Like, it's been there forever. It will always be there. And yeah, it's an intelligent machine. It is both... What does Kirk say? Are you machine or being? And he says, "I am both in neither." You dipshit. You know, just talk. Stop talking to riddles. Your science knowledge is obviously primitive. What is the actual line there? He says, "I answer as simply as your little understanding makes possible." [Laughs] What an asshole. I know, but it's so good. Yeah. It's so good. Got him right there with you. I will put The Guardian above Time Cop. If we had not covered back to the future... It would have been the number one. It'd be at number one right now. Yeah. Yeah. Do we need to go back through these names? It's been 10 episodes. It's been 10 episodes. Yeah, let's do a quick recap. It's been 10 episodes. This is the first episode of Star Trek Month. Here's where we are, folks. Go back and listen if you need some context for this list. But we have ranked the time travel methods as follows. The DeLorean from Back to the Future. Best time travel machine. It's going to be hard to beat. The Guardian in the city, the edge of forever. The time travel machine from Time Cop. The little train tracks, right? Little train tracks. Little train tracks, as you like to call it. I like to think of it as like a rocket. I mean, it's a rocket on a track. It is Pierce's time. It's kind of awesome. That's why it's number two, folks. Or number three. Number four. Midnight in Paris. The Peugeot that picks you up and takes you to a party. Yeah. Go to a party. A fancy car. The TVA time door. The time travel from Looper. Which is essentially like crawling into a clothes dryer. For me, that one's more judged on the lack of special effects that you just pop in and out. I don't dislike it. At all. Yeah, I like it a lot, but not necessarily the time machine, but the way they do time travel. Yeah. In that movie. So that's why that's up there. Loki's time slipping from Loki season two. This is where things start to turn, because that's not great. That seems really unpleasant. The first time machine in popular culture. The clock that went backwards. How in the world? Oh, yeah. I remember the rationale for putting that below Loki's time slipping. That it only takes you one place and it's a war. And you have to fucking drag it everywhere. In huge ass grandfather clock. And risk being struck by lightning every time you use it. However, better than being pruned from all time with the TVA pruning stick that sends you to the void in Deadpool and Wolverine. And rounding out the bottom of the list. The clock stopper watch from this movie from 2002 called Clockstoppers. Yeah, heck yeah. So there it is, folks. That's your top ten of the first ten episodes of the bold new era of oh boy. And next week, do we give a tease as to what it is? Okay, we can say that this is obviously going to be an episode of Star Trek The Next Generation, which had several, several time travel episodes. This particular episode is one we have mentioned more than once on this podcast. Yeah, let's leave it there. We just bring it up and off a lot. That's true. And I think probably safe to say not the one you want us to discuss. And we just going to say each one is probably other than this one. Sitting on the edge forever is kind of the no brainer. But every other one is like probably not the one you want us to talk about. Yeah, not the one you're looking for. But wait till next September, stick with us. But I mean, hey, when we're talking about the next generation in time travel, I mean, they're all pretty good. Except maybe that one. Yeah, that one. You know which one I'm talking about. Who doesn't? Well, folks, thanks for listening. Always a pleasure to be here with you. Remember to subscribe to this podcast on your favorite podcast apps. You can find us on YouTube where you can also listen. It is a video format. Look, we understand that YouTube is designed to be a video format. There is no accompanying video, but you can still listen to us there. And you can comment, leave us reviews wherever you listen to, guys. I'd like to see some of them. Again, if there's a star rating involved or anything like that, anything less than, I'm going to say, I said three stars last time and say four stars this time. If you're not going to give us at least four stars, just take your comments elsewhere. Or just go listen to a episode you like better than this one and then leave us the five star review. Send us emails. Our email address, oh boy, qlpod@gmail.com. I do want to take a moment here to let you know that, God, how long has it been? Like 15 episodes ago that I solicited for haikus? Probably. But we didn't really get any until very recently. And we do have more. We do have more haikus. We do have more haikus. But the main thing I want to say is that the Snickers promotion is now void. That's funny. I was going to offer one more. Oh, you're going to offer one more Snickers? Yeah, I was thinking, because here's the thing with the haiku. That was fun. And we have others. We've got a second entrant. And what I'm saying is, so I've got two Snickers bars that need to go in the mail. Yeah, I don't know how you go. But I feel like chocolate. I feel like, I feel like one more Snickers bar in play. If we can get a third person out there to send us some haikus, we might actually be able to turn this thing into a segment. People might actually want us to talk about poetry. Maybe not. But it was a fun game to play. I hope it's a fun game to listen to. And if it is, third person, next person to send us a haiku at oh boy ql pod at gmail.com. There's a Snickers bar in it for you. And we'll be sharing more of those haikus on an upcoming episode too. Mind us on social media. You know, I'm just going to say, if you want to find me, find me on threads. Don't look anywhere but threads. Brian dot lead out Martin on threads. That seems to be the place where the good people go. That's the good place now. I thought that's what blue sky was supposed to be. I mean, I don't get any traction over a blue sky. I don't know. So threads. That's where I'm hanging now. You can find me over there. Brian dot lead out Martin. And I am at action date on both blue sky and threads. And that's a wrap folks. Come back next week. Oh yeah. We'll be back in one week with Star Trek the next generation. Until then, I'm Brian. And I'm Nate. And we'll see you in the future. Let's get the holiday. [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING]