Trek Marry Kill

MY FAIR SEVEN. The Doctor sticks his photons into Seven of Nine's interest in procuring a man to "date," and little does he know that his programming has made him vulnerable to the feminine wiles of Seven of Nine, who is completely clueless about how humans date. Kristen returns to discuss the "Seven is horny" episode which features a complimentary B-plot featuring the hilarious Scott Thompson fro...

A LOVE STORY? When Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and Commissioner Nancy Hedford discover Zefram Cochrane is both still alive and under the influence of an electrical cloud that has fallen in love with him, it's just the setup for perhaps the deepest exploration of love in Star Trek history.  Joining Bryan to discuss this BIG SWING from 1967 is Laurie Ulster from TrekMovie.com. Can she and Bryan agree on a f...

OFF THE SCALE! The Enterprise is thrown to the edge of the universe in one of the biggest swings Star Trek has ever taken. Joining Bryan to discuss this important early episode of TNG where Captain Picard talks to his dead mother and when Wesley Crusher meets the Traveler, are Mark Farinas & Ryan T. Riddle from the Ship Full of Jerks Podcast. They're here not only to judge the quality of this seas...

BOIM US UP! This month's animated spotlight looks at the highs and lows of being a lower decker as well as the highs and lows of Star Trek stories told via animation. Joining Bryan to discuss are two animation veterans: Cassie has written for multiple animated series and hosts a podcast that spotlights women & nonbinary talent in animation called The Ink & Paint Folk Podcast. Their partner Matt is...

SCOTTY GETS DRUNK with a Kelvan and Star Trek fans are given a scene to enjoy forever. Does the rest of the episode rise to the occasion or is there a "just play the hits" quality to it? It's Trek Marry Kill's 79th episode, and so it seemed only fitting to do an episode of TOS.  The Enterprise is once again taken over by superior beings and once again it's up to Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and Scotty to f...

ANSON MOUNT'S RETURN from paternity leave thrusts Captain Pike into an adventure where he loses his memory and becomes... the darkness that's been inside him all along? And it's because an asteroid crashed on a planet thousands of years ago? Huh? This week, Bryan is joined by Michael Baumann of the cycling blog Wheelysports and the baseball blog FanGraphs to sort out a greatest hits-type of story....

GATES MCFADDEN DIRECTS one of the biggest swings in the history of the Star Trek franchise: the crew de-evolves! How did the Dancing Doctor's perspective improve the episode and is her directorial debut a classic? Joining Bryan this week is actor-writer-producer-director Heidi Cox, creator of the web series "Stalking LeVar" and co-founder of Dweeb Darlings (@DweebDarlings on social), a media compa...

MASAKA IS SLEEPY! Writer-Director-Actor Thomas Tulak joins Bryan to discuss one of the most extreme examples of writing, directing, and acting in all of Star Trek history. Is Brent Spiner up to the task of playing multiple characters from an entire civilization? Is Patrick Stewart sleepwalking through his performance or does he manage to act just enough in this one to not be shown up by the 12 err...

PARTY OF LINCOLN! We continue to look at Star Trek's BIG SWINGS with the episode where literally Abraham Lincoln beams aboard the Enterprise. It's a classic Star Trek story that includes wacky 1960s predictions about the future, alien gods pitting our crew against the forces of evil itself for their own amusement, and some really unsubtle Kirk-Spock slashfic material.  Joining Bryan this week is r...

COOL OR FOOL? In the this month's animated spotlight, Bryan and Katie Hampton from the Napping Through Happy Hour podcast take a look at two Lower Decks episodes that firmly push the freshman series in its own direction. In the first, Mariner suspects that Boimler's long distance girlfriend is a parasite. In the second, Tim Robinson screams his way through some shenanigans.  Are they Treks, Marrys...

CAMP OR CLASSIC? The Emmy-winning and New York Times-bestselling writer Joshua Pruett returns to walk Bryan through the high camp of one of Star Trek: Voyager's most tragic episodes in which the crew discovers that they are merely mimic goo that's now disintegrating because of an enhanced warp drive. Did Bryan Fuller and Nick Sagan have higher aims or were they locked into a nihilistic ending? And...

LOKI MEETS TWILIGHT? Bryan and Kristen kick off a new theme series: BIG SWINGS. And, folks, Star Trek is committed to the big swing. This time out sees La'an teaming up with an alternate reality Captain Kirk to travel back in time to 21st century Earth for reasons. Does the episode reveal something new about La'an? Does it give us a new side of Kirk even if only through the lens of an alternate re...

SOME MALE BONDING is all the crew behind Star Trek: Enterprise needed to get excited again about their show late in the first season. This bottle episode that was largely a two-hander wound up bonding actors Connor Trinneer and Dominic Keating IRL. Does this one evoke the adventure and progressivism that are the hallmarks of Trek, or does it tend to scratch the itch of its corporate masters who wa...

WHY WON'T THEY? A mysterious disease forces Janeway and Chakotay to live on an alien planet for the rest of their lives, but will the tension force them to move beyond colleagues? Wait a minute. What tension? Is there actually something here, or is it merely the inertia of a man and a woman of similar ages being stranded together in a confined space? Is it the ultimate Bachelor date?  Our Two Hand...

IT'S BUFFER TIME! Bryan and returning guest co-host Katie Hampton from Geekscape's Napping Through Happy Hour podcast (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/napping-through-happy-hour/id1628046345) judge two more episodes of Star Trek: Lower Decks and, folks, you're not going to believe this, but they didn't agree on a grade for either of them! We'll need your vote to break the deadlocks! After Ca...

JUST BROING OUT. A key episode in the development of Chief O'Brien and Dr. Bashir's friendship sees them trapped on an alien world trying to survive until Commander Sisko can rescue them. Joining Bryan to discuss this pivotal story is Clint Worthington, Editor-in-Chief of The Spool (https://thespool.net), a pop culture website focused on Film & TV.   Back in 2021, Clint wrote "Queering the Bromanc...

GEORDI'S BIG EPISODE finds him trapped on a weird planet with a Romulan centurion. We get to see LeVar Burton channel his natural charisma and show different sides of our favorite chief engineer, but it's nearly overshadowed by one of the most compelling ethical and moral dilemmas ever featured on The Next Generation when Worf has the chance to save the life of a different Romulan.  Our Two Hander...

MOST FAMOUS EPISODE? Last week was the 55th anniversary of perhaps the most famous episode of Star Trek, which is really saying something. It's a middle of season three episode wherein the Enterprise takes on two passengers -- one half black on the left side of their face and half white on the white; the other half white on the left and half black on the right -- that leads to an allegory or parab...

KIRA'S SOLEMN VOW leads to a shocking truth: vengeance is not moral. In the course of investigating a single Cardassian she comes to the realization that collective punishment of all Cardassians isn't justice, even if this particular Cardassian wants to face judgment for his people's crimes. It's one of the most intense episodes of Star Trek ever made and to help Bryan discuss this Deep Space Nine...

ODO'S PANIC ATTACKS lead to some scary times aboard Deep Space Nine thanks to some volcanic gas from a planet in the Gamma Quadrant and the arrival of Odo's old captor/trainer/parent figure, Dr. Mora (James Sloyan). It's an episode that was intended to be about alternate personalities, but it winds up being something else entirely. Kristen test runs her New Year's Resolution, Bryan tries to sing K...

HAPPY NEW YEAR! We kick off 2024 with our animated spotlight on the beloved Star Trek: Lower Decks and we do it by bringing in one of the biggest fans of the show: Katie Hampton, a comedy writer and performer in LA who co-hosts the Napping Through Happy Hour Podcast (social: @ElSassyPants or @ElSassyPantz on TIkTok). She was also a guest on our Star Trek: Picard -  "Surrender" episode last season....

A TRANSPORTER MIRACLE created two Rikers eight years ago setting up a situation where Counselor Troi would be confronted with the man she fell in love with who was still madly in love with her and Commander Riker looking a different part of himself right in the eyes. It's all in service of getting some Important Scientific Data from a planet and that could not be any less interesting than the love...

KIRK'S TOXIC MASCULINITY is unleashed after a transporter accident involving mystery ore from a freezing planet splits him into his Negative Side and Positive Side. This mascara'd drunk sexually assaults Yeoman Rand. Meanwhile, the Positive Side winds up being the passive side and his inaction and softness begins to offend Mr. Spock!  It's an episode that only could've been written in the 1960s an...

TWO MANY JANEWAYS? That's the conundrum at the heart of season two standout "Deadlock," and joining Bryan this week is Captain Janeway superfan Marina Kravchuk from Daily Star Trek News to talk all about. There's a lot of technobabble that only makes sense because of the years of world building going on since the TNG days, but there's also a lot of Voyager-specific tropes deployed in an episode th...

BLEEP GOT FREAKY aboard the USS Voyager, but BLEEP gets even freakier aboard the USS Cerritos after it's assigned to tow the famous ship to its final home as a museum piece. In this special bonus episode, Twitter/X's FanSince09 returns to discuss how Lower Decks deals with Star Trek's version of the trolley problem. He also uses this opportunity to soft launch a podcast he's been thinking about fo...