Out of Contreks

After spending a while at the beginning of the episode talking about upcoming Star Trek video games, Ryan and Brady dive into this very impressive episode of Voyager, which is about what to do if you have bad co-workers... but in space! In so doing, we talk about our own experiences managing employees, the best kind of Star Trek metaphors, and Ryan reveals one time when an irrational fear of his p...

Ryan and Brady had some fun with this Enterprise episode! Could it be that the show gets better in the second half? Is this really Stargate or Babylon 5-coded, as Ryan seems to think? How about that CGI? We talk about all that and more!

Ryan and Brady link up for our annual episode with Caitlin and Nicole of That's Not How Science Works. In this episode, we discuss the saga of Prodigy's availability on streaming networks and whether smells can get through space helmets. We also play a fun quiz at the beginning themed around the recently-ended best alien race poll with The World Cup of Star Trek. Can you beat Brady or our guests?

Probably not a good indication of Ryan and Brady's current feelings about Discovery that this recording is under 40 minutes and we spend the first several minutes of it discussing the old Rosetta Stone language learning software. Apologies for this episode coming out late; Ryan is moving and kind of lost track of things. The EV suits in this show look pretty cool, right? I used one as the episode...

Voyager never did a Mirror Universe episode, but Warlord feels a lot like one. Ryan and Brady talk about a pretty fun episode that both allows Jennifer Lien a rare opportunity to show her stuff and contains a strange sexual undercurrent that feels straight out of Deep Space 9. 

Ryan and Brady discuss the best Tom Paris episode, the one where maybe... Tom is right???? In our continuing discussion from the last episode, join us as we discuss good in media res openings, cool sci-fi concepts, and our recurring belief that Janeway is Star Trek at its most Clintonite.

Ryan and Brady try to avoid talking about a very unpleasant episode of Picard by talking about anything else, including a lengthy digression into the current politics of a couple different Trek actors and William Shatner's Super Bowl commercial. We also talk about Allison Pill's bum rap in Hollywood... really, anything to avoid talking about what Ryan refers to as possibly the worst in media res o...

Ryan and Brady chat about a low-key (even for this show!) episode of Enterprise, compare it favorably to a famously boring episode of Star Trek Voyager, and talk about Enterprise's general unwillingness to take its perfectly good premises and give them a little juice.

For the first time in more than a year, Ryan and Brady are putting out a special on a new season of Star Trek, this one the initial outing of Starfleet Academy. But where does it rank in the annals of nu-Trek? Is the dialogue actually youth-oriented, or is it a bunch of millennials and Xers trying to sound young? Has Jett Reno ever done anything wrong? (No.) All that and more inside this piping ho...

Ryan and Brady look into a Voyager episode that examines the nuances of the Doctor's relationship with the rest of the crew. While we aren't entirely satisfied with the ending, the episode itself is a pretty interesting one, allowing us much fodder for discussion on how exactly the message of "Latent Image" can be mapped onto a real-world situation, if at all.

Quick production note: We try to keep most Out of Contreks episodes reasonably family-friendly, but this episode does have a lot of swearing in it, primarily inspired by the horrible events of Jan. 2025 that were carried out by government thugs in the Twin Cities, where one of the hosts lives. If you don't mind that, give it a listen, because it's a pretty fun and wide-ranging discussion after the...

It had been a while since either Brady or Ryan had seen Shore Leave, the famous, fever-dreamesque outing of the Original Series in which Bones is literally killed and then brought back to life -- an incident that probably isn't even the weirdest thing that happens in the episode -- and boy, had we forgotten some of the finer points. Join us as we discuss Trek's descent into madness, courtesy of th...

In this wide-ranging episode about a very good episode of Deep Space 9, Ryan and Brady go off on several tangents, everything from nostalgia for parenting young kids to the efficacy of sci-fi metaphor to classic VeggieTales music to which Star Trek species would be the nastiest to bone down with. In between, we talk about the Jem'Hadar and an unsung performance from Bumper Robinson.

Ryan and Brady look into the first part of one of the most famous Voyager episodes, and what we find is something... all right. Join us as we look at why this episode is so famous, where it sits in Voyager lore, and what this show does well and not so well.

Happy New Year! In this episode, Ryan and Brady get their annual Ric Olie reference out of the way quick before discussing a DS9 episode that has a lot of fun little character bits for Sisko as it explores the nature of responsibility. Also, I chose the episode image because of O'Brien's incredible turtleneck. A true god among men.

Ryan and Brady aren't sure what to make of this Enterprise episode that doesn't even seem quite sure of what to make of itself. Still, though, it got us to open some cool Star Trek cards, and it's a rare truly Out of Contreks episode for the both of us.

Would this be a good episode to watch while high? Ryan and Brady discuss the (mostly aesthetic) positives of this late Season 2 TOS episode and generally have a good time talking about a shaggy thing that isn't really very good, but it's got those TOS vibes. Sometimes, that's all you need.

We got a rare opportunity to expose a new person to Wesley Crusher without the burden of expectation, and boy howdy does it not disappoint. Join Ryan and Brady as we talk about Trek's most famous self-insert character, old SNL sketches, the one cool effect sequence in this episode, and how dumb this episode's resolution is.

Ryan gets to nerd out about James Bond as he and Brady talk about this very fun holodeck episode of DS9. Also discussed: Star Trek Timelines, turtleneck fashion, and Star Trek's take on nature vs. nurture as it relates to pattern buffer mishaps. Production note: This is, hopefully, the last episode where Ryan has bad audio, as we hopefully will have resolved our mic issues by this time. Also, we a...

Sorry for our late episode posting this week, gang! That was on Ryan for forgetting to post it during a very busy crowdfunding campaign at his work. Anyway, on this episode we talk about starting to understand why people weren't super into TOS Season 3, as we dive into an episode premise that has an interesting premise but a not nearly as interesting execution.

Out of the Paramount+ mines, Ryan and Brady tackle a wide-ranging episode that includes talk of the Decipher Star Trek CCG, what fake name you would scramble for in a pinch, how this episode reads like a critique of revisionist plantation tourism, and much more! It's one of our favorites as of late.

How many times have we talked about an episode from the Paramount+ era of Star Trek in which Ryan says "This is one of my least favorite moments in nuTrek?" Is it just bad luck, or are there just too many of those moments? Anyway, Ryan and Brady talk about the episode of Picard where Seven and Raffi have a really long fight in a parking lot.  Look, we promise, there's no more new Star Trek on the...

Ryan and Brady take a detour into the recent Star Trek Day announcements before going long on the third season of Strange New Worlds, a very pleasant show that is also maybe out of ideas? Join us as we talk about what a difference a good cast makes, prequels that could be spiritual but end up being literal, and baseball metaphors.

Ryan and Brady limp to the end of their mini-Discovery run with this Breen-centric episode. But did the showrunners miss an opportunity to reveal the look of the race for the first time? Why are the details of this episode so hard to remember?

Ryan and Brady talk about the old reliable of Star Trek Voyager: A Doctor episode! A goofy outing for the Delta Quadrant crew becomes, if you think about it, a kind of touching meditation on who could survive their innermost thoughts being put on display for all to see.