Join hosts John, Cam, and Jesse this week as we talk with writer David Reed! He helped bring us 203: "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow" and 206: "Lost in Translation" of Star Trek Strange New Worlds
He also might be the unsung original hero of a much beloved Season 2 episode as well...so listen up!
Check out David's work on "The Boys" as well, after you listen to this episode of course!
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This is David Reed and you are listening to open pike night the undressed hot dog of the podcasting world
John T Bolds:this thing on hello hello welcome to open like guide. I'm your host John T bolds. here tonight with our amazing guests and our wonderful callers on stage to answer possibly the most important question about season two of Star Trek stage new worlds. But first, let me introduce my co hosts, the man who would definitely screw up the timeline ever dying temporal agent handed him a cool new toy Jesse Bailey.
Jesse:Hey, you don't know. No, no, yeah, yeah, you're totally right. Nevermind. And
John T Bolds:the man who would definitely listen to what a zombie version of a dead friend was trying to tell him. Host of green shirt, a newbie strike for the next generation. Cameron Harrison. What's
Cameron:that? John? Cindy more paramedics. Okay.
John T Bolds:Classic reference. And tonight we have a fantastic guest with us. The man who helped put Toronto on the map. And the man who gave us more hammer man who has written for lines for Kirk Spock, Uhura and McCoy. Okay, fine, is Karl Urban. But still, please welcome the writer of tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and lost in translation. David Reed.
David Reed:Hello, thank you so much for having me.
John T Bolds:Thank you for being here. It's it's great to have another writer on We love talking to writers here on open bike night. And we're excited when we were able to connect with you. Writers
David Reed:are always excited that anyone remembers that we even exist, or want to hear what we have to say. Hollywood is not super friendly to writer. So this is exciting. We don't get let out of our cage much.
Cameron:Well, we've got your red meat. I don't know.
John T Bolds:Yeah. Cam, you said that somebody else was recognizing David and wanted to say hello, I
Cameron:Yeah, Bill woke up while we on Twitter. I was letting him know we were about to talk to you. And he says Say hello.
David Reed:Hey, Phil. I haven't seen Bill in a while. I should I should reach out. Yeah,
John T Bolds:that's funny, because he also said to remind you that they're always watching. I can't remember. Yeah. Anyway. Let's talk about season three strange.
Cameron:Well, I don't know what your most pressing question was, John. But I think you know, let's just get this out of the way right now. Tomorrow and tomorrow. And tomorrow. What's your guys's shorthand for that title? Because we call it tomorrow cube over here? What do you guys call it?
David Reed:What do we call it? In the writers room. There was never there wasn't like a working title for that one. And I wrote it by myself and chose the title by myself. And by that point, it was like, beyond the discussion in our room because we had other we had to worry about the next couple. So yeah, I think we mostly just call it 203.
John T Bolds:Nice, so don't worry, we'll get to the most important question. Time. Yeah, now, but
Cameron:for now let's let's go back in time, fittingly enough to when you were a wee lad or whenever you first got the writing bug. How did you get interested in writing?
David Reed:That is sort of connected to being very, very we because for me, I realized that a person could be a TV writer from watching Deep Space Nine. And it was it was me. So I grew up in sort of the middle of nowhere in Wisconsin, and we didn't have a Deep Space Nine and Voyager were both syndicated late at night on the weekend. Deep Space Nine was Saturday night. Voyager was Sunday night tng we didn't get it all I only was able to watch tng through borrowing videotapes from my friends who had cable and just illegally recorded them. So but I was watching an episode of Deep Space Nine. And it just I don't know why that one episode. I don't remember which one it was. But there was one that I was thinking about what's what does it mean to be a co executive producer. And then I started thinking about that. And then I was watching the credits. And I was like, oh, and someone wrote this. And like, their job is to just sit around and think about Star Trek all the time. And that must be like, just amazing, right? Like, that's the that was the job that I wanted. So I was sort of more interested in being a Star Trek writer than being a writer. And it took me actually a really long time to come back around to it because I went to the University of Wisconsin Madison to be a computer programmer, computer science. And I did like a last minute emergency pivot to being a film major because I realized how boring it was. I was just like, I'm i all i want to do is think about TV and movies. And I don't want to you know, I thought I was going to work on like video games. And I was like, I don't want to be the person whose job is to like code, the interaction between a video game characters foot and the floor, I want to, you know, tell stories and, and so I found my way back to it. But it all sort of goes back to trek for me because my first memory as a person is watching Star Trek, I was I was a very small child. And I was at home with my parents and my parents were in the next room arguing about whether or not they should give me any juice because I was sick, and my dad was worried I was gonna throw up, and it would like stay in the French. And I was watching on TV Star Trek three, the Search for Spock. And so that was like the beginning of my consciousness as far as I remember. And then I was obsessed with Star Trek my entire childhood, particularly the original series, which I watched on on VHS tape, and then Deep Space Nine, I was just that was my, that was my trek and everything I've watched and loved everything else. But it's, it's always come back to that. And for me, I don't even totally think of myself as a writer. I'm just like a person who kind of fell into this. And here I am. And I've written a bunch of TV now. And I've written some books and comic books and movies and things, but it's not. I don't totally think of it as like my identity. I also have directed and I still feel like I would like to work on video games someday. So yeah, I'm just kind of go down,
Cameron:but feet and floors. I don't want to.
John T Bolds:I would like to just write collision detection. Come on, man. It's like can't be that bad. Yeah, I
David Reed:mean, someone's got to do right.
Cameron:Well, usually I go chronologically, but I mean, this begs the question, Did you were you trying to get onto a Star Trek show? Or did someone just happen to reach out? How did you get on strangely worlds? How the dream happen? So
David Reed:one of my very best friends is Henry Alonzo Meyers. Okay, so that helped. But yeah, so when, when I was working on the magician's with Henry, so Henry eventually became the show, the CO showrunner of the magicians, he started out as sort of the number two, who ran the room when the show runners weren't there. And then when he took over, then I became his number two. So I ran the room when he wasn't there, the writers room. And around that time, our mutual friend John McNamara, his wife, Julie McNamara, was running CBS All Access. She was the executive in charge of the programming decisions for CBS. And that was when discovery had been ordered to series but hadn't. It hadn't broadcast any episodes yet. And discovery. The writers room is taking a long time, they were just trying to get everything right. And there had been some behind the scenes showrunner changes and some some drama there. And I got a call, basically, from Julie McNamara's office saying, Would you be willing during your hiatus from the magicians because she knew that I was a huge Star Trek fan from from John and just from me having dinner at their house a couple times? She was like, Would you be willing to come over and just kind of consult on Star Trek Discovery. And what they ended up doing was very rightfully was they took the money that they might have spent on a new writer, and they just extended every all the writers who were already there. So it just didn't work out. And then they call me again for season two. And I wasn't available. And then they stopped calling. And then when the magician's was ending, I knew that there was what was being called at the time the the pike Spock spin off. And because they weren't sure if they weren't going to be able, I think, I think Rebecca Romain was not totally like, contractually, they hadn't worked out her deal yet. So they weren't sure if it was going to be all three of them from disco season two, or if it was just gonna be pike and Spock. But so I met to actually to do Henry's job to be the CO showrunner because I was an executive producer on the magician's. I had some, you know, writing samples that were in that area. And I was like, wildly not qualified for it. And so it was not real, it was not actually going to happen. And I ended up going to work on the boys instead. And that that offer just came in first. So I went and did that. And then, about two weeks after I took the job and the boys and Henry called me and said, Hey, great news. I'm gonna be Kosho running strange new worlds, which I don't think they even decided on the title yet. But he was like, I'm gonna run this show. Come on over. Like,
Cameron:did you know yours in the running? Or was that kind of out of the blue?
David Reed:No, I mean, I knew he was in the running and I knew he had met on it, and he and Alex Kurtzman they know each other from from way back as well. And obviously he knows John McNamara as well. So he had the same people vouching for him. But yeah, we. We talked a lot about season one, but I wasn't available to work on it. And it wasn't until I was done with season three of the Boys and I had come back from filming that in Toronto. And I had been talking to Jack Quaid on set. And talking about Star Trek and about, I was like, You should play boiler in live action at some point. And I know the showrunner of strange new worlds all, let's, let's see if I can make this happen. And I was talking to Henry, and he's like, Well, if you're around, like, we kind of need some help, like they needed basically another upper level writer in the room to kind of just keep the the trains moving. When he and Akiva were busy with all of the production realities, and the, you know, a show like strange new worlds has such a long post production period, because of all the visual effects. And you have to see those visual effects over and over and over. And they're giving notes and they're saying, tweak this and move this ship a little this way. And the phaser should be a little more red or whatever. So he was very busy. And it just the timing worked out. So I came in for season two. And then I had to leave a little bit before, before we were done with Season Two to go back to boys, because that's sort of my, it's like, that's my day job in a way, and then I'm sort of consulting on strange new worlds. And then the exact same thing happened in season three. Whereas I knew I was done. I was like, I can't come back. I'm busy. And then things just lined up in the in the right way. And they needed someone right when I had some availability. So I came back and I wrote a couple. A couple more episodes in season three. And I keep thinking like under a workout again, but you know, they've already started. They've been picked up for season four, and we're working on season five of the boys, so I can't come back for season four. But but it was yeah, it was all really because of because of Henry and because of John and because of just being absolutely obsessed with Star Trek.
Cameron:When I know your passion Yeah, yeah. And
Jesse:seriously, like, writing the boys as your day job and just kind of doing Star Trek by night is amazing, right. Just imagine
David Reed:it's friggin awesome. Worked at the whiplash, the tonal whiplash of going no kidding between, like, exploding dicks. I mean, that's not to be totally crude. You said I could swear. But yeah, that's the energy for sure. On the boys, and then to come over and, you know, Star Trek is it's a utopian future. And it's so much about inclusivity and about optimism. And I think the boys is trying to be a reflection of our flaws in a way that Star Trek is like, trying to be an example of our positive future, obviously. So yeah, there's there's a difference in the jokes we might tell in each of those writers rooms.
John T Bolds:Yeah, I was thinking about looking through your your filmography is like, Man, this this swap between irreverent and Reverend between those two writers room like, that has got to be hard. So
David Reed:yeah, it's, it's a lot, but it's fun. It's awesome. I love both the shows. I love both universes. So happy to get the chance. Yeah,
Cameron:that's great. Well, going back, how did you go from film school graduate to getting a paid writing gig? Yeah,
David Reed:I mean, it actually is entirely because of my wife. So we I was obsessed at the time. This is when we moved to Los Angeles. It was 2006. And we were dating. I wasn't married at the time. And we went to a screening of Battlestar Galactica, the Sci Fi reimagined Battlestar, which at the time was like, I mean, I just loved it more than anything. And it's, that's probably the reason why I actually committed to like moving to Los Angeles and pursuing TV writing. And so we went to a screening that the writers were going to do a q&a at. And I went and talked to one of the writers who actually, it's his name is Michael Taylor, who's written a bunch of amazing Star Trek, including maybe my two favorite deep space nine episodes. Yeah. But so I was talking to him. And you know, he talks to a lot of genre fans, I think, and I was just being a fanboy. And you'd be like, Oh, my God, I love your show so much. And he's like, cool. Like, back away slowly, please. And at the same time, my wife or girlfriend at the time now my wife, she went and talk to the wife of another one of the writers and that lady, she was like, oh, yeah, no, my husband will absolutely give you his business card, and he'll read your script. And he'll take you to lunch. And he'll give you whatever career advice you might want that that writer is David Weddell from Battlestar, who also wrote some Deep Space Nine. And he was just so open and and generous with his time and it was sort of because his wife made him but you know, he was he's a great guy anyway. So I ended up getting a job on Battlestar as the writer's assistant. And I learned just an insane amount from all of them and for Ron, when I went into interview, I was sitting across from Ron Moore, who was one of my greatest heroes in life. And it was so distracting because he had wharfs bat left on the wall behind him. And I was just like, that's his actual, the screen use real batla from the next generation is just on Ron Moore's wall in his office. And I'm just like, sorry, Ron, I just I can't pay attention to anything you're saying in this job interview? Because I'm just staring at this. But yes, and then from there, I just I worked as an assistant on a bunch of shows I worked on that I worked on Supernatural for a couple years, I worked on revolution. And I wrote an episode, I wrote a couple episodes of supernatural and revolution as an assistant and then eventually got to be a full time writer. Very cool.
Cameron:And what is it like to have? I mean, it's, it must always be great to see your words brought to life by amazing actors. But some of your lines have been delivered by some of the most iconic actors of our time. We've got Michael Ironside, Robert England, Carol Kane,
David Reed:you went deep. Oh, yeah.
Cameron:We've got like passing questions. Don't you worry. Oh, yeah.
David Reed:Well, it's obviously it's amazing to have to have all of those very iconic and talented actors say all those things. It's also sometimes embarrassing because, you know, your your refer. There was a time when I was the writers assistant on Battlestar that the Sci Fi Channel was doing sci fi original movies, which aired on Saturday nights, right? And all kinds of creature features. And so just through knowing some of the executives at sci fi, they said, Well, you know, you're not in the Writers Guild, yet, maybe you'd want to try your hand at pitching on some of these. And I ended up writing a couple of them. And, you know, I would say that in the production of those movies, the scripts were a suggestion. And they would kind of do whatever they want it. So like Michael Ironside, I loved, like Starship Troopers. And I mean, it was just a super, super important movie to me when I was a teenager. And so he was in Lake Placid three, which was amazing. And then I'm, like, watching the dailies for it. And I'm like, he also was just saying whatever it feels like. And I don't, I don't, I don't blame him. for it. It was it was not. I was not an experienced writer. And I definitely didn't have experience with the physical production. So like one of the things that you really have to learn and figure out as a TV writer is like, there's a big difference between what you would like to have happen and what they can actually achieve. And so especially on a movie like that That movie was shot in Bulgaria, outside of Sofia, Bulgaria. And so they didn't really have a lot of people around who could speak English. So there were a couple characters in that movie that were local Bulgarian actors who they later ADR, they replaced their voices, with American actors in post, and you can really tell it's done very seamlessly. But it was it was an amazing experience just to get to write something and to have it me because, you know, at the time, like a lot of my friends were just they were doing the same job as me, but they didn't have any of that sort of creative fulfillment of getting to see the process through to see, you know, the Director's Cut. See the dailies see, the different kids have to go through the notes process. One of the most fascinating parts was the Sci Fi Channel executives were like, look, we know who's watching these movies. They are people who are not, this is not what they're doing. They're like this is on while they're doing something else. They told me that their market research showed that a lot of the audience was drinking while they were watching. And a lot of the audience also didn't watch the whole thing. So they said you can't refer to any important plot information at the end of the movie. What happened at the beginning, because no one is going to remember because they just tuned in halfway through. So I learned a lot. I would hope that in our streaming age, you're you know, you're choosing things more selectively and watching maybe the whole thing but yeah, I remember
John T Bolds:getting pretty lit up on whiskey sours to I believe it was SS Doom Trooper the Sci Fi original movie, like, yeah, that was that was an era of sci fi man. That was classic. Yeah. Um, yeah,
David Reed:the secret. You know, it's I haven't scrubbed those from my IMDb because I have enough pride in it that I'm like, I don't care if people know. It's like it's embarrassing to a certain extent because they didn't turn out great. But the thing I will admit to y'all that is not on there is that I wrote twice as many as are on my IMDb I didn't take credit for them because at a certain point, like
Cameron:plaster board is a
David Reed:good one. I mean, like that's it for. Yeah. So that but there were a couple more that I did uncredited dialogue polishes. Just basically write jokes to make the character sound more human or to make the scripts funnier. And I did that on a couple of movies. I won't tell you which ones because, you know, there's a reason that I didn't put my name in there.
Cameron:That's where we'll do some detective work. And we'll send you some guesses and you can give us the thumbs up or thumbs down. Well, a lot of your previous work does involve the magical arts, let's say on something like the magician's or supernatural. Or, I admit I haven't seen the boys so I don't know how much of their powers are science based or just superhero, mostly science base. Yeah. But how is it shifting into like the science and technobabble of Star Trek coming from kind of those more esoteric worlds?
David Reed:It's so much easier for me. I feel like the particularly like writing for Spock is the easiest thing in the world for me, because it's just so deeply ingrained in my psyche. Like, I find myself in the strange new worlds writers room, just speaking, in Spock dialogue, like, I'll just pitch you something, but I'll just say it in that mannerism. And that because of the long history of it, because you're building off of, you know, 900 episodes, like, which I've seen all of that you are just like, Okay, I know how to do this. Whereas on something like the boys or the magicians, there's, there's, there's material that those shows are based off of right? The Magicians is based on a trilogy of novels and the boys obviously a comic book, but you're still kind of figuring out the voice as you go. And you're trying to pick up the showrunners tone in their voice. And that's a big challenge. That's, that's actually the job of being a TV writer more than anything else is just like being able to mimic tone. He is, you know, 90% of TV writers are not running the show, they're working for someone else, and you're just trying to make your boss happy, and to do good work inside the structure of what someone else has built. But for me, because Star Trek existed, and I've watched so much of it as a kid, like in this and you know, my parents are both doctors, a lot of my family members are doctors and scientists. The science aspect of it is really appealing to me, and I want it to make sense. And I'm sure you know, listeners will then go back and like watch the episodes that I wrote and be like, well, they don't make sense at all. But I'm like, Okay, I want them to make sense in the way that Star Trek makes sense. Right? Which is like when it feels like
Cameron:do you enjoy working with Aaron McDonald, then? Yeah,
David Reed:Aaron is great. We, we usually have like a either a sit down or a Zoom meeting at the beginning of the season, where we just sort of go through the premise premises premises of the season, because one of the interesting things about strange new worlds is that you have to figure out what all of the episodes are going to be about very early in the process. Because you have to start we have to start building the digital assets for the LED wall before you do any other prep work for the season. So that means that we have a meeting with Aaron, where we we talk through like, okay, so this is the episode where I, you know, had a childhood fixation on Bussard collectors, and so I want to talk about them. And I talked through the science of it, and then she'll say, Well, here's the thing, like, I think she suggested for lost in translation of statistics, the idea that the sort of extra dimensional creatures are attached to the deuterium, I think in the original pitch, it was just like, they're just like, out there. They're just like, mingling with the deuterium. And she was like, no, they're from another dimension. And they like attach themselves. And that's how they move. So she'll come in with notes like that. And she makes it make sense in a way that we otherwise wouldn't be able to. And then there's other stuff where like, we like for episode two or three loss or tomorrow, tomorrow and tomorrow, we had the idea of the tritium watch, that would kind of show where cold fusion reactor might be. And we came up with a science about in the room and so what we needed from her was just a cosine. And she was like, Oh, look like it makes sense. And I was like, that's all I need.
John T Bolds:It's a star trick. Yeah. Tritium and nuclear devices are not dis you know, like they they're kind of related close to full
David Reed:name. Volkoff. Bill Wolkoff had had done some research for a previous show that he had worked on, and that's where they came from. And then room he just was like, Well, did you know this thing about cold fusion? And I was like, obviously, you know, while he was pitching it, I was just on my phone in the room like looking up tritium and I was like, oh, it's in divers watches. And so instantly I was just like, well that's what it's gonna be. It's gonna be she's got this watch and so then you know, we had to figure out some of the science around that stuff but it really comes down to like Aaron trying to help us get to the coolest story and sometimes she'll suggest stuff that's not totally scientifically accurate knowing that she's like, but this which I feel like this would just make a cooler story. So would you do this and I'm like, Are all of us you know, in the in the room say? Yes, please. Let's do the one that is just the most exciting Excellent.
John T Bolds:Well, we have our first caller up. Here's a good friend plaidy with
Platty:a open mic night this is peerless. plaidy M three Hello, David Reid. Thanks for joining this week and talking to the guys who recently just ranked all the strange new worlds episodes and most definitely put one of yours in the top three. Or at least one handsome devil of a caller did props to that guys. Also props to oh, sorry all those my friend Barney just walking by. He just came back from Costco on the way home today got a couple of those dollar 50 hotdogs with the mustard and the ketchup and the rouse the onions on it. Oh, man. What a great smell combination just hanging over the recording studio man right now. Just heavenly heavenly man. Oh, sorry. Sorry, where was it? David Reed right dude, really enjoyed your work on strange worlds. And I see row for one of my other favorite series supernatural. That's awesome. I have recently been watching all the 90s track. But that's about to come to an end and I need another another sci fi show to begin. So tell me all about your work on the magicians sell that show to me. I've only heard a few things about it. But it's always been good. Tell me more good. Also, and feel free to place blame on the editing or production or the shitty depraved universes or whatever that was going on there. But a year now it's kind of been a thing year round open pike night with Kirk wing lawn with a hot dog with zero condiments. Come on, man. Personally, I just don't see the appeal of going in for a flirt with just a naked wiener in your hand. But hey, whatever. How the heck did that happen? Hotdogs aside. Thank you, David, for one of my top strange to Worlds episodes in tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow, really like lost in translation as well. And look forward to seeing whatever else you do have a good one.
Cameron:That's the most important question, isn't it?
John T Bolds:That was the most important question. Yes.
David Reed:Okay. Well, I so I did listen, I listened to your episode about tomorrow on tomorrow, tomorrow and the discussion of the hotdogs. And what I have to say about that is so I was not on set for that episode, because I had to go back to my my day job on the voice. So if you want in the future, to place specific blame for
Cameron:this IRS or reward someone or the right choice,
David Reed:depending on your perspective, I would direct that to nature Johnson because she was very helpfully covering for me. She was the one who you know, was standing next to them while they were making these decisions. So actually, I like as a person who doesn't like ketchup, which is a weird thing, but I actually kind of understand it, but I definitely didn't write it with that in mind. I was picturing a full like a fully loaded. Yes. And I think thank you, when you think about television production, though, there's a couple things that happen, like, characters very rarely get wet, because it's such a pain because then you have to do another take, and they have to get dried off and put on new clothes. So when you put a bunch of like ketchup and mustard and whatever, on a hotdog, it just makes a big mess for production because then it's like it's gonna get on his face. And sometimes it's just what what will the actor eat? That's a whole thing where we had on to pivot to his other question about the magicians, we had some actors on the magicians who were either vegan or vegetarian or just had some food allergies. And so we would write scenes of them eating and then we would the prop department who handles that kind of the food they actually eat, they have to make like, you know, make a hot dog but but out of entirely vegetarian ingredients or whatever, and make it look like a not veggie hotdog or whatever. So I don't know if that was the case here. But the pitch the the quick pitch for the magicians is it's like, sort of an acid trip version of Harry Potter meets Narnia. Very often when it was when it was first in production, I would describe it as Harry Potter with drugs and sex. And it's, it's a coming of age story. It's a story about figuring out who you are and what the world really is. But with the trappings of magic, and through the lens of like, it's, it's for people who grew up with Harry Potter, and have are now grownups and want to take a story like that, more seriously, like with more human emotion and you know, darker themes. But it also is very funny. Like, one of the things that happened on that show over time was it became more of a comedy, which Henry Alonzo Meyers, the strange new world show runner, he was very much responsible for that he did the show was not totally a comedy at first, and he wrote a couple of very funny episodes. And we're like, oh, we're allowed to do that. We can just make jokes. We're definitely doing that from now on.
Cameron:Well, in that vein, I also think Kirk would enjoy a ride dog. So that's, yeah, yeah, that's right, Dan,
Jesse:I, I have to say that answer is very illuminating. Because I, obviously just recently rewatched that episode, and there's some definite, like gesturing that Kurt does with the hot dogs. So it makes sense that, you know, for production reasons, they'd be like, do not put condiments on this. But yeah, I mean, I'm always gonna be in the no naked dogs group. But I really appreciate having the answer to it. And you can bet that we will ask nature about that. We will get her back for a third time and talk nothing but hot dogs Taylor.
David Reed:Yeah. Tell her that I put her on the spot. And I said, Why? Why?
Cameron:Why? What were the discussions had onset at that. Yeah,
David Reed:my creative vision wasn't respected. She did a great job, it was actually super helpful for me, because to have to be able to trust that the episode was in good hands when I had to have, you know, I had to go off and have nothing to do with it. And I would just sneak out of our writers room occasionally. And just because we can watch our we can watch it being filmed live from anywhere. So I just could log in and watch the filming. And that was a lot of fun. But I did. I regretted not being able to actually be there for that one.
John T Bolds:Dang. Yeah. Well, I've
Jesse:heard it was like one of the coldest days of the year in Toronto while they were shooting that so maybe you actually dodged a bullet there too. Yeah. Yeah.
David Reed:I mean, when isn't it the coldest day of the year? The boys also filmed in Toronto. So I've spent a lot of time in Toronto. I love the city. It's great.
John T Bolds:Well, we'll, we'll get into Star Trek specific a little bit. You talked about your extensive history with it. What would you consider what we call here on open pike? Your home track? Like? What is what is always the first and foremost Trek series that you love the most?
David Reed:Oh, that's easy. It's Deep Space Nine 100%. Excellent
John T Bolds:choice.
David Reed:I mean, you know, my experience with it was that that was the one that was airing. Like, when I was at my most formative age, you know, it's I was 10 years old when it started. And you know, about to graduate from high school when it ended. And so that's, that's a time when you just find stuff that you really love. That's yours. And I had watched Star Trek with my parents a little. But, you know, I think this is actually a pretty common phenomenon. Like, I became too much of a Star Trek nerd for them. And they were like, backing away like we can't, we can't go where you're going with. And so Deep Space Nine though, it had both. It had it did basically with strange new worlds is doing now, which is that episodic stories, but serialized character through lines. And then obviously, by the end of it, you know, it's like a 10 part series finale, which was unpressed I mean, even among really prestigious dramas at the time, that was just unheard of, you know, so inspiring. And I just love the characters. And you know, also, I loved the original series, and I love the next generation, Voyager. I was like, I watched all of it and it was just never quite for me. But the interesting thing being in a Star Trek writers room is that there's so many Voyager die hearts. You know, KEARSON Byers, who's who's written on so many of the Kurtzman era shows, like, lives and breathes for Voyager? Obviously she's she's written a bunch of novels. She kind of took over that that story after the show. And then there's like me and Katherine Lynn, and Henry in the room who are like but Deep Space Nine that's I mean, isn't isn't it just known that that's the best one. And the fights we have like this almost screaming arguments about which series is the best against Got a lot. That's
Cameron:great. It's great that you're coming of age series was something amazing like DS nine because mine was seaQuest. And it oh
David Reed:I love seaQuest too. I worked with Rockne O'Bannon on a show called Revolution. And he had a poster in his office that NBC gave him after seaQuest premiered. And it said something I forget the exact numbers, but it was like 66 million people took the plunge. And then in the first episode got like a 25 Share, which means that 25% of people with their TV on at the time we're watching seaQuest. Wow. I mean, point five share now that would be incredible. And so yeah, that show was a two if that if you got those numbers now. It would be tenfold the biggest show in the world. And now we treat it like that tiny little genre show that
Cameron:no dolphin show? Yeah. Now I loved it. I loved it. All right.
John T Bolds:HD Remaster new effects come on, and we can bring seaQuest back, we can do it.
Cameron:I take that. Take that. Anything we get more Roy Snyder on my screen.
John T Bolds:All right, here's our next caller, Melanie.
Unknown:Hi, guys. And hello, David. This is Melanie from Germany and calling in again. David l looked you up on the Internet Movie Database. And you wrote multiple fantastic episodes of supernatural the boys and strange shovels to name a few. But stranger also did an episode that's basically a love story. And you are lost in translation more for mystery episode. And I like them both very much, though. Thanks for that. Both of our different episodes. What kind of shoulder Do you like to write for the most? And I'm very curious to know how it works? Are you in a pool of writers who get assigned a specific episode and can write what you want for certain degree? And how big of an influence do you have on the story? And the characters? And what's happening in your story? Have you written episodes for the third season? And we also write for the fourth season? And what would you like to write about in the future? Or what series would you like to write for? Okay, I think I've asked you enough questions. So that's it for me. Thanks again for everything and live long and prosper.
Jesse:Possibly the most economic use of the 90 seconds then open pipe nightwalkers that we've ever had very well done melody that was information
David Reed:dense. Thank you, Melanie, thank you for for watching and enjoying some of these things we've talked about a little bit. I did write two episodes for the CO wrote two episodes for the third season. I'm not gonna do anything for the fourth season, at least currently. My favorite genre to write for is science fiction, I would say John, like genre television that can include fantasy as well. But definitely I'm a I'm a sci fi person. The writers room on strange new worlds is very collaborative. We come in at the beginning of the season, everyone pitches, the episodes that they would like to see, you don't necessarily have any control over which one you're actually going to write. So you have to kind of pitch episodes that you're like, I would both like to write this and also just would like to see this and we'd like to champion someone else getting to do this if you don't if it doesn't come up for you. I alluded to it a little bit earlier. But like one of the episodes that I pitched for season two was those old scientists. Because I work on the boys with Jack and I love like capital l love lower decks. It's just exactly my shit. And I love it so much that I was telling him I was like, you just need to play this character and live action jackets amazing on the boys and and so I was talking like when we first started the season two room. That was the first thing I pitched was like, there should be a crossover, you should get Jack Quaid. And you should get Tony Museum. They both look enough like their characters. And I pitched the actually my initial pitch was exactly what it ended up being which was so they're doing a lame mission on the Cerritos about, you know around this portal that does nothing. And it turns out that the portal actually does one thing which is send you 120 years in the past and they land on the enterprise. And there was an episode of The Magicians that Henry and I did. Were one of the characters he basically gets stuck in the astral plane. And so he's watching everyone go about their business they all think that he's dead basically. And he's not he's like a basically a kind of an astral ghost. And so I was like what if we did something like that where the point because that the pitcher that episode was this character Penny. It's like what if he had to watch an episode of the magicians and he hated it. He's like, he's watching the show that he's in, and he hates the show. Because it just seemed like it'd be very funny. And so the pitch for this was, what if the world's biggest, like strange new worlds fan landed on the enterprise and then had to be cool. Like, everyone is just like, don't blow up the timeline. And then, because I was not gonna be able to stick around, I couldn't, I couldn't write it. But luckily, we had Kat and Bill who both have animation experience, and Kat has, you know, written for lower decks, it was perfect, and they did a great job. And I helped punch it up, I added jokes, like, Pike, flippy, communicator joke and a couple others throughout. And so that was great. But what we ended up really doing is, you know, we break all of the stories together, we figure out the exact plot and all the character moves as a big group. And then a writer is assigned, you go off and write an outline. And then you go off and write a script. And the showrunners, or upper level writers will sometimes rewrite the scripts to make it fit with the characters voices are just punch things up, make it work for production. But yeah, extremely, extremely collaborative.
Cameron:Can I ask, did you get to meet Jonathan Frakes? Who directed?
David Reed:Oh, my God, no. And then Kat is now like, best friends with Frakes. And she's texting with him every day. She's like, we're sitting in the room for season three. And she was just like, Oh, I've got to send my Wordle score to Frakes. You stole this friendship. I've never met him. I mean, I've been in the room with him. And I've been on a zoom call with him. But I've never, we've never gotten to have a
Jesse:moment. So Well, David, I gotta say, I don't know that anybody knew that those old scientists was your pitch? Because I mean, we heaped a lot of praise on Katherine. And Bill, and obviously, the performers for that episode. But like, dude, like Star Trek fans owe you so much. That is, it
David Reed:was an instinct. Because like, you know, they did all the heavy lifting. I just was like, Wouldn't it be funny if and then the basic premise of it, but you know, really, the hardest part of that was making it totally work. And I know that Bill has talked to you about that on the show. But it's, it's really a bigger challenge than it seems. Because one of the things that we sort of wrestled with, was that Akiva was very, very concerned that the antics of those characters would be too much. And it would overpower the characters that, you know, as you guys have said, on several episodes, like we only have 10 Like, it's not enough, we want more. We want we've every season, we're like, what if we did 15 And they're like, We don't want to spend that much money. The the challenge of not letting it become just a lower decks episode, and still having some emotional relevance to the characters that we need to be caring the most about, which is our, our band of series regulars. So that was the part that you know, Bill and cat really needed to pick up the ball and and do that, but like, you know, I pitched the idea for Episode Five. And I knew from the beginning, that wasn't, I wasn't gonna write that one. Because as soon as I said it, Henry is like, Oh, I know how to do that. And I was like, yep, you're right. Were the people that needed to write that one. And then, but I didn't pitch the idea for Episode Three will became tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. That episode came from a Kiva wanting to do a Romulan thing. And then a Kiva wanting to direct an episode early in the season that he wanted to film in New York City. And you're probably asking yourself, why is it sentence Rasika? Why is it? Yeah, he approached CBS Studios and said, Hey, we have a plan. We're going to shoot an episode in New York City. We're going to take you know, our crew and our cast and we're going to do it on location. And they said, No, you're not. That sounds really expensive. I listening to your episode on that or your your podcast on that episode. You guys were talking about how these modern day time travel episodes come from budget. And that is 100% Not the case here. Very often. I imagine it is. In this case. This was an expensive episode. We did a lot of stuff in this caused a lot of money. And it was not from that at all. It was just wanting to do this story. He wanted to do a contemporary story that was about the Romulans and then I was like, I don't totally get it. Because as a you know, it's like me and Kat Lin And kierston buyers in the room who are the biggest, like cannon nerds? Who would tell you like, Well, according to, according to Memory Alpha can't do that, for these reasons. And so we had to go back and forth. And honestly, it was like me and Akiva arguing about like, well, we could do this. And then we can judge things this way. And we can make it make sense. And in the end, there when I watched the producers cut of the episode, Akiva and Henry had actually cut the bit that Sarah, the Romulan agent says, at the end about time, like healing itself, redirecting these moments, all the stuff about like, I've been here for a very long time. And they were just kind of scared. They were like, people are not going to react well to this. And they thought it was just too confusing. And I was like, No, you have to, this is the only way that this makes any sense to me.
Jesse:Dude, thank you again, because I mean, specifically, a ton of Trekkies were like, worried, right? I mean, a lot of people voiced concern when the character of Leon was even announced, because they're like, Well, that'll never work for all these canon reasons. And I was, I mean, I was gonna just specifically ask, like, were you told, while writing that, like, just move the Eugenics Wars forward? Or was it something that you decided like, oh, we need to explain this, because otherwise people will ask about it. So that's, I mean, that's brilliant. The
David Reed:eugenics war, moving it around in the timeline, it was a huge, huge, like, week long debate. And there are definitely I mean, obviously, there's two factions. There's the faction of people who are like, well, Star Trek has always been essentially an alternate universe. And then there's the other faction, which, you know, I think I subscribe to this theory, which is that you do want it to be our future, because it's just more relatable. Even if you set aside the aspirational aspect of Star Trek, which I think it's very hard to do. I just think that it's difficult to have a casual audience of like non, you know, the people who aren't on Memory Alpha, or listening to Star Trek podcasts, for them to understand that the Eugenics Wars happened in the 90s, and World War Three happened and all these things that are not in our lived experience. It's just confusing. So that was our pitch to sort of, not permanently answer the question, but to just like, make it someone else's problem. One of the things that you have to accept as a Star Trek writer is that someone else is going to come along later, and they're going to retcon your shit, you know, like in the same way that we go in? And we're like, Well, there's one thing I didn't really think that made sense. So I'm going to try to explain it a different way. And it's like some person who is three years old right now is going to be the showrunner of a Star Trek show 30 years from now, and they're going to have a different idea, a different interpretation. And that's great. That's awesome. I'm happy to have my moment here. But it's not going to be the last one. And we had seen the script for Picard season two, the finale where they have project con envelope, and there was a little bit more if I remember correctly, there's a little bit more in the script than ended up in the final cut of that about that. And I was like, Well, I guess I'll just try to make that all makes sense. Yeah.
Jesse:Well, that's a good thing. Picard Season Three paid no mind to season two, because otherwise things really could have gotten tangled.
David Reed:I mean, it's exactly what I'm talking about. It's like, it doesn't happen. Yeah, 30 years from now that someone comes in and is like, I'm doing something else. coming in tomorrow, he could steal my job tomorrow.
Cameron:Well, speaking of tomorrow, millinery also asked, what else do you want to write in the future you've achieved your dream of writing on track and the other franchises or properties? There's
David Reed:not really like I've done. You know, besides Star Trek, it's like, once you've summited Everest, like, for me personally, that's what this feels like. So I mean, I would love to run a Star Trek show and be the final arbiter at some point in the future. But I also understand that that is, you know, that's really rarefied air. Very, very few people are going to get that chance. I also really would like to make a new space opera. I think that culturally, we become sort of fixated. And I think it's because of how much money they cost on a couple of franchises. And if you look at, you know, the TV landscape, I just feel like, you know, why don't we have an alternative to sort of these big two franchises I would also love I mean, I love Star Wars, too. It was never quite, it didn't mean as much to me as a kid. No So just because there was less of it, you know, when I was a kid, there were three movies. And that was it and a bunch of novels that I read that were great. So yeah, I would like to just make a new, insane, perhaps slightly more unhinged version of Star Trek, like a little bit of energy into the space opera.
Jesse:That'd be, I don't want to speak for all Trekkies everywhere. But here I go. Dude, you totally get it. And you should get your own Star Trek series or your own space opera. Like, I'm comfortable with that. I think everybody listening to this would be comfortable with that. So
David Reed:all the luck in the world from your lips to Alex Kurtzman zero.
Jesse:Seriously, we will send emails. I mean,
David Reed:I've been pitching not not that this is like the one that I would if I could make any Star Trek show. I don't know if it'd be this. But the one that's right there. I'm like young Kirk. Like, let's just do it. Let's just get this spin off going, like, build the show around him. But I do also, I've I've heard from from y'all, that this version of Kirk is still like there's still some hesitation. There's still a little bit of he's
Cameron:grown on it. That's probably coming from me. And I will say he's grown on me over season two. And I will also say this leads perfectly into our next couple calls.
Jesse:I was gonna say that and also personally, man I bought in right away. I don't care. Like he told me he was Kirk. Oh, yes. I was like, that's correct. Because they said it was good.
John T Bolds:We had one right. And David Jones asked, Can you talk about setting the episode and shooting in Toronto? So very well answered there on that. So here is our friend XO
Zo from Back Look Cinema:open pipeline. This is the USS cinema. XO Richardson, Captain commanding also, host of dactylic. Cinema, the podcast. And I just want to thank you for giving us the opportunity to talk to David Reid. great writer. And I honestly don't have a question I just have. I just want to praise David Reed for the episode tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, particularly, because it's the episode that really got me on board with the new incarnation of Captain Kirk, I, I really got to feel that I was seeing that Captain Kirk that I grew up with in this episode. And I think that the writing had a lot to do with that. And they're all everybody's doing great job over there at strange new worlds. But really, this particular episode really got me on board with, you know, the whole, the whole Captain Kirk have it all, or at least now he's Lieutenant Kirk, and then he'll be Captain Kirk, later, you know what I'm talking about? In any case, as you can tell, I'm on shore leave, I managed to get a show leave on Earth? Who can believe that? And thank you guys, for the good work you're doing? Have a great one. Awesome.
David Reed:Thanks. So that's, that's great. That's great to hear. I love when people appreciate Paul in his his interpretation of Kirk. It's a tightrope that he's walking. Because, you know, it's a it's an iconic performance, there's mannerisms that he is very careful to not, you know, to not just ape to not do an imitation in the same way that I thought Chris Pine, you know, you're seeing this man at different areas of his life. And I know that if you looked at me as a 20, something and then as a 30, something and then as a 40. Something, those are their different interpretations of the same person. And I think that's what each one of them is doing. And when we write Kirk, for the show, and it just so happens, like not out of any any plan on my part, but I just happen to write the two current episodes in season two. And spoiler alert, perhaps more in season three. It's I don't work there anymore. I'll just say whatever I want. But it's it really is a combination of, you know, obviously, William Shatner, but then I'm also trying to put a little bit of the Chris Pine energy in there as well. And then Paul is doing his thing. And Paul has very specific ideas about like, why this Kirk, at this stage in his life, is he's more of a trihard at this stage, because he hasn't gotten to his goal yet. And some of the swagger that he gets as a captain, it's because he's a captain. It's because he got there. He did it. And right now he has to be a little bit more by the book. But he also has this like youthful mischievousness, that's like wants to get out a little bit, but he's like, I've got to keep it. I gotta keep it under control because I'm not where I want to be. He has ambition. So yeah, it's he's really fun to write and I'm glad I've that that people are warming up to him. And I think that they really will warm even further as the show goes on. You
Cameron:did write two of his episodes. Although you wrote an alternate timeline Kirk and then the prime timeline. Kirk, did you approach writing those Kirk's differently? Or did you just kind of write him as Kirk?
David Reed:Well, I didn't know, when I was writing the first one that I was going to write the second one, I knew that I had pitched the idea for the episode. And I knew that that episode was going to happen, because they were already building the digital assets for the inside of the Bandon station. And I would say I didn't write them differently, except for thinking all the time about how this the one in tomorrow on tomorrow, and tomorrow was different, because of the specific trauma of, you know, his species sort of being on the run and losing Sam. And like, when we were pitching the opposite for like, you know, usually you're not pitching dialogue, when you're standing in front of a board full of cards and saying to Akiva and Henry like, here's what I think the episode should be. But one line of dialogue that was in there from the very beginning was wait, Sam is alive. And that, to me is the key to the whole episode, because that's what he needed. And that's the reason why he could see more like, beyond his own timeline, and beyond his own life, he was like, there's a better world, and it's hers. And so I'm willing to try to help her get to that. And so, you know, that version of him is a more mature version, because he's the captain already. And he's been through so much like, such terrible stuff has happened to him. And, and, you know, like we see in the beginning in the in the teaser, like shutting Spock down and being like, this is their problem, we're not dealing with that. Like, that's just a very different person than who he is. Especially if you look at how he is with hoorah, where he's like, you have a problem, I'm gonna try to fix it like that's the commonality is that he wants to help people in both, but the one in tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, is jaded and has been, he's been burned. He's tried that and had it have bad outcomes. And so that's why he used the way he is at the beginning of the episode. And then by the end of the episode, he sort of opened up into more of the work that we know. I
Jesse:mean, I got goosebumps when you said Sam's alive. And I remember feeling that way in the episode 100%. But I feel like you have just absolutely nailed. A lot of what people forget about shatters Kirk, because yes, he was, you know, swagger and good looking and always gets the girl. But he's also described as a stack of books with legs. And he said, You know, when I was in the academy, I was downright morose. And it's like, I feel like you really are hitting the nail on the head with what a prequel series is supposed to do, which is flesh out the characters we already know. And give us more sides to that. So, man, you're killing it.
David Reed:Thank you. That's That's great.
Jesse:All right, play pixies call.
John T Bolds:Here is our next caller and good friend, Pixie.
Tessa:Hi, guys. Hi, David. Mystery. I don't know how formal we're supposed to be with this. My name is pixie and I am a huge fan. I love both of the episodes you wrote for season two. And I would argue that they're the best episodes in the season. And I just really love the way you wrote Kirk. I will admit that I was skeptical of having a Jim Kirk at all in the show. But I really fell in love with him from the very start of tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. And lost in translation is one of my top three episodes in the entire show. And a large part of that is how you wrote Jim. Beyond just singing you praise though. I did want to ask you a question. One of my favorite things about how you write Jim Kirk is the fact that he seems like he sees food as a comfort. He buys himself in the on the hot dogs and the honest clearly tense. He offers me Yoda a cookie. He does these things that are comforting in these times of high stress that revolve around food. And I really appreciated that because one of my favorite TOS episodes is conscience of the king. Are we discovered Jim Kirk survived a famine on Tarsus four. And it's a piece of backstory I've always thought was criminally overlooked. So I was wondering if there are any specific episodes or pieces of cannon that you pulled from while writing this Jim Kirk, thank you so much. I'm so excited to hear everything you have to say by Awesome. Thank
David Reed:you, Pixie, great to great to hear from you. The thing about the food is really funny because it was not totally intentional. And I think and this is this is dumb. This is a dumb answer. You're you might be disappointed by this answer. It's the it's I think actually coming from the 2009 JJ track and Chris Pine sitting there with the apple. And it just that that mannerism was just so funny to me. And when I think about this version of Kirk, and I'm trying to make him somewhere in between those two between the, you know, books with legs, the sack of books with legs and that, you know, it's like obviously, the Chris Pine interpretation is not consistent with the way that he's described in TOS in the academy. But, you know, I just think that he's a guy who enjoys life. And food is such a big part of my enjoyment of life. The all of that just came up while I was writing the scenes, it was stuff that wasn't, it wasn't in the outlines. It wasn't in. When we were figuring out what the scenes would be, it was just like, you know, I might have had a cookie in front of me while I was writing it. And so it was like, you're just gonna have, he's gonna be obsessed with these cookies. I just needed him believe, honestly. But then about that scene was I just needed him to leave. So that's something had happened. And I was like, why would he leave? Why would I leave? I would leave to go get?
Jesse:Well, writing from the heart, so Okay, speaking of consistency, you know, how Trekkies are man. Time Travel functions in a lot of different ways. In Star Trek, it's it's, you know, often whatever the script needs, that's how it works right now. Were you given any guidelines or restrictions around that? Or did they just tell you, hey, whatever you need to make tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow work? do time travel that way?
David Reed:Interesting. I think my follow up to that would just be like, who would you say they are? Because it's just like, it's sort of the inmates running the prison. Like, there's not a lot of I mean, there's obviously oversight from the show runners, right. But in terms of things like that, the reason that me and Kat and Kirsten are there is to tell them how it works. Nice. And so what they will come back and say is like, this doesn't make emotional sense. Or this doesn't like or I as a just reading the episode, I just don't get it. Or it's just not working for whatever reason. But if it's about the rules of, of the franchise, and the rules of time travel are something like you said, there's a million different interpretations. You know, the entire premise of the Calvin verse just completely discounts the way time travel worked most of the time in the original series, and the next generation and Deep Space Nine, and Voyager and enterprise. So it's like, what do you do? And that's when people like, when people criticize anything inside of inside of the modern tracks, and they do it from a place of canon. I think that I both understand it. And I'm like, What do you really think is going on here? Like, we're just making this up? Like, this is not, there's no rules, because the original series is wildly inconsistent. Like, they went warp 13. Like, this is crazy. There's episodes where they're just like, hey, we just went through the past. Like, that's not how that works now. Like the United Federation of Planets didn't exist early on in tos. So we have to pick and choose, which can and we respect and there's times when we'll have a heated debate, because someone will be, they'll have picked out some moment from Voyager that meant something to them. And they're like, that's why this has to work in this way. And I'm like, Well, I'm picking this moment from Deep Space Nine, because that meant more to me. And so that's why, you know, it works this other way. Like, even in tomorrow, and tomorrow and tomorrow, the Department of temporal investigations. Like, that's not who should be doing this. Like there's other time travel entities, but it's the one that's from Deep Space Nine. And so I was like, Yeah, I'm doing. And then our, our graphics person timpeall, who was a huge Star Trek fan, he was like, Well, what if we use T cars on the little time travel device? And that's the Voyager reference, right? So it's like, we're all pulling from different stuff. And we're all deciding as a as a little collective. And then ultimately, you know, Akiva and Henry have to be the arbiters of is this making the show better? And if it is, then great, and if it's not, then we try something else.
Jesse:That's an excellent answer. It's honestly one of my favorite parts about doing open pike night is talking to writers because, you know, so frequently online, you know, in the social media sphere, which is basically a dirty word at this point. Like, the criticism always comes down to bad writing lazy writing this out any other thing. And I'm like, You don't know that. Like, you don't know the people that are doing it, you don't understand their intentions. You just didn't like it. And it's okay to not like it. But like, don't ascribe a fake made up reason to that. And that's part of why I like getting to hear the reasons and you know, the thought processes behind it, because it's like, none of the stuff that ends up on the screen just happened. Somebody advocated for that, and it's there on purpose. And I think my remaining questions for this episode, I'm gonna know you could maybe call them a little less serious. So let's go ahead and play Abby's question.
John T Bolds:Yeah. We go,
Abby from First Flight:Hey, open pike and Dave, this is Abby summer from the first flight podcast. I love talking to writers and especially with lost in translation. And tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. I'm wondering, I have a feeling that you knew where you wanted to go with these episodes, you had the big foundational pieces out there. But they're both so emotional. How do you work with balancing that amount of emotion that needs to go into the writing of an episode, while still making sure that big plot points, especially when there's time travel involved, are laid out in a way that the audience can really still comprehend and take in in a way that does justice to both parts of those stories? Because I know that I couldn't find balance between the deep emotion and the wonderful story. So kudos to you hope this finds you all. Well, and we'll talk soon.
David Reed:Cool. Yeah, I mean, it is it is a challenge in some episodes, and it's not in others. So like an interesting thing about specifically tomorrow, and tomorrow and tomorrow, is that of all the television I've ever written. Many apps like 30, some episodes, and then been involved involved in hundreds more. It's the one that was the easiest. And I just wrote the scripts. And then Akiva added a couple lines of dialogue at the end, in the scene where on and Kirk finally kiss, he added a joke about her thinking he didn't know about the Bible. That was him. But everything else was just I wrote a first draft and I turned it in, and they were like, great, and then we shot it. And so it was completely instinctual. And completely just like, well, this is how it feels like this story should go. And then there's other ones. There's an episode in Season Three that you know, I can't really talk much about, but it was the hardest episode I've ever worked on. For any show. And it turned out I think pretty well, I will, you know, wait to see what the responses but but it was so difficult, because we just didn't quite know what the point of it was in the beginning. And it took us a lot of drafts and a lot of frankly, different concepts for what the episode really was, before we figured out why this episode needed to exist. And with the emotion and balancing that, to me, like the reason you watch these things, is actually to see humans talking to each other. Like it's much more about that than the sort of whiz bang science fiction craziness. But I love the whiz bang science fiction crisis. So like, to me, that's the icing. And the core of it is the emotion and the characters feeling their feelings. And like another example of that is in Lost in Translation, there's a scene where en and Kirk, meet again on the enterprise. And that scene wasn't in the outline. I never pitched it to anyone, I co wrote that episode with a Mitra. And I didn't even pitch it to her. I just added it because I was like this needs to happen. Because I had just finished writing the other one. And I was like, these two need to have a moment we talked in the room about, we should find some moment for them. And people were like, maybe it's just a look on the bridge or whatever. And then, you know all the stuff about his dad and about like, well, it was really important if he was willing to if his dad was willing to leave his family behind. It must have been for something important and on had having the perspective of like, yeah, I was I was one of those people, like all of that was just instinctual, like, this is what these people would have to say to each other. And then there's other parts that are just like you're moving pieces on a chessboard, and I need this person to get from A to B, I need Kirk to leave the room. So he needs a cookie because I need something to happen for the plot. And that stuff is much more architected, and it's more thought out in advance. And then as your we call them, writers opportunities, like there's all these little things, these little moments that you add that are just to humanize it and just to make it feel like these are real human beings. Okay,
Jesse:so I've to not super serious questions once like super deeply a tricky question, so I'll save that one. When we're in the alternate Toronto, there are featured several posters for a movie called Blood train.
David Reed:I'm so glad you're asking this question. Did you oh my god, okay.
Jesse:This train is bound for blood. Is this you? Was this like, the writers went? Oh, let's put blood trade in here.
Cameron:Was this one of your buddies? Yeah.
Jesse:Does it some does it exist in some version in your head? Or was it like, I need to come up with a name for a movie? Here's what it is.
David Reed:Okay. So this goes this is such a deeper well than you can even imagine. So blood train, we did need to because you know, we were shooting that in Dundas Square, which is covered on these LED billboards. And so if you saw the original footage of that scene, it was advertising actual Little movies and soft drinks and resistors and things. And we had to replace all of them for copyright purposes and whatever. So Henry called me. I was working on season for the boys. And he was like, we need to put stuff on those. Do you have ideas? And I said, well, obviously it has to be blood train. Because blood train is a movie that the supernatural writers, when they were stuck, they would pitch on. And it was a movie, the premise and it was like a joke, right? It started as a joke, but then it got more serious. And so Sarah gamble, who is one of my very best friends, and was my boss on the magicians. She co created that show, and she's a good friend of Henry's and I worked for her on Supernatural as well. She was always talking about blood train, and it's a movie about a bunch of vampires who it's like a Orient Express type, long haul passenger train, that the vampires engineer situation so it gets stuck in a tunnel, and then they are going to eat everyone on the train. And then it's like a horror movie about human beings trying to get off his bucket. Right? So it was Sarah and Robbie Thompson. Robbie is a another TV writer. And he's, he's, he's great. And it was their sort of secret side project. And they were always saying we're going to write this someday. So this was a shout out to Sarah gamble. And to Robbie. And the other shout out to Sarah Campbell is Sarah the Romulan because Sarah's name is spelled s e r a. And I was trying to think of a Romulan name that would sound like a human name. And I was like, this is the perfect name because also Sarah is a Romulan in real life. So I think she'd be happy for me to say that she she agrees. She's always like I'm a slither in. I'm a Romulan. So there's there's that side of it. And the other thing that's crazy is that and I speaking slightly out of school, but Robbie Thompson, the other architect of this completely coincidentally, you might just want to keep looking at the credits for future seasons of strange new worlds oh man to say about that.
Jesse:Open pipe night is going to be the blood train podcast, you guys like, I could not be prouder. And actually, David, you already answered my next question. I there was some speculation about the character of Sarah. There are some similarities between this episode. And I think it's called futures and Voyager where Yeah, Sarah Silverman plays a character so a lot of people figured, oh, she's named after Sarah Silverman has like a nice callback to that character. So man, we're just getting gems left. And right here. This is this is great. I'm
David Reed:well, and I, on the subject of names. I've got another this is just a clarification, because I listened to your episode about about tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow. And you mentioned that agents MLA at the end is spelled strangely. So it's not like a weird way of saying Emily. Its agent MLAs. Last Name, and it's named after my brother in law, who, whose name is Ramon, MLA, so Lieutenant Ramon in 206, is named after him an agent MLA in two or three was named after him. He is the biggest Star Trek fan I have ever met in my life. And like, I went to space camp when I was 10. And I was the biggest Star Trek fan at space. So just think about that. Think about how when I met this dude, I was like, Holy shit, like, love Star Trek. 100 times more than me. His basement is like 100% full of Star Trek models. Yeah, anyway, so it's named after him. He didn't even notice it though. Because he thought it was agent Emily. And it was like, white, who was like to date just was that just Star Trek?
John T Bolds:That's awesome. That's so cool.
Jesse:Yeah, for future reference. David, our last names are bolds Bailey inheritance, like no pressure.
David Reed:It's difficult because I don't work there. But you know, maybe right now
Jesse:you don't work there anymore.
Cameron:My favorite part of course, is the I was just telling these guys the kind of The X Files type characters fitting in the UFO conspiracy nuts into Star Trek is just like, something that makes me happy. It's like a comfort Star Trek moment. Can you just talk about that aspect of the script? Oh, yeah.
David Reed:I mean, that was just, we just thought it would be very funny. Like, someone who's like so like, because you want to hide the banana? on who that person is like Sarah's character you need to have the audience think oh, I know the reason they were there right on the A side so that you can reveal that it's something else on the beach. that. And so on the A side I was like, if we could make it funny if you could make it like, Oh, this is a tragic character who's like so close to understanding the truth, but understands none of it, then you don't suspect that they're going to come back at the end and be the secret Romulan agent. That's where that came from. And I'm, you know, as a huge X Files fan, as a kid, and still, so a lot of X Files vibes going into that for sure.
Cameron:It's the best kind of red herring for sure. Yeah. Well done. Yeah,
John T Bolds:I know you weren't on set, but I do a tiny technical question about that episode. Did they film the flashback shots for subspace Rhapsody? For lon song? Did they film that while they were filming tomorrow? And tomorrow, tomorrow? Did they have to go back and redo the under the sheets, you know, romance movie shots.
David Reed:I think they had to go back. I'm pretty sure they went back and later, because they did. One of the things that wasn't in the original cut and was added after is there's a little like nighttime interlude with lawn and Kirk in the hotel that wasn't in the script that was that was added after I had moved back to the boys. So I wasn't, you know, totally aware of everything they shot for that. But I think that the stuff in subspace Rhapsody was new. Cool.
John T Bolds:Thank you. So with Lawson translation do you do your history of writing horror help you get that episode? Or how did you end up there?
David Reed:I pitched the episode because I love Bussard collectors. I had a I had the technical manual from tng, I had a giant poster that was like the cutaway of the Enterprise D on my wall as a kid, it's it's some it's elsewhere in my house. Still, I have it still. And I just was like, Those are awesome. And I want to go inside then this owl I want to whatever. And the horror aspect of it was actually a trick. It was a trick. I will admit now because one of the things that Akiva wanted to do that season was he was like, We should do a horror episode. And I was like, Yeah, sure, it'll, it'll be more. And I'm like, whatever. Like, I'll add that part to it. It'll work and, and so we got, I'm trying to remember when it was assigned, but it was I was either going to co write seven or six. And because I had to go back to the boys six made more sense. So that's that's how that landed. But I pitched the episode. So I knew how to do it. You know, I knew I knew what how it should feel. And I knew, like what the emotional beats that it would be. And the horror stuff in it was sort of the icing. It was just like this little this little kind of give us our unique tone for this one.
Cameron:I remember watching the episode for the first time and texting the eyes right after the zombie hammer reveal with just head exploding emojis across the thing. I was so excited for zombie hammer.
David Reed:I mean, I love zombies was hammer part of your original pitch in the three sentence pitch? No, it was very, very early though, in the season before I think we'd even come in and actually pitched our episode concepts that, you know, since I hadn't worked on Season One, I had sort of missed the hammer train. And that was an idea that everyone liked was just like, we have to find some way to bring him back because he was unexpectedly such like a beloved character. I mean, we Yeah, like the people making the show loved him. But the audience reaction was crazy. And so that was sort of a delightful, like addition that that it definitely sealed the deal that this should be, you know, hoorah. Horror, memory, trauma, grief, like all of that stuff was swimming in the same ocean and hammer fit very cleanly, cleanly, well
Jesse:covered in maggots, but ya know, yeah. So, being a big Trekkie yourself, like, Did you cut did you feel the weight of writing the moment that Kirk and Spock meet for the first time? Yes.
David Reed:And like, I wanted to downplay it, I wanted to make it feel like this isn't, we're not gonna do the like the version where the music swells. And it's all close ups and you want it you just feel like these are two dudes meeting in a bar. And the thing I'll say about it is that to go back to what I was saying before about knowing someone else is going to come in later. Like, it's the first moment that they met for now. Like, there's also the moment where they met for the first time in JJs movie. And obviously, that's a different chronology. And we're claiming this is in the prime timeline. And then later on, someone else could come along and be like, Nope, they actually right as toddlers, like great school. Babies.
John T Bolds:Oh, yeah. We've had lots of conversation about Star Trek movies. Yeah. Yeah. Well,
David Reed:I'll run that show. Yeah.
Cameron:Yeah. Well, aside from getting two of the kirkko So you also got to very pelea heavy episodes. What was your approach to writing her character?
David Reed:We didn't. We didn't. So I had written two or three before. I think we knew as Carol Kane. We definitely knew as Carol Kane, but we didn't know what she was going to do like in terms of the accent. And so my most recent experience watching Carol was from Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. And so I was picturing that, like, I don't know why, because I knew that she wouldn't do that, like that was a very insane character. But that's what I was writing too. And so I wrote sort of a jokey or, like slightly more misanthropic version of her because of that, and then they just never changed. And so when she came in, and was doing slightly a different thing, I was like, well, this works, too. And it was really fun. Because I like having that comedic relief that turns into something more emotional, particularly in Lost in Translation. I will admit that like the story that she tells at the end of Lost in Translation about like, it starts as soon as saying it's it because I got to see. And then Talia is like, No, it's not. It's because of hammer. Like, I wrote the opposite of that. And then Akiva was like, No, we need to do the more emotional thing last. And so what I wrote originally was that Pelleas like, you're mad at me because of hammer because of lofts. And because of your deep trauma about losing a friend. And then she's like, No, I'm not like, you're you were a bitch to me at school. And that was, it was ending on a joke. And then that's, that's one example of where the powers that be came in. And we're like, we need to take this more seriously.
Cameron:Did you write the? I only said that because he's deadline? Yes, absolutely. Nailed it.
David Reed:There was another one where I had written the scene originally with her being more earnest. And I was like, I need to put some vinegar on this because it's just, it was it was too earnest. I just couldn't imagine it playing well. Yeah.
Jesse:So we spoke with Oh, neitra. About this episode a little bit as well. She watched the TOS episode, the devil in the dark with us. And we talked about some of the influence that that episode had here. Did you have any specific other Trek episodes in mind? I mean, very clearly, you wanted to explore the Boussard collectors, which we deeply appreciate. But was there like any episode tonal touchstones that you had? Or was it all technical for you?
David Reed:You know, there's episodes that I thought about, like one of the things that we do when we're pitching the season. In the beginning, when we're saying here's our 10 episodes, here's what the we call them, arenas. These are what the 10 places that we're gonna go, these are the 10 strange new worlds. One of the things that we do for the purposes of selling that document to the executives, is will say, here are the tonal comps, here's the other episodes in the franchise that we can point to that are like this, so that you don't get scared that we're breaking your very valuable property. And so if I remember correctly, Tarok nor was one of them. Yeah. And I feel like the devil in the dark might have actually been the other one. Because it was, what I wanted to do was to have to both find, like that light horror angle, but also have it be an episode that really is about communication and about connection with other people. And how that can be very difficult because of the roadblocks we put in our own way. And so it was not necessarily thinking about like, here's the other episodes that have done similar things so much as like, what are the areas of the characters that we want to explore or that as a just a fan watching season one, and I had early access to it because of Henry, so I kind of was more up to speed on it. But the the stuff about who his parents, like I was like, you know, I just I deeply want to know more about that and how that affected her. Yeah, so it was not so much trying to ape other episodes as like, sometimes using other episodes as like this will work in Star Trek.
Jesse:Right now I'm suddenly wondering if they use the way to eat in and Bada bing bada bang to sell the musical episode because no cops
David Reed:I honestly think that they were just like, Look guys, this one's weird.
John T Bolds:900 episodes we got to do a musical at some point. Yeah, yeah,
David Reed:I think what they actually did was this is a form braking episode in this style of you know, gotcha other episodes that are just like, weird, but not in that way.
Jesse:Cameron, I cannot wait wait for you to see terok nor like, top 10 Star Trek episode over.
Cameron:Yes, Emily. I'm making my way through DS nine now. Second season. It's so good. It's.
John T Bolds:So in one of your episodes, Jim Kirk is killed and the other he gets punched in the face. So how did Jim Kirk heard you? Like, what did he do?
David Reed:It's funny to watch pretty people suffer. So, on the topic of him dying, I actually I'm sort of a generation's apologist, like, I saw that movie at the exact right time to just love it. And to love what they were doing everyone who's like, it's just a big episode of Star Trek. I'm like, Yes, awesome. Like, that's exactly what I wanted sought in the theater day one, sought a million more times after that. You know, I've I've talked to Ron about, like, the sort of fan response to killing Kirk, you know, landing a bridge on him. And, you know, to me, it's like, that moment is actually really beautiful. And like when what he says specifically to Picard about, like this is, you know, he's basically saying, like, this is what I would do for any captain of the enterprise like this is, that's, that's great to me. I feel like he died doing what he loved. And so killing him in loss or in tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow, was not something that was like, controversial at all for us, because it wasn't really him. And, you know, it's a kind of a classic of the genre of like, you've got an alternate version, like, murder that dude. But it was like, what is going to hurt? The most? Like, what is going to give her some more because you know, what lon was really needing was trauma. She didn't have any before this, right? Yeah. And we're like, what if we gave her her first ever taste of trauma? No, actually, it was almost the opposite of that. It was like we wanted her to have like, a beautiful experience and like to really take away something like meaningful about life being good from it. But at the same time, we don't like we can't bring him along. And we I one of the things I added in the script that wasn't in the outline was her pitch to him that like, what if I could, though, like, what if you just came along? We just had a couple Kirk's and it was just like, it felt like something she would say, but we couldn't. So yeah, to die.
Jesse:Yeah, it's to your point earlier, I think it's really human. And that's why you watch Star Trek, right is for the human experience and watching them interact, because anybody given that kind of opportunity will go but what if you know, so I think it works really, really well. And it does. I mean, that paired with her seen at the end of that episode makes it really very,
Cameron:I was gonna ask, how do you write love on breaks down and cries in a way that rips the entire audience's hearts? still beating from their chest into a script? How do you write that?
David Reed:I mean, let's go and look. I'm just always open the script.
Cameron:I'm telling you. That's the first time we've gotten that response. In a
David Reed:in a general way. Like the thing I'll say about it is that it wasn't I don't remember really imagining that it was going to be that emotionally. That heavy. Yeah. Oh, okay. So this is I'm gonna I'll read this little Trent, this little bit of the script to you. And it'll surprise you, because it's like, I didn't really think that it would go to that place. That was something that Christina brought, and that, that Amanda Rowe who directed the episode, right. And I wasn't on the set. So when I saw it in the cut, I was like, Okay, so, Kirk, she's talking about, you know, place of birth, Riverside, Iowa, blah, blah, blah. And there's a moment where Kirk says, Iowa on Earth. Yes, ma'am. Is that really while you're calling, and just as lon takes a beat, holding back a swell of emotions. And she says that's it. I'm a stickler for an orderly security record. He says, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I've got some gems on Sam for his permanent file, kind of flirting a little bit. And it says lon puts on a fake smile. And she says That sounds lovely. With a polite nod, she ends the call and sits there feeling both connected and more alone than ever. And that's how the script ends. Wow. So it was meant to be you sometimes need to leave room for the actors to feel what they've been through. You know, like they are the ones who have to pick it up and actually bring it to life. And so in this case, she asked me on the Zoom call. What if I cried at the end? And I said, I can see that. I also have a pretty strong feeling generally that characters on Star Trek, don't really get that emotional, usually, like they're pretty well put together because they're at work, like something that I feel like has been sort of a loss in some areas of the franchise is that these people are professionals that work. And they like our messy, messy people sometimes. And so I was like you just, she's, she's home alone, she's in her quarters, no one else is there, she can have an emotional reaction. But it just shouldn't be histrionic. And I think Chrissy found a way to make it feel deeply, deeply emotional. And to bring it further than I, I think I would have wanted to script it because like, if you write, and then they break down in tears, you know, sometimes you'll get a reaction that's five times bigger than what you're thinking. And so what I really wanted was something believable, subtle and human. And I think she brought it and she really felt it and like, I think that it was the first episode that that let her feel that and she wanted to take advantage of it. So yeah.