The climactic moment! Dom Bettinelli, Jimmy Akin, and Fr. Jason Tyler discuss the big showdown with Ascensia featuring an obvious trap and a dangerous Loom as well as heroic sacrifice, cunning deception, and the possibilities of redemption.
Jimmy Akin Podcast
Touch of Grey (PRO) - The Secrets of Star Trek
The Secrets of Star Trek is brought to you by the Star Quest Production Network and is made possible by our many generous patrons. If you'd like to support the podcast, please visit sqpn.com/give. You're listening to the Secrets of Star Trek, where we discuss the hidden layers and deeper meanings found in all the Star Trek TV series, movies, and more. And today we're discussing the penultimate story, actually it's an ultimate. Anyway, one of the last episodes of Season 2 of Prodigy Touch of Grey. I'm Dom Bethanelli and joining me today on the panel are Father Jason Tyler. Hey Father. Hello. And Jimmy Aiken. Hey Jimmy. How did Dom? Of course we have more of your great listener feedback coming up at the end of the episode, so be sure to stick around for that. I want to tell you about how you can get your very own Secrets of Star Trek t-shirt, like I'm wearing right now in our video online. You can see it down in our YouTube channel. You can get that by visiting sqpn.com/merch. And if you don't want a t-shirt, you can get a design on a mug or a phone case and a bunch of other stuff. So check it out at sqpn.com/merch. And if you're gonna have to update that t-shirt at some point, because it's got Father Cory on it instead of Father Jason, although I know look kind of similar. Yeah, I was like bearded priest. We just need to lighten up the hair a little bit. So light in the beard, maybe. Yeah, a little bit. Yeah. So also, before we get into today's discussion, I want to tell everyone, if you're a fan of Secrets of Star Trek, I'm sure you'll be a fan of another Star Quest podcast called Let Science, which you can find wherever fine podcasts are found or at sqpn.com/science. So Jimmy, as usual, can you give us a recap of Touch of Grey? This week, a sensea baits Janeway into coming down to Solum to rescue the kids and knowing it's a trap, Janeway takes the bait. Chikote, the doctor, and Wesley Crusher come with. We have transporter separation since a sensea has activated blockers to keep people from being in down to or up from the planet. So they replicate a Valnecott flyer to sneak down. The kids have been taken to a prison facility where a sensea is tormenting them with a captured loom that could erase them from existence. But it turns out that the loom is not happy about its captivity and really wants to be let loose. When Janeway's party arrives, she goes in alone and offers herself as a bargaining chip in the coming war if a sensea will release the hostages. But a sensea shoots Janeway in the chest. Except it really isn't Janeway. Instead, it's the doctor pretended to be Janeway. Zero senses the real Janeway outside and sends her a message about the loom wanting its freedom. Since Wesley doesn't currently have his powers because a sensea mentally tortured him, Janeway improvises a move with her combat and a phaser. She blows a hole in the prison facility so they can get in and frees the loom, which menaces a sensea and her goons before leaving. This serves as a distraction while the kids escape and they board the replicated Valnecott flyer and head back to Voyager. Also from Voyager, Gwen's dad, Iltheron inspires a rebellion on the planet much to a sensea chagrin. The end. Father, what'd you think of this one? I really enjoyed it. You know, it was a good set up for the finale that's coming and I thought it was good to see Wesley sort of without his traveler powers again for a little bit and again, just see things moving along well to wrap up this story. How about you, Jimmy? Yeah, I thought I have a note that it feels dramatic like we're building towards a climax. So it had a lot of energy in this episode. You know, there are some things to mention in it. But overall, I thought it was a really good episode and I don't have substantial criticisms of it. Yeah, I agree. I didn't have a lot of notes on this one for some reason because it just felt like it moved so fast. It's action. Yeah. And the rule of action is when actions happen in the plot is not advancing. Right. Right. So yeah, there's lots of running around and that sort of thing. But yeah, I mean, it was good. It felt like the story right before the end. We're putting all the pieces in place for that final set piece at confrontation and then wrap up that we're going to have, which we'll talk about next time. But this is the part of the story arc where you want action. You want that sense of forward momentum where we all know the background. Now everything is colliding and we're heading towards the crescendo. Right. It was something we brought up several times, which is you want the action, you know, in a thriller, you know, when you're building the story up to meeting your villain, you want the confrontation with that villain, that action piece to last as long as possible. And that's what we're getting here is, you know, this episode, the next episode. So that worked really well. One of the things I thought was interesting was in the beginning of the episode. I don't know why, but it kind of struck me to watch Janeway was in a ready room working. And you know, that little laptop computer sort of thing that was always on Picard's desk? Well, she's actually using it like a laptop this time, like it has like a keyboard, which I thought was very funny because back in the 80s, it was a stylus and a tablet sort of thing that he always was writing with. Picard was always writing with it. I just thought it was an interesting production design change to update it to be, I don't know, current, to be what our expectations are. I just I thought that was a funny little thing. And you know, other times when we've seen characters record their logs, a lot of times they're speaking and it's just being recorded, you know, and this time she's typing, but that seems, you know, plausible that you'd have the option to do either one, you know, I mean, we already have speech to text and that sort of thing now. So by the 24th century, you could easily have officers sometimes recording their logs by typing and sometimes by by their own voice. Yeah. It's a bit it's a bit inconsistent with what they've done before. I mean, Scotty didn't even know what a mouse was in Star Trek 4. Oh, a keyboard. How quaint. Yeah, that's true. That is true. That is true. If one and one of the best scenes in a Star Trek movie, that is true. But I could imagine there were times when you would not want to be speaking aloud, whatever your entry is, whether for security or just because you don't want to, you know, it's private. But yeah, this is also a common issue in science fiction, where they're trying to imagine futuristic interfaces. And sometimes they get them way wrong, like 3D gestural interfaces you used to see in a lot of sci-fi shows, like on the sci-fi channel, where in order to fly a show, in fact, in a Gene Rotterberry related episode in Earth final conflict, they had these ships and the way you flew them was basically by waving your hands around doing stuff. And it's like, that is not how you would design an interface. You want to you want to be able to control a ship with as little hand motion as possible. That's why we have joysticks. Right. You know, I don't want to scratch your nose, either. Yeah, that is true. Yeah, it is funny watching the our feature design, like the idea, like trying to figure out what things in the future are like, you look at TOS, everything was just colored, you know, candy on a black console, you know, there was no interface that was clearly inspired by like, submarine design in the 1950s, where instead of typing on a keyboard, because they didn't have computers running your sub, you had manual controls for each system. Yeah, yeah. So interesting to see that. One thing we get is it's apparently the 14th anniversary of the beginning of Jane Way's first command, which was Voyager, her first actual command was Voyager. That went well. And got her an admiral. Admiral ship. I guess it did. So I guess it did go well. So it's been seven years since they came back from the Delta Quadrant. So that's kind of interesting. And she's making noises here about retiring, which we will eventually see some stuff about that. But that was interesting to have that sort of set it in a time. And we've established, in fact, I think that comes up again, the year, 22, 84, 22, 85, this establishment of a particular time that we're in. So I think it's interesting that they really set it in a time. One thing that I have a note on is when they're on the Valmicott Flyer that they've replicated and they're going down to Solum, they need to pass through planetary security. And so the doctor imitates a dreadnock voice to get him past security. And he kind of bungles it a little bit for comedy. But he's not using Robert Piccardo's voice. He's using the dreadnock robot voice. And that's a nice reminder that he can do that. And that sets us up for him impersonating Jane Way later in the episode because they've just reminded us he is capable of imitating other people. What I don't recall is did he use disability? I imagine he did, but I don't just don't remember when he used disability in Voyager. But it makes sense that a holographic person would have this ability. I made the same note and especially when he appears as Jane Way and gets shot and it turns out not to be Jane Way. And I don't remember that ever happening in the Voyager series where he turned into the form of someone else completely. He'd go into the holodeck and he'd have different clothing, but he'd still have Robert Piccardo's face. And one thought I had was because Voyager was running quite a bit during the same time as Deep Space Nine. And you had Odo as the shapeshifter on Deep Space Nine. Did they perhaps not want to have a de facto other shapeshifter going on at the same time? That's an interesting thought. I could imagine them making that choice. Yeah. I get this sense that there was at some point where he did change his matrix to look different, maybe with... Or at least his voice. I don't know. Because they had data. They had data. They had shifted. Shift his voice too. Right. Data did that. It seems like the Herogen took over the ship or something like that. I feel like it's just a recollection, a recollection, not an actual memory. So I don't know when that happened, but it would be strange that they wouldn't have taken advantage of that possibility of being a hologram. So I don't know. Another thing we got going on on that same trip down to the planet. Well, actually, I guess it's on the planet. Gwen has really bummed out about having split up the group. And since Wesley's plan hinged on them, never separated and never being out of each other's presence, even though how do you go to the bathroom in that situation? Presumably they're all sleeping in their own bunks and stuff. So I think the plan is a little vague on exactly how much they're supposed to stick together. But she had split up the team in the previous episode to try to rescue her father and to try to rescue Wesley. And so she is feeling at fault and the others cheer her up. And zero has an interesting line, which is uncertainty is the predecessor to hope. And this is one of those. It's like Yoda, you know, fear leads to anger, anger leads to whatever. It's like you can arrange those terms in any order you want. Yeah. And it's kind of the same thing here. I mean, uncertainty can be a predecessor to hope. It's also a predecessor to despair. It's one of those pseudo profile profundities. You know, like the writer like, oh, that's a good line. I'm going to include that in the show. Well, as Anthony Burgess said about your favorite lines as a writer, kill your babies. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, it was not terrible. But yeah, it's uncertainty can lead to hope. That would be it can also lead to neutrality. It can lead to anything. That's why it's uncertain. So it was clear that they would have to, at some point, disable Wesley's traveler powers because it is the Deus Ex Machina. It would have, you know, he, you know, he would have taken the ring to go to the cracks of doom, you know what I mean? Like, it was would have circumvented the whole plot because he could easily travel from here to there without any problem. So they clearly had to remove his powers, but still make him important to the plot, important to get anything's done. So it is interesting to see that they wanted him, you know, Wesley to be key to the resolution. So he's on the away team. He's, he's involved. And eventually he'll get his powers back. But you know, the, the doctor was, you know, they won't be coming back anytime soon. So it was it made sense to kind of limit his ability. It's almost like TARDIS separation for the doctor in Doctor Who. Yeah. That's why I mentioned we have transporter separation in this episode because it's like TARDIS separation, where you can't get to your normal travel machine. Right. So the, I'm still remember where I mean, why I made this note, but there was a note about Magell saying that, you know, it was important. I think she was reassuring Gwen that was important to get Wesley and Ithron off the board off, you know, out of harm's way to stop the war. Despite whatever Wesley was saying about, they needed to be there, you know, to, for the things to go as he planned. But I think, but Magell is saying like, look, you know, whatever Wesley's plan was, whatever he thought was the one way things could be fixed, which clearly they weren't. It wasn't, you know, Gwen made a completely, and Dow by beaming them out, made completely reasonable choices in those circumstances. I think that's an important point because like, often, often people think, oh, there's, there's only one way I can do the right thing. There's only one path to follow. And, you know, I've, I've gone wrong. And it was good to see in this, like, no, no, there are many paths to success here. And you've chose the one that seemed logical at the time. Yeah. And there is kind of a group hug, metaphorically speaking, where all the other kids are chiming in to, to make Gwen feel better. And she finally does. It's pretty paint by numbers right and wise. But, but there's also a right and flaw here because they told us there is only one way Wesley has scanned all the timelines. And there's only one where this timeline gets saved. And then it turns out that's not true. And they, they just kind of slide past that and don't really deal with it. Like the Doctor Strange moment, the only the one out of a 14 million possibilities. One thing I thought was interesting was watching the Doctor and Hollow Janeway sort of bonding. And it was interesting to see because the Hollow Janeway is Captain Janeway, in a sense, like it is her personality. It is her. And there's a sort of, I don't know, Bond, you know, I didn't say Bond Bond, maybe more than just friendly bond. I don't know. It was sort of almost like flirting with the Doctor. I don't know. I just thought she I just thought she I mean, she says she's a she's a huge fan of his Hollow novels. Yeah. And I just took her as a super fan. Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of funny just to imagine Janeway. We know from Voyager being a super fan of the Doctor's Hollow novels, because I always got the sense that the Doctor kind of was amused. I mean, the that Janeway was kind of amused by the Doctor and his aspirations. Yeah. I think that whether you're going to be a fan or not is going to depend significantly on whether you're a hologram or not. I think I think that's what makes a difference. Yeah. Yeah. And I brought out a time or two in in some of the later Voyager episodes where one of his Hollow novels finds its way into the hands of some other holograms working somewhere or something. And it's kind of being passed around as subversive literature. Photons be free was the was the name of that one. Yeah. The best Hollow novel episode they had was not actually a Hollow novel episode. But this is like around the end of season two or something or season three. They discovered what they assumed was a Hollow novel in the holodeck database that featured Voyager crew in a let's overthrow Janeway scenario. And it turned out it wasn't a Hollow novel at all. It was a training scenario that Tuvak had designed in the early days of the ship when it wasn't clear that the two crews were going to mash. Right. And so it was a training program for security officers. How do we deal with an attempted, you know, civil war on the ship? And that was, to my mind, the best Hollow novel episode they ever did. I agree. I think we've done that one already. Yeah. And yeah. That was a team. And it turns out, Cesca had after Tuvak had written the program, had come in and monkeyed with it. So it doesn't behave the way Tuvak expects. That's right. That's right. There was a nice moment where on that shuttle down the, you know, the the Volnakot shuttle down to the surface, Janeway turns to Wesley and kind of tells him, hey, by the way, call your mother. Yes. I've talked to your mom. You need to call us a little bit of mom guilt going on there. Yeah. So as I predicted, we're going to have more Beverly Crusher in this season. Right. Yeah. Yeah. But that was a nice moment to see there. And he was he was abashed. He is like, yes, I should call my mom more. It was nice to see that. Yeah. And that's something that, you know, in the Picard series was not really explored. I mean, I think she mentions once having lost one son to outer space or something like that. And, you know, some some vague reference in the way to Wesley becoming a traveler, but not a whole lot else of discussion about where Wesley is or what he's doing or anything. It was a weird flaw in Picard season three, you know, one of the few, but that that we did have Beverly and Jack and almost zero mention of Wesley who yeah, that you wouldn't get Wesley in that is somehow there was that was weird. And I'm glad that they're working to fix that in prodigy, which is interesting, given that prodigy was in production around the same time as Picard season three, I think, you know, there's a long lead time for for a well, maybe that was maybe that was a deliberate choice because they could have said, okay, well, we're going to actually be using Wesley in prodigy. So why don't we tie that up here? And that way you don't have to be burdened with it over in Picard season three. Yeah, that's right. And just the fans will have to wait a year to get that solution or longer. I mean, they, you know, it wasn't even clear if prodigy season two was going to come out at that point. Right. Right. That's true. Yeah. The doctor does get that line after he pretends to be the dreadnock. He gets to say I'm a doctor, not a covert operative. Just nice to have more. I'm a doctor and I'll back. Yeah. Once they get down to the planet, you know, they're they're moving, they're moving along, doing stuff. But when Jane Jane way apparently offers yourself to Asensia, if she'll let go the kids, it's a little startling because she says I've got I'm a cap star fleet admiral. I've got all this classified knowledge. And it's like, why are you offering to trade classified knowledge in the middle of a war? And then it turns, it turns out it's not Jane way at all. So that makes sense. Sure. But initially I'm going, what are you thinking here? Yeah, what's your play here? What do you because clearly, Jane way would not actually want to give her information that could help defeat the Starfleet. So yeah, she's also walking into a place where she knows that Asensia has mined torture devices to yank the info out of you. Exactly. Yeah. When she walks in and sort of turns herself in, I made the notice of reminded me of Luke Skywalker sort of turning himself in his return to the Jedi. Yeah, that's true. I didn't rewatch it. But I'm curious if they animated in the hallowomitter before they revealed the doctor, the doctor's ruse. I haven't rewatched it either, but they make a point of showing it to us after Asensia has shot him. Yes. And he goes into his overacting mood with Adri's been shot. The dark is always good for some some coven. The well, some cringe comedy at times coming up to a cringe point. But the Jane way does this maneuver the real Jane way does this maneuver to get in because Wesley is whining about power converters or something. Oh, no, his lack of powers. That's it. And he so he's not able to get him into the fortress. But Jane Way does this thing where she like puts her combat on the wall of the fortress and then shoots it with her phaser. And I'm going, how much energy does a combat have? I would say phaser would have way more energy in it than a combat edge. I mean, just I wouldn't wear one of those on my chest. It's, I mean, really what you could do given established technology is put the phaser on the wall of the fortress and set it to overload. Yeah, then you wouldn't have the phaser at the end, but you got other guys who got phasers. Right. So, or you could have more phasers back in the Valnekot ship that you replicated and just beam one of those over. Yeah, since they can beam across the planet, they just can't beam up and down from it. But that was another one in the writing that I thought was a little sketchy. Yeah, or you didn't watch Discovery season five, but there was a similar thing where they were, you know, how they have the smart materials and they can just replicate things out of thin air. And they're like, what do we do? We've, we've, we've used our phasers on over to load to explode them and stop whatever this thing was that's coming at us and Father Cori and I were both remarking in our discussion of season five. Like, I don't know, maybe replicate another one in your hand. Like you've been doing. So at least, at least we don't have that bad writing problem here. Yeah. The exploding combat did remind me of some rip from the headlines, sort of contemporary news. Exploding iPhones and stuff. That's right. Yeah. Exploding pages. Oh, that too. Yeah. Well, that was deliberate. Yes. So one thing that kind of got me by surprise is how did a sense he managed to capture and control a loom? Because they've been presented as this in an unstoppable enemy. And then they finally figured how to, you know, modulate the shields, et cetera. But this Star Trek has this way of creating these bad guys that are implacable at first. You can't possibly stop them. They're the big bad guy, Klingons, Frankie, board, you know, we go down a list. And then they eventually defang them. And this was remarkably fast, defanging the loom. That's true for everybody. Every, every franchise has that problem. Because if you've got regularly recurring heroes, they have to win at least most of the time. And so inevitably the threats that you've built up for huge drama end up becoming less of a threat. I mean, in it, for example, the only exception I can think of to that is Babylon five, where the shadows and the warlords just leave. And that's what solves the situation. They just leave. But in general, you know, over in Doctor Who, we've got the master who, you know, he's always got to lose. And the Daleks, they've always got to lose in the Cybermen, they've always got to lose. And similarly in comic books, you know, the Joker always got to lose. There's, you know, this is just a recurring problem across serialized fiction. Or I should say ongoing serialized fiction. Right. If you have recurring villains. Yeah, that's what I mean. Yeah, it is. It is an issue. That's true. So in the end, it's like you mentioned in the recap, you'll throw on gets the people a solemn to revolt. And I couldn't help them think of history of the world part. Sorry, the people are revolting. Yeah, they stink on ice. It's a quote we hear around my house a lot. I quote old movies. So but the, you know, we basically resolve almost everything. And it puts a sensea basically on the back foot. She's no longer in control of, of, of, uh, solemn. And kind of where we end things is, I forget exactly the end point of this episode, but there we go ahead. I know you, you actually probably will. They're flying back up to Voyager on the replicated volonacot flyer. And this is where we hit a real moment of Dr. To me, Dr. cringe humor, because he's, he's, he's thinking that he's going to name his new holla novel. Mission assignment, solemn, the adventures of dirt danger and the dome of loom and doom. To which Magellan actually gets a good line. And she says that is certainly a title. Yeah, that was good. Um, and, but it's this sets us up for the finale. I mean, it feels like this ending feels like, Oh, that's, we've wrapped things up nicely here. We've, and we still get two episodes to go. But we haven't. There's still more, uh, a sensea to, to go. Yeah, I don't get that feeling because even though a rebellion has started on solemn, she's still in charge. And so I got to deal with her. They got to get, they got to get the proto star back in time. And I got to deal with the loom. Yeah, that's the big, the big thing. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Right. Cause it ends with the, no, it doesn't never mind. Uh, I, I watched all three of these final episodes together. And so the, uh, the exact ending point between them is, is making my mind. So I don't want to get too far into the next episode. Any other thoughts on this one though, father? Yeah. And one thing I noticed, uh, you know, when they're, they're confronting the loom and in their imprisoned situation, zero, you know, mentions fitness, sensing the loom's fear and loneliness, and they believe it's sick and everything. And it reminded me of how this season in particular has really gone, uh, sometimes gone out of its way to humanize the villains in different moments. You know, we get ill through on being the, the young version of the diviner. And so you see, okay, the diviner wasn't always evil. He had this good side. We see a young as sincere at one point, who's also, you know, a good character. And we don't have a loom that becomes a good character, but at least we have, you know, our heroes recognizing, okay, this is, this is a being that has its own emotions and its own thoughts and concerns and whatever about what's going on right now. It's, it's a, it's like an animal, you know, it doesn't have, uh, evil motivations. It's just following its, you know, genetic disposition to do what it does. Yeah. Yeah. She is like my sister's dog, which is super sweet, but, um, and, you know, she's super sweet and everything. But if she finds a bug, she is after that bug, she's going to eat that bug. And we are the bug to the loom, the loom's dog, the loom's Luna. Uh, very good. Jimmy, do you have any other notes on this? Just that I noticed as an, and I've commented on this before, but Dal is really taking a back seat in this. He's really stepped back and let Gwen take the lead on things. And he continues to step back in this, which is setting us up for something we're going to learn about in our next episode. But, um, I think it's, I think they carry it a little. I like seeing him do that, but I think they carry it a little too far in the end. But we can talk about that next episode. Right. Very good. All right. So that does it for our discussion of touch of gray. Uh, before we go, I did mention we have some feedback and this is great because it's feedback on some of our older recordings. This goes, these go back aways. Uh, the first one is on our discussion of the original series episode, the Squire of Gothos, which is awesome. Uh, Stots 42 wrote on YouTube. One of my favorite episodes, you all did it justice. Cheers. So thank you, Stots 42. Um, it was a lot of fun. Trelade is one of the fun, uh, bill in agonists. Uh, and then our other feedback comes from our discussion of Haven, the, uh, the next generation, Robert Stevens, on YouTube rights. Now I'll think of Loveboat when I see the Enterprise D. I pictured data singing and love won't hurt anymore or something like that. I forget the exact words. Love it. That is one of the lines in the Loveboat lyrics. Yes. I could, I could sing it, uh, the whole thing if I had to, but, uh, I won't. Um, but, uh, yes, the, the, in Haven, the Enterprise D was definitely the Loveboat. So, uh, that's it for our feedback. And now we'd like to take a moment to thank our patrons who make it possible for us to create the Secrets of Star Trek, including Christopher R, energy Vincent B, Catalina E and David C, their generous donations at SQPN.com/give make it possible for us to continue the Secrets of Star Trek and all the shows at Star Quest. And you can join them by visiting SQPN.com/give. So that's it from us. We'd love to hear what you think of Touch of Gray. You can let us know by commenting on the show at SQPN.com/trek or Facebook page, Facebook.com/Star Quest Media, send an email to trek@SQPN.com or visit our Discord community at SQPN.com/discord. You can watch the Secrets of Star Trek on our YouTube channel at youtube.com/Star Quest Media. And we'll be back next time when we'll be discussing the two-part finale or a borrows. Until then, Father Jason Tyler, thank you for joining me in sharing the Secrets of Star Trek. Thanks, Dom. Jimmy Yakin, thank you as well. Thank you and live long and prosper. And once again, I'm Dom Betanelli. Thank you for listening to the Secrets of Star Trek on Star Quest. And remember, boldness isn't only for the young. Join a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to go on pilgrimage to the mysterious shrines and sites of Italy in the Jubilee year 2025 with Jimmy Yakin and me, Dom Betanelli. Go with us on a 12-day, all-inclusive tour that gives you incredible access to Jimmy's insights in Rome, Assisi, Orvieto, Monte Cassino, San Giovanni Rotundo, the Grotto of St. Michael, and more. We're also planning special activities like recording on location for future episodes of Mysterious World and an in-person, weird questions episode just for pilgrims. Space is limited and filling up, so be sure to find out more. Visit mysterious.fm/Italy2025 to reserve your spot today. 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