Strange New WORDS - "Off-Hour" with Bill Wolkoff

[00:00:00] This is Bill Wolkoff and you are listening to Open Pike Night's Strange New Words, where I'll reveal my recipe for a disaster. Is this thing on? Hello? Hello?

[00:00:34] Welcome to Open Pike Night's Strange New Words, where we never give up on learning how your favorite Strange New Worlds episodes survived. I am Cameron Harrison, acting as host today because John suddenly shouted at me to take the con and then grab some wires, effectively knocking himself out. And then Jesse said he had to go outside to take care of something and put on a space suit and hasn't returned. I'm sure he's fine.

[00:00:57] Which leaves just me to welcome back one of our favorite writers and guests, the man who once made our beloved characters sing and now makes them cry out in anguish, one Bill Wolkoff. Welcome to Open Pike Night. Hello everybody in the Open Pike audience that I can't see but you're out there somewhere I know. Can you hear that? Thousands of people saying hello back. I hear, I believe.

[00:01:25] Now, since it's just me here, I am going to take a little bit of a gratuitous moment. John and Jesse can't stop me to talk to you, Bill. I believe I mentioned this credit of yours when you first came on, which would be Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts, which I watched back then and loved. But my kids were a little young. And just recently I got them to watch it again at a more appropriate age and they are loving it. I'm remembering how much I love it. So I just want to say again, thank you for that show. It really is something special. And my son did have a very burning question he wanted to ask.

[00:01:55] What kind of bug is Dave? Ah, that's a great question. Dave was mutated from some type of cicada-ish beetle. Okay. Okay. I said probably beetle, but cicada, that checks out. He kind of has a mix of both in his genetic mix.

[00:02:19] And yeah. And then he goes through his five life cycles and those do, some are more cicada-ish and some are more beetle-ish. That's fair. So he's like the neutrinos of this episode. A lot of science space in there, but maybe some plot, make believe as well.

[00:02:38] I mean, I'll give you a slight detour into that. Like when we were, it was, God, I think it was James Gibson was the board artist who first did Dave's transformation. Okay. And if I, if it was a different board artist, I apologize if I'm improperly crediting a different board artist, but we didn't expect him to transform that many times. It wasn't scripted that way.

[00:03:02] Oh yeah. And then, and then James just in the boards, I'm sure it was him actually, because he was the first board artist that we had when we were doing the pilot episode, just kept having him transform in that scene over and over again. And then we just built on that with showing him going through each life cycle. I mean, it was glorious. He, you know, and he, in his boards assigned different beetle, some beetle-ish, some cicada-ish qualities in those.

[00:03:27] So there you go. That's the, that's the, uh, uh, starry star Trek fans. Watch Kipo in the Age of Wonderbeast. You can't watch it on Netflix anymore. You'll have to get the DVD. Which is what I did. So I, my son could watch it. I know. I think I looked like two weeks after they took it off. I was like, no, but, uh, the DVD is out there. Yes, you can find it. It's, it's an amazing show that makes you feel the feels all the way through. Just like this episode we're talking about tonight.

[00:03:51] Right. I'll, I'll, I'll wait a little bit to, to gush effusively. Let's just start maybe with the seeds of this, with the, the baby Dave and how did it grow into big Dave? Yeah. Interestingly, this episode started with a completely wildly different idea. Okay. We were looking to do a very, uh, a true bottle episode in the, in this season. And this wound up not being that bottle episode. It is of sorts of bottle episode. Cause they never really leave the enterprise.

[00:04:20] Uh, I mean, they go on top of it, uh, but it w it was not really in the trip, but you know, we were looking to do a true limited to certain rooms bottle episode. And there was an idea to do a cooking episode.

[00:04:35] Um, imagine a, uh, alien species like you ever, you ever watch the original twilight zone episode, uh, original twilight. So there's a famous episode called to serve man with these alien or these alien creatures called the canimates come to earth and they pretend that they're there to serve humanity and uplift humanity. But actually what they want to do is eat all of humanity to serve man is actually a cookbook. That's the big twist of the episode.

[00:05:03] I'm, I'm, I'm more familiar with the Simpsons take on that, but I have at least in bits and pieces of the original. Yeah. So the idea was kind of like a race of it. Maybe even the canimates, maybe we stake the canimates from the twilight zone, take over the enterprise and they're going to eat everybody. And the episode turns into cooking episode where Pike in his confined to his quarters with the whole crew has to cook to save the entire crew's life and use our alpha bridge crew as his, as you know, and they're all out of their elements because none of them are, are,

[00:05:33] are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are the big deal with the whole crew of cooks. Um, anyways, so that was the original idea for this episode. We didn't do it. I noticed. And we, and we, and we realized looking, you know, down at all of our episodes, we didn't really have, um, a really big traditional science episode where, where the science is really, you know, the problem that they have to solve over, over the episode.

[00:05:59] So kind of Henry came back to me and gave me a challenge and said, and I had been pushing the cooking episode. And he said, well, now you've got to kind of come through with something that is more in the a little more classic Trek where they have to solve a massive problem. We always call those the competency porn episodes where it's just watching the crew be good at their jobs.

[00:06:23] Yes. Yes. And we knew that we wanted the episode to center around Chapel and and Umbanga. And that was really about it. And I went off and I realized we've never really gotten to do a disaster movie episode. And I thought, how cool would that be, you know, to do an episode where some massive cosmic phenomenon has our crew in trouble?

[00:06:50] So I really wanted to like have Enterprise get taken over by some type of I'm just going to you know, this is what I was thinking at the time. Cosmic tidal wave. I was thinking Poseidon adventure, but it had to be real. It had to or it had to it had to come somehow come out of reality. And I couldn't go back to the writers room without something more than that, you know, like cosmic tidal wave was the vague idea in my head.

[00:07:19] And I had recently listened to an episode of shortwave, which is an NPR science podcast. And in shortwave, they did an entire piece on neutrinos and specifically on a new particle beam emitter called the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment. It's called Dune. What this experiment is, is they have a lab in Illinois.

[00:07:48] I believe it's from a lab that is, I think, like 20 miles underground or something. And it is shooting a beam of neutrinos all the way 800 miles away to a lab in South Dakota. And the whole purpose of it is to isolate neutrinos and understand neutrinos. And in listening to this, I became fascinated with them. It sounded really cool. Is there something something here to play with?

[00:08:12] And the thing that really kind of blew my mind about this is that understanding neutrinos, which, you know, we right now we have trillions of neutrinos passing through us from the sun and they're ghost particles. We don't feel them at all. But if you can isolate them and when you can find them, when they do interact, they oscillate in a certain way. They actually change states if you can observe them unobtruded. That's what the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment is.

[00:08:42] That's only 800 miles, which is a tiny distance in Star Trek world. And then I remembered my son was reading the What If book written by Randall Munro of OK or XKCD. XKCD. Sorry. Thank you. So I listened to that podcast and then I remembered, oh, there's this article about lethal neutrino radiation, about how absurd, at least on Earth, the idea of lethal neutrino radiation is because we're pelted with neutrinos all the time and they barely interact with us.

[00:09:09] But if you could get to the center of where cosmic neutrinos are being produced and this is what his article is about, like, say, if you could get close to a neutron star that had gone supernova and somehow survive that, which you can't, which is physically impossible, you would still be killed by the neutrinos because you'd be being pelted with so many neutrinos that those would interact with you and those would kill you if the heat of the actual supernova didn't do it.

[00:09:38] And then I'm like, oh, my God, there's my there's my cosmic tidal wave. Now how to how to create that? I worked with our science advisor, Dr. Aaron McDonald, who advises all of the Trek shows, and she is brilliant and really understands story. And I started talking with her about this. And that was where the concept of a slipstream wormhole came in that is so big and vast that I mean, imagine I don't think any of this language actually made it in the episode.

[00:10:05] But the idea is that it was like a neutron star that went supernova and collapsed. And then that was what created this massive wormhole that goes on forever at warp speed. That's where all the mass of neutrinos went. And it has a slipstream effect that pulls things into it. If you get too close to it and you don't notice it, there's the ghost particles part. And that's where that was how we made our slipstream wormhole, which became our space tidal wave that the Enterprise gets trapped inside of.

[00:10:35] And then we built the whole episode around that. Now I'm like, oh, this is this is the kind of, you know, if you get this many neutrinos this close together, the ship gets sucked into it. And by the way, and the reason why I wrote this on the board here, I'm at my other job right now where I'm NDA and I can't tell you what I'm working on. So I had to erase my board. But all of this stuff that I, you know, that I borrowed from from the shortwave podcast and then and from Randall Munroe's book, that's theory. Like none of this is proven.

[00:11:04] Like the deep underground neutrino experiment still isn't done. It's not going to be done until I think the 2030s or something. So all of this is theory, which great. Like, so this is what, you know, we think of right now. So this episode takes a deep detour to theory land. So that was that was what I filled my board with behind you. For those who are watching, you'll see this. But for those who are listening, that's what it says. A detour in theory land. And yeah, that was the that was the genesis of the episode. Nice.

[00:11:34] Best kind of detours for Star Trek. I obviously thought, you know, yeah, Poseidon Adventure in Space. I also thought of TNG's Disaster, which is my favorite TNG episode. And spoiler, this is now my favorite Strange New Worlds episode. So maybe I just have a type. I don't know. But two other things I noticed. Let's let's kind of back out a little bit is by now six episodes into Strange New Worlds season four. I'm seeing a pattern. I'm seeing some themes for the season, Bill. And I want you to to kind of comment on them.

[00:12:03] One, it seems the Alpha crew is constantly wanting time off. Is there were the writers room? Was that being overworked? What's what's going on here, Bill? Why why everyone feeling overworked on the Enterprise? It is. I mean, sure, there are certainly parallels. We did, you know, pressures definitely ratcheted up as we were making season four.

[00:12:27] And we we did have to make season four for a little bit less money than we made previous seasons because we did them so successfully. It's the classic TV conundrum. Like when you do deliver a show on time and on budget, they're like, great. Now do the next season for less money because you're so good at that. So, yeah, that that definitely put a lot of pressure on us. And that was why I was pitching a cooking episode. I'm like, how are we going to save money on this show? So, well, I guess we got pikes anyways.

[00:12:56] And this wound up not being the episode where we saved money. Sorry. But we were definitely feeling that. And perhaps that that, you know, that came through a little bit. And also just using Poseidon Adventure as a touchstone. Like it is the contrast of, you know, you're on this ship on New Year's Eve and there's this massive disaster coming coming towards you. And we have, I would say Kat and Kirsten are probably the two most well-versed on every aspect of Trek.

[00:13:23] I always thought I was pretty good until I got in this writer's room, you know, realized how little I actually knew. But Kirsten, you know, pointed out that we don't, in Trek, there haven't been a lot of stories that did talk about the difference between the different shifts. So that kind of became rife for us to play with this season. And we do play with it a bit this season. And I can't remember if it was this episode or if it was Human Best Friend that really started, you know, like playing with the ideas of the different shifts.

[00:13:52] But yeah, we do dig into that a bit this season. And sometimes, you know, even great crew members need a bathroom break. We'll allow it. The other thing I've noticed is it feels like someone in the writer's room realized, recognized that this is the future. And you can seriously mess up your characters and they'll come back, at least physically fine.

[00:14:15] I think at this point, episode six, everyone but Ahura has suffered what would be for us a horrifying wound if you count Puppet, Pelley, and Lan. Who was this? Why the sudden bloodlust? Robbie said Akiva has some bloodlust. Is it Akiva? Blink twice if it's Akiva. Akiva definitely, you know, can be, he can see long term, like who are we going to, you know.

[00:14:43] But for this episode, I mean, when you're going to do a disaster episode, everything, you know, Akiva was great, you know, North Star for this. And pointing us towards, like, you have to be scared every second. It was a great reminder. Like, I rewatched The Poseidon Adventure. I also rewatched Disaster and Towering Inferno. I watched a lot of disaster movies to prepare for writing this episode. And everything goes wrong at every second. Your crew is in deep trouble every second. And it's even more satisfying when they're really good at their jobs.

[00:15:13] And still things go wrong. And we knew we wanted to do a big Umbenga and Chapel episode. And in canon, Mbenga is not the chief medical officer. So we do need to start laying that groundwork. Now, listen, if you haven't seen the episode, watch the episode before listening to this. I'm going to spoil the hell out of it right now. But spoiler, you know, we know that Umbenga survives because he's a legacy character. But there are some audience members who are not going to know that. That's true.

[00:15:42] So the challenge of this episode was to really make the audience think, oh, my God, is this is this the last episode for for Babs? This is Mbenga's swan song. And that would really allow us to play out in an accelerated way all of the natural friendship tensions that come in the mentor-mentee relationship between Umbenga and Chapel in a condensed, you know, one hour pressure cooker.

[00:16:07] So that was why, you know, that was why we had it out for Babs and gave him a truly horrible wound where, you know, everybody is telling Chapel from the beginning of the episode to the end. He's dead. You got to leave him. You got to leave him. Bill, I know Umbenga is a legacy character. I know he's coming back at some point. At the end of this episode, you had me. I thought for sure he was going to die.

[00:16:32] I thought this was going to be like a, speaking of TNG, a you can do everything right, but still fail lesson for Chapel. That's what it felt like. You guys built it so perfectly. I, my brain was like, we've seen previews. Have we seen Umbenga in any of the other previews? I visited the set. Did they talk about Umbenga in season five? What's going on here? And then like, yeah, just before we see him, I'm like, oh wait, yeah, that's right. Legacy character. Duh, Cam. So good job. Like you, there's people who won't know and there's people who will know and still forget because that moment is so well delivered.

[00:17:01] Um, I mean, you answered the question. So just congratulations on that. Uh, the, the other part of the Umbenga thing, I think is the graphic that the medical scan that Chapel keeps looking at, like that had to work so well to kind of put in our head, what is happening over there under that desk? Like, did you guys go back and forth on that image a lot? Was that Timothy Peele? The brilliant Timothy Peele. Well, we had some trouble with that graphic because I want to preface this by saying we

[00:17:31] have a top notch crew. Uh, and even with the top notch crew, the people who are operating at the top of the games, the best of all times, things still go wrong on set. And this was an episode and Dan Liu, I, I could not be happier with how this episode turned out. Dan Liu delivered such, uh, the director delivered such an amazing episode. And Dan would, I, he might even say this, you know, when you interview him, literally everything that could go wrong with this episode went wrong.

[00:17:59] We did a test because Tim Peele's graphic had to match how we had Babs pinned and that had to look right. And the idea was that he was turned around, uh, that had to be done before we started shooting. And Tim worked like mad to get that done. The thing that we just, I mean, this is where you have a million brilliant minds and sometimes things just don't play out. Right. We, we did a test with, with, with Babs in the costume on the set, uh, with his legs

[00:18:27] turned around and you look at it through the camera and then, oh my God, you can see his legs are turned around and it looks horrifying. Tim Peele match that. And he went ahead and match that on the day that we started shooting it. It didn't look the same. It didn't look, you couldn't see it clearly. I'm looking through the lens. I'm like, damn, you can't see the, like it does. You can't see anything when she did through that POV shot. And he, and he's like, wait, wait, wait, stop. He's like, you're right. What the hell? And we realized that we, the one thing we didn't account for is we didn't have a sick bay and red alert during the test.

[00:18:56] It was normal lighting. And so we had to move Babs around and then I can't remember who it was that called poor Tim Peele, but somebody said, Hey Tim, remember that graphic that you, you know, you and your team, Steph and everybody like they amazing team works many overtime hours to, we need you to do it all over and we need it by tomorrow. So he was your miracle worker. You're Scott. He, he was a miracle worker. He was a miracle worker. So you wound up not having him twisted then.

[00:19:26] Yeah, exactly. You had to go with just, just severed. Okay. I was, as you were talking, I was like, is that what it was? I didn't remember. Okay. Okay. Interesting. Yeah. That sounds even more horrifying. Oh God. Yeah. It just, it had to show up. Like when you look at it down there, you're like, Oh, that was a challenge. It was one of many, many challenges. I appreciate the work you put into it. Cause those are those things where it's probably easy enough on set to be like, ah, don't worry about it. It's one bump, but like to make a perfect episode like this, you gotta pay attention to the details. Thank you.

[00:19:53] Speaking of CMOs, you know, we introduced a character Stranger Worlds fans have been asking for, for a long time. Boys. Can you talk about why it was time to bring him in and, and can you reveal if we'll see more of him this season? Well, I will say this, we got the great Brian Markinson to play Dr. Boyce, a legacy character. And he is a great actor. If any, uh, the open Pike audience hasn't seen him in Mad Men go back and watch it. I mean, he's done a million things. A lot of Star Trek, right?

[00:20:23] He's done Star Trek before he's, I think he's most famous for, for being Don Draper's neighbor and has a lot of elevator scenes with Don Draper in. I mean, that's how I really recognized him. Mm-hmm . And he's a great, great actor. And that's all I could say. I don't want to like spoil more than that, but like when you get a great actor, you want to try to use your act, your great actor. If you can. Understood. Understood. That all came out of wanting to tell a story about Babs leaving the ship and how, how are we going to do that? So it was a great opportunity.

[00:20:53] Oh, that's right. Boyce used to be the CMO before Mbango was the CMO. So because we established that in the cage and the menagerie. So that was a great way to bring back that character. Oh, he's coming back on the ship. Maybe Babs' time is up. So it was a really great opportunity. And also a great way to explore Chapel's relationship with authority figures and mentor figures in a different way than she has a relationship with, with, with Mbenga.

[00:21:22] Uh, so yeah, it was, it was just a great opportunity and, and we were able to get Brian who just knocked out of the park. There was, there was one scene that we had to cut that Brian did that I was, I was bummed that we had to cut, but he's, he's just that good. Like, you don't, you don't want to lose, lose anything with, with, with him. Well, let's talk about it now. Reveal it, bring it back to life. You know, in, in the, in the tradition of things not going right on set, we had, uh, and

[00:21:48] I'm a little sad that the scene didn't work out because, uh, Jess also did such a great job on it after power comes back to the enterprise and she, you know, she turns and she sees that the strong force neutrinos have, have interacted with him and have performed surgery and, and sewn Mbenga back together. Now she has to restart his heart. Uh, and the scene that you didn't see is power just comes back on and she's just been in

[00:22:14] this room wrapped in mylar that's, you know, almost 400 below pushed to her limits out of adrenaline and she's holding up the paddles and she just collapses to the ground and can't move. And she's just stuck there and you see her and like, it was true. It really milked the idea that, oh my God, we're going to kill Babs because she's this close to finish. And this is the easy part. She can do CPR and she can't because she's just been pushed to her physical limit and she's

[00:22:39] just on the ground shuddering and, and, and, and she can't move to him and, and just did such a great job. The problem was we had problems with her headpiece and her mask, her mask kept coming off during the scene and the head thing, the thing kept coming down over her head and blocking her. If I remember correctly, maybe Dan would remember even, you know, that and, and issues with ice on the walls. Like it, it just didn't match. And we, we wound up not, I think that's why we weren't able to use it. And then at the end of it, like she can, you think, oh my God, this is, this is really it.

[00:23:09] Bang is going to die. Boyce then comes in and he lifts her up. He says, we got it from here. And it's just like with the look to her, he like indicates like you were right actually. And we're able to save him. So it was just this nice brief little last moment with Brian Markinson, but for production issues, we could not quite get that scene the way we, I mean, we shot it, but it just, it, you know, it, it didn't match up with the quality of every, you know, because of the production issues that went wrong.

[00:23:37] It was just one of those episodes where, you know, so I do think it would have made for an even more traumatic moment at the end. But, uh, you know, imagine that in your heads audience. I mean, I got, I got chills hearing you talk about it. So thank you for that. And I could definitely say how it would go a long way for his character at a little redemption for him. But at the same time, what's on screen works really well too. So can't complain too much. I love the use of the chronometer in this episode. Uh, it had me guessing the whole time for like a lot of it.

[00:24:07] I was like, are they just going to kill everyone off? And then it's like time travel going to bring them back like that better not happen. It didn't. In fact, you kind of wait till the midpoint to reveal what the chronometer is counting down to. I love, I love that. Was that technique, the use of it on screen always in the script or was that something Dan brought? That was by intention. That was in the script. We wanted this not only to be a disaster episode, but we do make a, and it is, this is out of all of the episodes that we've seen so far.

[00:24:34] This is, this and episode one are probably the most traditional Star Trek episodes, but we do take a formal, uh, leap with this episode and, and we do a true real time episode. I was going to ask, I didn't watch it with the stopwatch, but. It is real time. Oh, nice. Very nice. To, to make that feel real, like we have to put a chronometer in and, uh, it was a kind of cool light device to like. Get you, you know, uh, Cameron people like you saying, why is, why are we seeing that?

[00:25:02] And then like, you realize, oh, this is, you know, like there's literally a countdown and everything is happening. And it did become a challenge because we had to like write everything truly chronologically. It's hard, hard to do episodes like that. 24 hour does it so, so well. And, you know, obviously they have every, uh, act out on 24 goes to the clock ticking. And, you know, when they transition to different scenes, you see the clock ticking, but, uh, we don't have clocks. We have chronometers as established in the original series. So we went with the chronometer.

[00:25:32] Hey Bill, can you make us a cheap and easy episode of Star Trek? Sure. Sure. Sure. But what if we did it in real time? Nice work. Thank you. No, that was, that was like the, the formal way to like make it like, oh, it is a little different than, than Star Trek has done before. And a lot of people won't notice it, but for those that do, you know, that's, it was, it was a lot of fun to get to do that. So were the, the split frames was, were those in the script too, or was that Dan? I started to write them in the script.

[00:26:02] And then Henry said, dude, stop your, you know, let, let Dan and let Andrew take care of that. They're editors and direct don't direct, don't edit the script. Like, great. Sorry. Sorry. I, so that was all them that like, they, they, you know, they did and, and they did it better than I could have ever, ever written. That's I have those notes in my interview for Dan, which tune in tomorrow to hear our episode with Dan. Shout out to Andrew Coots, the lead editor for the series who did this episode and, and, uh, uh, just did that so beautifully.

[00:26:32] I was able to watch him edit in real time on sets. Like they would stop shooting a scene and then he'd be immediately editing it. And it's, it's amazing to watch. That's fun. Yeah. So we don't see extended arguments between our characters in Star Trek or strange new worlds very often. I mean, to the point where like watching the scene with them bang in chapel, I was like, okay, is there some sort of mind control or like attitude thing affecting them? Like, are those scenes difficult to write if for no other reason?

[00:27:01] Because you're not used to that cadence between characters? Yes. If we did our job right, that's the scene that, that, you know, really keys the audience in like, oh, this is going to be their episode. You know, we tried to pick up on, on real issues that these two very good friends and all good friends, you know, like no, no friendship is perfect. Especially when it's, you know, a workplace friendship and a mentorship, you know, that, that shades everything.

[00:27:28] So it was hard in the, in the fun way to write that scene because it relied on, on, you know, I had to look back at all of the chapel banga stories in the past and make sure that I was carrying through the thread of their, their relationship up to this point. And the, and the scene carries, carries that baggage for, for people who have, have seen the show and followed every, every episode. And if, if you're more of a casual viewer that is just tuning in, the hope is that, you,

[00:27:56] you know, you get it like enough that like, oh, that they're friends and, and also he's her mentor. And, uh, we're starting to see the strains in their relationship when they want, want different things with, uh, with their futures. Well, speaking of, of character moments, you know, there's not a lot of laugh out loud moments in this episode, but Scotty's engineering bit. Fair. Uh, fantastic. We've, I feel like we've been teased by both Martin and writers alike for a while that there's going to be a gag about a character not understanding Scotty.

[00:28:26] I never in a million years would have guessed was the computer. And, uh, it's, it's so funny. That was a Martin Quinn improv. He kind of like looked at us for permission and I'm like, please, that's great. Like on the day improv in the set. Oh, wow. That's so cool. I love it. Yeah. Well, speaking of Scotty, like the other moment I really like is her assuring that Erica, that her new BFF Scotty is going to be okay.

[00:28:52] It's just like this nice little character moment in the midst of all this tension building, which I mean, the script is mostly like raising the stakes, ramping those stakes. And building tension. So finding those little moments that don't necessarily need to be there, but really add a lot. Is that something you like coming to after, after you like get the plot as tight as possible? Or are you going through and adding them and maybe going back and having to cut some out? How, how do you balance that tone? I guess is what I'm asking.

[00:29:18] That is knowing the people that you're writing and knowing the Uhura that Celia has brought and, and the Scotty that Martin has brought and finding those little moments. And they're so important. Uh, and I'm glad that you noticed them. Cause I think those are what make an episode like this stand out because if it's just people, uh, around microphones or, you know, or talking to microphones in the air and it's

[00:29:43] all just, you know, you, you do this, you, you, you don't feel it emotionally. That's what makes you feel it, feel it emotionally. And I mean, I was saying that we knew going in that this was going to be on an Umbanga, uh, uh, in chapel episode. We did not know going in that it was going to be a Scotty episode. That was really only in the breaking of the episode. I mean, I, in the back of my head, I, I had always known, and I, I, I'm going to take credit for it cause my name's on the episode.

[00:30:12] Uh, but perhaps it was somebody else in the room who brought this up, but I can tell you with certainty that as we were going through, uh, season three and season four, we never had an episode where Scotty fell in love with the enterprise. Okay. And I wanted this to be that episode. This is the episode where he falls in love with the enterprise and if it ordered him to fall in love with the enterprise, at first it's got to burn him worse than he's ever been burned before.

[00:30:38] And so, and Pellia in this, I mean, she's a, another great, you know, mentor mentee relationship, but she really is. She's the kind of the voice of the enterprise in those scenes. And that's the, that's the other story is this is, this is the love story, but this is the beginning of, of Scotty believing in the enterprise more than any other ship. Yeah. My, my mind to your mind. My note is amidst everything, this episode is also a love story between Scotty and his spaceship. And I, I do love that.

[00:31:06] And not only that, but like in this competency important episode, even the enterprise gets to, to rise to the occasion and, and pulls through for the crew. And I, I mean, genuinely like from the moment Babs like screams in the med bay, like I am just on the edge of emotions for the rest of this episode. Even those Scotty scenes, all the Scotty scenes where he's touching the hole, where, where Pellia tells him to be a miracle worker. Like I'm welling up with emotion at those scenes. It works so well.

[00:31:36] Again, no question. How did you do it? I guess. How did you do it, Bill? It's, it's really good. Maybe one question is like so much of this episode is, does rely on, on make believe and special effects, sound effects, camera work, editing, like when it's just Pellia and, and Scotty, like touching a set wall, but it means so much. Like, is there reverence on the set or is there a little bit of like, is this going to come off silly? There's absolutely reverence on this.

[00:32:04] I mean, you're asking all the right questions and that was, it was hard to do that. I mean, we, and credit our actor. We have, we have such an amazing cast that they can bring. And we did have pyro in, in this episode for Martin, you know, to react to, but a lot of it was, you know, just him alone. Yeah. Talking to, I think Carol, it's possible Carol came on set for some of his scenes. I can't remember. And he, and I think he came on set.

[00:32:31] I don't know if we were able to get their schedules to match up entirely, but there were certain days when, when, you know, they would come on set for each other, which helped, helped through a lot. And we built a bigger, and I'm sure Dan, you know, I don't want to steal all Dan's good stories, but Dan built an amazing extension of the Jeffrey's tube. That was so cool getting to be, you know, build, uh, to work in that, in that Jeffrey's tube extension. We, we had a smaller Jeffrey's tube that we've been using over and over again.

[00:32:59] And in this episode, we finally built it out more to do, do those climbing scenes and do, do all those scenes of him stuck in there. And seeing that, like, you know, I think also being inside of that, like did something to Martin and really brought, you know, so credit to Jonathan Lee and the entire construction department and, uh, Justin Craig and everybody who, uh, built that Jeffrey's tube extension. You know, I think that also helped, helped tell Martin's story in a big way too. Mm-hmm.

[00:33:27] Speaking of, of Scotty and, and Pellia, I love that Scotty gives Pellia a Dracula accent. It's, it, it doesn't make sense, but makes perfect sense at the same time. When he did it last season, was that intended to be a runner or was this you being like, let's turn that into a runner? That was, I mean, Martin picking up on the relationship that he had developed with, with Pellia along, along the way. And, you know, they knew each other before we see them in our show.

[00:33:56] So yeah, that was just, that was him like picking up on her hard to pin accent. Exactly. Uh, you know, but that's, you know, Lanthanites have lived a long time, lived through a lot of dialects. So there's a lot that's informing how she speaks. Indeed. And speaking of Scotty's pairings, I also love the pairing of him with Asha, like this Uber Vulcan with perhaps the most human crew member of the enterprise. Was she always going to be paired with him in this episode?

[00:34:25] Or did you kind of try putting her in different situations? Bianca Nugara, who plays Kadet Asha is, is great. And this was a chance to really showcase her a little bit. Um, I think she brings a little bit of entitled, Zillennial, you know, mix that with Vulcan, no nonsense, you know, and you can't, you get like an even sharper Vulcan character than we normally have on our walking the enterprise, uh, floors. Uh, so it was, it felt like a fun pairing, uh, to have the two of them together.

[00:34:55] And she really brought it. I love working with Bianca. She's, she's the best. Loved all the scenes so far. Don't know why she's on the show yet. I'm sure something's coming by this time last season, you'd already pulled out Gamble's eyes. So I'm, I'm definitely left guessing with Asha. Okay. Let's, let's skip back to the meat of this episode. The table severing Mbango works so well for so many reasons. Like it's visceral. It's kind of science fiction.

[00:35:21] Also it's visually, we can kind of basically tell what's going on and like why you can't just move it. Uh, it, it allows Mbango to kind of still be stoic and upright the whole time. Did you go through any other ideas of, of ways you can nearly kill him in the med bay? And how did you land on this one specifically? I think originally he was going to get impaled with just some type of spear, like, you know, pipe that came from, came from the ceiling and Akiva pushed us. He's like, I don't think it's enough.

[00:35:50] I don't think, I think you need something that feels more fatal. And, and, and he brought up a subway, uh, which is a classic homicide episode where, uh, Vincent D'Onofrio falls into a subway as it goes through and the subway stops and it's holding him together. Oh man. And they're trying to like find, I think it was his camera, if it was his girlfriend or his wife, but they know he's going to die. And they're trying to get him like at least his girlfriend or his wife to come and say goodbye to him before he does.

[00:36:17] Um, and he doesn't realize he's going to die until, until like later in the episode. Uh, and how do you beat that? Like, you know, um, you know, we can't get a subway, but we have these, we've, we have these huge lab tables that we've established and, and, you know, we know they're pretty heavy, uh, and they've got to like be weighed down by something. So magnetics, you know, that, you know, and it was very much an homage to, you know, my hats off to the, the, the, the brilliant writers of, of that homicide episode.

[00:36:47] We definitely borrowed and, and hopefully made different enough to make it our own hats off to, uh, uh, great tell, you know, you want to stand on the shoulders of greatness. Indeed. And well, and you know, you, again, you gave it that kind of Star Trek spin with the, the mag locks, just the sound effect of that. I don't know. I feel like that's what pushed me over on the visceral, like, Ooh. Other than giving us a reason to cheer when Ortegas gets the helm, why did you have Pike knocked out for a good chunk of this episode?

[00:37:15] Because everything needs to be going wrong at every, every, every single point. So taking in what could be seen as one of the worst crises that the enterprises, this enterprise has, has been through taking him out of the chair at the focus of it felt like a great way to make the audience feel unsafe. And, and, uh, uh, Anson was, was very game for that.

[00:37:40] And we got to put Melissa in the, uh, in the captain's chair when the inertial dampeners are failing and everybody is struggling to like stay on their feet. And by the way, no, we did not have, uh, sets that tilted. They were not kibbles. I'm going to ask Dan all about this. Ask Dan. I'll, I'll say, but you know, I'll, I'll let Dan tell you how he pulled off that magic trick. That was one where I'm, when I'm rewatching it, I'm like, I've been on that site. I don't think it tilted. How did they pull this off? Well, tune in audience.

[00:38:09] Tune in to the Dan, the great Dan Liu episode where he will tell you all about that, that very, what he, you know, his solution for making that real and visceral and keeping us, you know, feeling very unsafe. You're a natural podcaster, Bill. Speaking of your favorite podcast. Sure. I'll use that transition. Was chapel asking him, bingo to tell her a joke and Open Pike Night reference. And if not, could you lie to us and tell us it was, you know, it's funny. Yeah.

[00:38:39] That's I, I, I, I was thinking about that as it was coming here. Cause I, that, that is a favorite joke of mine. And, uh, it's one of like, have you ever seen the documentary of the aristocrats? Of course. Yes. Yes. Okay. It's what it's like that kind of a joke where that joke has been told. It's, it's not as insane as the aristocrats, but that joke about outliving, you know, an old turtle has been told in many different ways.

[00:39:06] I've seen multiple comedians use that joke and I feel like it, it says something about mortality and like life and, you know, and I've always wanted to do it in star Trek. And I did it on your, I did, I did tell it on your podcast. Uh, uh, season one. I think it was if Riker and, and LaForge had brought Picard, uh, an old turtle. Oh, that's right. That is right. Okay. We're going to play that right here now. And he says, I cannot accept this turtle.

[00:39:35] And they are horrified. And LaVar says, but Patrick, why? And he says, that's the tragedy of pets. You grow attached to them and then they go and die on you. The punchline is not that funny, but what it says, but it's the telling of it and what it says about us and how we deal with letting go of people, letting go of things that we

[00:40:04] love that makes it kind of, to me, a little profound. And that's why I like it so much. Uh, and it felt right for, you know, like what's the moment when chapel kills a banka and she does kill a banka. She, uh, freezes to death. Uh, it stops his heart. How is she going to set him in ease? Like what's the nicest kindest like way that she can let him go out before she opens, opens that door. And it's taking his mind off of like, it was just taking his mind off of it with something

[00:40:32] that he finds funny that my hope was that it also feels a little profound about what she's going through. Um, so that, that was the idea behind it. And, and, uh, yes, I did tell it here first, so you can take credit for that. Okay. We'll take, we'll take that as our first, like our longest running spoiler. Uh, well, I was also wondering though, because we heard that originally in human best friend, part of him Benga's journey was to become a standup comic. Was this, uh, going to be a callback to that? Had that already been kind of taken out when you wrote it?

[00:41:02] It, it, it, it, that, it, that informed it too. It, by, by the time I got around to writing it, it was, he was a bar, he was, he was a bartender with flair, but I think that, that might, that probably put it in my head too. Like, oh yeah. Like he's been working on jokes. Yeah. I, I, I, I think that might've informed it as well. Yeah. Like you said with the, the table, there's other ways to maybe kill Babs and Benga before you, you landed on the table, landing on him.

[00:41:28] You know, what other kind of disaster scenarios did you come up with for the ship? Obviously we have the gravity in the port galley. We've got the, uh, the dampening thrusters, like what else in the pitch meeting, throwing stuff up on the wall, but other ones did not make it. I mean, I think we got, I mean, honestly, the inertial dampeners failing and the ship starting to tilt almost didn't make it like a producing director, Chris, the great Chris

[00:41:53] Fisher called me and he said, dude, dude, this is the bottle episode. Dude. What the hell are you doing? Every single one of these scenes is going to take twice as long to, to effectively pull this. What dude, dude. And I said to him, dude, dude, I, I, I hear you.

[00:42:16] I, I, I give me a couple of days and I'll take half the scenes out that don't need it. And he said, dude, don't forget this conversation that we just had. I said, dude, I won't. And that, and so we cut out, you know, and, and from a story point, I think we have the ones that we really need the most. I wasn't missing any. The thing that we missed was like in my, and I think it works. Actually, I think it works better without it.

[00:42:43] I don't know if we would have been able to pull it off in the Poseidon adventure. When you see the ship turning upside down at new year's Eve and every like things start falling from the ceiling in my head. I was like, can we do that with, you know, in the port galley? And that was written a little in a very, very early draft. That was like one of the things that, so it, you know, it was the same problem. It was just like, we were seeing it play out bigger. And it's like, oh, okay. We, we can come in on the aftermath of it.

[00:43:09] But there's other ways to do it because we're going to do it in engineering that we can pull off. We can get that huge. They, you know, they gave me the huge door that comes down and, and, and Dan shot it so brilliantly. You get it all from that, but you don't have the fun party where, you know, every, like things go haywire. I mean, that is a classic scene of Poseidon Adventure at the same time, like watching the gravity sequence in the port gallon. Again, I can't wait to talk to Dan about pulling this off because one, I can see how like it's,

[00:43:38] it's mostly done in post. Like it's small practical effects, performance, music, editing. And it, I mean, I thought Poseidon Adventure the whole time. I'm like, I feel like I'm in the Poseidon Adventure, but with the, like a sci-fi flair to it. Good. That was what we want. Good job. With the, of the engineering scene, you know, we definitely see some crew members probably not making it from there. Do you have a casualty count for this episode?

[00:44:04] Uh, uh, probably eight or nine. I think I can't remember how many exactly we're down there, but the entire beta shift, uh, um, was, uh, you know, in engineering was, I don't think anybody made it under that door, but the rest of the ship, the rest of the ship's okay. Uh, yes. I think everybody else made it out. Okay. So, uh, oh, I forget what her rank was, but the, the one, the commander who was going to take over beta shift, uh, what was her name? Raja or Rada? Rada.

[00:44:33] Cause she has, she's okay. She is okay. And in fact, I'm glad you brought her up because she is a legacy character. Oh, is she? Yes. And I, I, I, I, now I am embarrassed. I should have, it wasn't a huge part, but she was in one TOS episode in season three. Uh, okay. Uh, Lieutenant Rada. I think she was at commanding level in a TOS and I'm, I'm, God, I'm now I'm so embarrassed. I'm forgetting the name of the TOS episode. Somebody look it up. Somebody look up. I'm right here.

[00:45:04] Lieutenant Rada, report to the bridge immediately. That would be season three, episode 17. That which survives. What bothers me is the stars, Mr. Spock. The stars. Yes, sir. They're wrong. There we go. There it is. When we put in characters who sometimes don't have a lot to do, but we need somebody to do something. And that was just somebody like, don't worry, the ship's in good hands with me. That's essentially her character. Yeah.

[00:45:32] Uh, it's fun to make, you know, it like let's all of us do. Um, and I, I definitely try to look back into Canon and see was there, is there anybody that we can use that we can, you know, and then maybe they'll be good and we can bring them back and you know, all the, all the fun stuff. That's fun. That's fun. Well, I mean, it takes no small amount of charisma to like look at ants and mountain be like, don't worry. I got this. Like that alone will make you a memorable character. So she did good.

[00:45:58] Well, when all is said and done and people are looking back at, at strange new worlds and Star Trek as a whole, what do you think this episode will be remembered as? What will be the shorthand for it? Uh, um, um, um, banga dead. The episode where they didn't kill him. Um, I mean, that's my hope is that, you know, people, people remember it fondly and went on the, you know, this great adventure where we really get to see our crew at their best

[00:46:27] in, in the most trying of, of, of circumstances. And you hopefully learned a little bit of cool science. And by the way, the, listen, theory land, uh, we don't know if, if in a side of the slipstream wormhole that big, there would be particles that would be able to do what they do in this episode. But, but, uh, that is real science. Um, and that's the purpose of Dune is that when you see all of these neutrinos, uh, traveling

[00:46:56] and you're, and you're able to record them in, in theory land, they oscillate and change states of matter. And this is what explains when at the beginning of time, when, uh, after the big bang happened and there was just as much matter and there was just as much anti-matter, why it didn't all cancel each other out. It's because the fee in theory land and, uh, and Dr. Aaron is probably rolling her eyes. I might not be explaining this exactly right. She's definitely listening.

[00:47:24] In theory land, the neutrinos that oscillate and change slightly that our, our, our, our universe is in a state that tends towards matter. That's why matter exists. So, uh, for those who are science oriented and, and, and a little science nerdy, hopefully this is the episode where like, Oh, that was like, they, you know, they actually based it on that cool thing. And that's where I get my cool space tidal wave. That makes me go, ah, for the whole episode. That's what I hope. Do the scientists who work at this place, when they come out, do they have bright blue

[00:47:55] eyes to work at the dune? I guess so. Cause they're underground for a long time. Probably. Did you, uh, did you let, uh, Russell Monroe and I forget the name of the podcast. Did you let them know they inspired an episode or? Let this be the episode where that comes out. Randall Monroe and, and the, the brilliant people at the shortwave podcast. I'll credit. I think that scientists that they interviewed, I think her name was Jessica Esquival. I apologize if I'm, if I'm mispronouncing that, but they inspired the science behind off hour.

[00:48:25] Nice. Thank you. Thank you. I also thank you. Again, favorite episode. Thank you so much for that bill. Any, anything else I didn't ask any other deleted scenes you want to share with the world about this episode? I'm going to credit again, Jess Bush. Like she worked so hard on that scene where she froze to death. She, she, she researched what it would mean to actually freeze to death. She was working on the weekend. She was texting me on the weekend.

[00:48:55] Like, do you want to see this video? You want to, you know, texting Dan on the weekend. Like I'm ready for the scene. It's so good. I'm sorry that the production side didn't measure up to what she was bringing, but Dan, that was, you know, she was so good in the, in the, in those moments. And there's an alternate universe where that does exist. Oh, that, that seems specific. I see. Yeah. Well, I mean, but all of the other scenes, she is amazed. She is a powerhouse in this episode. She owns this episode.

[00:49:23] I mean, Babs is too, like the different levels he plays of grieving himself is amazing. Martin is amazing. Again, like you're saying, playing those scenes by himself, like having to fall in love with the ship inside of this tube. Melissa's great taking the con and being captain. I mean, again, like Rebecca, I can't, I can't wait to ask Dan some of these questions. What it must've been like on set to ask Rebecca. Okay. Trust us in post. This is going to be really intense right now though.

[00:49:50] It's all on you to act like you're being crushed to death as you crawl across the room. Like that's all on her shoulders on set. Like everyone brings it. Yep. I was going to ask, but I didn't cause I know the answer, but I'll just throw it out there. Like when writing, do you ever go like, I'm asking too much of these guys. Like this is, this is too much because not yet have they let the scripts down and you've asked a lot from these actors. We have, I mean, we have such a great cast. Like it's, and, and they embrace it with open arms. They, they take it very seriously.

[00:50:20] And when we give them a challenge, you know, they, they come to us a lot and they talk to us and they, you know, we, we talked them through it and all of them were, you know, Anson came to me. He's like, this is this any of this true? Like I said, Anson, I'm telling you, I, I did my research on this. He's like, I don't know if I, if I fully buy that. I'm like, great. Use that. Use that. I do love those things. Like, wait, wait, wait, slow down. It's a great way to shut chapel down at that moment.

[00:50:50] Yeah. Anson knew something about, like about, about neutrinos. Like they're ghost particles. There's, I know that they're traveling through me right now. How can we do this? And like, I'm telling you, I don't have the Randall Monroe book with me right now and I don't have the podcast with me, but I did. Anyways. So yeah. Even, even Ethan's like just when he spits up blood, like that little moment, like it's, it's timed so well, the look on his face is like both horrifying, but heroic because he knows he has the answer and he's trying to get it across.

[00:51:20] And yeah, it's just good from top to bottom. And the tone, I mean, you talked a little bit about it, but like, again, it's an emotional rollercoaster. Like we're dealing with some dark stuff. You're basically killing him. I mean, and being in chapel, die. Yeah. That's a fun ride. It's, I have so much fun watching it. And again, maybe that's just me. I love disaster movies and episodes, but like you managed to keep that fun throughout. Thank you.

[00:51:43] Uh, I, you mentioned, uh, the, the mind meld, uh, that's another little fun fact of how hard the production was, we have, uh, and this is a real credit to the, this entire crew that we, we, we, we were very ambitious, not only for the actors, but for the crew to like pull things off on time and on budget. And in that scene, we had so many moving elements. We had so, we had such a huge cast. We had makeup changes. You know, we had a smoke coming in.

[00:52:12] We had doors that had opened at the right place in the right spot. And, uh, we had to have this mind meld and tie and the, and literally the clock was ticking. We're racing to like get things done before 12 hours are up and we go over budget and our, uh, production manager comes on set. He always shows up like about 20 minutes before it's over. He's like, hi, Bill. Hi, Dan. How are you doing? We're going to finish on time. Did you guys put a little chronometer up on the wall? Like, tick tock, tick tock. It's like that.

[00:52:37] So in this moment, Ethan pulls me aside and says, Bill, this glove is attached to the space suit. I can't take it off. How am I going to mind meld? And I went, uh, and we like, we had to shoot it. Like we had to like shoot it in 40 seconds. And I'm like, uh, and then in my head, I just remembered Spock in a suit in the motion picture, mind melding with V'ger with the glove. And I said, he's done it with the glove before. I remember it.

[00:53:06] This is when he learns how. Yes. We can do it. And he looked at me, he said, okay. And he went, because we couldn't take that glove off. It was attached to the suit. No skin contact. Bernadette would have killed you if you brought it back with scissor cuts in it. Ah, that's great. Well, I could spend another hour talking about this episode and I'm dying to know how you pulled some of this off, but I will save it for Dan.

[00:53:34] And, uh, please tune into our conversation with him tomorrow. I can't wait for that. I might ask him about some other episodes he's worked on because he's worked on some doozies in the series. Uh, so for right now, I only have one last question for you, Bill. What is your favorite line from off hour? Uh, pets. You love them. And then they go and. Well done. Well done. That's the line.

[00:54:04] That was me freezing. We need a smoke machine under you to just fill the room at that point. Excellent. Yeah, that's it. Well, thank you again for all the work you've done throughout the series and on my favorite episode to date. I appreciate it all. Thank you. And all the time you've come talking to us too. I love coming on your podcast and talking to you all. And hopefully I don't word salad it all the time. Um, this is always, it's always a joy.