Ceti Alpha 3: A Star Trek Podcast

Proposed Star Trek Spinoffs Star Trek is wonderful - fans are gifted with so many series (and movies) to watch, from the 22nd to the 24th Century. But - what if there was MORE Star Trek? Phillip, Daniel, and Darren take a meeting and pitch their ideas of spinoffs from the existing Star Trek live series. What if Star Trek: The Next Generation led to a medical drama starring Nurse Ogawa? What if Sta...

Star Trek in Wonderland. Star Trek provides so much to their fans - great stories and characters, a sense of hope for the future, a dazzling prediction of future technology and more. There is also the simple sense of wonder - whether in special effects or small moments. Darren, Daniel, and Phillip look at the moments of "wonder" in Star Trek, and why they are so important. What's your favorite "wo...

What If ... It Wasn't the Vulcans at First Contact? April 5, 2063 - one of the most historic days for Earth in "Star Trek." However, Daniel, Darren, and Phillip imagine a reality where it wasn't the Vulcans that landed in Montana. What if it had been the Klingons? Or Cardassians? Or Denobulans? The trio goes through the effects on human history if Earth's first contact had been with any other Trek...

"The Cage" Overview The season one finale of "Star Trek: Discovery" gave viewers their first glimpse of the Captain Christopher Pike-led starship Enterprise since The Original Series. Phillip, Daniel, and Darren decide to view the original source material of the first Star Trek pilot, "The Cage," to see where the season two premiere episode of DSC will lead us. They discuss the characters, technol...

Star Trek Theme Park With Star Wars land coming to the Disneyland Resort next year Daniel, Darren and Phillip decide what a Star Trek theme park would look like. Located in central Montana your stay will be surrounded by Klingons, Vulcans and Starfleet. What would you add to your Star Trek theme park?

Writing the Star Trek Discovery Movie The final scene of Star Trek Discovery's first season showed us the starship Discovery meeting the U.S.S. Enterprise. The trio decides to pitch their idea of a Discovery movie that answers the question - what happens next? They imagine an epic story where Captain Pike's distress signal leads to a starship Enterprise caught in a temporal dimensional eddy leadin...

Trek Marriages.  We know that romantic stories can play a part in many “stories of the week” in the Star Trek franchise. But what about the long-term romances? Phillip, Daniel, and Darren look at the trial and tribulations of committed couples in Starfleet and wonder why they are so rare. Who is your favorite married couple in Trek?

If the Enterprise-D Had Lived in the Movies We all know that the Enterprise-D was destroyed and unable to be salvaged in "Star Trek: Generations." In this episode, Darren, Daniel, and Phillip try to imagine the rest of the Next Generation feature films with our favorite Galaxy-class vessel. What if the flagship went through the same evolution as The Original Series' Enterprise in the movies - with...

The Ultimate Star Trek Crew Bracket. There has been a lot of uses of “pop culture” brackets following the end of sports ball bracket season. Daniel, Darren, and Phillip put their own spore drive spin on the concept - they pick a captain and crew member from each series and “pit” them against each other in a “Hunger Games”-esque scenario. Which pair will come out on top? And which partners might tu...

Shakespeare in Star Trek VI In this week of 4/1, the Ceti Alpha 3 duo tackle the ubiquitious use of William Shakespeare in The Original Series' final feature outing, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. From the film title itself to General Chang's frequent quotations, Jessica and Phillip look at how Klingon culture embraces the Bard and more.  What is your favorite Shakespeare line from the mo...

Picking Your Fantasy Starfleet Assignment We all dream of serving on the Enterprise with Captain Kirk or Voyager in the Delta Quadrant. But the trio decides to pick their fantasy Starfleet assignments outside of the "main" ships and space stations. This leads to some surprising choices across time and space. Join the stranded team as they do a round-robin exercise of picking their future starship...

Star Trek: Titan Pilot Episode. Star Trek fans hunger for the continuing adventures of the 24th Century. Many of those stories live on in the novels, including those with Captain William T. Riker and the starship Titan. However, Daniel, Darren, and Phillip decide to write and pitch their own television pilot for “Star Trek: Titan,” with new characters and some familiar faces. They fill in the seni...

Switching Trek Crew Roles Every so often in Star Trek, a crew member will be asked to take another's role - Worf took over for Yar after her death in "Star Trek: The Next Generation," and Saru got placed on the command track after Burhnam was sentenced to life in prison in "Star Trek: Discovery." In this thought experiment episode, Phillip goes through every live-action Star Trek television series...

Episodes That Should Have Been Movies. We love our Star Trek movies (er, most of them...) and those two- and three-part episodes. However, there are still some individual Star Trek episodes that could have shined on the silver screen. Darren, Daniel, and Phillip take turns pitching episodes from 50 plus years of Star Trek that would have brought our favorite characters to feature length stories (a...

Creating a Star Trek Escape Room The trio has been stranded on Ceti Alpha 3 for while, so it's time to think about escape! Daniel, Phillip, and Darren are joined by Escape Room GameMaster Zach LaVoy (@ZachLaVoy) as they create a Star Trek-themed escape room. They establish "Professor Moriarty's Holodeck Mis-adventure," as well as specialized escape room ideas for each of the live-action Star Trek...

The Ultimate Star Trek Convention Daniel, Darren and Phillip plan the ultimate 2 day Star Trek Convention. There will be sets, stars, cosplay, music, bars, dancing, escape rooms and more. Listen as we spare no expense to make thousands of fans happy.

"Will You Take My Hand?" Analysis Chapter one (or is it chapter two?) of "Star Trek: Discovery" comes to a close with this season finale. Daniel, Darren, and Phillip take one last trip in the Crossfield-class Starfleet vessel before turning off the mushroom drive for hiatus. They discuss whether the Klingon War came to a satisfying end, how Michael's redemption was earned, and if all the character...

The penultimate episode of season one gives us a Mirror Empereor with a surprising new role, a devasted and perhaps morally-wounded Federation, and a plan to end the Klingon War once and for all. So this should all get wrapped up nicely in the one remaining episode! Darren, Daniel, and Phillip follow the episode chronologically, looking at character moments and how all the previous episodes have l...

"What's Past is Prologue" Analysis The first season of "Star Trek: Discovery" is coming to a close, and things are happening fast. So fast, that the trio does their first-ever "quick reaction" episode, recording just an hour after "What's Past is Prologue" was uploaded onto CBS All Access. With all the twists and turns in this Mirror episode, and a plot moving at mushroom warp speed, Phillip, Dani...

"Vaulting Ambition" Analysis In the shortest episode of Star Trek ever we get many confirmations, reveals and questions about what the last 3 episodes will hold. Captain Lorca is ... revealed. And the trio has a lot to say about it. Join them as they examine the Discovery’s continued adventure into the Mirror Universe with Emperor Georgiou, sampling Kelpien dishes, and Stamets meets himself & his...

"The Wolf Inside" Analysis "Star Trek Discovery" finally commits to revealing some long-awaiting plot twists in "The Wolf Inside," but unfortunately the Mirror Universe swallows co-host Darren Moser. However, Daniel and Phillip welcome Andi VanderKolk (@firsttimetrek) to help discuss Lt. Ash Tyler's tendency to sweat and look nauseous, when it's appropriate to tell someone who their Mirror version...

“Despite Yourself” Analysis Star Trek: Discovery returns with a mid-season premiere that puts our crew in the Mirror Universe ... and starts killing people off. The trio is join by Lee Hutchison to not only gauge the accuracy of Captain Lorca’s Scottish accent but how we should handle all the plot twists in this episode.  Are the myriad of “surprises” getting you excited about the rest of season o...

"Star Trek Continues" Series Finale Discussion  The five year mission of the original starship Enterprise, NCC-1701, was cut short by NBC in the 1960s. But fans kept the stories alive in a variety of forms, one of those being the recent series "Star Trek Continues" ( http://www.startrekcontinues.com ). The two-part series finale "To Boldly Go" features our favorite Star Trek characters, along with...

Ceti Alpha 3 Holiday Special. The trio has spent over 50 episodes talking about the Star Trek franchise. This holiday week, Daniel, Phillip, and Darren take the time to reflect on holidays in Star Trek, how various characters would view the myriad of Christmas traditions, and what makes a Ferengi say "Bah Humbug!" Join the stranded crew and enjoy the festive roundtable discussion of a Ceti Alpha 3...

Trek Outside of Trek, Part 2 There are a variety of Star Trek episodes that take place outside of the environment of starships, space stations, aliens, and technology. They depict almost "day in the life" episodes that are far and away from the trials and tribulations of Starfleet and its time. In this second installment, the trio looks at two such "Treks" outside of Trek with "Carbon Creek" (ENT)...