PRIME DIRECTION - "Level-Five Transporter Accident" with Jordan Canning

[00:00:00] Hi, this is Jordan Canning and you're listening to Open Pike Night's Prime Direction, where you'll find out if Star Trek episodes are actually just directed by three puppets in a trench coat. Is this thing on? Hello? Hello?

[00:00:21] And welcome! It is time to dance your cares away and worry on another day. It's time to let the music play down in Open Pike Night's Prime Direction, where we talk to the directors who pull the strings of your favorite Strange New Worlds episodes.

[00:00:50] I'm your host, Cameron Harrison, and let me introduce my co-host, a man who holds Grover from Sesame Street in equal regard to Spock, Jesse Bailey. See, the thing about Grover is that he and Spock both have kind of trouble understanding what's happening around them. And I think that kind of makes them kindred spirits, and I think it's why I ended up identifying with both of those characters as a young kid. Mm-hmm.

[00:01:15] John wishes he could be here tonight, but he's currently floating unharmed through the majesty of space. Who can blame him? But, at the risk of being slapped by a feisty Vulcan puppet, I would like to share some gratitude with our next guest, the undisputed queen of hijinks, the woman who leans into chaos and has had a hand in some of the biggest laughs you've felt. Ladies and gentlemen, it's Jordan Canning! Yay! Woo!

[00:01:44] Wow, that was delightful. Hello, guys. Hello! Welcome back. Hi. Nice to be back. Hello. Well, we are here to talk about a puppet episode. Yeah. One that was teased forever ago by Akiva seeming to make an offhand joke. So, yeah. Back while season three was in production, he had made this reference to variety.

[00:02:08] And then we understand it was during, I think, the filming of Four and a Half Vulcans they approached you about doing it? Yeah, I think... Is that the timeline? Yeah, that sounds right. I mean, the way I remember it is I was on set with Dana and we were just chatting and I, you know, I said, okay, well, what's coming up in season four? Like, what are the genres? What are the big, like, idea board ideas?

[00:02:35] You know, and she listed a couple and then she said, you know, well, the one we always, it's always up on the board, but we have never been able to, like, figure out how to do it is the puppet episode. We just don't know, you know, what the ins and outs of that would be. And I was sort of like, I could tell you what the ins and outs of it would be. Like, no problem. Like, the sets you guys have are actually quite conducive to puppets. You know, there's so many, like, consoles and I mean, mostly just there's consoles everywhere.

[00:03:05] And like... You never see people's feet or legs. You never see people's feet, every lot of sitting, you know, things that kind of make it easy to puppeteer. Yeah. And then, you know, it just kind of snowballed from there. Chris Fisher, amazing Chris came up to me and was like, well, what, you know, what we do? And I was like, well, I'll just introduce you to Henson. Like, Henson is who you should get. I mean, I'm sure they were already like, Henson is obviously who we would want to build the puppets. Who's Henson? Yeah. But I was like, well, I can at least introduce you guys.

[00:03:31] So yeah, I just sort of sent an email, introduced them and then they, you know, developed this great story idea. And I was really like, really chocked to be involved a bit more in the development of it than, you know, normally an episodic director would get to be. You know, often you just kind of come in once the script is already there and you do your episode. But yeah, I got to like be involved as they were talking about puppet design and they did a first draft of a script.

[00:03:59] I remember I sent a really detailed set of notes of like, okay, well, you know, this is what I've learned over my years of working with puppets. Like certain things puppets do really well and certain things puppets do really badly. And, you know, the best way to approach this as you're conceiving of the story before it's locked in stone is to eliminate the things that puppets do badly and lean into what they do great.

[00:04:22] And then they kind of really brilliantly like took that idea and ran with it and made it such a like perfect thematic through line in, in the episode itself, which is like, yeah, puppets are really bad at some things. But if you embrace the like the things they do well, then Bob's your uncle. So Henry and Dana wrote this amazing script. They always write the best scripts. I mean, I've been so lucky to just get the greatest episodes to work on.

[00:04:52] And yeah. And so it was really a melding of two worlds. Like I worked on Fraggle Rock for two seasons with Henson and then, you know, Fraggle and Star Trek are, I'll never say which of my two, which of the two are my favorite because I love them both so dearly. Sophie's choice. Yeah, I would never make it. I don't have to make that choice. But blending the two worlds was really, I mean, even just in the development was a dream come true. And then we can talk about this shooting, which was even more universes colliding.

[00:05:22] So, yeah. So that's kind of how it came to be. And the puppet episode in season four was one of the later ones that we shot because there were so many adjustments to the sets that they had to do. So, yes, like the consoles and stuff help hide puppeteers and all that. But, you know, they wrote in this great thing about like Pike has a new chair. So they fully designed and built a new chair that was puppeteerable.

[00:05:48] So the chair you see actually has a hollow body so that the puppeteer can be underneath the chair with a hole in the pillow, you know, puppeteering from below. They made kind of seatless chairs, basically replicas of all the chairs in the ready room, all the chairs on the bridge so that the puppeteers could be, you know, Uhura can be sitting in her chair. But there's not actually a bottom to it so that the puppeteer is down there.

[00:06:14] And like in the sick bay, we cut a hole in one of the sick bay beds. We got holes in the actual one, the only couch in Pike's room. We just cut holes in it. They were like, yeah, whatever. This is probably like, I don't even know how expensive that couch is. It's so heavy. Probably more. It'd probably be the most expensive piece of furniture I would ever sit on. Not now with holes all in it. Not now with holes.

[00:06:39] So they really like, the art department had to start thinking about these things early on and designing them and working with the puppeteers to kind of design them like the chair. I remember there were a couple of iterations of it where we actually got Frank who puppeteered Pike to like climb in and be like, actually, it'd be better if, you know, this was like that. Oh, wow. You know, yeah. So it was a process.

[00:07:03] I mean, I saw an interview that Akiva and Alex did where they were like, this was the most complicated episode we've ever done. And I agree. Like it just, it's because also it just takes, if you haven't worked in the puppet world, there's just a big learning curve of like these things you never have to consider with human actors. Like picking up this can of bubbly is like a piece of cake.

[00:07:28] But if you want a puppet to pick this up, that's a big, you have to get a, you really got to plan about it. So yeah. That's like a special effect. Yeah. I remember the South Park guys talking about that with Team America. They were like, yeah, we thought it would be easy, but like just to get them to do the simplest thing. It's like working with a bunch of like dumb babies. Well, I can't even imagine like marionettes. Like that's a whole other, like, yeah, string puppets is insane. But yeah.

[00:07:53] So you did, you mentioned the production and I mean, it's easily believable that it would be more complicated than any other episode of Star Trek. I mean, and you're not even considering visual effects and post-production and all that. But what was the actual filming of the episode like? I mean, was it, were the actors on set? Were there, you know, was it all voiceover pre-recorded and they were matching the mouths? Like how did that all work? There was a lot of discussion in prep about the best way to do this.

[00:08:23] Often, like the way we did it on Fraggle when we had a guest star, for example, because lots of, you know, there was always one or two guest stars on a Fraggle episode. And they would do like a kind of pre-record performance of how they would do it, you know. And then the puppeteer would listen to it and kind of learn the rhythm of the voice. And then, you know, basically do an imitation, make it their own a little bit, but try to kind of embody the essence of it.

[00:08:51] And then you would do a sort of finessing re-record later over the finished cut. And we went back and forth about that a lot. And obviously with the schedule of shooting, it just like became pretty apparent that like recording all of the actors' voices ahead of time was not realistic. We did pre-record some. Like we did Pellia and Scotty. Like we offered it up to the actors to be like, do you want to do this?

[00:09:20] But a lot of them, because the puppeteers came in, the puppeteers are all geniuses. They're all, I've worked with them on Fraggle. They're incredible. And they also like already knew and loved the show and also just like take it so seriously that they learned, they learned by watching the episodes and learning the characters. And then they had conversations with the actors. And most of the actors felt pretty like confident that, okay, I think I'm in good hands with this puppeteer.

[00:09:47] So how we ended up doing it for the most part was the puppeteer is performing it on set. And then we ADR'd everything later with the actors, which, you know, it's hard when you, usually like when you're like on Fraggle, you know, 75% of the voices of the puppets are the person performing it. So you're not usually ADRing the entire thing.

[00:10:14] Sometimes, I mean, you know, there was like an episode of Community where they kind of did a similar thing where like everybody turned into puppets. And I don't know how they did it on that. But the way we did it, I think worked quite well for what we needed to do. And with just the realities of production, like the actors weren't going to, some of them came to set sometimes, but it's like also, what do you want to sit around for 12 hours while someone else is performing? It's like, you know, at a certain point you go, okay, great.

[00:10:44] They got it. I'm going to go live my life, you know, to kind of get an episode off. And at that point in the schedule too, they were like picking up shots from other episodes. It was like dovetailing near the end of the season. So there was plenty for everyone to be doing. So yeah, that's how we did it. The puppeteers worked really hard to learn the voices. And then we recorded everyone after. That's really cool. And speaking of the voices, did you direct the actors to deliver their lines differently as puppets?

[00:11:13] Did you help them find their puppet performance? Yeah, there was a bit of back and forth on that. I sat in on the ADR, the first ADR sessions we did with everyone. Like I did the initial first pass with all the actors on Zoom basically. And then once I delivered my director's cut, you know, it's sort of out of my hands. I think there were, they did go back and kind of change some of the performances. You know, it's tricky tonally like to know. What do you mean?

[00:11:42] Because initially I think we all thought, okay, well, this is like a Star Trek episode. I mean, it's obviously a funnier Star Trek episode, but we wanted to play it all really like real and grounded. And like, this is what the real lawn would say. And this is what, you know, the real Pike would say. And I think possibly what happened was in watching it, they go, okay, maybe they do need to be puppetized a little bit.

[00:12:04] So I think I watched the cut and I was like, okay, I see they went and they changed, they tweaked and sort of fine tuned some of the, some of the performances. And I think also, you know, those actors work so hard to build these characters. I think it's tricky too, to, to kind of, it's not that you're fully locked in with what the puppeteer does because a puppet is very forgiving.

[00:12:28] You know, like it's not so precise that you can't change words, change rhythms, change a lot of things. So I think that initial pass, maybe there was like a bit of a feeling of like, oh, I have to perfectly kind of emulate what they did on set. And then in the second pass, there was a bit more freedom to play around and be like, actually, I want to say it like this. And so they, yeah, they, they, they were able to kind of like fine tune it to, to their own taste. Yeah. That's interesting.

[00:12:57] Cause I like in particular Anson Mount's puppet performance, I'm like, he is a having a blast, but it's almost like he's doing an impression of his own Pike character. Like it's, he like pulled the gravitas out, but kept the sincerity and it's like, it's really impressive. Well, like each character seems to kind of, yeah. Like a hura just seems like she's just gone up in pitch a little bit. Yeah.

[00:13:26] Pelley is 100% exactly the same. Yeah. Oh yeah. Scott, he's just a little more manic. Yeah. Pelley is already kind of a puppet, you know, like we'll talk about the Pelley puppet. Yeah. I mean, the Pelley puppet is a scene stealer. Yeah. So they all leaned into it and I will, I will say like the Scotty puppet and the puppeteer who performed him, like really, I thought really nailed Scotty. And I think kind of, they had a bit of a mind meld where he got, he got Scotty's rhythm really well.

[00:13:55] I don't, I don't feel like, like Martin changed too much about, um, about that performance in the end. Yeah. Scotty's already kind of like at 11 at all times. We just were like, he's even more stressed, you know, than usual. So you were saying you, you were brought on because of your experience working with puppets in the past, coming into the production, was it pretty much what you were expecting or was there a little bit of like, oh, puppets in space a little bit different than I expected?

[00:14:22] Well, I mean, they wrote some really ambitious scenes. I mean, they wrote the, the, the fight scenes in particular, like way more are very complex. Like no fist fights in Fraggle Rock. Generally not. You know, the kind of stunts you, a stunt you would do in Fraggle Rock would be something very silly where it's like, you know, okay, something, one of them like flies across the room or something, but these were like meant to feel like real choreographed fights. And those were hard.

[00:14:51] And you know what, it was pretty much what I expected, which I, because what I expected was, okay, this is going to be hard. It's going to be so fun. Everyone's going to have so much fun. Everyone's going to learn so much really quickly. Like I would say the first like two and a half hours of day one, you know, the crew was just sort of like, what? Because there's all these other things that have to happen with puppets. It's like, you know, you're not Mike.

[00:15:18] Well, I mean, you do, you might, the puppeteers and stuff, but there's no hair, makeup, but there are the, there's the whole like puppet wrangling team who has to come in and like, okay, Pelley, his hair is in her face or the eye fell off. You have to like do all that. And then also you have to set up all of these monitors. Like that's how the puppeteers are doing their performance. So they, we block the scene. We go, okay, this is what the shots are. And then they're like, okay, I'm going to need a monitor here and here.

[00:15:45] And I need, I need a sandbag under my back because I'm like down here. I need a, I need a little like wheelie thing. There's all of these sort of technical things that come along with puppeteering, especially on a set that isn't built primarily for puppeteering, where you have a lot of sort of space and you're working off the floor. But I would say like two hours and 35 minutes in, everyone was like, okay. When they were on it and like, you know, our dolly grip was like giggling.

[00:16:14] And like, I will say it is so joyful. I know that everyone had so much fun on this shoot because like, it's just so silly. Like you look around and you're like, what are, what are we doing? What is our lives? You know, if you yell something at the puppet, I'm like, Frank, I need to do this. He'll like answer you as the puppet. And like, they'll, you know, they'll chirp back to the crew. Like, you know, the, you know, the second AC will come in and like do the slate and they'll like talk to them and they're, you know, it just really,

[00:16:43] really is joyful and fun when there's puppets around. Like, even though it is stressful and like, there's so many things that just like can go wrong and suck time out of a day that normally, you know, you'd be like, oh, this would be so easy if it was just people. Um, it is always worth it because it is like, it's so, it's so, I always say like the dumber, the better with puppets. Like how can we make this dumber? Because that is what puppets do best.

[00:17:12] Like silly, fun stuff. And yeah. So it was, I would say the biggest, most stressful days were those two. We did two full days on the bridge of that big kind of fight scene at the end. That it was, it was another bridge fight scene. There were a lot of fight scenes in that. And the puppets in the trench coat, three puppets in the trench coat. Like, yes, that was, that was challenging. I mean, it's, it's, it, it takes a lot of pre, I mean, any show takes a lot of prep,

[00:17:41] but like you really have, cause you can't really wing it. I mean, that's not true. The puppet wrangling team is like, they're absolute geniuses. And so are the puppeteers. They're always like, they're so good at problem solving. If something's not working, they're like, okay, okay, we'll figure it out. We'll try something new. And they can fix things on the fly and change things and de-rig a puppet and put it on, you know, stick it on a stick, like whatever you need.

[00:18:05] But it really is crucial to do so much pre-conceptualization of this, like the three puppets in a trench coat, like we had so many conversations about, okay, how do we, A, how do we build the trench coat? How do we have the trench coat fly off of them? How do we attach the puppets in a way so they're puppeteerable, but so that they can, they look like they're standing on each other's shoulders. Puppets generally are best puppeteered when they're half body.

[00:18:35] So you don't often see puppets full body in like Muppets or whatever, because they often look kind of silly. Like when you see Kermit walking and you see his legs, you're like, that's a bit weird. Very creepy. It's weird. It just, they don't look quite right. It's, you want, this is the puppet. Hello, what's up? And it's like, yes, it makes no sense. Their feet would be four feet long, their legs would be long, but we all believe it. And it's also easier to puppeteer. So when you add the limbs on, you add the, okay, so now you've got all three of them

[00:19:05] with limbs. You need to pin the legs to the shoulders of each puppet and you need one puppeteer down on the ground. You have two other puppeteers doing the limbs. It's not like it's just one puppeteer per puppet. Sometimes you've got five puppeteers on one puppet. Like when they're flying in space, you'd have one puppeteer doing the hair, one doing the arms, one doing the legs, one doing the body.

[00:19:31] Like it takes a lot of people to make one puppet feel alive. And there's just time that it takes to figure it out. You know, it's not, sometimes you can just like throw the puppet on and they go behind the console and you're like, great, that's easy. But the kind of ambitious stuff that this episode required and that we were all sort of striving to achieve. Yeah. It was like, it was big puppet stuff. All of us, all, all the puppeteers too. We were looking around being like, I've never seen a puppet do this.

[00:20:01] This is cool. Like we're really trying some, trying some stuff here. It's crazy. Like you would think a puppet episode, like not intuitively, but a lay person right here might think like, oh, puppet episode, they can save some money in the budget. Right? Yeah. I think maybe they thought that originally. Right. And it's like, no, there's, there's more special effects in this episode than in some of the other episodes. There's so many people you got to pull out. There's, you know, strings and keys and stuff you got to get rid of.

[00:20:30] You got to, you pay, they painted out all the rods, you know, the arm rods and stuff. I mean, we actually did a pretty remarkable. I think we all thought we were going to have to paint out way more puppeteers than we actually did. Like we did a pretty incredible job. Cause like when you're going to see the full body puppeteers, you put them in like a green, you know, morph suit basically. And you paint them out and you do a plate and all that, all the stuff you would do any VFX stuff.

[00:20:55] But man, the puppeteers are so good at hiding and figuring out ways to like do things practically. And you, you kind of like rely on VFX only when it's necessary other than like having to paint out rods and stuff. I think we, I mean, again, there's no money that was saved making this episode, but I do think like some of the money shifted around maybe from like, you know, where we thought it would be. So we thought, oh my God, we're going to have to do so much VFX on their full bodies.

[00:21:22] And it's like, no, we didn't have to do as much there. That's really impressive. How many puppeteers did you hire? On our biggest days, you know, like when we were doing the big fight scene where you had, everybody was puppeteering, you had BG puppets, you had support puppets doing limbs and stuff. I would say there was probably like 17 ish. I could have, I should have looked this up.

[00:21:47] I mean, we had our main cast and a couple of people doubled up, but most people had one puppet that they were sort of in charge of. And then there were a couple of people that we sort of tracked. We were like, okay, well, these two puppets are rarely in scenes together. So this puppeteer can kind of do both. And sometimes people would have to tag out. Like if Allie was normally playing chapel, but then also was playing, I can't even remember it. It's a blur now, but then other people could tag out.

[00:22:17] Like that's what's so incredible about them. Usually you want to kind of keep consistency and continuity with who's playing the character because weirdly it's not just about performance. Sometimes it's about the way like their hand fits in the face. Like I remember realizing this on Fraggle once because Johnny who played Gobo, you know, and I'm so used to seeing Gobo and sometimes he would have to play another character and like Andy would step in and play Gobo and I'd be like, why does Gobo's face look different?

[00:22:43] Like it's the puppet, but it's the way that, it's the way their hand fits in. It just holds the face differently. Basically it's a different skeleton. Yeah, exactly. You have a different, different core. So we try to keep that consistency as much as possible, but sometimes you're just like, okay, well you've got to jump in and do this. And they're all so fluid and brilliant. They can, I can literally, they can do anything. And then who played the three Muppets in a trench coat in the scene where he's walking? Is that just a stunt guy? Oh yeah.

[00:23:13] So that, I mean, I will take credit for that. That was my, I do remember kind of Frank, who was our kind of puppet captain being like, okay, we're going to figure this out. So we'll be under the thing. I was like, let's just put a human under there. Put a guy under there. And he was like, yeah, actually that, that's a good idea. So it was one of our puppeteers who kind of had, you know, a, he was a nice tall kind of broad guy who fit the thing. And he did that great kind of like, I mean, it was someone who knew what they were doing. Yeah. He was great.

[00:23:42] That scene ended up amazing. Like the, the shot where the Pike puppet slowly looks up. I'm like, this is movie level. It's iconic. It is iconic. Yeah. We've, I mean, I know that that, like when I say Dana and Henry and Akiva, they've all been like, someday we'll do a puppet episode. I think three puppets in a trench coat was like the reason they wanted to.

[00:24:08] They were like, that's everything is anchored around this image and we'll just build it out from here. So that was always the plan to do three puppets in a trench coat. And, um, it was so hard. I mean, we were re I remember that day. It was like, we are running out of time. And there was like, but it, it all worked. Like, again, you shoot puppet stuff. You need to get the pieces. It's, it's much more about the edit with puppets. It's like, I just needed to work for this little bit.

[00:24:37] And we do it over and over and over. And then we're done. We don't have to do it like start to finish. And so I feel like just by the skin of our teeth, we got all the pieces we needed to cut that sequence together. And of course, if we'd had like five more hours, I'm sure we would have done some more stuff. But I was like, okay, I know, I know we just, we just have it and we can get out of this scene. But that was a challenging scene. That and the bridge stuff was, was hard. Anything with big gags, like puppet gags is, is hard because it takes so much rehearsal

[00:25:06] and trial and error. And you have to watch it back and you go, oh, the leg is doing something weird or like the gravity doesn't make sense. And they have to, the puppeteers have to watch it and digest it and go, okay, I gotta, I gotta do this. And they're, they're watching. I mean, I don't know how they do this. I put on a puppet and play around the screens. I'm talking about the monitors that they're playing off is reversed. They're not, it's not like us right now watching in a mirror where I'm like, okay, I'm watching myself and I want to go this way.

[00:25:34] If I want to go this way, I have to go this way in the monitor, like twist your brain in half. And they're performing. They're doing all of the, obviously the physical manipulation on Fraggle, they were singing and dancing and doing choreography. It's just like, they have such multiple sets of skills that they're using at once. It's, it's amazing to watch and get to work with. I am incredibly happy that we got this episode because it's, you're right.

[00:26:01] Like, I think a lot of that is evident in the, in all the performances because you were saying earlier, we wanted it to be grounded and feel like these characters. And there's no moment where in your, like you're what, you know, you're watching a puppet, but you're never like, oh, that's, you know, Anson didn't read that line or, you know, this that or the other thing. It's like, it all feels accurate. And kind of to that point, like these puppets and we'll get to the Pelleya puppet, but these

[00:26:28] puppets, they look like these people, right? Like they're incredible. I mean, Henson doesn't fuck around. They are the best of the best. And they made just these incredible puppets. Like they worked for months making these puppets down to like the specifics of their hair. Our amazing wardrobe department sent them the fabric that they use and they built all the mini little, like, it's all pitch perfect. What the real stuff would be.

[00:26:57] They made, you know, their little boots, they 3d printed their little boots. And like, I mean, it's so cute. And you don't even get to see to praying. You only get to see her like on a space zoom call, which is what I always call them on the, on the monitors. But like, it was an exact replica. Like you only saw her from like the waist up, but she had the full dress on. And then they made the exact perfect mini replica and like the neck piece and these earrings.

[00:27:26] Like it was incredible. Yeah. I mean, and then the pet, okay. What are you ready to get the Pelleya? Let's get into Pelleya. I mean, so Scott, who is like, did like the main design of this. Scott worked on, he's amazing. Scott is one of my favorite people. And he pitched Pelleya having this tube hair early on because everyone, everyone else has normal hair.

[00:27:51] It's like kind of human looking hair, like as they would, they didn't have sort of like, you know, feather hair or felt hair or whatever. We talked about like, should they have sort of yarn hair? We're like, no, we want them to feel real. Except he just pitched this tube hair for Pelleya. And we all were like, yes, it must, it simply must be the tube hair. And you know, her proportions are insane.

[00:28:16] Like she is the most adorable, like she's half the size of the Pike puppet. Like when I get to start posting pictures in a few weeks, it's very exciting because, you know, I have pictures of them all lined up together and like Pike is the biggest one and Pike and like Una are quite big and then they sort of get smaller. And then literally like Pelleya is just a, she's just a tiny little puppet with this

[00:28:41] huge head of hair that constantly was just bopping around those big lips. Like, God, I love that puppet so much. And Ingrid Hanson was the puppeteer and it could have been no one but Ingrid playing her. Like me and Frank were just like, well, obviously Ingrid is playing Pelleya. Like there's no one else. Ingrid, Ingrid was on Fraggle. She played Landford. I don't know if you guys watch Fraggle, but she played all the kind of like weirdest little creatures and, you know, it just is such a kind of like visceral, amazing puppeteer.

[00:29:10] And she just became Pelleya from the get go. Every time she had the puppet on, she was just like, I'm Pelleya. You know, anyway, she stole every scene. Oh man. Yeah. I mean, once she showed up, it was like a whole new episode. I was like, I was on board, but now I like, I'm buying extra tickets. Yeah. And I was quite pleased when we revealed her, like, because you don't see her in the opening. Obviously you see everyone on the bridge. And I just, I remember we were shot listing the ready room scene that comes right after the opening credits.

[00:29:39] And I was like, you know, okay, well we want to show everyone. And then I was like, oh, this is great. Cause she's so short. You come over to an empty frame and then have to come down and find her. And I was like, oh, everybody's going to love when we find Pelleya. Yeah. It's, it's very like beautiful that you're almost puppeting the camera. Like the camera becomes a character here because it's like, oh, this is how you would experience this, you know? And it's like, it's amazing.

[00:30:06] And we, so we always ask actors and, you know, we tell them, you don't have to answer if you don't want to, but are there any props that you brought home? You know, like, is there anything you couldn't let go of? Are the puppets considered a prop? Oh, they are locked up in a vault. They are in a CBS vault under lock and key. No, then nobody gets to touch those. They, I swear when we wrapped, it was like an unmarked van showed up and like put them, wrapped them all up and like drove them away.

[00:30:34] Cause they are like, they're quite precious and they were quite expensive to make. So like, no, we didn't get to, no, nobody gets to keep their puppets. Not on this one. I hope the puppets tour or end up somewhere where people can see them. Puppet spinoff or like, I mean, like, it feels like we do web series, like anything. Like I just, those puppets exist now and they, they just, they gotta be used for something. They can't just sit in a vault. The world deserves them. Yes. Yeah.

[00:31:04] Well, and I, God, you know what? I didn't watch after. Did they do the after credits scenes? Not on the screeners. So I'm hoping in the final version, we'll have seen them by the time this airs. Yeah. It's funny. Cause we shot these improvised or they were, they were sort of improvised. No, Dana and Henry sort of whipped them out, which was like Pelia and Scotty in the engineering room. Just kind of like silly little kind of like runners.

[00:31:32] And we shot them all in like an hour or something. And they were so delightful. And I just realized, I was like, I can't remember if we, if they played them after credits or not. Well, now we know to fight for them to see the light of day or just put them out online or maybe they'll just release them online as like a funny. Yeah. Cause just even seeing them, I mean, I know, you know, we don't have the sets to play with anymore, but just like letting them goof around as the puppets is, it's fun.

[00:32:02] It's just, you get a little bit more time with these characters. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, speaking of, uh, you know, people are watching this after the episode came out, they can go and see your photos right now if they wanted, where would they find those? Oh, on my Instagram, JJH Canning. Yes. That's what it is. Yeah. I've got like so many videos and photos to, to start just spamming everyone's timelines with been sitting on them for a year. Oh, I cannot wait.

[00:32:31] So to dive deeper in the design though, like, were there any characters that were harder that you went through multiple iterations? Some were easier? Like who were part of those conversations? I feel like kind of Pike and Una and kind of everyone except Chapel and La'on actually went through a few different iterations and not, we didn't start building them just in sort of design conceptual level. We went back and forth on them a bit.

[00:32:58] Like I remember, um, like, uh, Chapel's first version had like more of like a, like a Sesame Street nose, like a kind of orange, like honk nose. And we, we just sort of sat with it a bit and we were like, I don't think she can have that kind of nose if everyone has like a normal nose. Yeah. And you go through a lot of back and forth design briefs with Henson. Like they send them and then, you know, you send notes and they did it to them and then they start building it.

[00:33:27] And then even when they're building it, there's still room for adjustments. It's amazing. They send you, I remember, you know, we were getting weekly emails with like progress photos of like, here's just like the foam head shape of one of them. And what do you guys think of this? Or like, here's two different tones for like Pike's hair. And like, here's different styles for Pike's hair. Like, you know, do you want it to do this? And I mean, they care so much and they work so hard to make exactly what, you know, is in your brain come to life.

[00:33:57] So yeah. But some of them looked exactly the same right from day one. I feel like Pellia kind of was like, that's Pellia, you know, it was probably like a napkin sketch that Scott did. And we were like, yes, that's it. Just make that real. Yeah. So you mentioned the space Zoom calls, which I think is a great shorthand because nobody doesn't know what that means.

[00:34:20] Did Adrian Holmes actually get to talk to puppets as April or was that filmed entirely separately? No, that was just filmed. That was just, I think I was reading with him. Yeah, no, we had to do the Orions and to Pring and April all as like just sort of straight to camera, their own things. That makes sense. I'm sure he came and saw the puppets just to get a taste of it. Yeah. Because I would think otherwise this is going to take 40 takes.

[00:34:48] Like he has to be so serious. Exactly. He'd just be laughing and he'd just be like, you'd give it away. But I mean, it was funny. I remember doing that one with April because I don't know if he'd seen the puppets. The first take or two, he played it so serious. And I was like, hang on a second. Let me just reiterate, you were looking at an actual puppet like this is insane. Like you can play how absolutely absurd this is. And he was like, oh, okay, okay. And then he kind of, you know, loosened up and was like, oh yeah, this is, like I said,

[00:35:18] like it's dumb. It's so dumb, but it's so good. It's delightful, dumb. And also you're just a figment of Spock's sleep stage brain activity. Sure. Yeah, maybe. Sure. No, okay. Well, we'll discuss that final scene then. But before then, I want to get back to the puppets because there are more puppets than just the main cast. Yes, there are. Some of my favorite moments of this episode are just the cuts to chaos and all the other people.

[00:35:47] Are there any cameos that showed up? Like when they designed all the other puppets, like who? Well, so those other puppets are all culled from puppets that Henson has in their kind of like library of puppets. They had the puppets up puppets is what they're called. So they have this sort of cast of puppets that I remember we got like a bunch of mug shots basically. And we were like, this one, this one, oh, this blue fish guy is great. This weird alien guy.

[00:36:14] So we picked our sort of BG puppets out of a cast of characters that already existed trying to find because, you know, some of them just didn't feel like they'd be in space. Like, and so we picked the ones that felt like they would be, you know, red shirts and stuff. And then obviously we picked the ones that were at least alien like. But yeah, no, I love those two. One of my favorite shot is when we do the like explosion and then the guy pops up screaming and they're all running through the hallway and the fish guy, you know, being chased in

[00:36:43] the, in the science lab by like a rolling cart. Yeah. He looked like an Andoran. Yeah. Yeah. He's an Andoran. Yeah. I think that's the first shot we did actually. Yeah. We did that in prep because we were like, let's just shoot it. Like, that's another thing about the podcast. Like we don't have to wait for any cast. We don't even need sound necessarily. Like, let's just shoot it. So yeah, I really loved the cuts to cast. I was very pleased that they kept all of those in like the sliding down the bar one. And yeah, they kept all the silliness in there.

[00:37:12] Speaking of the bar and I love the guy sliding across it and like holding, holding his drink. Tell me everything about the bartender puppet, because I need like, at first I was like, is that, is that the, uh, was that the Edocian or something? Yeah. Edocian from White Bell Blues. Character from season three. I thought it was like a callback to her. No. No, she's even more alien. Yeah. Yeah. This is just a classic sort of like gray. What are they called? Gray. Oh, grayling. Gray's. They're called gray's. Gray's. Gray's. Yeah.

[00:37:41] He was a big, long puppet with really sort of long spindly arms. And so all we knew was like, okay, well, this is when, you know, we're doing our classic, like they're shooting at the bridge and everybody on the bridge is getting thrown around. And then we wanted to cut away to chaos on the ship. And so we were like, okay, well, we got to use these arms. And the guy's like trying to stop all these bottles and, you know, special effects has got the bottles on like shakers and, you know, they're throwing them around. And then we Dutch the camera and the guy slides down the bar.

[00:38:10] And yeah, I mean, it was just finding ways to, yeah, use these puppets and expand the world of the ship a little bit. And because technically the conceit obviously is that everyone on the enterprise turned into puppets, but we don't have a thousand puppets and BG and stuff to like really fill up the world and see everybody. So we wanted to have these moments where we felt like, okay, it's not just our main cast.

[00:38:35] We have like these little pockets of cookie puppets around the, around the, the ship all trying their best to, you know, deal with being puppets for, for the day. Trust us. There's a lot of puppets. Like it's enough. Yeah. Good. Okay. Good. Yeah. Yeah. There are a lot of puppets. We have this red shirt puppet on the bridge and he's, he had, he does not have lines. He has sounds. Right. And I love him. I love him too.

[00:39:04] Is he, is that performance just the puppeteer? Yeah. That's so cool. But we cast the actor based on the puppet. So we found this puppet. I was like, which is the weeniest puppet? Basically. And this guy was the weeniest puppet. And then we cast an actor based on him kind of looking like the puppet. And yeah, it was great. He was perfect.

[00:39:28] I can't remember, or it was early on in the process where it was like, let's have a red shirt that just keeps getting the crap kicked out of them. Like, because they can't be killed really. Like, let's see him, you know, get demolished and da, da, da, da. And then I, I mean, I love, I'm so happy with how it worked out with like him getting shot through the stomach and then the final shot of pulling through the hole in space. I was really proud of that.

[00:39:56] I was like, you know, there's just enough of that little weird red shirt through line that he feels like a full character in this, in this journey. I love him. Yeah. He's so, he's so great. Yeah. He's like a little wiener who's just scared on the bridge all the time. The guy's agent called him like, we need a wiener stat. Well, the actor's not a wiener. The puppet's a wiener. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Can you play wiener? And he was like, no problem. I got it.

[00:40:26] Did you get a pitch? Any story ideas since you were working on this so early in the process? I mean, I do feel like some of the red shirt stuff I pitched. God, I can't remember. It all gets so. Such a suit by the time it gets made. Yeah. I remember like the first draft I remember reading being like, okay, this is, some of this is not possible. So I think I did a pitch, some alternative things to do that just felt more kind of like achievable

[00:40:56] and they made their way. Some of those things for sure made their way into the script, but I mean like, who knows? It's a big stew, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So everybody knows the classic Muppet or puppet conceit, right? Is everyone's a puppet except for one character. Yeah. Now we have three non-puppet characters in this and you have some amazing guest stars in this episode. Incredible.

[00:41:22] Just, I mean, and actual like Muppet mayhem alums. Rachel Harris has been in Star Trek before. Like Joe Letruglio, like just talk about working with them on what, like, I think it would be a tall order for most actors to come into Star Trek anyway, but to come into arguably the most absurd Star Trek episode ever and just fit right in. And be painted fully like head to toe green.

[00:41:49] I think Henry wrote it for Joe originally. Like he, that's who he was picturing in his head. And when, when we were talking about casting, he was like, well, I mean, I, that's who I picture. And I was like, I mean, I would say I would die to work with him. I like, you know, wet, hot American summer is like, you know, in my DNA and like, obviously love Brooklyn Nine-Nine. I mean, he's so good. And so then when we got him, I was like, well, this is amazing. And then we got Rachel. I mean, they're two incredible performers and improvisers.

[00:42:16] So like, they were a, they were so funny together. Like they were riffing, they were doing great stuff and they just like, oh my God, the scene with Joe and Spock also in the, uh, in the bar was just a delight. Like Joe really, like he's, he's highly trained. Like he's really wanted kind of this like precision about the blocking. And then, you know, he did that whole stunt himself where his arm catches on fire and runs

[00:42:45] around and knocks himself out and like really wanted to do all of that. And I mean, Rachel is such a delight. Yeah, they were, I mean, they were incredible. They were so fun and really embraced the puppet stuff. You know, it is kind of remarkable. I mean, I do hope you guys get to hang out with like a puppet sometime who's being puppeteered by a professional because like you do just, you give over to it. Like this, even if you see the puppeteer, it starts talking to you and you're just like,

[00:43:15] okay, well, we're, we're in a scene together now. And you like, it is the suspension of disbelief kind of clicks in instantly. And, you know, like Joe and, and to praying, like when he's like holding her hand and like setting it on fire and like kind of roughing her around. So I was like, this is great. Like, I loved watching it. Yeah. And the mind meld. I mean, to praying that scene, I love that scene so much. You know, Pearl Spock has been like tied to a chair for half the episode.

[00:43:43] And then to praying comes in and her little plan and her little like singed hand. Like we had two different arms for to praying one that isn't singed and one that was pre-singed. So we'd like switch out the arm to the post burnt arm and then comes over and does her little, you know, they bend her little fingers. Cause there's wires in the fingers to like do the little mind meld with her little burnt hand. I was like, I love this. So dumb. It's so good. It's incredibly impressive to your point as a viewer.

[00:44:12] I'm like, oh wow. This guy really has great chemistry with the to praying puppet. Yeah. Who knows she's a puppet. Like the live action performances are super impressive. And it is, it's like the weird, like half suspension of disbelief. Cause the episode's calling it out the whole time. Right. Yeah. They're like, this is absurd. It's baked into the premise. Yeah. It's like, yeah. It just works on such a, an insane level.

[00:44:40] Like now I do have to ask because it took me forever. I was like, where do I know this Orion captain from? There's something that I know this Orion captain from. Um, it's the hangover. She was the mean girlfriend at the end of the hangover. Yes. You guys have a hangover episode in this season. Did she, did you tell her that? No, I don't think so. I mean, it was, it was like the second one that was shot.

[00:45:10] This was months later that we shot. And so I don't even know if it came up, but she'll, if she watches the season, she'll, she'll see it. You'll get the text. Well, speaking of the chemistry of Spock and Duprene and his many other loves, you've directed a lot of the key moments in Spock's relationships over the past few seasons. Do you feel any sort of responsibility or ownership to that character's dating life at this point? Like, I don't, I don't, I would never say ownership.

[00:45:39] I feel very, very blessed that I got to carry Spock's kind of emotional, romantic, human through line over these episodes. Yeah. I mean, I, I really, I adore all of the episodes that I got to do.

[00:46:03] And I, it does feel very complete what I got to achieve with Ethan and, and Spock and, you know, with Chapel and Lon and, and then bringing it back finally to Tupring where we know he, you know, eventually goes on. And, and yeah, I mean, I, I don't know if there's anything I love more than like a Vulcan romance. Like I find it very romantic. I find it like, yeah, it's, it's kind of like catnip to me.

[00:46:30] So I felt very lucky to get to do so many Spock smooches and like, yeah, I had to do three great Spock kisses, I think. Which I don't know if him and Lon kissed in mine, but they touched hands at least. They dance. They was like a. They dance. I mean, the dance was amazing. Both of them. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and then Tupring specifically, I want to talk about because I am a big Tupring stan. I think Gia is knocking it out of the park with this character. The character could easily just be like a paper cut out stereotypical Vulcan.

[00:47:00] And she is imbuing it with so much that I'm rooting for these two, even though I know how it ends up for them. I know. What's it, what's it been like working with her? You've worked with her on two episodes. Oh, she's so great. Yeah. I mean, we, it's kind of a bummer on the, on the puppet episode. Like she literally came in for, you know, I mean, she was probably in the chair for four hours, but we shot with her for like, I don't know, half an hour doing that zoom call or like an hour.

[00:47:22] So, you know, we took pictures with her and her puppet and we hugged and we got to chat a bit, but really doing, you know, charades was kind of when we got to really dig in together. And I, I mean, I've rewatched charades, you know, in the recent, and I, you're right. I mean, she's, she does some amazing stuff with it. Again, like the way that actors who are playing Vulcans find ways to like imbue it with like a little bit of humor or like rhinos or sarcastic, anything that they find in there.

[00:47:50] I find it is amazing to watch. And she's so good at it. I always love that line where she's like, I am not hungry. You know, she's just like, I can't deal with my mother. Like even Vulcans can't handle that much time with their mothers. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So you did bring up getting to do more than one Spock kiss. Yes. Yes. I was literally everything about this kissing scene. Yeah.

[00:48:19] Like I was like, this is the part where like you think to yourself, oh, this is what they would have done to Cameron's point in team America. Like this, but this works. Is it not like so heartfelt, a heartfelt, genuine, like, this is what I mean about what, what we really wanted was to ground this where it's like, you don't, I mean, obviously, yes, it's a puppet version of her. But you really feel like these two reconnecting in this genuine way.

[00:48:48] And this, the way that Spock, that Ethan like takes her little hand and touches her little, it's so tender. And I, we shot the scene, Donna, who played to Pring, who is like an absolute genius. It was so good. And I, we were all watching this scene being like, this isn't beautiful. Like both of them are so connected and Ethan did such a great job. Like, you know, obviously you could sit there and kind of get the giggles or like whatever.

[00:49:16] And he was just so, yeah, just so tender with this puppet and like the two of them. And you just see the love between them. And you're like, that's happening. This is incredible. This is a puppet, but you believe it. And you, you, you do root for them. You're like, great. I'm so happy. They're finally reconnecting. Yeah. The whole episode, he's just so kind. We're like, he's always getting down to her level and he's got his hand on her back all the time. He's very gentle with her. He's so gentle with her. Yeah. And that, that whole scene. Cause like, I'm like, they gotta go for the kiss.

[00:49:46] Please go for the kiss. And you go for the kiss and it is absurdly funny, but it is also touching. And then you pan up to the, the people floating in space. And that's the whole episode. I'm like every hilarious strange new worlds episode. I'm at least in the feels, if not like full on tears at the end of everyone. I have everyone. So I was like, what's, what's going to be the emotional heartbreak in this episode. And when they're floating in space and they're talking about, like, we had to take that moment to, to really appreciate this. It was so moving. Like I was, I felt chills.

[00:50:14] And then you pull back through the red shirt's hole on this chest. And it, it, it wasn't like, I still felt the chills, but I was also laughing at the absurdity. Don't forget these are puppets. Yeah. I'm glad you're feeling things, but this is also very silly. Yes. Yeah. So both of those scenes back to back worked really well in that way. Yeah. Yeah. I, I was very, I mean, we had so much fun shooting them in space because everybody, we shot everyone separately against green screen. And so like, you know, there's not really much sound to it.

[00:50:43] So we were just yelling things that were like, okay, all right, now try this. And they all had different ideas of how they wanted to be floating in space. And like, you know, yeah, Scotty launching Erica, like a torpedo that was fully then they were like, let's just like, can I just try this? You know, puppeteers, they, they're, they have so many ideas and they just, yeah, we tried all these different things. And then of course in VFX, we sort of layered them all in and let them, you know, they all just have so much different personality.

[00:51:08] Like, you know, Pike is just sort of kicking back in space and we got Una's hair sort of flowing, you know, in the anti-gravity. And yeah, it was very delightful to do that. I, you know, they write so much heart into these episodes. We really care. You care so much about the characters and even when they're puppets, you're like, I love them. And that's, I think to me, one of the impressive things about it.

[00:51:35] It's like, so these, this is, you know, halfway through the season and these characters have arcs they're going through this year. And it's like, everything is nailed. Like even Scotty launching Ortegas as a torpedo, it's like, well, they're, they're besties now. Like absolutely. They would do that together. Right. And it's like, it's, and then Lon's entire arc of like, well, I can't hurt anybody. If I'm a puppet, you're like, oh no, my heart. But also she's a hilarious puppet.

[00:52:05] Like it's the balance that you guys pulled off is insane. Like, I, I mean, I think that's the word I've used to describe it. We started this episode talking about like, how is it going to be received? And I am so, I guess by the time this comes out, I'll have a bit more of a sense of it, but I just know like, it was such a special episode to make and like the work that went into it from like conception and writing and design and how much Henson cared about it

[00:52:35] and the puppeteers and every, the crew all rallying together and how much fun we had making it. Like, I hope that that joy really like lives on screen. And I know some people are going to, some fans are going to go like, what the fuck? You know, like, you know, what have we done? You know, you guys are, you're nuts if you think we're going to buy into this puppet thing. But I do think like so many fans are going to like love it. I hope, I hope that they just like embrace, I know it's wacky.

[00:53:05] I know it's puppets. We all know it's puppets, but like, it's, it's all so grounded in emotion and character and who these, these characters we love are and it moves their arc forward. And it, yeah, it's, I, anyway, I hope people like it. I'm sure some people won't, but that's okay. And if you don't, you've got like 960 odd other non-puppet Star Trek. There's so many other episodes you can watch. Most of Star Trek is not puppets.

[00:53:33] So yeah, I was, I was telling Cameron before we started recording, like, as soon as this is available, I'm going to take the clip of Mbenga squinting at the Orion right before he fights him. That will be my reaction. Like, this is my face when you don't like the puppet episode, right? Like, it is so good. Oh yeah. I love, I love that even puppet Mbenga does like massive damage and like kneecaps somewhere with knitting needles. Just like him in the back, stabbing him with the knitting needle.

[00:54:03] There was one shot that unfortunately got cut out because we ended up sort of recutting. The fight scene was sort of, um, we blocked it in a way where it was a bit more kind of linear. And then when we ended up cutting it, we sort of like mashed it together a bit more. So everything was kind of happening at once, but there was this great shot we got that we couldn't end up using because it screwed up with the continuity of it. But after he kind of like, you know, he looks up and he goes, and then he runs and he stabs the guy.

[00:54:31] There was a shot over him where he's hanging by the two needles in the legs. And then you kind of, you kind of shoot, you rack focus through him to the guy on the other side going, huh? And I do wish we could have used that shot a little bit, but you know, they can't all make it into the final cut. I'm glad we could hear about it here. Yeah. Yeah. Now it sounded like maybe you've got some inception like feelings on the end of this episode on whether it was a dream or not. Is that?

[00:55:00] I, I think I'm going to leave it up to obviously there is that scene at the end and that I think is what people are meant to be left with in some sort of like, you know, canon way perhaps, but I don't know. I'm not. My head canon. I can imagine this all actually happened. Exactly. I mean, there's that sort of strange, you know, push in on, on little Ricky at the end. It's a little bit strange. You don't, I don't think one way or the other, it's personally definitive whether it was all

[00:55:30] a dream or not, but. So you didn't do any directorial flourishes to suggest it might be a dream throughout, you know, David Lynchian little. No, certainly not throughout. Throughout we're meant to believe it is all really happening. Yeah. Well, and I think what's most important, right? Right. Is even if it is Spock's dream, there's some part of him in the wrath of Khan when he's got his hand on the glass that's remembering this puppet dream.

[00:55:57] And he's like, somehow this is the most appropriate thing for me to do right now. Right. I was pretty pleased about that. I do think that was actually my idea was that. Oh, really? Yeah. And then I think they wrote the scene. They wrote the line in as the callback to it. But yeah, I love that scene too. Yeah. That was. There is a lot of, I mean, when I think about all this stuff we did in this episode, it is like, it is a jam packed episode, you know?

[00:56:25] Well, and 90% of this jam packed episode is just simply shots of Spock's face reacting to things in either some sort of WTF or OMG level. Like by the end, had you and Ethan like developed a shorthand on like what level of shocked he should be? Or I mean, how did that, how did working with Spock throughout all this? Yeah. I mean, by the time we were making this, like Ethan and I have made, we'd made three episodes together. I feel like we were just, we know how to do Spock stuff together.

[00:56:55] I mean, Ethan, Ethan is so good. Like he, he knows that character inside and out and there's really, I have a really good blooper of him. There's like this shot where, where after, after Pike talks to April and he comes over and Pike is like, Oh God, Spock, thank God you're here. I should give you, um, I should give you chair access so that you can deal with this. And there was a, you know, so Frank who's puppeteering him, you know, hits it.

[00:57:25] And then it's like access denied or I can't remember, you know, hand not recognized, not recognized, not recognized. And he, he like keeps trying sort of different things and the camera sort of slowly pushing it on Ethan, like about to sort of twitch. And there's one take where we put, we're pushing anything. I recognize it. And Ethan breaks. And it's so rare for Ethan to break. Like, and I was so delighted that that was like, I think maybe one of the only times I've seen Ethan break as Spock.

[00:57:52] The other time would have been with, with Patton at the end of, uh, four and a half Vulcans, which we got to, which I was so happy they left in. Yeah. But yeah, that's, I think maybe the only two times I've seen him break. So yeah, I'll, I'll be posting that blooper. Yeah. It's very good. So what that means is kissing the puppet did not break Ethan. No, Ethan was, he was dialed in because again, like Donna is an amazing puppeteer and performer

[00:58:20] and actress, you know, she's incredible. And they were just like, they were performing a scene, you know, this was Spock and Dupring performing a scene. It was, everyone was quiet. Everyone, you know, it was like, it was not, I mean, I don't remember, I'm sure maybe the first time they went to kiss, maybe I was sort of like, but, uh, but now we were treating it. You got it. You know, it's so much work that they're doing.

[00:58:46] It's like, it's, you are kind of in awe at, at, at all the stuff they're doing. And there's a great shot too. I mean, the shot where, um, I think it's the take we left in, like where, um, lawns are and then the worm pops off when, when Scotty's trying to transport her and like fix her. And she's like, I'm good. I'm good. And it goes, boing. And there's a shot of Scotty and, and Ethan. And there was a take where Ethan just goes, like his kind of mouth opens like a little

[00:59:14] fish, like gaping. And I, I died laughing because it is, it is just so funny to see Spock react. You know, you, when you see his human side come out, I find it really delightful. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's the take we kept in. The one scene where he's, I think his mouth is open and he's just going, uh, I was like, somehow this is perfect.

[00:59:40] Like I've never seen Spock do that, but it feels completely organic. The whole thing, like the chaos, the insanity through line of like Spock, just like trying to stay grounded and just being absolutely stuck in this like tornado of chaos. He gets to have some of those like bigger reactions to things. Cause you're just like, this is insanity. Yeah. Now I'm just wondering if the tabloids are going to suggest that Ethan and the tippering puppet are dating after this episode comes out. I mean, you know how those rags are. Yeah.

[01:00:10] Yeah. That's a page six kind of thing. Yeah. Too much chemistry. Yeah. So a lot of the more comedic episodes of this series, and most of them are yours. I know that we have ended up with a lot of deleted scenes or alternate takes of those episodes. And you said there was a lot of kind of puppet improv going on here and the, you know, the mouth movements are very forgiving for lip sync and things like that.

[01:00:37] Other than the coolest sounding Mbenga scene where he's just hanging off of somebody with sewing needles. Are there any scenes where you're like, I know that I shot this and I know I wasn't able to include it. And I wish I could have. There was a great, I mean, it'd be fun if they released it. Like when Pike comes back, when he gets launched out and everyone's like, oh my God, he's dead. What do we do? And they're all in Pike's room. And then Pelly's like, look who's not dead.

[01:01:07] And you cut to the window and Pike's kind of outside floating in space being like, let me in. We shot, like the puppeteers were out there doing so many silly things. Like all, and like puppeteering in slow motion. So, you know, puppeteering like he's in space. And like they, you know, had him come in and sort of launch off. And there's a whole, because we just ran the camera and he just, they just tried all these different things. And I, I would say like the things that didn't get to make it in are like all the other types of

[01:01:37] weird space floating that we shot. And like some of the sillier, like Mbenga, someone did like a cartwheel in space that I don't think made it into the cut. And yeah, just like all the kind of bonus stuff you, there's no time for, you know, you have to make a choice at some point. You're like, this is the one Mbenga's doing in space instead of the cartwheel. But I think for the most part, I had to watch it again and see if anything, but they kept most stuff in.

[01:02:06] They added some stuff actually. So yeah. Say you got to kill your Muppet babies. Okay. Well, let me ask an incredibly specific question because this is kind of the sick way I watch media sometimes is so the episode opens. The first shot is the exterior shot of the enterprise and it's going by and then the camera zooms in on the illuminated dome and you crossfade to the bright reflection on the transporter pad. Yeah. And that's the sort of thing where I'm always like, huh?

[01:02:36] I wonder if like, did Jordan storyboard that ahead of time that she knew she wanted that match cut? Or is that something like the visual effects guys go, oh, let's do this or editing. You found it. No, that was intentional. I did one of those in, I mean, there's been a bunch of them throughout the series and you're always like, I mean, I am at least trying to like find a new way to transition out of space and into a scene. And so no, that was always on the plan.

[01:03:02] I will say though, because it's tricky, like when you're kind of doing your edit, you get very kind of rough previs stuff from VFX and then of course you deliver your cut and they go do the VFX for like a year. So, and I will say like the way I had envisioned it is not quite how it ended up. Like the direction that the enterprise is flying is the opposite of what I actually wanted it to be doing.

[01:03:29] But at that point I'm long gone and they don't care. They don't care what I think. Yeah. Oh, I will say also little Ricky was a real find. We built him. He, our amazing props team, you know, they had found kind of like a more of a kind of creepy ventriloquist one that we were like, maybe this could work. And then we just realized, no, we have to build the puppet. So we got this great, I think somebody local in Toronto to build this wacky little Ricky.

[01:03:58] We just kept being like, make him weirder, make his eyes not match, make him dirtier and stuff. So I don't know where that puppet is. That guy's probably not locked up in the CBS vaults. Yeah. I'd buy him. I put him, I display him. Little Ricky's pretty, he was a great puppet. Actually, he was really nicely built. He was quite fun to play with. I want a ringtone of just every time Tupring says little Ricky. Little Ricky. Well, and the last shot of little Ricky is like genuinely creepy.

[01:04:28] Right. And to me, that's the mystery in the episode, right? Because you're like, does little Ricky have some kind of power? Does Spock have a phobia of puppets? Exactly. These are legitimate questions because I am not afraid of puppets, even a ventriloquist dummy. But that puppet was a little bit upsetting. He was a strange puppet. Yeah. I mean, can you imagine if you were Declan Wilder and you're just sitting in your bunk

[01:04:57] and suddenly that thing appears out of nowhere? I did love the Declan Wilder through line of like just how petty Scotty was and like Pelley always needling him about it. And then you just find out later he's just like some kind of rich kid that Pelley thought was shitty anyway. And you're like, I like that. That feels good. Feels good for Scotty. Oh, I was also pleased. One of the things that kind of came late in the game, I think actually. It was our on-set props who was like, I think I can make this work.

[01:05:25] I think I can make Scotty's magnifying glass goggles like fit the puppet. I loved that callback when we were, you know, because the first time, one of the first times you see Scotty on the Enterprise, he's wearing those. And so I was happy we got to sneak that in. Any little like things you can mash from the real set or the real props with the puppets was pretty fun. All the phasers that we built, fake phasers, small phasers that could,

[01:05:52] that were lighter and, you know, things have to be lighter for puppets, obviously. To Pring carrying the armfuls of phasers. Like just the visual of that is like the most adorable. But again, you're like, what's your plan, To Pring? Yeah. So silly. We're like, okay. Kind of heroic. I was like, yeah, To Pring, you're doing something. That was actually, I mean, that scene, that's a one. That was very tricky, you know, because Donna, that was a one-er basically like of them coming down the hallway.

[01:06:21] So Donna is like lying on basically like a kind of dolly on her back, puppeteering to Pring by herself. And also, so the arms are pinned like this. And then she's got the pile of phasers on a stick, basically. It's like a prop on a stick. So she's rolling with her feet. I don't even know where she had the, she must've had a monitor, like a small monitor attached to the dolly. And like, it's not like she wasn't on a track.

[01:06:50] She was, so sometimes she'd be like, kind of like, so she like, keep a straight line, perform with him, hold a kind of heavy prop on a stick. And like, I swear we did it in like three takes. Like, it was incredible. Like not easy stuff to be doing. Yeah. We talked to Emily Hyde and one of her favorite props to make was the torpedo that pins Scotty to the floor. Did she tell you how much it costs? Maybe that's why it was her favorite. Yeah.

[01:07:18] We kept calling it like the, I can't remember if we were calling it like the Mercedes Benz of torpedoes or anything, but it was an immaculate prop. It was like beautiful. It was beautiful. I mean, I hope they used it for something else. Yeah. But yeah, that was a tricky one too. We had to like, I mean, we figured it out long before we were shooting it, but at first we were like, okay, we have to like get our puppeteer under the floor through a hole because the torpedo couldn't have a piece cut out of it.

[01:07:43] Like, you know, if you were building this, if you weren't building such an immaculate torpedo, you would have built like a kind of thing with like a little mouse hole cut out of it so that you could just put it in the floor and put it in the floor. But that thing was not going to be broken or up. So we cut a hole in the floor, more like a trench kind of, so that our puppeteer was lying behind the torpedo.

[01:08:08] So he, his arm could be under puppeteering like this and the torpedo is lying on enough of the floor to keep his arm from being crushed. But it was like a bit of a math problem to, to figure that one out, but, and it worked great. Yeah. And to go to all that effort and then just have the fix be, well, now he's not pinned anymore. He's fine. And I think we, I mean, we definitely, we had it for sure in the, in my director's cut. I'd have to watch it again to see if they left it in. I hope they did.

[01:08:38] It's always really fun with puppet stuff to use like a little bit of a cartoon sound effect. Like I'm pretty sure we use like a, like a little zip sound when he like slides into frame, like just a couple of those little like kind of puppet cartoon tropes really do help with the silliness factor. Yeah. Yeah. I, I, yeah, I, I was telling Cameron, I just, I watched it again today, you know, to help work on the outline and make notes.

[01:09:07] And it was like, when I got done watching it, my face hurt. Cause I was like, there are no, there's no time to stop smiling. Right. Like there's no part of this where you're not like, these are Star Trek puppets. That's the characters. Yeah. Yeah. It was, it was very amazing. So we do ask all of our directors this at the end of our interviews with them. We have to know, do you have a favorite single shot from this episode? Yeah.

[01:09:37] I mean, it is, it's the final shot. It's, it's, it's Spock into print kissing and leaning out of frame and pushing past them and finding all the puppets in space. I loved that. It felt like such a kind of elegant way, you know, to go from a really earnest moment to then kind of have the joy of them all sort of floating in space. I was really pleased with that shot. Yeah. Love it. I have to ask because I'm a big fan of your podcast, Mandatory Viewing.

[01:10:06] Oh my God. You're one of our three listeners. I was, every time you would say that on the show, I was like, how do I communicate? I'm that person without being like, you know, I want to thank you for helping me remember that television can and should be a social activity. Like you guys talked on there about like, you get together with people, you watch it together as a thing you are doing, not as a passive thing.

[01:10:34] And it actually really helped my wife and I are now several, like, I don't know, six or seven seasons deep into Love is Blind. Oh yeah. And we're absolute, absolute junkies for it. Yeah. So like, I want to say thank you for that reminder because we do a social podcast about Star Trek, right? But the way it is, is everybody watches it on their own and then they call in and we build a conversation out of that.

[01:10:58] So I kind of forgot that TV is best watched with someone next to you and you can, you know, kind of game the whole show together. Pick your favorites and you come up with your theories and stuff. Is there any word on the second season of Mandatory Viewing? Yes. We are, we actually recorded episode one already and we were like trying to get episode two in a can so that we could like kind of get ahead of it. But we, we've both been a bit cuckoo bananas.

[01:11:25] Um, but yes, it's, it's fully coming back. We have a big, such a long list of things we want to do. So yeah, it's, it's coming back. We just have to get our, our kind of schedules aligned so that we can get a few in the can and not feel bad that we don't release them weekly or bi-weekly. Yeah. Fully understand the attempt to get ahead of yourself and not having that always work out with a podcast. Fully get it.

[01:11:48] Um, I think your episode on the Don Hertzfeld cartoons, I was like, it was like a, a memory bomb, right? I was like, Oh, I have seen exactly what they're talking about. And I remember being like, how did this get made? Like, I know. And that was like, I feel like that was early, early internet. And we were just like, none of them. We were like, what is this? Like, this is incredible. Is this what the internet is? Cool. Is this how TV will be now? I hope. Unfortunately, no.

[01:12:18] But yeah. Well, thank you again so much, Jordan Canning, for stopping back by the Open Pike Night stage. This has been a delight. And we will absolutely be talking to you again because you're not done with Star Trek. Never. I'm never done. Yeah. But yeah, I'll talk to you guys for the next one. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I got to bring you on for Wedding Bell Blues sometime too because it's legit like my cover episode. We didn't do a Wedding Bell Blues one? Oh, we got to do that one.

[01:12:48] Oh, let's do it anytime. Yeah. You can retroactively. Yeah. Yeah. Let's just keep rolling. Keep rolling. Yeah. Got to get ahead of the release schedule. Yeah. We'll post it backward in the feed and be like, I don't know what you guys are talking about. It's been there. It's always there. It's there the whole time. Yeah. And that legit like top tier at Star Trek. Oh, thanks. I love that one too. Great. Yeah. Anytime. I love talking to you guys. Bye.