Another Pass at Another Pass at Star Trek The Motion Picture

Let's look back at the time Case had Farragut Forward's Executive Producer, John Broughton, on to talk about Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

Check out Farragut Forward: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/farragut-forward-a-star-trek-fan-production#/

Transcription

(AI Generated. Subject to Error)

00:00
Case
Just gonna see how this all goes.

00:01
Case
I'm gonna put one hand in to make sure that the binky doesn't fall out.

00:05
Sam
Fair enough. Have you gotten too used to the fact that people just don't care about you and only care about the baby now?

00:11
Case
Yeah, it became pretty clear the second my mom visited us the first time.

00:15
Sam
Yeah. Good.

00:23
Case
Hey, everyone, and welcome back to an other past podcast. I'm Kay saken, and as always, I am joined by my co host, Sam Alicea.

00:29
Sam
Hi.

00:31
Case
And even though this is one of our bonus episodes, we actually have a guest with us today. We have my baby, Grace.

00:37
Sam
Hi, Grace. Yay.

00:40
Case
So, Sam, this actually seemed like a perfect episode for us to have an intruding child with us, because this is one of the early episodes of the show that we are talking about today. We're looking back at the episode I did with John Broughton, executive producer for Starship Farragut, discussing Star Trek the motion picture. And while I had a great conversation with him, he has a couple of kids, and his youngest son just kept on barging in on us quite a bit during the recording, which led for me to have a very chopped kind of episode. You can really hear very abrupt transitions in conversation when you listen to it.

01:18
Sam
Yeah, definitely.

01:19
Case
The other thing, that this will really only affect the tens of people who listen to it first on the certain point of view feed, when it first went out, the audio quality was way worse. And when we split off into its own channel, I went back on all the original episodes because I had learned a decent amount about editing between the first episode and the 9th episode and remastered it. So it actually sounds a lot better than I remembered because the first version, our audio levels just kept dropping. There's one or two spots still in this one, but it was way worse than the original release.

01:57
Sam
Yeah, it's not too bad.

02:02
Case
Relistening to it, I was like, oh, this isn't that bad. And then I got to a spot where my voice kind of dropped out. Because at the time, a lot of the ways that I would deal with those kind of audio issues, especially because were both in the room together, is I would drop the volume on our mics as opposed to just like, a hard cut.

02:20
Sam
Right.

02:21
Case
And there's lots of other ways to kind of finesse it. But I was extremely reliant on the gain line in audition and setting points of like, okay, now fade out here, now. Okay. That aside, I actually think it now actually sounds pretty good overall. Just, like, acknowledging that it's still an early episode for the show.

02:40
Sam
Yeah, I thought it sounded pretty good. I did notice the choppiness and stops, and I was like, oh, wait. But there's also so much knowledge in this episode. I feel like in general, people will enjoy this, and especially if they didn't know tiny facts about know things like, yeah.

02:59
Case
That's why I really was excited to have John on, because he's such a Star Trek fan. And this will be a really interesting episode to look at in general, but it is fascinating to be like, oh, yeah, were talking about Farrogate forward at this time. And like, at the time it was so fresh after the Paramount guidelines had dropped that we thought that it was a project that we had to shelve.

03:20
Sam
Right.

03:21
Case
And then flash forward to six years later and wow. And we're almost done with the production of Farrogate forward. It's a project that had new life and a lot of excitement, and I've been a part of that, and John's been on here promoting that. When we did the Star Trek episode last year, I want to say, yeah, it was part of us, like, actually promoing the indiegogo when that was launching.

03:53
Sam
Yes.

03:53
Case
So that's all stuff that we talk about in this episode. But why don't we get into it? Because I don't know how long I can hold this binky in my daughter's face and keep her from fussing.

04:09
John Broughton
Welcome to certain point of view, another past podcast. Be sure to subscribe, rate and review on iTunes. Just go to certainpov.com.

04:21
Case
Hey, thanks for tuning in, nerf herders. I'm case Aiken, and today I am joined by John Broughton. Hey, guys, today we're going to talk about Star Trek, the motion picture. And I honestly could not think of a better person to talk to about it than John Broughton. So, John, why don't you tell everyone a little bit about Starship Farrogate, which is how I know you well, Starship.

04:41
John Broughton
Farrogate is one of the oldest fan film series dedicated to Star Trek. We started around 2004 2005. We've made numerous films, both live action and animation and a comic and some other forms of media out there based on the USS Farragut and its crew, which is not Kirk, Spock, and McCoy. It's Captain Carter, Smithfield, and Tackett. And it's a different ship, different crew, different adventures, but not a parody. Serious Trek set in the same original series platform.

05:16
Case
Yeah, the Farragut's a canonical ship, right? It's appeared a couple of times in Tos and then again in TNG. It gets some love. But it was referenced in the 2009 Star Trek movie. Yes.

05:29
John Broughton
It was almost put on it deliberate, too.

05:31
Case
Yeah. So it's definitely a love letter to original Trek material and not just like, okay, we're going to just poke fun at everything, right?

05:44
John Broughton
Yes.

05:46
Case
Now, John, I have to say, one of the reasons I wanted to talk about this movie, especially with you, is that I owe you a debt. In my love of Star Trek, I grew up as a next gen guy. I watched next gen and D, Space Nine and Voyager in high school, and then in college, I kind of missed Enterprise because I just wasn't watching tv that much. But then shortly after college, I met you and started working with you guys on Farragut. And that's when I got into, like, I went back, I rewatched the original series. I finally watched all the animated series, made a point of watching all of the movies, and really loved it because before that, I remembered it. I'd watched some of it, I liked it, but I was like, I'm a next gen guy. I like Picard.

06:29
Case
And really working with Farragut, that's how I sort of revived my love of Star Trek. And me watching Star Trek, the motion picture was kind of part of a completionist mode for me. I was like, I've got to watch all these movies because I'd seen Wrath of Khan. I loved Wrath of Khan. It's a great movie. But I'd always heard the motion picture was kind of bad. And I was like, all right, you know what? I'm going to give it a shot. I've heard some counterarguments to it. Let's take a look.

07:00
John Broughton
Well, one, I never knew that about you. I mean, I've known you, as you said, a long time ago, you were like one of our young kids, one of our young pups who came to our project and very early, and you were featured. I think the first time was for one of a nail.

07:16
Case
Yeah, I had a quick cameo in there.

07:18
John Broughton
So it's good to hear that through our project, it helped kind of incite you to watch some of the earlier work of Star Trek to the point of Star Trek the motion picture and those that may not be familiar with a little background. It was the movie that was made ten years after Star Trek was canceled, which went through many iterations in the. Went through a phase where it was literally called Star Trek phase two. And it had a lot of the 70s look and feel woven in the series. And the plan was initially to bring back Star Trek, but to have it as a new television series. And after the success, the major, unprecedented blockbuster success of Star Wars, Paramount executives said, well, let's push it out as a motion picture.

08:11
Case
So now the motion picture was a script from the phase two project, right? Was it the pilot?

08:16
John Broughton
Well, I'm not for sure if it was one of the pilots. I would suspect not. It was based on a story that Gene wrote called in thy known image, and it was based about meeting God. From what I remember, Star Trek fans don't quote.

08:34
Case
This is not one of the big ones that people talk about a lot.

08:37
John Broughton
No, it's not. And I think based on all the scripts that Gene had, and he was involved in the first movie, but he wasn't thereafter. And it was more of a consultant and getting his take on the script. But this was the script that they opted to go with, right?

08:52
Case
I mean, this movie, it was not a commercial failure. It actually is one of the higher percentage return ones of Star Trek movies. But it still doesn't have the sort of love that the immediate follow up, wrath of Khan, did. Correct.

09:06
John Broughton
Correct. And in terms of timeline, when this movie did come out, it did very well financially. However, the people that after they had seen it, the rapport was, or the consensus was this wasn't a great movie. So when they were two or three years later, when they opted to do Star Trek, two, a lot was banking on reusing sets and costumes and such, and it was a make or break fail. And had the script that Nick Meyer had provided and the directorship of that had not been executed well, we might have seen an end to all the movies and the franchise itself.

09:47
Case
Can I tell you a fan theory of mine? So I have theorized that with this movie, especially the way the shots that we got in this movie, that Gene Roddenberry either was holding out hope to do another tv show or to do movies, but with a tight turnaround and possibly at tighter budgets in some case. And that's why we get these crazy, elaborate, long special effect shots, because that's classically what you do for a tv pilot, where you get like, okay, all the special effects that we're going to need with the ships and everything, we're going to get those so we can reuse little snippets of it here and there. Later, when we make the next episode, that happens to be like, oh, we just need a shot of the ship, or we just need a laser blast image to chop it all together.

10:36
John Broughton
It's an interesting theory. That's one thing I'm sure we're going to talk about is the editing and all the footage that is in this film. There's a lot of special effects, and for the time, for the day, it was quite, I wouldn't say revolutionary, but it's quite extravagant. It's very nice.

10:57
Case
Yeah, I mean, it definitely came in the way, or it came right out after close encounters of the third kind, which I think was the thing that really pushed everyone to be like, Sci-Fi can be a blockbuster. Like, Star wars was like, people weren't sure if it was going to be like a flash in the pan. No one else cares about anything else. Close Encounters follows up, and then all of a sudden they're like, oh, wait, people like this stuff. It's not just kids tv anymore. We can do real movies about it. And it's part of that golden age of Hollywood. Or not Golden Bronze Age of Hollywood. Right. Yeah. So do we want to just dive in? All right, so pretty famously, there's the Od even rule for Star Trek movies, and this movie sort of starts it off.

11:40
Case
I don't fully agree, and I don't fully agree with the larger series having that rule, but I get why people say that. I mean, wrath of Khan is so good, and it's so different. This movie is very much a Roddenberry Star Trek.

11:54
John Broughton
Yes, it is. It definitely is. With theme of the movie. It's definitely got Roddenberry all over it.

12:03
Case
See, I've argued and I've seen other people make the same point about Star Trek movies, is that they tend, for a movie to make Starfleet more militarized. That's why it's like very military jacket looking in wrath of Khan. And then like that era of Star Trek films, when you get to first contact, they have a much more military kind of look to them. And then with the new Trek stuff, like 2009, all of a sudden, all the terms are like, you got to enlist in Starfleet. It's a peacekeeping armada. These terms making it so military makes it easier to convey this to a broader audience than for the subtlety of a movie like this movie, which is sort of doing the same thing that the tv show did, where it's not exactly a military ship. It is a ship. It has a purpose.

12:52
Case
It has a mission. But that mission isn't defense or fighting or anything like that. That mission is discovery.

13:00
John Broughton
Yeah. And Robert Wise, who was the director of this film, whose work goes back, way back from the. He started out, I think, as a video editor. He won an award, Academy, I think, award for his work on Citizen Kane films that he directed that got him a lot of fame. I'm not sure about Gone with the Wind, but certainly west side Story and sound of music, other movies and some science fiction ones as well. He wasn't a novice when it came to Star Trek.

13:38
Sam
No.

13:39
Case
I mean, if he's working on Gone with the Wind in Citizen Kane, we're talking about a Hollywood pedigree right there. Yeah.

13:44
John Broughton
And some other Sci-Fi films as well that Robert Weiss had directed. Now, when he started working with Gene Roddenberry on this, he interviewed Bill Tyce, the original designer of Star Trek. He rejected his work. He rejected another one, another designer's work. And then he met with Robert Weiss. And Robert Weiss was meeting Roddenberry, I think, and I could be wrong about timing, but he came up with the designs for the Klingons, which not many people know about, which set the standard from 1979 all the way up to all the movies, all the incarnations of Trek TV, of Star Trek all the way up. So from 1979, say, to 2004, 2000 time frame, he set the standard. What the Klingons were.

14:30
Case
Yeah, this is the movie that brought out the forehead ridges. This is the one that made Star Trek like the most recognizable species in Star Trek. What they are like. Prior to this, they were the smooth headed, yellow skinned, kind of cheap aliens. That's actually what they were. They were introduced originally to be a cheap alternative to Romulans, which had the much more expensive prosthetic, actually, in terms.

14:57
John Broughton
Of, like you say, the ridges. And it was based on a design that he had for another project, I think, that Jack palace was involved with. And it was more like a lizard kind of. He just. You can see the similarities in his drawings of that image and what the Klingons, what he pitched and what was accepted. But when he met with Robert Weiss and shared his designs and they were talking, like you were saying about the military look, he didn't want to be too overly military. And he said that he did not want a lot of color in the film. So that's why Robert Fletcher was sometimes. I spoke to him last year and we talked about this and he said, I mentioned about the monochromatic look of those uniforms.

15:43
John Broughton
I called him in regards to Star Trek two and the uniforms for that. And we started with the reuse of the uniforms in Star Trek, from Star Trek the motion picture to Star Trek two because of cost savings. So they had to repurpose those uniforms. They had to redy them. They repurposed them. Those became the enlisted jumpsuits.

16:04
Case
Okay.

16:05
John Broughton
Of everything that you saw, and there's plenty of those different iterations of those costumes, but essentially, what you see in the motion picture became all the enlisted jumpsuits. And he mentioned, I just said it was such a difference going from the leisure suits of what they look like, these lounge outfits, to these nice military uniforms. And it was Robert Weiss that really influenced how that military look, that uniform look, which really wasn't uniform at all. There were so many different colors, and they were all on a monochromatic color scheme, and they had so many different iterations of what Kirk wore and some of the other characters wore. That just wasn't consistent.

16:51
Case
You're talking about in two through six.

16:53
John Broughton
No, in the first iteration, once Star Trek two came about, there was this uniform palette that became the standard moving forward. But before that, in the motion picture, it's all over the place.

17:06
Case
Yeah. No, this one, it doesn't look like there's any sort of consistent feel, aside from some very minor details from the tv show to this. It's interesting thinking about that in relation to the look of the bridge versus, like, the 2009 movie, where it's, like, very white, and then they have the classic uniform color scheme, so it pops a bit more, but you get that same sort of very white to represent the future in this movie, too.

17:35
John Broughton
Yeah. The colors of these sets and how the sets are lit. It's very bright. It's very warm. In contrast to the other movies after.

17:44
Case
Or to the original series, where it was very gray. Yes, gray and black were the constant scheme of the actual ship, with, like, a few bright colors to indicate this is a railing or this is a pipe to don't touch it. The original series looks very submarine esque like, very naval, which I kind of attribute to so many people who worked on that movie, who worked on the tv show, having come from military backgrounds, either in World War II or in Korea.

18:11
John Broughton
That's correct.

18:12
Case
And then you look. And so it all makes sense in that regard. And this one is moving more towards this utopian future thing that Roddenberry was really pushing with bright colors and much more futuristic looking jumpsuits and lots of interesting choices.

18:29
John Broughton
The sets on the motion picture, though, they had a lot of money to spend with, so they went all out, and they're very nice. The functionality of the sets and how they, in contrast to the original 60s Trek, which was tv, you had alien come out around the same time as this movie, and so that realistic, more modern feel like these look like real sets, so that believability aspect went up.

18:56
Case
Yeah. The lived in future is the term for alien and also for Star wars, where they have a worn down kind of thing. And I think Ralph McCrory worked on designs at one point for this. Or was it for Wrath of Khan? He was a big designer for Star wars, but then he submitted some stuff for Star Trek that never actually went anywhere. It's really good that you're noticing all this uniform stuff, because with Farragut, I mean, it's all hands on deck. And so you've been responsible for all the costumes, right?

19:25
John Broughton
Yes. Making the costumes was a necessity. I couldn't find anyone to make these uniforms, and my tailor that I saw in the Navy just he wasn't inclined to make them, so I had to learn how to make them myself. And then so deep diving in the research and the costumes and such, that was what I was. I hone in a lot.

19:47
Case
Yeah, you've done fantastic work. I have one of yours that no longer fits me. That was the velour original look. I wore it to a poker tournament once, and I was just kicking ass because people were like, I know you have a great hand right now, but I can't take you seriously right now. I have to call. The only problem was, it was too hot and I had to change, and all of a sudden, my winnings just ripped away from me. That was the shift there. So, yes, the movie looks beautiful, and that actually kind of leads me to my big note about this movie, which is learning to edit. The whole thing is gorgeous, and it's a true Star Trek piece, but it is so slow.

20:31
John Broughton
Yeah, I think the overall problem with Star Trek, the motion picture, is the video edit. You can chop this film down to a much more tighter would be a tighter flow of the whole story. That makes it so you don't lose interest. You know what I think a problem with Star Trek fan films in general is that the person that usually is doing the edit is usually the camera person or the director, and they don't want to cut any of the footage. And I feel like with the motion picture, it's almost like a fan film in some respects. Not only about the video edit, but a lot of the story itself has a lot of exposition, that is, explanation.

21:15
Case
Of things well, and some fanficy concepts like Veeger being Voyager six, that feels like a concept that someone who's just pitching a Star Trek idea and just spitballing ideas that sound Star Trek like. But that said, I don't think that the plot's a bad plot. And I think it's a true to Star Trek movie. So I don't have a lot like, you might have some different opinions, but in my opinion, the biggest issue is just that it takes so long to get to everything and to get to every point.

21:43
John Broughton
Yeah, you got the beginning sequence of Kirk and Scotty getting in a travel pod and going around the new, refurbished Enterprise and all that fanfare that is just way too long.

21:55
Case
It's like, what, 15 minutes?

21:56
John Broughton
Yes, it is.

21:57
Case
So goddamn long.

21:59
John Broughton
It is. And then later on, when you're going. When the Enterprise is going into beejer itself, and you have these exaggerated shots of not only what's going on the outside, but of the characters, the crew members, like, looking and their reactions, and it's just way too long.

22:17
Case
They're pretty, they're beautiful, but it just takes forever. And the movie just grinds to a halt every time. They have these extended special effects shots.

22:27
John Broughton
That look great, but just. Yeah, even on the reactions of the crew members, you got, like, almost like a full minute of Spock, 30 seconds of ahura, 30 seconds of Decker. I mean, you just need a couple of seconds. You don't need all this. It's just way too much.

22:43
Case
And, I mean, we shouldn't try to look at it from the perspective of the modern era, like the music video style editing that has become characteristic of movie making today since 2000. And we've seen a lot of directors who cut their teeth doing either commercials or music videos, getting bigger movie roles. And as a result, we've seen this tighter editing become kind of the norm, like this rapid fire style, which has ups and downs. But we shouldn't look at it purely from the context of today, where we've gotten used to it. But even movies of that era, like, compare it directly to Star wars, like Star wars, had big, elaborate special effect shots, but they were still much shorter and much tighter.

23:30
John Broughton
Much. Yeah.

23:31
Case
The best thing you can say about Star wars, which is an immediate inspiration for this movie coming out, is that its pacing is perfect.

23:37
John Broughton
Yeah. It's interesting that for a guy who directed this film, who got an award for best editing on Citizen Kane, one of the most revered films of all time, to then make this movie, I've seen the director's cut, which came out in 2002 on dvd. When you watch that film, it's actually a tolerable movie. Whenever I watch this, whether as a kid or an adult, I would always fall asleep on the film. I can never watch it from start to end. And not only does the director's cut work it's actually a good movie. I hated this movie until then.

24:15
Case
So it's proof that you can make a better movie out of this, which is why this is great fodder. This is an interesting one, because I don't think it's a bad movie. I wouldn't call it a good movie either in its purest form. But I think that there's a lot there that could be a great one. Like the first time someone really had a long conversation with me about this movie. They referred to it as the motionless picture. Other people call it the slow motion picture. The fact that those are its nicknames is a terrible thing.

24:41
John Broughton
Yeah. I think my experience working with films, fan films, is that it all comes down to script and story, and you can only do so much with what you have to work with. So, putting aside that, because I agree with you, I think it is Trek. It's not probably the best story to tell, but it's not terrible as well. I think overall, my criticism would be just on the video edit itself, that it could be cut down. And you work from that in terms of. There's. There's a lot of things that I think the. The film gets overlooked upon, and that is the way the camera, the cinematography of this film is extraordinary. Oh, the beautiful, the shots, the framing, the lighting, everything is very crisp. And then you go to Star Trek two, which was made a couple of years later.

25:34
John Broughton
And all that footage, a lot of that footage is grainy. In Star Trek two, which, moving forward, you think that the quality would better. But for whatever reason, whether it was just not the aperture and the camera wasn't set right or what have you. But in the motion picture, all the cinematography is well done. The framing directorship, I thought, was executed well.

25:57
Case
Yeah. Listeners, we have a freeze frame right now. We had the Blu ray on before we started recording, and it's just a shot of Spock in a spacesuit. And it looks gorgeous. Like, that could be a desktop background for my computer. Every shot looks so good in this movie.

26:13
John Broughton
Every shot in the film.

26:14
Case
They just didn't want to cut down on it. Right. All right, so we talked about the editing. I think a lot of people have talked about that. It's the biggest problem with this movie. Just by having it a little trimmed down, you could have made this movie just a much more effective story, because you would have gotten to your beats and hit those and moved on. So let's talk about the conflict between Kirk and Decker, because that's probably the most interesting relationship in this movie.

26:45
John Broughton
Yes.

26:46
Case
And I'm so torn about how it plays out because Decker. Later stuff with the actor aside, I really like that conflict, but I think that the way they wrote it would have been better for a tv show where they then had a chance to resolve their differences and move on.

27:05
John Broughton
Yeah, I never thought about that. I liked it, and it has got a lot of good dialogue between the two. And I think that the director, whether it was him being able to bring it out of William Shatner or William Shatner just being on point, his acting in this film is actually pretty good.

27:25
Case
Yeah. My biggest concern with it, because I like that they have this adversarial relationship where Decker feels like Kirk is stepping in and kicking him out of his spot. He literally gets demoted from captain of the flagship of the federation back down to commander. And I can see that hostility, and that's all great. It's very anti Roddenberry. Like, famously, during the first three seasons of next gen, they weren't allowed to have interpersonal conflict.

27:52
John Broughton
They were not.

27:53
Case
And this is right front and center. My problem is that Kirk comes off like a dick, and I don't like that he doesn't seem as well reasoned for his. Like, if this was like the way it opens wrath of Khan, where he's feeling very much benched and sidelined, and we get a lot of scenes about that, and where when he takes command of the ship, it's a bit more of a step out of necessity. Yeah, we don't get any scenes before he comes to the Enterprise, where we see him feeling like he's stuck.

28:28
John Broughton
And you know what? As an admiral, him coming back, it almost seems unlike Kirk to have that kind of reaction. But to me, it came off as something that, a legitimate behavior of someone that had something. He let it go, then he wants to take it back. And then just certainly the animosity that Decker has that he projects, it's legitimate. But Kirk's reaction, you're right.

28:55
Case
I never thought of, like, let's take the timeline here. So this movie came out ten years after the show ended. So that means that if they finished their five year mission, then Kirk would have been off of that five year mission for eight years at this point. Well, if he became an admiral immediately after his success leading the Enterprise for that five year mission, then that means at most, he's been an admiral for eight years, maybe even less. He might have had a command of a ship after that.

29:24
John Broughton
I think in terms of the lineage, it's not that long. I think, if I remember correctly, is it even shorter. I think it's like five or six years.

29:31
Case
Oh, that's even shorter.

29:32
John Broughton
Yeah.

29:32
Case
So that makes it even less of a. He's been off the ship for so long, and now he's, like desperately reclaiming it. I mean, I guess if he's only been off it for a very small amount of time, he can't even imagine someone else commanding it, which might be the thing, but it seems very different than the professional Kirk that we got in the original series. I know the reputation is that he's a hothead and that he's a womanizer and that he's the swashbuckling figure, but in the show, he was always depicted as being very professional, maybe a little cocky at times, but it wasn't that he was like a loose poker player. He just knew how to bluff. There's a difference between those two things.

30:10
Case
And in this movie, I would have liked to see him kind of stuck in hating being in the administration of Starfleet, like hating that he's doing paperwork when he used to grace the stars and have that be when he gets the opportunity to take command of the Enterprise again, he jumps at the chance rather than he kind of just jumps at the chance without us really seeing it.

30:35
John Broughton
But when Kirk takes over the ship, he really doesn't want to take it away from Spock, and it's more about the mission than anything.

30:46
Case
Part of it is that Star Trek two, at this point, he's getting much older, whereas in this, he's in his early 40s versus his late 40s early fifty s. The sense of Star Trek two, there's the huge plot of him feeling his age and feeling like his glory years are behind him, whereas in this one, they kind of do the same plot, but it doesn't have the same backing material. They have him sort of act that way without scenes to sort of explain it, which, it's weird that I'm saying they needed additional scenes earlier in the movie, considering that this is a movie that I wish they would cut about 45 minutes out of. It's just a funny dichotomy there.

31:26
John Broughton
And the part that you said about the administration being in the bureaucracy when he rather be hopping along starships in the galaxy, as they said in the movie, that was in Star Trek, too. So Nick Meyer really tapped into that piece that you were just.

31:44
Case
Star Trek two is basically a do over in a lot of ways. Yeah, the uniform switch and everything in this movie doesn't really make sense. Star Trek two has this much more militarized streamlined uniform. And those are great. And then you could sort of argue that when you get to next gen, people are like, I kind of miss those retro multicolored uniforms. And maybe it's just like a fad. And then everyone goes back to it. The fact that this movie is so famous for that big, glaring flaw, however, I think that sort of is the big thing that I would say needs to be done to make this movie work.

32:16
John Broughton
Right.

32:17
Case
Just tighten it up. It's just so slow and kind of sloppy in that regard. Yeah, sure, you made a glorious shot of circling the Enterprise, but takes so long, and movies just don't work that way.

32:30
John Broughton
Right. And there's many instances we have those examples of the long shots that need to be condensed, like the going in Vijer and the fanfare of the Enterprise. But there's so many other instances, as I was rewatching the film today, of just cut here, there, cut here and there, and you can take out 30 minutes easily of just stuff that would make the film just flow so much better and make the story, make it a really good movie. I think the director's edition did a lot of that, but even in some of that, I saw places that still could be chopped. I think also, too, the positive aspects of this film that in terms of cinematography, it was well filmed. And the production value, because they had so much money.

33:17
John Broughton
You look in the beginning scene when the shuttlecraft comes in, or Kirk's shuttle that comes in and you've got all these people walking about. It really gives that sense of, there's a lot of people in this military organization. When Kirk gets the crew in for that rec room scene and there's all those people that background actors and people. They brought in a lot of fans of Star Trek. Chris Dewan, the son of Jimmy Dewan, is in there, as well as his other brother, and Yeoman Rand's son is in there. They just flooded that rec room with so many people. So it conveys that this ship really does have 432 people on board.

34:00
Case
It feels a very lived in ship as a result. Yeah.

34:02
John Broughton
So the production value with the sets and everything, that's another thing I think gets discounted or something that rewatching this film made me think, oh, wow, they really had some money on this one.

34:12
Case
Yeah. One thing I would be remiss if we didn't mention was the music. The fact that all this music eventually gets reused for next generation.

34:22
John Broughton
Right.

34:23
Case
And that's why it's more famous and what we associate. But that theme is great. They don't use it for the rest of the Star Trek or the original series Star Trek movies.

34:30
John Broughton
They did own Star Trek five.

34:32
Case
Is it in there? That's cool. I actually don't remember that spot, but still, it's such a classic theme that now has shaped the way we look at Star Trek music. Since then, every spin off show has tried to do something kind of similar because it was such a strong theme and this movie brought it into the first place, even though it really isn't what it's known for or where it's known from. But it's a good thing. I wouldn't want to not mention that because it's so good. And I can only imagine watching this movie in theaters being like, this is so much better than the kind of cheesy Star Trek theme that was of the original one.

35:13
John Broughton
Right. Well, you know what? When they did something really good with that music, where throughout the original series, the composers that they got, they would somehow incorporate the elements of the teal theme.

35:28
Case
Yeah. So I don't want to bash the original theme so much. I just always, in my head, think of the Roddenberry lyrics that he wrote for it. And that's only because I had to do that when I was like an 8th grade choir. Like, we did like a tv tribute and they did the Star Trek one. I'm like, these are horrible. But, yeah, so that was a cool thing. Well, John, I can't thank you enough for coming on. Sure. Why don't you talk a little bit about what you're working on right now?

35:52
John Broughton
Okay. We're working on an original concept. Up until the point of the Star Trek fan film guidelines came out, were working on a new spin off, the new chapter of Starship Farrogate, which was called Farrogate forward, and essentially related to this conversation. It was to take place in the motion after the motion picture time frame. So the wrath of Khan uniform.

36:17
Case
Yeah, doing those Eric uniforms, not the one piece suits from this.

36:22
John Broughton
So were working on that, and then the fan film guidelines came out and retooled it to be a new original concept called Vanguard, which is essentially a space navy, and we're working on.

36:33
Case
Cool. Cool. All right, so not Star Trek in any way, but similar kind of like space opera kind of thing.

36:39
John Broughton
Yes. It'll be essentially that a space opera that takes place two or 300 years. We're being nondescript in terms of exact time frame, but in the future, and it's something coming out of my head in terms of relating when I was in the Navy, so taking naval elements and navy traditions of a fleet of ships, but putting in the space, that's fantastic.

37:07
Case
So it's not a Star Trek series, but it's going to be kind of the same energy and spirit, basically.

37:14
John Broughton
Right. Trying to retool some of the sets and props and costumes that we made, but putting it a whole different universe, whole different concept. And I've pulled from my own experiences in the Navy and trying to flash forward 200, 300 years with the navy kind of being the pivotal point.

37:37
Case
Fantastic. Awesome. Do you have a time frame for any of the material for it? We had talked out before we started recording about a trailer being in the future. So we're looking at a release of fall of 2017 for that?

37:55
John Broughton
Yes. The plan is that this summer and perhaps this fall, we'll be working to put a five to six minute trailer for the project and we plan to crowdfund it. And if we're successful, then we'll make an initial three parter web series. And if we get people that want to see more, then we can continue it all. But it is for profit because it is an original concept. So we're hoping that the fan base of Starship Farrogate and the Star Trek fans that want to see some original stuff will back it.

38:28
Case
Well, that's fantastic. I hope people get really interested in it and check it out as soon as we have solid dates. I'll be sure to post that myself. It's really going to be cool.

38:40
John Broughton
Great.

38:41
Case
All right, well, John, thank you again so much. I really appreciate it. Yes. So, guys, thanks for tuning in. Next week we're going to be talking about Highlander two, the quickening. And until then, stay scruffy, my nerf herders.

38:56
John Broughton
Thanks for listening to certain point of views. Another past podcast. Don't miss an episode. Just subscribe and review the show on iTunes. Just go to certainpov.com you.

39:29
Case
And we're back. So, Sam, this is always a time for us to have you talk about a movie that you didn't have a chance to because we did 100 episodes before you officially joined the show. So what were your thoughts about Star Trek, the motion picture? And then what are your thoughts about our pitches?

39:49
Sam
I like this movie. I think that anything from that particular, I kind of put into it like a ball, like a little jar. It's like, was great for what it was. Think overall have a sense of nostalgia for this film. So I don't know if I would really change it. But I did enjoy both of the pitches that you guys, it was so hard because, first of all, both of you are so knowledgeable. There's so many wonderful kind of chiz in there and so much nuggets of knowledge throughout this episode that it's just like, oh, my God, that's amazing. I was like, oh, yeah. That did change from the show to just things that you wouldn't even actually realize if you were a casual observer of Star Trek.

40:49
Sam
But I'm going to go, no pitch for this because I like how flawed this movie is, and I feel like I can take a pass on this one. They do that really often. Also, it's just like there's something just so classic about all of it, even with its foibles.

41:11
Case
Yeah. With the director's cut that came out with the Blu ray release, it's pretty close to perfect for me. It's still not entire. It's not without its notes, but it's really close. The reputation that it had built up, I think, is overblown. And in part because rat of Khan, especially, if you're comparing those two, is so good.

41:38
Sam
Right. But I also think there's a lot of things that have changed over the years, especially even acting styles and what was considered what was on stage. You go back and you watch any of those old Charlton Heston movies. I'm not just talking about plan of the apes, but then her and Spartacus and even, like, Cleopatra, like those big giant movies. Lawrence Livia was, you know, so I feel like there's all of that involved. And then just like, the movie is just a great summation of what was already the series. Right. There's something wonderful to expose this onto the big screen. And so, yeah, I think with the director's cut and that kind of thing, it's just a fun film. So I'm going to leave it with its flaws because it feels like a movie of its time. And I'm okay with that.

42:42
Case
Yeah, I stand by my statement that wrath of Khan feels like a do over in terms of getting a Star Trek movie out there.

42:48
Sam
Oh, great.

42:48
Case
Because with wrath of Khan, it feels like they just wanted to get all these emotions out to do this whole theme of aging. And there is that theme in this movie, but it's just not fully realized yet. And so I don't think they even had the language to articulate how they wanted to make those changes. And I think some of that was, we talk a lot on the show about how if you don't have a budget, you have to be creative. And like, wrath of Khan was very creative because the budget was tiny on that movie. It's a bottle episode versus this big special effects spectacular. I stand by my thought that the movie feels like a pilot episode where they were trying to overshoot the special effect footage so that they could use inserts for future projects, and I think it actually does.

43:35
Case
So that actually, I think, holds up pretty well in that regard. But the bulk of the movie is like, yeah, no, this is fine. It was a perfectly fine script from the phase two project that they converted into a movie script, and that's all fine. And it's really funny looking at it from now. The perspective of TNG is like this storied institution where we get theme for TNG. Here we have basically the cast dynamic from TNG, with Decker being Riker and all these elements that are like, oh, yeah, you can see how that all is what they eventually turned into.

44:09
Sam
Yeah, 100%.

44:14
Case
But then the thing is, it is missing that little bit at the beginning. Having Kirk really feeling like he's being taken out of action is the thing that it's missing, because then he acts appropriately for a character who's feeling that way. We just don't get really good scenes of him feeling that way.

44:29
Sam
Yeah, there's no early on development. It's like a telling and a not showing. And so whenever you have that, you really only need a scene to really show something. And really, when someone's like, I feel terrible, but there's nothing. You don't know why. There's nothing to support that it's a poor setup, because it's the expectation that the actor just expressing that feeling or, like, saying it out loud somehow will make you just understand. Basically, it's like the audience will believe the words that come out of the actor's mouth. And it always kind of bothers me when I'm watching shows or movies and you're like, oh, so let's say it's like a secret sister is like, that's your sister? It's like, yes, that's my sister. It's like, oh, we're just believing that person you just ran into is a sister.

45:33
Sam
Like, we're just putting this together. No, hard. I'm like, oh, are they going to discover that they're wrong? Are they going to prove this? And it's like, you're just going to take my word that is his sister. That is his sister. Now we're just going to roll with that. And so that's kind of what this happened to here, right? It's like, I feel really bad about it, but you don't have those moments of getting the actor to let you also show, not just tell.

46:03
Case
Yeah, there's no authenticity in those kind of scenarios. And you just kind of see it here again, once the action starts rolling, you're like, oh, yeah, okay, this is right. This is right for a Star Trek movie. Yeah, I think kind of the lead up again, this is kind of a soft pilot for whatever future projects they wanted to do with Star Trek. So it's like, all right, let's shake it up a little bit. It's a love letter to the original series. It's working off of the phase two ideas that they had been kind of playing around with and getting some of the cast back and having to shuffle that around. So we get that awkwardness with spock coming back when he was written out of the show at that point. Yeah.

46:44
Case
So there's those kind of things going on, and then just like, again, there's, like, a lot of set up at the beginning, which is not necessary. They do it very well in Star Trek two. And you could see it's like, oh, yeah, the audience would be here for it. Now, that said, star Trek two does use a lot of shorthand to get the audience on board for it all. I talk in the episode about the militarization of Starfleet, which is not present in this movie. This is really the only movie where that isn't kind of an element.

47:12
Sam
Yeah, that is absolutely true, because when I was listening to the episode, I was like, oh, wow, he's super right about that. Because it didn't even occur to me because, yes, I watched the original series as a kid, but I really grew up with the next generation. Right. And so that was already very organized. Right. Everyone has their roles, their jobs, and so my introduction to Star Trek, it's pretty organized ship, right?

47:42
Case
Well, it's always going to be like, there's a chain of command. It is like a paramilitary organization, but the shows always have the room to breathe and be like, oh, right, it's a scientific exploration and peaceful ambassador program. They're explorers first. As opposed to. I cite the peacekeeping armada line from the 2009 Star Trek, which is, like, just such a. It's such a different vibe. And the monster maroons, I think, really start to push it into that territory. Opening with the Kobayashi maru and everyone loses scenario. As great a lesson as that is, it still starts to move into this, like, okay, in combat, what is going to happen kind of right away of the series, and that's not in any of the shows, even deep space nine, it's them dealing with being forced to be a military group and the consequences of that.

48:38
Case
But the shows are exploration shows, and the ones that forget that lesson have to relearn it. Like enterprise starts with a little bit more of a military vibe. And then by the time we get to season four, it's like, okay, we're getting away from that, right? Yeah. Okay, we're getting away from that. Oh, we're canceled. We're canceled. Okay.

48:56
Sam
Yeah, we should have backed off immediately. But I kind of understand why they try, because it's this idea of trying to hook new people, right? And then they realize that the original formula, this works best. Just go back to what this is, because that's what people are showing up.

49:20
Case
Like, I think beyond, for example, of the newer movies, that one gets back to being more exploration based. And I think that it hits the best with the fans of the Kelvin verse movies as a result. And you can see were just kind of missing that. But again, it's hard to really say in retrospect, because we have had so many adaptations of Star Trek at this point. We have so many renditions of it that it's harder to be upset about all of it. But when you think back to this time, especially thinking back to Wrath of Khan, where Star Trek had been off the air as a live action show for 20 years at that point, or not fully 20 years, but almost 20 years.

50:01
Case
And then the animated show, while it had its fans, is probably a larger percentage of that is younger people. So people coming in to see the movie needed something to catch them up on it. What is the deal, if you remember the show from syndication? What is the status quo that you need to care about? Like, where are we now?

50:21
Sam
Right.

50:24
Case
As much as I like this movie, Rathicon is still the better movie.

50:27
Sam
Oh, 100%. Rathicon does everything better. The effects are a little bit bigger in the motion picture, again, budget things. But wrath of Khan, emotionally, structurally, where it comes to the setup, when it comes to the acting, when it comes to the three parts of the film, just all the way through, it's just constructed as a much better film, and it flows better and it's got a climax and it's got a great payoff. So it starts off strong, too. So the problem with this movie is that it just doesn't start strong, right. Not all parts are equal. It's not an even movie all the way through.

51:19
Case
I would argue it's not really a movie, just in the sense that the structure of it's based on the show. It's the show writ large. In a lot of ways, that's great. And I'm not complaining about the tone or anything right now, because I'm just saying that the arc of the movie isn't really built around a three act structure like a movie. Teleplays are usually five act structures, I think, for an hour long, which sounds like, well, whatever, but no, it's there. And also, the nature of movie writing is that usually you need to have a bigger change occur throughout the course of it. There is a lot that change. Even taking out Spock's death in Star Trek. Two spoilers, you know?

52:05
Case
But even taking that out, there is a big through line of Kirk's feelings as a man in his late 40s, early 50s, experiencing this world. It's the whole, like, he feels old at the beginning and at the end he feels young. And there isn't quite a parallel structure. Again, there are those elements there, like his relationship with Decker fully realizes that, but they don't do a lot to support it because this would have been more of a b plot or a c plot that would be existing in a series that was running for a period of episodes that got crammed into a much bigger movie.

52:40
Sam
Right.

52:41
Case
Versus wrath of Khan is built up around that idea.

52:44
Sam
Right. Rathicon was written as a movie. It was written as a movie. It was written as an actual movie.

52:51
Case
Right? Yeah. And it's not that you couldn't have worked around it. And that's why I think, like, oh, yeah, actually punch up the opening a little bit and then tighten all of the extremely long shots. And you would have, like, a really strong Star Trek movie in this. But as it stands, it looks pretty good. The director's cut is much tighter, and as a result, I think, addresses most of the complaints people had. It was commercially a success. It was successful enough to get a sequel, even if the sequel was like, fuck, guys, we can't do this amount of money again, even if we made our money back and more. Right. There's a lot of stuff going into it. And then one thing.

53:27
Case
So I had read a lot of Star Trek behind the scenes books at this point, but I hadn't read because it wasn't out yet. The 50 year mission that Ed gross put together, which is an oral history of the Star Trek franchise. And it is so fascinating. I have to recommend that one. I'm a little biased because I was cited in his more recent book, voices from Krypton, which is the history of Superman book so check that out, too.

53:55
Sam
Check both of them out.

53:57
Case
That one's coming out this month, and I got my copy, and it's cool. It's really cool seeing my David there. But the 50 year mission goes really in depth on everyone's thoughts about the behind the scenes of Star Trek. And it's really interesting with the birth of the convention scene and the nader of Roddenberry's career that had occurred post Star Trek. All of these periods of real lows and tension with the writers and tension with all the producers and trying to see if they had other. Star Trek was like a critical darling, but not a huge hit in terms of money for the studios.

54:43
Case
I mean, it drove Desilu into the ground, which is a weird question of, like, okay, if they had made it through season three and not been bought out by, like, what would have happened to the film industry in general? It's just, it would have been such a different world. But also behind the scenes with Roddenberry, specifically, who, while big, great ideas and apparently very personable guy, also hard to work with. And I don't mean this in like a toxic.

55:17
Case
I don't mean this in the sense of he was directly an abuser, but he definitely had a habit of filing off everyone else's name and taking credit for things infamously, we talk about it in this episode, the opening credits for the original Star Trek he wrote lyrics to, even though it was a musical piece and always intended to be a musical piece so he could get residuals even though they didn't use it. And that's kind of fucked up. And that's the story of Gene Roddenberry. And in the. He had a side business of hawking memorabilia from Star Trek that quote unquote, was used on set. They didn't want him around.

55:53
Case
And that there's a reason he got cut out from the later movies, and there's a reason why he would push writers away who were attached to the series and dearly loved the series because they just couldn't work with him anymore as the show kept going on and being a bigger property. And so it's hard because he was this huge figure who inspired everything with it and had this great vision, but he also was kind of a control freak and did the whole meme of the, like, hey, I made this. And then I made this kind of thing where he would take credit for other people's work, which. That's not cool.

56:36
Sam
No, not cool.

56:37
Case
It's frankly not very Star Trek.

56:40
Sam
Not at all. No, it's the opposite of the spirit of the piece that was created.

56:49
Case
Right. And I'm not saying that if he was a better guy, some of the stuff would have necessarily happened better because you also kind of need a person who is looking for, who has that kind of ego to drive a project forward. But it's just weird to think about, and it's weird to see how when you know a little bit more about like, oh, there were some really hurt feelings between people at all the studios, like, oh, I see why this thing know going to end here or why certain actors were no, like, write me out if we're going to do a know. Nimoy kept trying to leave.

57:29
Sam
I mean, it makes like you don't have to necessarily be the worst person in the world to cultivate something toxic. We all have the ability to create unhealthy environments. That being said, yeah, pretty bad. Pretty bad. It makes sense why people would step away. And especially when you're looking from just a fan perspective, you're like, oh, this is great. Why wouldn't you want to be part of this? And then you find out what's happening behind the scenes and you're, oh, yeah, that fits two and two together.

58:09
Case
Yeah. And again, I don't want to be too negative about it all, but it is interesting to see, and this is the movie that Roddenberry actually had his fingers on. And you can see some areas where it's like, oh, there was no compromise here. There was no making this work better for a movie going audience. It was like, this is what Star Trek is, and we're going to do it that way. Which in some regards, great, in other regards would have been good for a larger audience to really latch onto the franchise because maybe we would have gotten that sequel sooner.

58:43
Sam
Great. And I think that sometimes artists in general and people in general can just get in their own way. Right. Because you get so attached to the thing that you feel like makes this thing this, right. But when you're switching from mediums, I think that happens a lot with adaptations of books, right. There's no way that you can make a film exactly like the book. You can't be inside the inner dialogue. There's more description that you can put in, and you have to allow the book to become, you have to allow the movie to be slightly different because it just doesn't translate into that different medium. And it's the same thing with even the structure of writing for film and tv. Right. This is what Star Trek is.

59:40
Sam
And I have this idea and I want to see it come to fruition no matter what, even if it's on the big screen, I'll just make bigger explosions. That doesn't quite serve the medium that you're now writing in. Right. That doesn't serve the story or the characters going forward because you have a smaller amount of time. How many times on this show have we said, oh, this should have been a show, right? Like Jupiter ascending. We're like, if that had been a show, like an actual series, would have had more time to deal with all the ideas that they had, and it would have made for a better story, would have been able to flesh some things out. There's too much in there. I think that with here that it's the same thing. Right. There's a lot of stuff happening that needs to happen.

01:00:37
Sam
But then you never really get in depth everywhere. And because it's a new medium, it's like, oh, let's play with the effects, which is cool. I get it. It's great. But then some things just kind of get neglected and left out. And that's where you're missing that emotional drive that wrath of Khan definitely has.

01:00:57
Case
Yeah. Because if you're doing a movie, it has to be tight and punchy. And if you're doing a show, you can be long and philosophical. And that's why I love that we have that now in this era, like strange new worlds. I love.

01:01:11
Sam
I love strange new worlds so much.

01:01:12
Case
Picard season three was such a hit. Even lower decks where it's like, here's us actually dealing with all the weird trivia and the silliness of the world. It's such a great franchise. The franchise is in such a great shape right now because it can do a lot of the things that we really want.

01:01:33
Sam
Right?

01:01:33
Case
So you can see that's where its strong suit is. And this movie was trying to capture some of that, but it just wasn't the right medium for the format that they were doing and that it needed to be a tighter thing. And you can do a philosophical exploration piece in a movie. It just needs to be a focused one. You have to have a singular question that you're kind of dealing with.

01:01:58
Sam
Right.

01:01:58
Case
And then addressing it and passage of time is a really good one. Or just the, again, like I cite beyond, I think that's the best of the kelvinverse ones. And part of that is because it is about a bunch of characters who feel like they have been burned out from doing a job for too long. And it's not about them getting older. It's just that it's the grind.

01:02:20
Sam
Yeah.

01:02:21
Case
When the wonder becomes just labor, you need to be able to take a step back and really appreciate that. And I think that's a good element there. And sure, the best of the next gen movies is first contact, which is a fighting movie, but it's one that has a lot of lore and stuff to go into it, and that's really fun for people as a result and deals with like, oh, what is the nature of humanity? The machine man stuff with data and the Borg. And it's cool stuff that they're dealing.

01:02:50
Sam
With because there's enough going into it. Right. And because we're so familiar with the characters, we already have a little bit of the momentum, I think, with this film, it'd been so long. Right. Or it's been a break. And also that movie does it so well. First contact does it so well, where you have the one big question that's basically surrounded by all the other stuff. It's a really good through line of the one big question of what is humanity? And then you've got explosions and fighting, but it's always asking that question. It's done very well.

01:03:38
Case
Yeah. And you can see that the movies that have a harder time getting to that point, like nemesis, but really like insurrection, which is very much doing a plot from an episode, but trying to make it into the movie kind of length is why it kind of falters. And we will talk about that eventually because we've talked about most of the Star Trek movies at this point, so we'll get to that one because that was a great episode where I had Alex Schmidt from secretly incredibly fascinating on informally of the craft podcast. So looking forward to getting to that one, but that's going to be a while because that was like almost to episode 100 at that point.

01:04:19
Sam
Fair enough.

01:04:20
Case
Yeah. So I do want to address a couple of things that we talk about in it. So it's really fascinating looking at the or like, listening to the conversation with John about what were working on. Again, Farrogate forward. I mentioned the Indiegogo, I think is actually still technically running. It's like one of those things. We hit our budget a while ago, but if we keep getting investments, it'll still allow people to donate, which is really cool. So as of us recording this, in two weeks, they will be filming the big bridge stuff, like the main Starfleet bridge stuff. I was thinking at one point that I might be able to help out on that shoot.

01:04:53
Case
However, I have become very aware now that I'm actually apparent that is not really, like, in the cards, but I'm going to pop out by set and actually see everyone, which is hopefully going to be very nice. And I don't know, I really wanted to pitch in some nights, but it's just, man, the amount of time that you thought you would have.

01:05:14
Sam
Yeah.

01:05:15
Case
No, you being me, that I thought I would have. No way.

01:05:18
Sam
Overestimated Grace is a full time job.

01:05:21
Case
Yeah. As I rock her as we talk. Fortunately, she's kind of gone to sleep, but it is still going, and there's more shooting to be done after that. So the bridge set will be the last big indoor shoot, and then they still have the exterior stuff that they want to film. Because while it is a very tight production, there is a big, cool confrontation on an alien world kind of scene, because, of course it is. It's a Star Trek movie, so that's coming together really well. The footage has looked amazing. I was on set for half of the filming so far. I was there for the January shoot, and then the one in March was like the weekend that grace was born. So obviously I was not there for that. But the cast is awesome.

01:06:06
Case
Their casting crew is awesome, and they sent her a child size small, which is still a little too big, but Farragut forward crew shirt by everyone. Absolutely. So Farragut forward is like a really cool project. It's awesome that came back together. At the time, we thought were going to try to do something unique. And not to say that's not going to happen, but it is a lot harder to get that kind of momentum for a fan inspired, but original IP kind of project. So we'll see if more stuff happens. But I've been involved in other non IP related, but effectively fan film kind of shoots, and some of those that I shot footage in 2009. I'm still sending over ADR for today, so it's labors of love if you don't have real money behind it, right?

01:06:58
Sam
Yeah.

01:06:59
Case
But like I said, farragut Four looks great. The preview is out. If you look up starship Farragut on YouTube, you can find the little prologue video, as well as a lot of behind the scenes videos that are really cool to look at. I'm really glad that project, which had kind of fallen off, picked up again once we met Johnny Kay, the director who has such a great eye and did the oath, the Batman fam film, which is now well over a million downloads on that one, which is so cool. And that's another one that, like, was a producer on so really cool stuff happening in the fan space.

01:07:32
Case
And it is a space that I really love because as I mentioned in the episode, getting to know the Star Trek fandom got me to go back from being a next gen deep space nine Voyager era fan to really digging into the tos stuff and really loving the franchise in a totality that I didn't have before. So I do want to keep shouting that out. It's a project that is currently working or currently underway and coming together, and by the time this episode goes up, because hopefully I'll have this chopped together pretty fast, we still won't have actually filmed the big bridge stuff, but it's expensive and so if people want to chip in, it's still an option. If the indiegogo did end up closing, because I think it's like if someone hasn't donated in a couple of months, it'll shut down.

01:08:15
Case
So if it has shut down, message me and I can tell you how you can contribute. If you live in the Maryland area, would love to have people help out on set so I can connect you with people. They're awesome. So check all that out. I know this is so much more hockey than I normally am.

01:08:29
Sam
It's okay. I'm fine. Because as a person who did contribute as an investor in the film, I would like you to encourage people to do the same because I would like to see it.

01:08:39
Case
Yeah. And that's another part, which is when we recorded this episode, we had wrapped what was the final episode of Starship Farrogate. Like the tos era stuff. And that series we thought was like, okay, cool, it'll be out shortly. That was a fight to finish that took years to get it all edited between a whole bunch of stuff. The editor that were working with having some health issues that ultimately has since passed away, and, like, a bunch of other stuff. So that took years. And normally it was like, oh, yeah, we'll get it out in about a year after we finish filming ish, somewhere in that ballpark. And that one was like five years, right? So it only finished and came out shortly before we got fargate forward underway.

01:09:23
Case
So just for a frame of reference, it can take a long time because it's no one's job.

01:09:30
Sam
Right, exactly.

01:09:31
Case
Hard. When that's not the thing. It's a good segue into being like, writers Guild. Like, hey, you got to pay people money, otherwise they're not going to do good work and they're going to have a hard time actually finishing projects. Yeah, go putting that one out.

01:09:42
Sam
There 100%. We support all the writers.

01:09:46
Case
Yeah.

01:09:46
Sam
Please pay them for a show that.

01:09:49
Case
Is as writing focused as we are. We want to support those people because they do amazing work, and they make this podcast possible.

01:09:59
Sam
Well, they make movies possible. They make shows possible. They make all of our entertainment possible. Everything starts with writing. Now we are commercial for the writer strike.

01:10:08
Case
Yeah. Lord knows I do not want this show to turn into. How would we have reedited the episode of Real Housewives? Not that I'm bashing Real Housewives, just that is a way weirder kind of conversation. Like, well, if they had gotten the footage from this angle instead of that.

01:10:24
Sam
Be honest, I don't know enough names, but I really wanted to make a joke of, like, I think she should have thrown that water harder.

01:10:31
Case
Bravo. Bravo. Bravo. Denise Richard says, okay, moving on. Anyway, so, yeah, I think that kind of covers all we had to say about this, right?

01:10:42
Sam
Yeah, absolutely.

01:10:44
Case
Yeah. It's really fun to listen back on this one again. I'm really happy that the audio was better than I remember. It's still not, like, what I would consider great, but part of that is just that, literally, I think he was five at the time. His youngest son would just kept walking in and being like, daddy and would shout a bunch of stuff while were mid take. And so you could really hear where I'm able to chop us out completely and then try to restate it. But not mad in any way beyond, just, like, the circumstances. Like, kid currently holding a baby. Every time she cries. I'm cutting right now. Aside from where I need to remind people, that's actually what's going on. It was just a rough recording set up.

01:11:24
Case
And also, it's a reminder that live is way harder than on a Zoom call for some of this editing because when we do kind of cut each other off just because it's a natural flow of conversation but isn't good for podcasts, it's easier to space out that audio when we're not in the room together because you can hear it on the other person's mic a little bit. So just a good reminder on those things.

01:11:46
Sam
Just if any of you are starting a podcast, but not about this subject, because we already have it cornered. Thanks. I'm joking.

01:11:54
Case
Cornered is in quotes, considering I was just on Seth Decker's film rescue ship.

01:12:00
Sam
There's, like, a million of these.

01:12:02
Case
Yeah.

01:12:03
Sam
Still.

01:12:07
Case
The wildest part is that realizing that the crew from film rescue are all, like, my neighbors.

01:12:12
Sam
Oh, that is.

01:12:14
Case
Again, Seth and I would, like, meet up. He just moved across the country, but the rest of them are still all in this area. And Seth and I would meet up for coffee around the time that they were filming last summer, and I was a contributor on that movie. And it was like, oh, yeah, it's really weird that we have the same show, and it's not even just, like, live in the DC area, but live in the. Just north of the, like, in the suburbs area where the same Starbucks is. Like, the convenient Starbucks for the two of us.

01:12:46
Sam
Yeah, that's close.

01:12:47
Case
Yeah. And, like, one of the guys from the crew was, when I was recording with them last week was like, oh, shit, I know Broughton, he talked to me about working on this shoot. I'm like, well, we would have worked together if you were available because I was the production manager for the weeks that you were talking about. So wild stuff. Anyway, not just to be a commercial for other people's show, although, film rescue. Great show. You should check it out. They're great.

01:13:14
Sam
Everything here today.

01:13:16
Case
Yeah, well, you know, dad brain at the moment.

01:13:19
Sam
Okay.

01:13:19
Case
How is that water, by the way, that you're drinking, Sam? Is it wet? I don't know. Dad jokes. Yay. All right, let's call it here. So, listeners, I know the production schedule has been kind of wonky. A lot of that has to do with me having a baby and having a hard time kind of staying on top of things. But Jeff, our new editor, has been doing great and is getting into the rhythm of it. We did, unfortunately, saddle him with a over three hour recording for what is our next episode, but he assures me he's getting it down quite a bit. And I believe him because he is very faceidious when he edits. He also does the gamjabar show, which is just advertising everyone at this point. Great Dune podcast, and that sounds great.

01:14:04
Case
Anyway, next time we'll be talking about Power Rangers, the 2017 movie, which I'm very excited about. We've got Nick Wolf on for that one as well as Maddie Limerick. And so that one went big because it's hard not to when you've got Maddie Limerick and me talking about power rangers stuff.

01:14:18
Sam
Oh, yeah, 100%.

01:14:22
Case
And then next time on the bonus episodes, we're actually going to be looking at Spiderman Three.

01:14:26
Sam
Oh, boy.

01:14:28
Case
Yeah, usually we're going to have Jeff.

01:14:29
Sam
Moon and back on. Usually. I love a musical number, but. Oh, Spiderman three.

01:14:35
Case
Yeah, we've got. The next two are back to back with Jeff Moon, and it's Spiderman Three. And then the next bonus episode after that is the 2000s Tim Burton, Planet of the Apes.

01:14:47
Sam
Okay. Yeah.

01:14:48
Case
So some exciting stuff coming up there. And if you didn't check out our previous episode, that just is in very big quotes, dropped, which is we did speed Racer and we had Sophia Ricciardi from moviestruck and from the overly sarcastic podcast. She was great. That was a great episode. Really happy to chat about Wachowski stuff because whatever you can say about any other movies, it's always fun. That was a really good episode. So those are all cool ones. You should check those all out. You should check out Ed Gross's new book, voices from Krypton, where you will see me quoted quite a bit. I was really blown away at how much I was in there. Like middle of the book, not so much, but beginning and end of the book quite a lot. So very cool stuff there. And. Yeah. Until next.

01:15:35
Case
I don't know. Sorry, dad brain. Until next time, if you enjoyed the show, pass it on.

01:15:42
Sam
Pass it on. Yay. Grace is sleeping. Just in time for the end.

01:15:49
Case
And we're back. All right, so, Sam, so this is always a time for you to give some thoughts about movies that you didn't have a chance to talk about. Hey, Grace. Hi. Hi, baby girl.

01:16:00
Sam
Grace, would you like to give your thoughts on Star Trek the motion picture?

01:16:04
Case
Yeah, but. So, Sam, so what are your thoughts about Star Trek the motion picture? And then what are your thoughts? Hang on. We're going to redo this because that's too much.

01:16:13
Sam
My fault. I asked her.

01:16:14
Case
I can cut me. Well, she can't hear me. You like this weird motion that I'm doing right now? Okay, cool. All right, Jose, let's go through our new comic day stack. We have a lot to review.

01:16:33
John Broughton
I know. Maybe we've gone too far.

01:16:35
Case
Let's see. Marvel, of course. DC.

01:16:38
John Broughton
I got image. Dark horse. Black mask.

01:16:41
Sam
Boom.

01:16:42
Case
Idw.

01:16:43
John Broughton
Aftershock vault. Of course. Mad cave.

01:16:46
Case
Oni. Valiant scout.

01:16:49
John Broughton
Magma behemoth.

01:16:51
Case
Wow, that's a lot. All we need now is a name for our show. We need a name for a show about reviewing comic books every week. Something clever, but not too clever, like a pun. It's kind of cheesy. Yeah. Something that seems funny at first, but we might regret later on as an impulsive decision. A few dozen episodes in.

01:17:10
John Broughton
Yeah, we'll think of something.

01:17:12
Case
Join Keith and Oswe for we have issue, the weekly show reviewing almost every new comic released each week, available on Geek elite media and wherever you listen to your podcasts. That was very good on command, baby girl.

01:17:26
Sam
Yeah, she's a star already. Yeah.

01:17:31
Case
Cpov certainpov.com.