Face the Incursor! Dom Bettinelli, Jimmy Akin, and Fr. Jason Tyler discuss the two-part showdown between our heroes and Asencia's time technology, including Dal and Gwyn's growing maturity; Gwyn's evolving sense of home; and individual heroism and self-sacrifice.
Jimmy Akin Podcast
Ascension (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 next two episodes of Star Trek Prodigy Ascension Parts 1 and 2. I'm Dom Betanelli and joining me today on the panel are Father Jason Tyler. Hey Father. Hello. And Jimmy Yakin. Hey Jimmy. Headed Dom. Folks, be sure to stick around to the end. We have more listener feedback to share with you. Also, if you're not yet doing so, follow the Secrets of Star Trek. We're in Apple Podcasts, we're in Spotify, TuneIn, your favorite podcast app. You can also watch us on YouTube where you should make sure to hit the bell to get notifications and of course subscribe. And another show on the Star Quest Network is sure to enjoy, which is very topical right now is The Secrets of Middle Earth, which you can find wherever fine podcasts are found or at sqpn.com/middleearth. But today we're talking about Star Trek Prodigy and Jimmy, can you give us a recap of Ascension's Part 1 and 2. This week, we get a whole bunch of reminders and updates now that the kids are back on Voyager, but the plot starts when Admiral Jellico orders Voyager and the protostar back to Earth so that the Department of Temporal Investigations can take over the getting the protostar back in time to Tarzlora, which actually makes sense. So you know, a huge plot complication is about to intervene to stop the plot from being taken out of our hero's hands. That plot complication emerges when Gwen's father makes contact and tells her that Asensia has abolished the council on solemn and assumed power. What's more, she's used an advanced time-based technology to build a war fleet super fast by enclosing shipyards in fields that accelerate time. Asensia then breaks into the transmission and says she's learned Voyager's coordinates through it, so she sends a monster-sized evil ship to destroy Voyager. We then get a long and for once interest in space battle. The enemy ship disables Voyager with an energy dampening weapon and also starts attacking the protostar, and it releases an army of drone fliers. Voyager mounts a shuttle defense with Red Squad and Dowell, who has been training with Red Squad. Chukote and most of the—or Nova Squad. Chukote and most of the kids take control of the protostar, but zero whose body is failing stays on Voyager. Janeway gets Voyager's quantum torpedoes back online, but the enemy ship is preventing them from getting the coordinates they need to use them. So they execute a complex plan where Nova Squad distracts the drone fliers while the protostar gets close enough to the enemy ship to get the needed coordinates. It looks like the plan's going to work, but when Janeway fires the torpedoes, the drones create an energy shield protecting their mothership. Back on Salom, Asencia is delighted and she gloats to her captive, Wesley Crusher, whose mind she has tapped to get all of her new time-based technology. In part two, the space battle continues and Asencia fires a time bomb into Voyager's shuttle bay three. It is literally a time bomb. That is a bomb that accelerates time, so anyone who approaches it ages at a fantastic rate. Zero decides to sacrifice his current body since he's a seducing and doesn't age the way organics do. He struggles to shut off the time bomb, but he can't. However, he figures out how to direct it to another ship. Magel tells him to lock it onto her flier, and she and the rest of Nova Squad then fly so close to the enemy ship that the time bomb impacts it and destroys it. Afterwards, Zero gets a new encounter suit that looks just like his old one, but has sensory inputs. Janeway announces that, given the impending war with Salom, Admiral Jellico has realized the need for a fleet presence there, and since Starfleet is spread so thin, he assigns Voyager and the protostar to go there. Back on Salom, Wesley gloats to Asencia, but she gloats back, noting that nobody came to Voyager's defense during the battle, and that means Starfleet must be spread super thin, and completely unprepared for what comes next. The end. Does the line, Father Jason, your overall impression of this one? I really enjoyed these episodes. I agree with Jimmy's comment that we had a space battle that was interesting more than some of the other ones we have sometimes on Star Trek, and I thought the story moved along well. It's interesting to see the idea of a traveler taking captive and what that can do in terms of damage to things. So Jimmy, how about you? Yeah, I enjoyed this a lot more than I thought I would. Of the two episodes, part one opens with several minutes long series of just basic updates to remind people of stuff and tie up little things. And then when the plot starts moving, I'm thinking, oh, great, another space battle, which on Star Trek are kind of like car chases. You know, not a lot tends to happen until the end of the battle. But this time it was interesting. It went on a really long time, and it had a bunch of phases that you could follow. It wasn't just people standing over consoles talking dramatically, although there was some of that. But I thought they did a good job. I was thinking about space battles, and you know, Star Trek space battles, I don't think are the best. And especially since the end of Deep Space Nine, they've just been shoving as many ships on the screen as possible. And there's no real drama because you don't have a plot you can really follow. At some point, someone just says, punch me a hole through there. And they do. And so Babylon five space battles, I think, were a step up because they've frequently focused on the maneuvers of individual ships. And they would do things like ramming each other and stuff. I think the best space battles I've seen are Battlestar Galactica, where they would even show you here is our attack plan, you know, using a tabletop set of models, and then you get to watch it and see how it goes right and wrong. So I thought this was a step up for Star Trek in terms of space battle presentation. And Star Wars has historically done a pretty good job of space battles too, I think. Even like in like Rogue One, the big battle there, you can keep in a sense of what's overall going on. It's so hard because so much is flying around and stuff, and it's easy to get lost in it. And it's a tricky thing to do. Yeah, like at the end of season one of Strange New Worlds, they have that space battle where Kirk shows up with an enormous fleet of ships piloted entirely by him. And there's just, OK, all you're doing is shoving stuff on the screen. I'm not going to get any sense of tactics out of this. Right. Right. Yeah. I think it was at the end of season two of Discovery that they actually had several shuttlecraft that were involved, kind of on both sides of a fight. And that's something that, you know, haven't seen too terribly often on Star Trek. We see it in a different way here as well with the drones on the one side and the Nova squad on the other. And that's probably more of how some of these things would go, rather than just having the, you know, capital ships from the two different sides fighting it out. You'd have the shuttlecraft effectively doing what aircraft taking off from an aircraft carrier would do in a naval battle nowadays. Yeah, I've always thought that Star Trek should have fighters, and you should have carriers with fighters, just like, you know, Star Wars, that sort of thing, that wouldn't just be capitalism, because, you know, each one has different, as we see, different benefits, a little ships are harder to hit, and that sort of thing, and they maneuver faster, and that sort of stuff. So I agree with that. I also really like these two episodes. I think there was plenty of action. It felt like it moved right along. There was that beginning part where we're kind of catching up. It's sort of catching our breath before the rush to the end, because we only get a few episodes left of the season. And I thought that was good. And I felt like during the action sequences, there was character development. There was, you know, we move forward with people. There was risks. There was failure, you know, where they try a thing. It wasn't just, you know, zero is going to go fix this and does it? No, that doesn't work. So we have to try something else. And you know, so everybody's involved. There is no single failure point that you mentioned recently, Jimmy, you know, it's just no single point of failure. And so I thought it was, I thought it was well written and well executed as a story. So I really enjoyed that. That was one thing I appreciated about it. There's even there's a line at the end where they talk about the nature of the victory, where Janeway after the battle says there was no single hero or savior. Instead, we were carried by many smaller acts of bravery as we fought for each other. And I thought that is exactly what we just saw. There nobody was the hero who saves the day. Everybody was working together. It reminded me of a graphic novel I read a number of years ago called Golden Age, which was about the Golden Age of DC comic book heroes. It was set in an alternate universe, but they have to fight a real big villain at the end of it. And one of the, I saw a comment by one of the writers who who had by the writer who had done this. And he commented on how at the climax of a lot of comic book plots, there's like one big punch that takes out the enemy, which I guess even led to the creation of one punch man. But you know, it all tends to build up to one single act. And he deliberately went the other way in Golden Age, where the hero is not the villain is not taken out by one punch from some hero. It's a death of a thousand cuts. And so you get this longer battle where everybody's doing a little bit of damage and they're having reversals and setbacks. And it's so much more satisfying. Right. Right. Yeah, it is. It is. I mean, when you, it's, it's harder to write. That's for sure. But it's more satisfying to, to have all of your cast, all of your heroes. And it's, there's a lot of times, especially in novels where they have these action sequences. And they end just abruptly because one put like the equivalent of one punch, whatever that happens to be in that story. And it's like, yeah, and it's unsatisfying. I'm like, no, you built up to this throughout this whole story. It's in a lot of time. And then, oh, we've run out of time or pages or whatever. Like resolve it. I don't think it's space limitations that that caused it. I think it's a right and flaw. I was watching an interview, I believe it was with John Le Corre, the spy novelist, who he was being asked, what have you learned since you started writing? You know, what techniques have you changed with? And he said, well, one thing that he learned was, if there is a conflict between a physical fight, between two characters, it must go on for as long as possible. Because if you in spy fiction, when you get to that physical fight, you've been building up to it for a long time. And it needs to pay off and have heft. And previously in his work, he would have, you know, just a couple of, you know, he threw a punch and that would be it. And so he decided to make lists of everything that he could think of that could happen in the fight and use them and would have much longer final fights. And I said, yeah, that's right. And so even though I haven't written fiction in years, I adopted that principle. And so if I'm writing up towards a climactic battle, I do the same thing. I make a list of everything I can think of that could happen in this context, in this fight. And then I use it all. So we mentioned that early on was sort of a recap of this of what's where we are in the story, you know, that the beginning of the first part. And one of the things we have is is Gwyn giving a personal journal, she, you know, her personal log. And she says something that I was interested in a bit sums up a bit how Gwyn has changed, which is she says, maybe home isn't always a place. It's the people you trust the most. Because Gwyn, who was never born on solemn and had only recently ever been there, had identified herself as, you know, on the cod, you know, someone from Solomon, solemn was her home. And she's over time, I think, come to appreciate. And I think this is going to be part of the resolution of the story, I think, that her home is among the rest of the protostar crew. You know, we remember back to the beginning of the season, she was the only one who wasn't with them. She was the only one who wasn't at the prep school for the Starfleet Academy with the rest. She was off to solemn. And so I think it shows this shift in Gwyn, that we're going to, as you know, in the resolution, she's going to end up staying with the protostar crew instead of going back to solemn, I think, or, or she'll be at least given this choice, she's going to have to make this decision between them. But it's going to be, you know, this idea that these people are her home. So I thought that was interesting the way for them to start the episode. By the way, one note that you just reminded me of, I like the fact that the planet is called solemn, but the people from the planet are called the volna cott, because that's how it is here. We're on planet earth, but we're humans. I know in some fiction where Terrans are earthers, but the way we actually talk in real life is we're humans and we're from the planet earth, as opposed to, oh, Vulcans come from Vulcan and organians come from Oregonia and Klingons come, well, they come from Kronos now, but yeah, I appreciate having the name of the species and the name of the planet be different. We also got good character development with dial, because he is, he is seems to be over his, I mean, I'm sure he's not completely, but he seems to be over his, you know, lusting for the captaincy of his of his little group. He in these, in this episode and in the next episode, which we'll talk about next time, he steps back and lets other people take leadership roles without trying to inject himself in next episode. He's going to step back and just let Gwen take the leadership role this episode. He steps back and lets Miguel take the up, take the role. He's fine with temporal investigations taken over this and let the professionals do it instead of us kids. So he's really, he's really, he's really matured a lot. I agree. Yeah, that was something I noticed in him, you know, Miguel invites him to fly with Nova Squadron in this, you know, crisis and he's willing to take the third seat because the third gets injured. Yeah, who I realize now is a lorry and like mourn, and thus doesn't have any lines. And you get to comment, yeah, but all this time to cut the chit chat or whatever, you know, it's the same kind of thing we have with mourn, you know, he never speaks on screen, but people act like he's talking all the time off screen. Yeah, I like that they continue the gag. That's a good game. Oh, by the way, I have a possible prediction. So we got that glimpse of of dial's future where he's telling Gwen that chair was never mine. And we assume at the time it's the captain's chair, but I said of something. But I I said, I suspect there's going to be a recontextualization that makes it different than what we're expecting. I now think we have a candidate for what that chair could be. It's a seat on Nova Squadron. Interesting. Yeah, like find his find his place and fit in and feel like he's fitting in, but then nope. I find how they're treating Nova Squadron to be kind of a bit odd, because Nova Squadron was was a flight team, like an athletic team from Starfleet Academy, originally when TNG. And now it's like something else. It's kind of, I don't know, like what it's what they're making it up to be. Like sometimes they refer to it in a way that makes it its own entity, in a sense. Well, I think it's I mean, it's still part of Starfleet Academy. It's just they've got these kids on ships who are part of it, and they're in a lead. And they've actually had a precedent for that on Deep Space Nine, where they found a defiant class ship that had that was crewed by another group called Elite Group called Red Squad. And the adult Starfleet captain of the ship had been killed. And so the kids, even though it was a training voyage, just had to step up and keep running the ship. And so they do they do at least have precedent for putting academicians, Academy members on servant ships in some circumstances. Yeah, yeah. And the US Navy does it now like in the summer between years, you have to get that the Naval Academy, they they put them on active duty ships to experience life on board. It's just a Magella one point, when they have to like not be in Starfleet. I think I think that's actually the next episodes. But she says I've resigned from Nova Squadron, and somehow that makes her not Starfleet. So that started was like an odd way of putting it. But, but in any case, the another thing that comes up in that pre part was that is a doctor talking about Zero's new body. And originally, the way he refers to it is that they're going to get like a Daystrom android body. I think that's how we did the decision would provide a design based on the body that Zero has now the body would be permanent, you know, with all the good and the bad feelings that, you know, that you could have, but it would be more permanent. But that's not what we end up with because of the emergency, I think. Well, the doctor also says though, it can be any form you choose. And then they drop that and don't tell us what form he chooses. So they can have the reveal at the end. Yeah. Oh, OK, so the the return to the previous design was all along. Oh, OK, I didn't catch that. So, so I thought maybe it was he was going to go for a more human looking design and ended up going with the or humanoid looking design. And they're going with what he what he did just out of necessity. But I could see that. OK. Yeah. Also, so here's where now that you brought it up. Here's a here's a flaw with the episode is he wants Jankham to be in charge of building the new body. Yeah, it's like, no, yeah, Jankham may be a good engineer, but he's a kid. If I'm if I'm getting my new phone made, I want Apple engineers doing it. I don't want some teenager doing it. Yeah. Or if you get a surgery coming up, you want the experience doctor, not the med student, right? Yeah, exactly. Another flaw, by the way, and even though the space battle was really interesting, I did think it had some flaws. One of them is they're right in front of this ship. And the big monster evil alien ship that never gets a name. And one, actually, I think, OK. Yeah. And Janeway gets her quantum torpedoes online, which is more people talking in dramatically while in front of consoles. But then she can't fire them at the ship that's right in front of her. So they've got to they've got to get a ship closer to get coordinates. And they have an explanation for it. It's like it's thrown off too much chroniton energy or something. And then that's interfering with their targeting system. But yeah, OK, this is not this is not real world here. Yeah. But it did lead to a nice overall solution. It's just a weak point in the right in. Yeah. There was a scene with Janeway and Chikote, where they're recalling the final episode of Voyager that was interesting, where she notes like the future, Janeway, who came back to send them home came from the future. And Janeway says, funny, I look a lot like her now. Is that going to happen in this story? I wonder if I probably are intimidating that that it's that's that Janeway is soon. It would be I don't think they will because it would be an unhappy ending because that Janeway dies. That's right. Yeah, that's right. I forgot about that. Yeah. So but it also may be intimating that this Janeway doesn't have long. So I know I don't think so. This is a kid show. They're going to have a happy ending for Janeway. By the way, speaking of Janeway, I really did like one line. So we've got two Janeways. Now we've got biological Janeway in charge of Voyager, and we've got hollow Janeway over on the protostar. And there's at the beginning of the space battle, hollow Janeway is all alone on the protostar. And it's under attack from the evil enemy ship. And I love how I'm saying that the ship itself is evil. But but we get this great line where hollow Janeway hails voyagers, hails Voyager and says, Janeway to Janeway. And it's like, OK, that's just fine. Yeah. Although again, as I saw that, I thought, did they really lead the protostar with no crew on board? You know, seems like they could have put Chikote and a few others there to to help pilot the thing along or whatever, or at least be there in case of an emergency like what wound up happening. I think it was some binars there. The binars are OK. Yeah, they do have binars in the crew. I noticed that I didn't notice if they were on Voyager. I would just assume I mean, these are complex computerized chips. I would assume that they just slaved protostar to Voyager's navigation system and and had it fly parallel. Yeah. Yeah. But it was in the opening montage. There was like, they were talking about the the weapon, the solemn weapon in that they and while talking about that, they showed the the binars they were working on it. So I would guess the crew were going back and forth, you know, regularly up. So Jimmy, you characterized Jellico's decision as logical. Yeah, let temporal investigations handle this. You got to reinsert this thing into the time stream into the past to fix it. That's a job for pros. See, I thought at the time that it was illogical in the sense of it's Starfleet is spread so thin, why have them bring the protostar all the way back to Earth to deal with it instead of letting them just finish the job while they're out there? Because because time machine, it doesn't matter. You don't have to worry about time. You can take all the time you need to get back to Earth. You don't have to fix the job immediately. It's better to do it right. Right. Okay. I guess that does make sense. And it may be better to have Voyager near Earth to deal with whatever's going on. You know, that's got Starfleet spread. So then, you know, they mentioned a couple things that Romulan evacuation and the whatever else. So some of the ships haven't been damaged or destroyed by the living construct, you know, in season one. So right, right. I get to say Ronnie Cox, his voice, you can tell how much older he is these days. I was thinking about that as he was speaking. I'm like, you know, what a great character he is in both in Stargate and his Star Trek. And he played the banjo in deliverance. That's right. Wow. That goes way back. I mean, he's a duel in banjos. He's the he's one of the two banjos. Right. Right. That's true. I do want to note as the ship guy in the panel, that the Nova to the Nova Mark II flyers were designed by Tom Paris. Yeah, presumably using what he learned about the Delta flyer. So that was kind of cool. I did like that. So let's talk about Wesley and the reveal that a censio has captured him. We don't know how in this episode, we will learn that in the next one. But she's captured him and she's using some technology to read his mind and to get all this information about this futuristic time technology that she's using to advance the Von the Cott tech. Yeah, it's and they're not really clear on this, either this episode or next, what the tech is. She's got him in in a like chamber and she's got some kind of device on him. And they don't I don't think they're clear on is this like just torture or is it mind reading or is it mind reading and torture or exactly what's going on with it. Yeah, yeah, although, yeah, we'll talk about that later, but because they get more into that later. So, but she's using it to do this presumably automated advanced ship building, which I think is a fascinating idea is like these bubbles of of accelerated time where they can build a ship that would take months in days. So I thought that was kind of interesting to see that. Speaking of ships, the the the big enemy ship, which I think is called Rev One reminds me a lot of the Narada in the Kelvin track. It's even the same thing. The way it emerged from the time to distortion, whatever. I wonder if that was intentional. We are we evoking that because that was also emerging from a time traveling space anomaly or whatever. Yeah, no, I think that was a deliberate visual call back to the movie. Okay. Yeah, there was, by the way, continuity error, I think you guys can tell me if I'm off. Counselor, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, the teller, right? They kept showing him on the bridge and in sick Bay during the battle, like he's running back and forth. I mean, I feel like it was a bit of a continuity error, just a small thing in there. One of the, you know, an error that just by the absence of other errors, it's noticeable to me. And what is interesting is they risk the protostar to save Voyager. The protostar is is vital to fixing everything. You've got to protect this ship to get it to Tarsalmora. That's the, when it comes down to it. And yet they get to this point where they have to Chikote and the crew aboard that have to, they've been told, you know, stay out of the battle, but Voyager's overmatched and they need to bring it in. And so they are risking everything, including Gwen. So I think it highlights how desperate the situation is, how desperate the battle is. And you know that Chikote can't just stand by and watch Voyager get battered into submission. So I thought that was an interesting aspect to the desperation of this. And that's one of the things I like is when you take these battles, you take your heroes to the point of desperation to, you know, they've got to go all in. I mean, that's what I think makes the most interesting sorts of these battles is by the heroes have to commit everything just to save to win. Not every battle, but that needs to be part of the mix. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Because if every battle is like that, they'd all be the same and they would end up being born. You know, you need peaks and valleys of drama. Yeah. Yeah. By the way, speaking of the battle, so there are a couple of things that on a tactical level that I thought we're interested in. One of them is when when Janeway finally gets her quantum torpedoes back online and is going to fire them and succeeds in firing them after she gets the coordinates. The way the ship defends itself is another visual call back, I think. It I'm sure. What the drones of the ship do is they start forming energy filaments between them to create a force field to protect the ship and it's like, Oh, this is the Tholian web defense. Because we've had a couple of there's one of them is the Tholian web. And there's another, which is the big space curtain that Q creates in encounter at far point where there's like a net like structure in space that you can't fly through, even though there are big holes between the the the filaments the net is made of. And so you just have to assume there's a force field there. And that's what they make that clear here where the quantum torpedoes hit the force field and you can see them scatter. There's there's also a move that is a callback. It's it's a new move, but it's a it's a callback to the original Nova squad episode of next gen where know the thing that got Nova squad in trouble when Wesley Crusher was part of it. And when Proto Tom Paris was part of it is they were trying to pull off some kind of starburst maneuver. I forget exactly what they called it. But it was very dangerous. And one of their members died. And here Nova squad is practicing something called the Boothby supernova, which is of course named after Boothby, my favorite Martian, who I mean, they they need to establish that Ray Ray Walsen's character was born on human born on Mars. Yeah, but but the gardener at Starfleet Academy. So I guess he was he impressed some flier so much they named a maneuver after him that they came up with. And instead of a starburst, it's a supernova. So Boothby supernova. But they say no one has ever done it before. And so they're gonna fly towards the evil alien ship and do this maneuver to get the time bomb, which they call the incursor to crash into the mother ship. And I'm like, why? Why do why do you need to do this fancy move? No one's ever done before. Why does Miguel need two other guys with her? Why didn't she if it's locked on her, she can just fly towards the ship, miss and hope the thing hits. So I'm not sure I'm it's it's a nice callback. I'm just on from a writing perspective. I'm just not sure it's like it's fully justified. The original maneuver was the Colvoord starburst. So now it's the but now starburst as a candy. So you can't use that probably. I don't know, but yeah, the yeah, you write about the Michelle. I mean, they had they had to he had they were practicing the maneuver on the holodeck. So you know, check out space maneuver. He had to do it in the in the show itself. But yeah, the whole point of the of the trick that you know, the trick the incursor was they eject the basically the cockpit section of the Nova flyer. And it follows the other part, you know, the aft section into the into the ship, the rev one. Yeah, and that's the whole idea. But you're right. Like the doll and the other guy were completely, you know, irrelevant to to that. But you know, oh, well, you know, it created some drama, but you're right. You're right. It's interesting. A sense of makes the classic super villain mistake, which is to toy with your enemy instead of just killing them. You know, she she could at any point have used the the device of the ship to just destroy Voyager, destroy the protostar and move on to destroying Starfleet. But she she wants to toy with them to make them suffer. And you know, this is the whole point of the incursor is it's a slow death. It's a slow moving weapon that ages you little by little and and also somehow explodes. Yeah. And it's yeah, well, maybe the age is the anti-matter containment pods to the point where they collapse or something. But but it's like it. It feels. I don't know, it's a kid show at the heart. I know. So we didn't we need to have the super villains acting like super villains. But you know, just once I want a villain who's just gonna and I've seen this before who just says, you know, it's like the Incredibles. Oh, you almost caught me monologuing. No, you're just going to die, you know, just to do the thing. It was a bit of a trope and it was a little annoying including the fact that in the end, where they've got the incursor heading back to Rev 1, a sense she is just standing there watching them get out of this trap that she said. And she doesn't do anything. She doesn't have the robot that's piloting the Rev 1 or anything. She just stands there, which is I think another writing flaw in it. Oh, they figured out how to get out of my trap and I'm just going to watch them do it. Well, I don't know. I have to rewatch it. But I think that, you know, she's kind of she's kind of shot her wide at that point. You know, she's she's used her big gun. She's she's hit him with the incursor. She only has one incursor on this ship. There's not a lot left for her to do at that point if they found a way to defeat it. Yeah, crash into the laser, you know, I mean, there's things, you know, I suppose other things you could do. But I guess that you felt like the way the incursor works, though, even though it seems slow from inside its time acceleration field from outside, this is all happening super fast. I guess so. Yeah. So, we have sacrifices from zero who is going to sacrifice the body that's failing. You know, they'll be it. It's failing. But, you know, recognizes that the body that was manufactured is just a carrier. So, you know, it's not like it's just another counter suit. Right. It's not like us, which we are embodied spirits. We are both body and spirit, as you well know, so that if our body dies, we die. But for zero, the body is just a suit, you know, that you're wearing and what's really zero is the energy field that makes it up that is inside it. So I guess, you know, it, well, it's kind of interesting and, you know, that he's suffering to do this. But in the end, you know, zero is not going to die from this. He tells it right up front. He's not going to die from it. So, it does take a little bit of the drama out of his personal sacrifice. But nevertheless, there's some sacrifice going on in there. Where's Miguel? She's, she's like pointed at me, aiming at me. I'm willing to sacrifice myself. There was no guarantee she'd survive this encounter with the incursor, which I thought was interesting. You know, for her, that was a logical conclusion that it should lock onto her, not into the end of the others, but to her. So I thought that was Wesley will be very unhappy when he learns about that. Well, she she makes the logical leap that maybe the reason she was he said she had to stay with them was for this, for this, but it turns out not there's also another problem on the science level with this. So the reason that that the time bomb works is it accelerates aging. And I'm sorry, it accelerates time, which has on organics, the effect of agent him really fast. And it's clear that's how it works. Because this is the same technology she's using to accelerate her shipyards. So you can get a ship built pronto. But when we're when zero is actually trying to defuse the bomb, they're treating it like it's increasing agent without speeding up time. Because he's talking to like rock and Miguel and stuff. And there's no time differential. It's not like, oh, I just heard a little noise. Let's play that back slower. What what what is your right? Yeah. So they're they're fudging about how this thing works. Right? Because we've seen Voyager episode specifically where there's a time differential between two places and how does that work? Yeah, like just super fast planet episode. Right. Right. So it shouldn't just be aging quickly. It should be time going quickly. Yeah. And we see Tysus actually, although they say they'll be able to reverse the effects on Tysus. So yeah, yeah, that couple weeks of some therapy, he'll be okay. Yeah. Yeah. And that that featured medical technology is kind of awesome. This is everything. You know, with with zero's new body, you know, they say it's it's basically just a new version of the old containment suit. Maybe body's neither the right the right word. But as a new version, it has sensory inputs that's supposed to be this big change, but would not the old suit have had some some need for contact with the outside world and something that we would call in that way, sensory inputs. You would need pressure sensors at a minimum in order to navigate space. Right. So he had to have those and they're making it sound like it didn't, but it had to. Right. And then Jane away, says everyone's going to have to adapt to this, this new suit, but I'm like, well, no, this is just where we were a few episodes ago. Frankly, I'm glad they put it back, though, because, you know, seeing him as the big tall green guy was okay, but you've invested, you know, thinking from a production standpoint, you've invested the whole first season. And, you know, basically, you know, I guess the first half of this season with him looking one way. And then you have this radically different thing. And to have him permanently look different would be a little much for a kid show, I think. Yeah. I mean, the look of zero is a key element to, I think, the look of the show. I mean, it just, it's, you know, when you see the cast, and it makes him different, it makes him, there are plenty of tall, gangly, funny colored aliens in Star Trek, but this, him in the encounter suit makes him different and makes him, and he has interesting capabilities that he had lost by being in the body. So I'm glad it opens up story possibilities to put him back inside. So I think that's, that's fine. Anything else we want to say about this episode, anything we didn't cover, brother? Just one little line I enjoyed, and a few little quotes are always interesting. But when Miguel is asked about their chances in the battle, and she's, I would decline to answer for purposes of morale. Yeah. That was nice. Never tell me the odds. Yeah. Jimmy, how about you? Nope. Very good. Well, let's move on to our feedback, because I promised that earlier. The first bit of feedback comes from our bonus episode that we had this past week, as if you're listening to this as we release. It was a patron special episode that we've released to our general audience to show you the benefits of being a patron. Father Corey and I recorded this some time back about the Discovery season five. And so we have a truly awesome New Mexico Catholic on our YouTube channel, right? Great episode, still no desire to see any discovery. Good to see Father Corey again. I hope he's doing well. And yes, thanks for asking. He reports all as well. But yeah, we as we as Father Corey now, we said, we watch it so you don't have to. Actually, our conclusion was season five was good. It was probably the second best season after season two of Discovery, not a high bar, but you know, still it was pretty good. And and then on our last product episode, cracked mirror, a truly awesome also says, finally, something I can agree with you guys on about DS9, the mirror episodes. In my opinion, they didn't capture what was cool about the mirror universe, nor what was cool about DS9, just a big misfire. Also, dark mirror is an awesome enterprise episode. Anyway, keep up the good work. Really appreciate your discussions in a mirror, darkly. Yeah, it is really good. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, it was it was very different from every other mirror universe episode. And that's one of the things that made it really cool. And that was one of the sad things about enterprise not getting that fifth season is that I think they were going to explore that universe a bit more in the fifth season enterprise. That would have been cool. I liked how they showed us what could be not has to be, but what could be the diversion point that split the mirror universe where in Star Trek, first contact is that from Cochrane pulls a gun on the landing Vulcans. And and then actually, it can't be the beginning because they, I don't think, because they they have completely different credits for those two episodes that are based on the credits we see for most enterprise episodes, but they're much more militaristic. So we see the development of spaceflight. We see the development of military technology and spaceflight. And it's that's just such a fun pair of episodes. Can't wait to get to see those. Talk about them. Yeah, because those are, we also finally get to see a full tholian in it. Right. And Dr. Flox kills it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's been a long time since I've seen those. I wanted to can't wait. All right. So those are that's our feedback this time. We really do appreciate this of anyone descending in feedback. We love to hear from you. 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. 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 for us this time. What did you think of Ascension in parts one and two? You can let us know by commenting on the show at sqpn.com/trek or facebook page at facebook.com/starquestmedia. Send an email to trek at sqpn.com or visit our discord community at sqpn.com/discord or you can watch the secrets of Star Trek on our YouTube channel at youtube.com/starquestmedia and leave a comment there after giving us a thumbs up and subscribing as well. We'll be back next time when we'll be discussing the next episode of Prodigy called Brink. Until then, Father Jason Tyler, thank you for joining me in sharing the secrets of Star Trek. Thanks Dom. And Jimmy Aiken, 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 to quote Murph, "pew pew pew pew!"