Issue 41: The Star Trek/X-Men Crossovers

Jessika: Bisexuals always carry two drinks.

Monte: It's just the way we are.

Melissa: Yeah.

Mike: Hello. Hello. Welcome to Ten Cent Takes, the podcast where we boldly go where comics have always gone before, one issue at a time. My name is Mike Thompson, and I am joined by my co host, the jewel of the gem Hadar herself, Jessica Fraser.

Jessika: Oh, fancy. Well, hello.

Mike: How are you doing?

Melissa: Good.

Jessika: M. How are you?

Mike: I'm, um, good. If you are enjoying the show so far and you want to help us grow, as always, it would be a huge help if you'd rate and or review us on Apple podcasts, pod Chaser or good pods, because that really helps with Discoverability. You can always just tell your friends too. That's also something that works. Friendly reminder, we have also pulled our content off Spotify given how the platform still continues to actively promote voices spreading vaccine disinformation. This episode is dropping on Star Trek Day 2022, which is September 8. So in honor, we are going to discuss the Star Trek and Xmen crossovers from the 1990s. But because we are talking about crossovers between socially aware properties, we felt we needed to have another socially progressive podcast crossover onto our show to help us talk about these. So today we are joined by the fine hosts of the SJW Comic Book Club, uh, Monte, Veronica, and Melissa, who I think I have been talking to about doing this episode for like, the better part of a year. Does that sound right there?

Monte: About that sounds about right. Yeah.

Mike: Would you mind introducing yourselves and telling our listeners about your show?

Veronica: Monte knows the intro by heart.

Monte: So the SJW Comic Book Club is a, ah, podcast where the three of us who have been friends since middle school basically, I was friends with Melissa first and then Veronica just kind of tagged along.

Melissa: Um, that's how I remember it.

Monte: Yeah. But we've been friends since middle school and, uh, we all have differing levels of interest in comics. And we were doing a podcast about like, politics and stuff and then we were like, this is frustrating, let's talk about something fun. So we started talking about comics and that's what we've been doing for the past year. Two years. Yeah, two years.

Mike: Nice. Was it the existential dread about politics or was it just kind of in general?

Veronica: Okay, so this was in like, winter 2019.

Jessika: So election lead up, bad tech, uh, time.

Mike: Yeah, I mean, it's not much better right now, but oh, no, it's gone.

Monte: It's significantly worse.

Jessika: I think it has ramped up exponentially.

Monte: I would say in terms of badness, it went from like a 15 to a 20 on a scale out of ten.

Jessika: Yeah, in like, three years. They were working hard at that one.

Mike: Yeah, it was supposed to get better when Papa Joe took over, but I swear to god it's just worse. Like the political stress, man. But we're not going to focus on that. We are going to talk about Star Trek, which is much more enjoyable. All right, so before we get started, we normally like to talk about one cool thing that we've read or watched lately. Because this episode is a Star Trek day episode, I want to talk about one cool Star Trek thing that we have read or watched lately. So our three guests, talk amongst yourselves and pick who goes first.

Melissa: I'm going to go first because I'm obsessed with Star Trek, and Monte has a passing interest, and Veronica might not have seen or interacted with Star Trek before this collab. So the answer to your question is that I'm re watching Deep Space Nine right now because I felt sad and didn't want to be sad. And Deep Space Nine has got to be the best well written series, and it's my favorite one, and I love it. It's like I'm obsessed with how good it is and how much it's my favorite.

Mike: I routinely refer to Deep Space Nine as the one true track.

Melissa: I love it. It's so good. Such a good Cisco. Um m here in a Reese.

Mike: Uh, yeah, I'm in Death in man.

Melissa: So they just got married, so it's actually fortuitous because we're reading I am currently watching Deep Space Nine at, like, almost the exact moment in which the book that we read, the Planet X book, takes place in.

Mike: We'll get into it, but I was actually surprised that the Deep Space Nine shout outs throughout two of the entries. All right, cool. All right, so, Monte, Veronica, who wants to go next?

Monte: So, like Melissa said, I have a passing interest in Star Trek. I would define it as my mom loves Star Trek, like, a lot, especially Deep Space Nine, but she loves all of them except the original. Well, and Enterprise she doesn't love.

Melissa: That mom is me. His mom.

Mike: Basically.

Monte: So I don't really watch that much Star Trek. I haven't watched anything Star Trek other than Deep Space Nine with my mom in a very long time. But I know the new Star Trek. What is it, like, brave New worlds or Strange New worlds or something like that?

Melissa: Strange new world.

Mike: Strange new worlds.

Monte: Yeah, whichever the new one is with the Hot, Spock.

Melissa: Mhm.

Monte: I've seen Hot Spot, and I find that very interesting. I find Ethan Peck very interesting.

Melissa: I think if you watch season three of Discovery, hotspock is in there.

Mike: Yeah, I think it was season two, because season three is when they go to the future. But season two has hike in his number one, and Spock all show up.

Melissa: Yeah. Must have been season two.

Mike: Yeah. Part of season two of Discovery is, like, a soft pilot season or strange New Worlds, which also stars Anton Mount as Captain Pike, and Anton Mount played Black Bolt in the Inhumans TV show and then what is arguably the greatest cameo ever in multiverse of madness. And then Rebecca Romaine, who is mystique as his number one. So I'm like, cool. We get black Bolton mystique in Star Trek now. It's canon. It's great.

Monte: Is black bolt immortal? Because, as we now know, star Trek is the canon future of the Marvel universe. So if Black Vault is immortal, it could be.

Mike: Yeah. I don't know.

Melissa: That makes Pike's fate a little bit more depressing, though, if he's immortal and has to live the rest of his.

Mike: Life stuck on the wheelchair. That beeps.

Melissa: Oh, never mind, Veronica. Don't think about it. It's fine. Pike is going to be fine.

Veronica: Well, I was very concerned.

Mike: Yeah. Uh, all right. So, Veronica, how about you?

Veronica: Yeah, so I only have experienced Star Trek through these two, really, and, like, general cultural osmosis. The last Star Trek thing I did was buy some old Star Trek comics for Melissa that were, I think, like the annuals from some years in the 80s or 90s. They had wharf on the COVID and I found them at a garage sale, so I bought it.

Melissa: It was appropriate.

Veronica: Before that, I went to visit Melissa, and she just continued watching the TV she was watching while I was there, as she does, and it was like was it Discovery Melissa with Michael?

Melissa: Yes.

Veronica: That's the series. I was pretty sure. Pretty good. It's like an alternate universe with evil people, evil versions of them.

Melissa: The mirror universe. The mirror evil version of everybody. Yes.

Mike: I love the mirror universe. It's great.

Melissa: It's one of the best. Like, if you come over to my house and I'm watching Star Trek, the best possible outcome is it being a mere universe episode?

Veronica: Yes.

Melissa: And there's nothing matter.

Monte: Quick question.

Mike: Yeah.

Monte: Are there any mirror episodes with Hotspot being porn angry?

Mike: Not yet, but I'm pretty sure that well, there's, like, some with Leonard Nemoy.

Monte: But that's less interesting to me.

Jessika: That was not the question. Resolutely not the question.

Monte: I said hot spot.

Mike: Hot. Here's the thing is, the mirror universe shows up in every series at some point. So if Strange New Worlds goes long enough, we'll get a mirror universe version of Hot horny Spock.

Melissa: Yeah.

Mike: All right.

Veronica: We can only help.

Monte: Let's get on it.

Melissa: You should write fan mail every week.

Monte: I don't want this show, but I just would like to know, when are we going to get Hot horny? Hot spot.

Veronica: Double hot.

Mike: I mean, he's already kind of hot and horny in the canon universe now in Strange New Worlds.

Melissa: Yeah. The first episode of that season does have a shirtless, intimate scene between him and his wife.

Mike: Yeah.

Monte: Uh, that's the only thing that I've ever seen of that series is that specific clip?

Melissa: Is it kind of pictures?

Mike: Okay.

Monte: Yes. And then I found gifts, and then I found a clip.

Veronica: Then you watched it on repeat.

Monte: I'm a completest.

Jessika: I love how you started that whole story by trying to lead us to believe that you just kind of stumbled upon that one thing, and then it really evolved into no, I very specifically searched this out once i, uh, snipped that it had existed.

Monte: Yeah, I get just, like, a little whiff of chest hair, and I'm just saying it.

Melissa: See, I'm one of his scouts.

Veronica: She's very effective.

Melissa: Love it.

Mike: Amazing.

Melissa: Sorry, Veronica, what were you saying about.

Veronica: Even though Discovery apparently is a very tenuous kind of story different than other X Star Trek series, I thought that episode held up really well as, like, a one shot. Was it? Michelle yo.

Melissa: Yes.

Veronica: She was fantastic. The one character's Mirror Universe version being named Killy instead, uh, of me. To this day.

Melissa: They could have gone more clever with it, and they didn't. And I respect that.

Veronica: Just in general, I enjoyed watching it while doing my laundry at Melissa's house.

Melissa: They spent about 30 seconds figuring out what Killy's alternate horny name was going to be, and they were like, what if it was Killy?

Monte: That's literally just galaxy brain shit. That's so perfect.

Mike: So good.

Jessika: It was the end of their day, and they were like, no. I give zero fucks about naming this character. Let's just over with my daughter today.

Melissa: I need to get home and be with my family.

Jessika: The name is I hate all of you.

Veronica: I hate everyone who works here. I hate the fans.

Melissa: Her name is little did they know.

Veronica: It was the greatest love letter they could write to the fans.

Melissa: It's truly I had to think the first time I watched an episode with that, I had to pause and just collect myself before I could.

Mike: All right, Jessica, you're up.

Jessika: So I have something because I always like to bend the rules. Listen, it's me. So I have a Star Trek adjacent kind of what have I been reading? And I commute about a half an hour each way to work right now. And then I also host Trivia, and I have to drive to Trivia, so I'm always in the car. And so I really like to listen to podcasts. I listen to guys'podcasts a lot, actually. And then I also like to listen to book on tape. And so I really like because I'm a big old nerd, I get onto the Sci-Fi kicks because of course I do, right? I love the theories that people come up with about, like, future Star travel and finding other planets and stuff. So I started listening to this book on tape called We Are Legion, we Are Bob by Dennis E. Taylor. Oh, my gosh. And you know what? It sums, um, up perfectly. Society is figuring out how to put your sentience into a program, basically, and put your personality, all of your memories, into some sort of a memory drive. Then it can split you up and replicate you. And so then it's like the oh, if you start replicating, are you still the same person? Do they have the same personalities? Do they want the same things? And so it's this thing where they go into space, and it's kind of the end of the Earth, and they're having to figure that out. And do they really owe the Earth anything? They don't really exist bodily anymore. So it's a really interesting book. There's actually a trilogy. So I was like, I just realized that, and I was like, oh, download. And the narrator is really great, too. Yeah, it's been really good so far. I would recommend it very quickly. But about Star Trek, bob is a Star Trek fan, and so he starts having all these other Bobs, and they're like, Whoa, whoa, whoa. We can't all be Bob, right? So you all have to come up with a name. When you realize you're not the Bob, you have to come up with a name and name yourself. And so the first guy comes up, and he's Riker, of course, so he's number one. And so this whole play about they're calling him Will, and they're like, Good. So if you are a Star Trek fan, there are so many little Easter eggs and lots of little pop culture Easter eggs as well, because this guy was just, like, an all around kind of pop culture, like, nerd. So, yeah, it's a fun one. I would highly recommend it.

Veronica: We just learned how many speaking of naming characters after Star Trek characters, we just did some trivia a few weeks ago and realized how many Star Trek characters are named after characters from 1984.

Melissa: In the first place, which I did not know. M Brian.

Veronica: Yeah. You looked at all the multiple choice options. You're like, These are all Star Trek characters.

Melissa: Yeah, it confused me because I didn't know the answer to the question, but I was like, I can't even help you. They're all just Star Trek names. Like, I'm thrown through a loop.

Mike: Uh, it's really funny. All right, so I am the last one. I recently signed up for Paramount Plus because I really like Star Trek in general, and Sarah really loves the old school Nickelodeon content, so it made sense for Ronica.

Veronica: I gasped with joy and then choked on myself.

Mike: But, yeah, the thing about Paramount Plus is they've got not one, not two, not three, but four original Star Trek shows right now streaming on that platform and plus all of the existing Star Trek content.

Melissa: Do they have all of it now? Because they didn't have some of the movies for some reason.

Mike: I don't know about the movies. I haven't tried to watch those yet. Whatever. The movies are fine. Whatever.

Veronica: Debatable.

Mike: I care so little about most of the movies, but, like, the TV shows, that's my bread and butter. Yeah, and so one of the new shows is called Lower Decks, and it's animated, and it's so funny, and it basically follows the adventures of the Ensigns on a is it a California class ship? Is that what it is?

Melissa: I don't remember, but, yeah, they're on, uh, the Cerebras. My husband has a shirt that says Ritos.

Mike: Nice.

Melissa: We also love that show.

Mike: No, it's really funny. And it also stars the main actor from The Boys who plays Huey. Who jack Quaid, I think is his name. He's Dennis Quaid and Meg Ryan son.

Monte: Yeah, it's Jack Quaid.

Mike: Yeah.

Melissa: Tony newsom is Mariner. Oh, God.

Mike: Yeah. The entire cast is perfect. Like, Jerry O'Connell is, like, the Riker esque character. They have cameos from all the other Star Trek actors at various points. It's really funny. It's really sweet. At times, it is far better than I ever could have expected, because when they announced they were doing an animated sitcom set in the Star Trek universe, I immediately was just like, no, that sounds like ass. And then my best friend was like, you got to watch this. This is really good. And I'm like, okay, fine. We watched it, and we were like, oh, fuck, this is really good. We basically binged it all on the night. All right, who is ready to talk about Star Trek hanging out with the X Men?

Veronica: Everyone is always ready for that.

Melissa: Who wouldn't be?

Mike: Okay, so before we go any further, what's everyone's history with and favorite incarnation of Star Trek? And I'm assuming that everyone in this discussion is familiar with the Xmen. I feel like that's a no brainer, but I just want to confirm that.

Veronica: Yes, Monte has made us familiar with the X Men.

Melissa: Yeah.

Monte: God help you if you're my friend and you're not familiar with the X Men. You're going to hear a lot of useless rambling about nothing.

Veronica: So actually, Melissa, I think you hadn't really watched it before. There was a time a few years ago, after we all came out of college, and we were like, we need to actually meet regularly or else we're just going to fall apart as friends. US and more friends. So we started doing, like, movie nights. I think first they watched all the Twilight movies, then we did Star Wars, and then we were going to Hunger Games, and then we were going to do Star Trek. But we started with the first two movies. Quickly gave up.

Melissa: Second movie was good. Uh, I would say the second movie was good.

Veronica: The first one was good in that it was just an episode of Star Trek with multiple hours of tracking space footage intercut into it, if you can call that a movie. But then, I don't know. You started watching it with your husband after that.

Melissa: Yeah, we skipped the original series, except for some of the most iconic episodes. Yeah, I don't regret it. So we started with Next Generation, moved on to Dupe, Space Nine, Enterprise. I'm, um, missing any and then at that point, when we were watching it, discovery hadn't come out, the Card hadn't come out lower deck. So we got basically through all the existing TV show properties except for the original series. And then we watched lower decks when it came out. And that was amazing. We did watch Picard, at least. I've only seen the first season. It was fine. Didn't watch the second season yet. I was just kind of waiting when I was in the mood for it. But I've seen almost all of Discovery. I'm finishing Deep Space Nine first before I finish the last season. And then I haven't really started Strange New Worlds yet because it's just people are busy with live piano. So I've seen most of Star Trek, and I have so many strong opinions about Star Trek. And I rarely get to talk about Star Trek with people who also know about Star Trek. She just tells me, it's a big day for me.

Mike: Dream. All right, Jessica, what about you? What's? Your familiarity with Star Trek.

Jessika: So I grew up watching mostly Next Gen because it was the that was just kind of always on. My dad loved that show. But we also watched the OG, like Kirk. And, you know, that just it's, uh it's just such a classic, and there are so many callbacks. It was such, like a formative kind of a show in society. And it can't be an amazing if you take it for what it is. If you don't take it seriously, if you try to take it seriously, no, you're fucked. Don't do that. But no, I really like Next Gen, and I have not rewatched it recently, and I can guarantee it's not going to hold up. There's going to be a lot of stuff that I don't like. I can absolutely guarantee that first season. Oh, I'm sure, yeah. And so I'm already anticipating when I go back to rewatch it, having not been, again, not freshly watched at all. I know it's going to feel a little rough and bumpy, and I'll probably want to move on pretty quickly, but I've seen some of the other iterations of it. My brother's had lower deck on before when I've come in and told me a little bit about it and seen an episode or two of that, but I want to get more into it.

Mike: Yeah, I'm kind of like you. I grew up watching the next generation. I never really got to know my grandparents. My grandfather's both died before I was born. My grandmother's both died when I was, like, five. So my great uncle and my great aunt were my de facto grandparents. My great uncle was like, for a little kid, he was, like, the coolest guy. He was like this very sarcastic, funny dude who was, like, a retired engineer. He had been a dive bomber in World War II. He always had cool stories. And so I remember coming over. We would come over every Sunday night for dinner at their house, and he was watching the first episode of Deep Space Nine Night, and I was like, oh, yeah? How is that? And he's like, Mary, I don't know. I'm not sure. I really like it. And then basically, we watched every episode of the first season together at this house before dinner. And so it's, like, etched into my brain now. And as a result, like, I have the DVDs. Like, those are going in my casket with me when I die. I don't care. The kids can't have them. And Deep State Sign, for me, is, like, the one true track. I feel like that is arguably the best of the Star Trek series. There's a couple that come close, but I'm like that's the one that is consistently very good. It doesn't adhere to the episode of the week for the most part. They have this overarching story that starts pretty early on, and then it continues all the way through the show. And it was just really good. It was really progressive. It had a lot of really great messages about diversity and inclusion when that was not something that was being focused on. And when it is funny, it is shockingly funny. The wedding episode that Melissa was talking about is still one of my favorites. Sarah and I just like getting ready for this episode. We watch Trials and Tribulations, which is the episode where they go back in time.

Melissa: Yes.

Mike: Uh, and they synced it up where they have the Deep Space Nine crew members in the backgrounds of all these iconic shots from the triples episode because they're holding us like, we can't interfere with this. We have to operate kind of like on the DL so that we can't interfere with history and change things. And it's so clever and so well done. And again, it's just funny and so good. Yeah. So that's my familiarity with the show. I've obviously watched everything, but I was just thinking about it. There was, like, the serious dearth of Star Trek content from 2002 to about 2009, where we just didn't have any shows. We had Enterprise. I guess that was around 2002.

Melissa: But, yeah, there's a joke on Futurama where George Decay turns to Scott Bacul and says, way to kill the franchise, Bacula. Not that I think Scott Bacula is actually responsible. We all know Rick Berman. But there was that drought after Enterprise.

Mike: Yeah, come on.

Melissa: But the movies, the JJ. Abrams movies with Chris Pine?

Mike: Yeah, that was around 2009.

Melissa: Honestly, I think that was my first introduction to Star Trek, and it would probably cracked open that door for me to start with the series because obviously, those movies are completely different from the.

Mike: TV shows, but they're also still really fun. I really like those movies. A, uh, lot of people ragging into darkness. I'm like it's fine. I'm like it's. Not my favorite of them, but I like the first, and the third one is a lot better. But it's fine.

Melissa: I mean Thunder and Cumber batch as ah con. He was so hot in that movie. That was a gift.

Monte: Melissa, stop.

Veronica: No, this got talked about in a crossover we did recently, and it intrigued me. So I do want to miss cain.

Monte: Comes out of nowhere and yanks Melissa off screen.

Melissa: Listen, when I said strong opinions about.

Monte: Star Trek this is too controversial, though.

Mike: Melissa oh, hot takes on our show. No.

Monte: She'S gone too far.

Mike: Next thing, we'll start talking about feminism.

Melissa: Oh, I don't know. Feminism in Star Trek? I got some opinions about that, as well.

Monte: Melissa has very strong opinions about the progressiveness of Star Trek.

Veronica: Yes, Melissa, we all know Star Trek has never and will never have politics in it in any way.

Mike: Oh, we're going to talk about that later.

Melissa: Yeah.

Mike: All right. So, Star Trek and comics, they have been pretty intertwined, you know, pretty much since the franchise started. The original series ran from January 1966 to June 1969, and the first comic book based on the show came out in 1967, and it was published by Dell Comics. It wasn't exactly a faithful recreation of the show, more of kind of like a stylized spin off. Apparently, all of the crew members except for Spock wore lime green uniforms, and the stories often featured original characters and plots. But, you know, some issues serve as sequels to specific episodes. I haven't had the opportunity to read any of these issues, but they've been reprinted a few times, like, in the last 20 years, so you can pick those up if you want to. The physical collections are going for pretty decent money these days, but the digital collections are still available for, like, roughly $10 a book. But what's surprising is that the comic series actually, like, outlasted the TV show by about a decade. It ran for 61 issues until 1979. So the first Star Trek comic was much longer lived than the show it was based on. And, in fact, the only reason it ended was because Marvel managed to secure the rights for the brand. Sort of like, it turns out that they didn't actually get the rights to all of Star Trek. They only got the rights to the first Star Trek movie, which wasn't actually that well received. It's not that good. I've watched it, and I can't remember much about it. There's something about the Voyager probe coming back and whatever, but Jim Shooter wound up venting about this in The American Comic Book Chronicles, the 1980s, we got.

Veronica: Screwed six ways to Sunday on Star Trek. We wanted from Paramount, all of Star Trek, the Motion Picture, the 1960s television series, everything. But what we got was only the motion picture. Once we were already committed to all these publishing plans, we were told we couldn't do what people wanted. The television series. We got the lame first movie, M.

Mike: Shooter went on to call it a disaster. That was foisted on marvel and also made claims of Paramount baiting and switching things that really hobbled them from the get go. And from what I've read, that doesn't seem entirely inaccurate. The series only lasted for 18 issues, and it ended in 1982, according to an interview in this other book called new Life and New Civilizations, which is a collection of essays about Star Trek and comics, writer Martin Pascoe said he wouldn't have been surprised if the series got canceled due to low sales. Basically, the book notes that anytime Paramount refused to renew the license with a comic publisher, it was due to them being unhappy with sales numbers. So kind of checks out. But after that, DC got the license in 1984 and managed to hold onto it until 1996 under DC's banner. Star Trek the original series ran in comics across two ongoing series, which totaled roughly 150 issues, and it told a number of stories set in that continuity. And then the Next generation had a six issue series that was then followed by an ongoing series that ran for almost 90 issues, if you count all the annuals and specials. There were also like a ton of miniseries and random specials and oneshots. And I looked it up on the League of Comic Geeks, which is all user submitted, dated, so take this with a grain of salt. But according to that site, DC published 377 different issues of Star Trek while it had the rights. And I'm not sure if these comics were ever widely collected and reprinted everywhere. I mean, honestly, there's not a lot of discussion about those books nowadays. Even DC Comics year by year doesn't mention anything about the series. So my guess is that the rights are a bit complicated, kind of wild. But the other big footnote from this time is Malibu comics, and we've mentioned them in previous episodes. Malibu was making some pretty big moves in the early ninety s, and they had acquired the rights to deep Space Nine. Malibu's Deep Space nine series ran for 32 issues until 1996, when Marvel bought Malibu. And Malibu was an indie publisher that had a sizable market share at this point in time. And from what I understand, DC comics was actually kind of sniffing around them. Um, and then Marvel decided to snap them up to keep DC from acquiring them, because if DC had acquired Malibu, then DC would have owned a bigger portion of the comics market than Marvel did. And Marvel was basically trying to dominate the market while they were under the leadership of this controversial financier named Ron Perlman. If you want to hear more about Ron Perlman and what he was doing around this time at Marvel, check out issue 20, where we talked about deathmate, but the crossover between image comics and Valiant with comic book couples counseling, and then episode 22, which is all about Marvel's holiday comics. So now Malibu had the deep space nine license, but. Their agreement with Paramount also allowed them to create comics based on any future spin off, television series or film and any incarnation of Star Trek not already covered by the agreement with DC. So when DC's license expired, marvel was able to sweet talk Paramount into letting them put all Star Trek comics under this publisher's umbrella. And this led to Marvel's Paramount Comics imprint. And basically, Paramount Comics was set up to publish adaptations of any Paramount TV or film properties. If I recall correctly, the 1996 Mission Impossible movie was the first book that they put out under the Paramount Comics label, and it wound up being kind of a disaster. Tom Cruise got really mad. He felt that his character looks too effeminate in one panel, and the book had to be recalled after it had been printed. It's amazing, but the problem is that you can still find copies of that book because they'd already gone out to public, to new stance. I may own a couple, and it may just be because I want to spite Z New, but whatever. But anyway, so it makes sense that Marvel wanted to get in on publishing Star Trek stuff again. And the mid 90s was kind of a golden age for the brand. There were two popular series on television. There was, at this point in time, Voyager in Deep Space Nine. The movies were coming out every couple of years, and they were doing pretty well at the box office. Licensed median products were everywhere. And then there was also this fully immersive theme attraction that was about to open in Las Vegas. I never got to go, and I'm really mad, but apparently the Star Trek Experience was a blast. Like you could get Romulan ale. That's so cool. Yeah, I'm really sad they shut it down before I ever went to Vegas, and I was really bummed about it, but it lasted for a while, and they had a lot of really cool interactive stuff. So the, heyday, we'll start paying, revitalize.

Melissa: It, we'll get it back.

Mike: Uh, well, I mean, that's the thing is, Universal has deals with Paramount, so, I mean, I'm kind of surprised that we don't have a Star Trek experience at one of the Universal Studios, but yeah. This brings us to the Star Trek Xmen crossovers. So Marvel immediately launched a Deep Space Nine and a Voyager comic, as well as a Star Trek Unlimited right after they got the rights. The last one was a, uh, bimonthly series that had stories set in the original series and the next generation settings. And then, even before these series were printed, marvel announced there was going to be a Star Trek and Xmen crossover, and the book was going to be written by this veteran writer named Scott Bell. And then it was going to be illustrated by a number of popular artists from Top Cow Productions, headlined by Mark Sylvestery, and Labdell gave an interview to Star trek communicator magazine, explaining how the two properties worked really well together.

Jessika: I think it's a completely organic blend of two wildly successful pop culture icons that have managed to get only stronger over the last 30 years. Whether you're traveling from one end of the galaxy to the other, or you're a mutant who is set apart from the rest of the mainstream, the bottom line is that these characters have the same hopes, fears, and dreams.

Mike: I mean, I don't think he's wrong. But before we go any further, we also have to acknowledge that Ladell has been outed as problematic. Back in 2013, he wound up admitting to sexually harassing comic book artist and writer Mari Naomi on stage during a prison comics panel at Long Beach ComicCon. Nothing else has really surfaced since then, but his behavior was pretty inappropriate, and it really bums me out because he wrote one of my favorite horror comedies, happy Death Day. And then Sylvesteri is one of the marvel arts who co founded Image Comics and his own studio, Top Cow Productions, and he had earned a ton of claim for his work on Uncanny X Men and and then Wolverine before he left to found the company. So the book was written by Scott Labelle. It was penciled by Mark Sylvestery, Billy Tan, Anthony Wynn, David Finch and Brian Ching. It was inked by Matt Banning dtron billy Tan, Aaron Soud, joe Weems, Victor Lamas team Tron jose Guillion fiat Tron mike Manzarek lettered by Dennis Heisler colored by Tyson Wingler steve Birchau, jonathan Smith, Richard Isaov and edited by Bobby Chase. There was a lot of people involved.

Veronica: There's so many.

Mike: It's so many. I, uh, can't help but think that they wanted to get something out that was going to have really high glossy production values and they wanted to get it out fast. So that would explain why they had so many people involved. But yeah. Jessica, you want to give us a quick plot summary?

Jessika: Yeah, sure. So several of the xmen and we're talking Storm, Gambit, Phoenix, AK, Jean, Gray, Bishop, Wolverine, Beast, and Cyclops all end up on Kirk's Enterprise due to a psionic rift. And Storm and Beast are discovered in the sick bay by Bones as they're trying to patch up a little more. Worse for where it gambit, spock finds Jean and the rest of the gang as he feels the tingle of her mind probing around the ship. Nice touch. And Kirk definitely immediately hits on Phoenix. The first 2nd, he's alone with her, and she's like, yeah, my husband thinks I'm hot, too, but thanks, mhm. And then immediately offends her further by telling a story about having to kill his friend because he was a M mutant and then feeling like he had to defend that it wasn't a good look.

Melissa: It's just a big yikes for Kirk.

Jessika: It's so bad. So the baddies of this story are Deathbird and Proteus, who apparently want to exploit the psionic energy from Earth that Deathbird had felt from some sensor probes that she had going, of course, which picked up Phoenix's stabilizing of this energy. And Deathbird really wants to figure out if she needs to cozy up to this person or take her out in order to get access to what she's being told as an endless energy source. So proteas had taken over the body of a Star Fleet officer named Gary Mitchell.

Mike: And the context is that Gary Mitchell features in an episode where he's exposed to strange energy and basically gets Godlike abilities. Or he's crushed by a rock. So, um, whatever. But yeah, I guess that's how you kill God. Proteus's original weakness was metal.

Jessika: I don't know. Sky Daddy, you listening? If I get taken out by a lightning bull right now continue. Just continue is all I'm saying.

Monte: I do like that you've threatened God. Um, we're coming for you. We know your weakness.

Melissa: Pretty fucking cheeky to speed a big enough rock.

Mike: Like, Star Trek really was not a fan of organized religion in general. In the original.

Melissa: Yeah, even Deep Space Nine, we get into a lot of Klingon history, and they basically like, back in the day, the historic Klingons killed God and then became the superior race that they are now. And you got to, uh, admire that.

Veronica: Klingons know how to live.

Mike: I mean, even Deep Space Nine deep Space Nine was like M. There's this whole section of Bejour that is an allegory for evangelical Christianity and, uh, how toxic it is. And they are not subtle.

Melissa: Yeah, I think they have a really awesome balance of showing what faith means to the individual person versus how big organizations, even religious ones, can be corrupted and cause so much damage and pain and suffering, just as and then they kind of even relate it to sorry, I love Deep Space Nine so much, but it's like there was a whole occupation of the Kardashians on Beijing, and then they take you know what I mean? And then, uh so good.

Mike: Anyway, back to Gary Mitchell and proteus.

Melissa: And death to Gary.

Jessika: Yeah, it was like, what were we talking about other than Sky Daddy?

Melissa: Yeah.

Jessika: The world is crumbling. What do I have to lose? Honestly?

Monte: Honestly, it can only go up.

Jessika: Yeah, this is already a good amount of people to go on a quest is all I'm saying.

Veronica: Five is a perfect party size.

Jessika: It's just perfect party size. So Proteus ends up like double crossing Deathbird. He's like, I really need you. Thanks. So bye. Kirk uses Jean's mind reading abilities to get access to the real Gary inside the Proteas like, takeover Gary body. But he died a really long time ago, so I'm not really sure why he was still able to talk to him. But that's never resolved. That it's not resolved. Don't expect it to, because it's not going to happen. And tries to talk to him to get him to take back over the body. And I guess that worked long enough for them to off him with a combined blasting. So he like, boom, explodes. The collective good guys glower a Deathbird who's like, I don't even like this place anyway. And then, like, fucks off. And then they say they're goodbyes and they scoot through the rift that is just conveniently closing fast. That's it, isn't.

Melissa: It just the perfect blend of stuff that doesn't make sense in Star Trek and stuff that doesn't make sense in comic books. Just, like, perfectly blended together. Yeah. And then it ended. What do you want? For me, it's all loaded through the print over long run away.

Jessika: There are no more pages.

Monte: Emotional weight.

Mike: Uh, the other thing is that I think people forget that the X Men, for a good while, were, like, very much a Sci-Fi space opera of a story. It's one of those things where I'm like, yeah, all right, fine, whatever. This checks out.

Veronica: Yes.

Mike: But yeah. What did everyone think about this comic? I'm curious.

Veronica: It was a lot in that specific 90s way that comics can be the art. I mean, I can see the effect of having 18 pencils and angels on this. There was a lot of very campy, fun moments that I read. It kind of late. I read the third thing we're gonna talk about first, and then I went back and read the comics. And so I was like, live tweeting all my reactions to this comic, to these two, and just be like, this statement makes no sense in the funniest way. I think my favorite was you talked about when they finally kill Gary Proteus. One panel says one phaser blast, and then the next panel is like a splash page where literally everyone is shooting him. He's just integrating into Slate.

Monte: Veronica everyone is shooting him. And then Wolverine is off to the side with his claws out, yelling.

Jessika: He's just doing icing the air.

Monte: Shadow boxing, nothing.

Jessika: Oh, my God.

Mike: I was really surprised we didn't get a Wolverine stabbing Phoenix moment, like, you know, from the original John Burn Chris Claremont run. Good opportunity, but yeah, you know, whatever. I'm not in charge of these comics. They don't pay me the big bucks, so fine.

Veronica: We should be, though.

Mike: Yeah, I felt it was perfectly serviceable. It felt like a one off episode of Star Trek, and the script was fun. It wasn't great, but it was fun. And I will say I did really like, though, that at the end, when Kirk is shaking Cyclops hand and Cyclops ends things on this hopeful note, talking about how he's glad to see a future where things aren't terrible, I thought that was solid. Also, I really liked it when the nurse came into sick bay and said, Dr. McCoy and then both Beast and Bones are like, yes. Yeah. Uh.

Veronica: There were a lot of bob.

Monte: It's like yes.

Melissa: You could definitely tell that this comic story both felt like an X Men story and the Star Trek story. I think everything we read was very Star Trek, for better or for worse. I felt like they did at least stick true to the Star Trek vibe.

Mike: Yeah. It was better than it had any right to be. And that's kind of how I feel about all of this stuff. The 90s were not known for good comics, let's be honest.

Melissa: What?

Monte: This is a great place for me to jump in.

Melissa: Yeah.

Monte: Transition to Monday on um play. So I am not a big fan of the 90s, just in general. I think Deep Space Nine actually has the distinction of being one of the only live action TV shows from the 90s that I can stand good for that. So I'll preface this by saying, I don't like Scott Labdell. Aside from being a predator and a bit of a bully, I also think he's a shitty writer who just survived on the inertia of the that's the reason why he was able to write for so long, because I don't think he did a very good job. All that out of the way. Just let that contextualize why I didn't really like this. It was because of preexisting biases is what I'm saying.

Mike: Yeah. So that's the thing. I wasn't aware of any of this stuff with Labelle. I knew the name vaguely, but I didn't know his work intimately until I was researching.

Monte: He wrote on X Men for, like, a decade, almost. And he had, like, one good storyline, which is early for us. And then M well, the beginning, like, when it was first transitioning from Claremont to his era, there were a few good, decent storylines and stuff, but he's just I don't see it. I don't get it. But he is prolific, for better or worse.

Mike: Probably for worse.

Jessika: And I liked a couple of things in it. I did like that Spock felt Phoenix's brain poking. Like, I thought that was a nice touch. And there were some cool, callback kind of things that I thought were interesting, but the drying with, like, uh, okay. Why did they always draw women's breasts? Like, it felt like they were swelling like balloons. They looked uncomfortable as shit. I don't know, man. Get it checked out is all I'm saying, because that shit looks uncomfortable. Unless you got it done. Don't look that way. In which case you're prerogative. No judgment, but I don't think that's supposed to be the case. And they all have, like, 20 fucking ABS, and it's just, like, muscles where there shouldn't be muscles and all of them. And I'm just, like I don't know. I don't really resonate with that type of drawing. And I know that's pretty specific to the that kind of vibe. Like, everybody's body shamed for the body they have kind of way. But you can't exist and feel good about yourself. Welcome to the 90s, let's also wear low rise jeans. So yeah.

Melissa: Uh.

Monte: I think Sylvester is one of the Image guys, right?

Mike: Yeah. He was one of the co founders.

Monte: Yeah, Sylvester is one of the people who started that, and it was, like, interesting and fun and exciting at the beginning, and then it just kind of, like I said, the inertia of the 90s, it just continued much longer than it should have. Just, like, denim jeans and denim jean jackets and denim jean T shirts.

Melissa: It's like how the early 2000s fashion couldn't recover quickly from the was really bad.

Monte: It's just so much inertia.

Mike: Well, and, I mean, we've we've talked about this before. I call it 90s extreme with a capital X. And, you know, like, it's interesting, because if you look at the art by all of the Image co founders, when they were working at Marvel, they were still very hyper stylized bodies. There's no way to get around that. But they were less just kind of characterized. There was, like, a slight amount of realism still to him, but, uh, as it went on, like, you watched Rob Weisseld, where all of a sudden, the women had, like, these three inch waists for Eric Larson, like the savage dragon. His shoulders were so wide. You're like, how does he fit through doorways? I don't know. I mean, Jim Lee is an incredible artist. He was starting out, I think he was training to be a medical illustrator or a doctor, one or the other. But, like, you know, his his that's why his anatomy was so good. He was, like, going through medical training, and then he became an incredible comic book artist instead. But, like, Wildcats number one, I think, has a center fold out image of, I think, Voodoo, because she's, like, a gogo dancer. All of these books were very much oriented towards teenage boys.

Melissa: Why?

Mike: Because that was the demographic they were targeting. And the other thing about this book, though, is that because you have so many people working on it, uh, a lot of the pages are harder to read because I feel like the inks were so dark. Like, there's an early on one where you're looking at it to Sylvester penciling, and then I think it's Billy Tan who inked it, but I'm not sure. Don't quote me on that. And Gladiator is floating in space, and we do get a great moment where Gladiator punches the Enterprise, which I thought was fantastic.

Jessika: That was funny.

Mike: Yeah. But, like but you're looking at Gladiator, and it's actually hard to get a read on his overall shape because the shadows blend in completely with the background space.

Melissa: Yeah. Tons of words, tons of exposition. Just so dense. Yeah. And, like, you guys had mentioned all the callbacks to the original series of Star Trek. While you might have been delighted by them, I was annoyed by every single one. But I personally just find that uh, original series. Annoying. So reminding me about the original series only annoyed me.

Veronica: Sad.

Mike: There's probably a reason that we didn't get another crossover with Kirk series. But the other thing is that Kirk series wasn't all that popular by this point in time. It was much more The Next Generation.

Melissa: Like, at this point.

Veronica: Yeah, speaking of the art and, like, it's overdone in this. It's kind of shockingly discordant. Like, mhm the X Men are drawn in their, like, super 90s comic extreme style, and the Star Trek cast are drawn, like, very recognizably. Like, the art is good, but they look like they're actors who have normal human straight bodies in T shirts and Velour uniforms.

Jessika: Like real ass people.

Veronica: Yeah. And when you're reading it, because, I mean, it's also so busy and there's so many words, I'm, like, scrolling through it now, and I'm like, I don't think I looked at any of the Star Trek crew members while I was reading this comment because I was so distracted by the X Men.

Mike: I have to think that must have been part of the agreement with Paramount, was that you have to make them recognizable as their characters.

Melissa: Right.

Mike: That must have been part of the agreement. Now that we're talking about The Next Generation, what do you say we move on to Star Trek The Next Generation? Slash xmen colon second contact.

Monte: Can I ask one thing before we move on?

Mike: Yeah, sure.

Monte: Did Proteus as a villain work for people? Because I was so confused the whole time about why Proteus was there because Proteus dies in the then he comes back for, like, one random issue of X Factor or something that nobody's ever read. So I have no idea what happened.

Mike: No, I think it was that there was an annual story where they told across four different annuals with, like, the New Guardians and X Factor and stuff like, that brought back to life. And it's actually, like, a really depressing story because I remember reading that when I was a kid and being like, oh, that was, uh, really bad.

Monte: I think you're the only one that read it.

Mike: Yeah, probably. It wasn't good. It made me upset, and I haven't gone back to it.

Monte: Yeah, but like you said, X Men. There's so many space storylines with X Men. I was just kind of confused about why, like, you have Deathbird and you have the Shiar there, but I was so confused about why Proteus was there and, like, not a more recurring ex villain. Because the Xmen have fought a lot of, like, psionics and, like, reality warpurs and stuff, especially in the 90s because they were, like, a dime a dozen. So it's like, why proteus? I was so confused by this choice Scott loved. I don't get it. What were you doing? What were you thinking?

Mike: They brought Proteus back a couple of different times, too. Like, there was a whole thing with the exiles and the Early Odds, new Mutants Annual Seven. No. So the story where he's brought back by this other character named Peacemeal, that was from the early 90s. That was, like, 91, apparently. So I don't know. It's an odd choice. Like maybe Scott labelle was doing something with proteus. I don't know. Like, I'm, um I don't have a lot of insight into that era. My knowledge of men is pretty limited. I wasn't reading the series at the time, and I haven't gone back and reread most of that stuff. I read the first few issues of the new series that Jim Lee was doing, and I stopped a little after 300 with Uncandy Xmen because I was a teenage boy and I moved on to image.

Monte: Yeah, no, I mean, Proteus, uh, he's brought back for that, like, one story, and then he goes away again, and then he comes back much later. I'm like, I don't understand why Proteus is here. I don't get it.

Mike: That's a good question. I hadn't thought about that, especially.

Veronica: We'd have a great villain in Gary.

Monte: All you need is Gary.

Mike: I mean, speaking Gary, honestly, they could have brought in Deathbird. They could have, like, resurrected Gary through, like, the psionic energy, the rift that was going on, and then just done all that. That would have been fine. I don't know. Proteus was yeah, an odd choice, and the more I think about it, the grumpier I get.

Veronica: So not having encountered Proteus anywhere else and him just being, like, an entity that lives in Gary in this comic, um, I don't have, like, any conception of what Proteus is or who he is as a villain from being in this comic. He's just the Slash after Gary, like.

Mike: Reality Warper, who is, like, a psionic entity who possesses other people. If I remember right, he possesses other.

Monte: People and kills them and burns through their bodies. Proteus is a very interesting villain. Like, Proteus was a great villain. Like when he was introduced in Claremont's Run, mhm. I just didn't understand why he was brought back here.

Mike: Yeah. All right, well, does anyone have any final thoughts before we move on?

Melissa: Okay.

Mike: All right, so let's talk about Star Trek the Next Generation. Xmen second Contact.

Veronica: All the titles of all of these.

Mike: Are just so much I'm just like, there is so much extra formatting that I have to note it.

Veronica: Yes. None of them are memorable words in any way.

Mike: No. Okay. Obviously, the Star Trek Xmen crossover did well, and Marvel decided to do a sequel. And this time we got Star Trek the Next Generation Xmen Second Contact. God, what a mouthful. But it was written this time by Dan Abnett and Ian Edgington. It was penciled by Carrie Nord, inked by Scott Coblish, colored by John Castlez, letter by Chris Elliopolos, and edited by Tim Twhee, Chip Carter and Julio Soto, and Abnet and Edgington. They are British writers who came up through the UK comic scene and Carry Nord is actually an Eisner Award winning pencillor who drew some of my favorite Conan comics for Dark Horse. So even though these weren't attention grabbing names at the time, they were really notable talents. They just, you know, weren't as well known then. And I'll handle the plot summary this time. This book is a direct sequel to Star Trek First Contact, the movie, and it starts immediately after the Enterprise has triumphed against the board. They are trying to make their way home and inadvertently find themselves in the Marvel Six One Six universe. The crew winds up visiting the X mansion because they detect Shi R technology that can get them home, which I thought was an interesting moment because Ryker is sitting there and like, oh, it's it's Shi R technology. What's that doing on Earth? And I'm like, oh, so the Shia are canon Star Trek lore, I guess. Okay. And then the Xmen and the crew end up skirmishing for a second, which, side note, Colossus fights Data, and Data is wearing slacks and a bowling shirt, I guess, which okay, sure. And then they all become friends, and Kang Conquer shows up to reveal that time has been busted because the Enterprise came over to Earth Six One Six. Kang sends two groups to different points in time, basically, where temporal anomalies have been detected, and then we get to see them arriving at different points of, uh, both timelines. One group goes to Earth eight one one, which is the dystopian future of days of future past and find a resurrected Tasha Yar about to send Kitty Pride's consciousness across time. And then the other group is sent forward to the Battle of Wolf Three Five Seven, which was a major conflict between the Federation and the Borg, and John proud Star, who also died in the X Men's past as part of Benjamin Cisco's crew. And then Wesley Crusher and the travelers show up in a nod, uh, to what's easily one of the Next Generation's worst episodes. And they reveal that King is actually trying to use the teams to stop the Anomalies in order to take over time and space. So the teams guarantee the events manage to happen like they're supposed to. The Enterprise blows up Kang's ship, and then everyone gets sent back to their appropriate times. And then, in a final shot, the X Men returned to their mansion, only to find something shocking before we're told the story will continue in the novel Planet X.

Melissa: See, Veronica? I told you Wesley and the Traveler was a bullshit.

Mike: It's garbage. It's such garbage. I rewatched that episode because I'm like, I vaguely remember this, and it is trash. It it is so bad. It's an episode that deals with Native Americans who have resettled on the planet, and then they're referred to as American Indians, which, I mean, you know, early 90s nomenclature. It's like, well, okay, that was how it was being referred to a lot of the time and hasn't aged well. And it's very heavy handed. They're trying to say the right thing, which is that this group of indigenous people are being forced to relocate from a planet that they've settled on because a new treaty has designated it as Kardashian space, so it's been designated as Cardassian space. And Picard has a number of monologues talking about how wrong this is and how this is repeating the sense of the past. And then Wesley Crusher has come back from Starfleet and is a real dipshit, and then ultimately winds up finding out that he can travel through time and space on his own. And so he's joined by the Traveler, who whatever. It's dumb. It's garbage. It's assuming.

Melissa: Um, so the fact that he just randomly shows up in this, I was like, fucking great. Obviously, that's how this is going to end. Wesley Crusher and the Traveler are just going to show up, uh, so upset about this moment.

Mike: Yeah, wesley Crusher also shows up in card season, too. And it's nice. I like that they threw well, wet in a bone, but still.

Melissa: I like Will Wheaton don't always agree with how people don't like Wesley Crusher, but that episode is dumb. No.

Mike: Yeah. And it's also pretty offensive and how it plays into the mystical wise Native American tropes too. I can see what they were doing, but it's like, I understand why this is voted as, like, one of the top five worst episodes of TNG. But yeah. Anyway, so what did everyone think about the comic?

Melissa: I didn't hate it. Despite me specifically hating the moment when it shows up, I didn't hate it. I kind of liked the callback for Cisco. And I didn't obviously fully understand.

Mike: Some.

Melissa: Of the other ones. But you know what I mean. As I was reading it, I was like, it's kind of interesting. Like, maybe Veronica or Monte understand the X Men references more than I do, but I obviously understand every Star Trek reference kind of thing.

Monte: Uh, yeah. For me, this one is probably the one that I was the most interested in of the three. I think that while, like you said, the art and this is very dicey, but in a different way because it's not really super stylistic to the time period. But like you said, it's not very expressive. It's not very dynamic. It's just kind of flat. But I think when it comes to what a ah crossover is for like as far as introducing a different property to someone who might be a fan of another property I think from the X Men side at least this story really brought in just enough Easter eggs and enough special little X Men things that might entice someone. Like, you have the future alternate timelines, which is what X Men is basically about at this point. And you have King the Conqueror is a. Much better sort of Marvel cameo than Proteus would be. Mhm I don't know. I think that a lot, at least from the X Men side, hit with me, and then I don't really know enough about Star Trek because I don't really watch it in detail just in passing with my mother. So I don't know if those references were as impactful as some of the references in the other stories. But from the Xmen Marvel side, I thought that it did a good job of introducing that property to new fans.

Mike: Mhm yeah, and I mean, I honestly wouldn't have recognized Kerry Nord's artwork if I hadn't read his name in the credits. Like, he has this really beautiful style, and it's just not obvious. Here, like, early on, there's this illustration of Deanna Troy where she doesn't look like she has a chin. Like, it reminded me a little bit more of that 19th century painting in Italy that some local woman ruined when she tried to fix it.

Melissa: Yeah, the picture in Jesus or something.

Mike: Yeah. So, like, here I've included I've included one of his early Conan illustrations here in the notes. So if you guys want to check it out and then see if you would have guessed that that would have been drawn by the same guy that drew this comic.

Melissa: Yeah.

Jessika: Huh.

Melissa: The Blob esqueness of everybody in this comic, really, the artwork felt like it detracted from the story rather than added. I feel worse about it now that we're obviously all referencing a very beautifully illustrated image, um, that looks like I.

Mike: Don'T like to shit on artists and what they create. And I think this is a situation where you had people who were very good at what they did, but then it just didn't come together because callus's colors, which seem digital, and this was very early in the industry where they were doing digital colors and cobalt's inks, just they don't quite mesh. Like, you can actually see the progress at the end of the book. And I think the main problem was that their styles just didn't complement each other. The illustrations themselves, I think, are a lot of times really beautifully composed. Like, some of the shots of the inside of Kang ship work really well. Like compositionally, like the way they're framed and everything. But it's just there's something about the way that they all come together where, like, details are lost or they just look very off. It gets better as the issue goes on. I feel like maybe they kind of started to, uh, vibe with each other, but the first few pages, I don't know. Yeah, I think Abnet and Edgington did a nice job weaving together a story that worked well in terms of both Star Trek and Marvel logic. Speaking of someone that's a fan of both properties, and I liked how there were Easter eggs from both of those properties. Like, I liked that Benjamin Cisco was one of the threats to Kang and that John proud Star was alive again, only to sacrifice himself so Cisco could live and then go on and find the wormhole with the profits in Deep Space Nine. And I liked how we got to revisit major moments from both franchises like Wolf Three Five Nine and Days of Future Past are still pretty well remembered by fans now, but they were really fresh in people's mind at the time if they were fans of those brands, and I think it felt way better than it had any right to be. As a Mashup comic, I think this is a much stronger entry than the first one. That's my opinion. You guys are totally welcome to tell me that I'm on drugs or something.

Monte: No, I would definitely agree. M 100%. Like 1000%.

Mike: Yeah. As noted, the story continues in the novel Planet X. So this was designed to serve as an immediate sequel to Second Contact. It was published by the Pocketbooks division of Simon and Schuster and written by Michael Yon Friedman, who has written dozens of Star Trek novels. And then he also wrote almost all of the Next Generation ongoing series from DC Comics back in the early ninety s. And according to new Life and New Civilizations, planet X was Pocket's best selling Next Generation novel for, I don't know, of all time. But for years it was. And that makes sense. Like the copy that I picked up is the fifth printing of the book. It was clearly doing well, but yeah. All right, who wants to give a brief summary of the plot?

Monte: So after second contact the Xmen ping back to the Star Trek universe. A year later, Picard picks them up to try and figure out how to get back home. Meanwhile, on the planet of Zaldia I think that's how I think the best.

Mike: Way to pronounce it.

Veronica: In my head, but now that I see it, um.

Mike: Yeah, I tried to look up the species too, from this planet. Like, they've never showed up in any other Star Trek references as far as I can tell.

Melissa: No, I don't think so.

Monte: Well, here on their planet, young people are developing powers in a similar vein to mutants on Earth. These Transformed are rounded up by the government and put into fortresses. The narrative follows Arid sovar as he and the other Transformed buck against their imprisonment and eventually stage a breakout, the Enterprise is dispatched to Zaldia, uh, to help recover and deal with the Transform. Diplomatically, the Xmen ask to assist, citing their similar experiences to the Transformed. However, when they arrive, a third party hostile force has cut off communication to the planet and is rounding up the Transformed. The Enterprise crew and the X Men pair off to fight back against the invading forces, eventually driving them off by working together. In the end, the Zaldian government realizes their error and a potential cure is presented to the transformed and the X Men many decline, and the X Men are returned to their reality.

Mike: Yeah. I just want to note that the hostile alien species is called the Dracone, I think is how it's pronounced. It's D-R-A-A apostrophe koni think. And I'm just, like, really? Okay.

Monte: Yeah. In my mind, I read it as Dracone.

Mike: Yeah. Uh, and then I immediately went to, like, Drakhar Noir. Anyway, this is the final entry in the series of crossovers. What did everyone think of this one?

Veronica: So, apart from some writing stuff that was kind of a slog for me, I actually really enjoyed the first two thirds of this book. And the last third isn't the worst thing.

Monte: I pray.

Veronica: I didn't like the end as much as the rest of the book, but it's not that it was terrible. I am more of a novel person than a comic person. And especially, I think that all the, like, relationships and the little, like, pairing characters off to make them have, like, oh, these characters are similar. We should have Wharf and Wolverine fight in a simulation on the hollow deck. Like, I think that stuff had a lot more time to shine and actually go in depth and be interesting to me. And this third storyline in the background about the transformed, at least the set up and build up of it was like, that's interesting, pulp Sci-Fi stuff to me. I enjoyed that. The build up, at least.

Melissa: Yeah.

Mike: And I mean, the last half of the novel is like it's just an ongoing series of action sequences that are all kind of tied together. They're fine. But the thing is that we did have that build up leading to that, and, uh, it works. It's fine.

Melissa: I would say it definitely feels like a Star Trek episode. There's a planet where something social is happening and people have opinions about it, and then there just so happens to be something else going on that directly ties in with this other really random, coincidental thing that's happening at the same time. And they all come together, and Picard is like, I'm the captain, and we all make sure that he's the captain, and then Riker's there, and the Holodecks there, and lots of I don't even know if you can call them Easter eggs, but they're just Blatant references to me anyway. It's basically just missing it's, like, from that episode, season four, episode 15, when this happened. It, uh, literally happened a couple of times. So really what I'm saying is, it felt like a Star Trek episode. I didn't love the ending. I felt like they were 50% of the way there with an ending that felt satisfying. And then the man who wrote this was like, yes, that's satisfying enough for me, but it wasn't satisfying enough for me. I, uh, feel like they did not quite get to the point, which is you didn't learn your lesson. Basically, that's kind of a little bit white saviory. Would that be the kind of correct term that I'm looking for right now? Yeah. So it's like Star Trek where you're like, they almost did something really cool that happens a few times, especially Next Generation. Like, well, they tried.

Mike: Yeah. Uh, especially the last few episodes of Next Generation. I feel I was very dissatisfied walking away from a lot of season seven episodes.

Jessika: I don't know, I thought the book was interesting and it was fascinating what they did with the characters. And since some of the characters hadn't met the Xmen, they were able to kind of do that little introduction thing, which felt kind of meaningful to both stories. And they did put things in there. Just to put them in there, though. There were a lot of things that were just like, oh, this is literally for the express purpose of linking these two characters. So my favorite of these probably was this little nod to fan worlds where, okay, first of all, this didn't make any sense at all. You cannot recreate professor X.

Veronica: Okay.

Jessika: Pissed me off. Um you cannot recreate Professor X from data files. I'm sorry, that's not data files. Do not a sentient person make.

Melissa: I have an episode of you get.

Jessika: A decision make with that.

Melissa: Never watch the Jordy Holiday episode.

Mike: Oh, they're so bad.

Jessika: Oh, my God.

Monte: Honestly, that was one of my favorite things at this point.

Melissa: Yeah.

Veronica: They're going to get insights that you couldn't just presume from talking to the people who knew him or whatever. It's like if we recreated with enough data points from these vague files from.

Mike: The past that we uploaded during the second contact comic, that was such a throwaway thing.

Jessika: We just happened to upload these data files about Professor X while we were there. I'm sorry. Wait, who lets you first of all, can you just upload are you just able to break down the firewall? Do they not have a firewall? This is all very concerning. You just were able to get access.

Veronica: Can I choose decline when we go to the website so you can't steal.

Jessika: All my Enterprise cookies?

Melissa: We'll say that Star Trek in the future. HIPAA is another thing, and neither is people express privacy to certain things that.

Jessika: You would think there would be, um.

Melissa: Flaws that you can't just recreate your coworkers in a hollow deck and then use those characters and oh, I don't know, maybe Lieutenant Barclays were in sex fantasies. It's fine. But, uh, yeah, there's a whole episode where Georgie puts data files of a woman, gives her a personality. It's a thing that happens in Star Trek. It's just something that happens and there's no reason. Now, the part I was complaining about was, why not just program him to understand he's a hologram, so you don't have to convince him that he's a hologram.

Jessika: You have to make all these connections.

Melissa: Whatever. Sorry. She spends, like, half her time explaining.

Jessika: What'S happening to him.

Melissa: Uh, very Star Trek.

Veronica: It was very Galaxy Brain, though, uh, where they predicted how Professor X and Picard would be played by the same.

Mike: Yeah, that was great.

Jessika: And that was the part at the end where I was just like they literally did not he literally walked into the room to interact with Professor X for one millisecond and then, uh, fucking bounced. He was like, oh, hello. Hologram, professor. Lovely to meet you. We do look a lot of, like, wink.

Veronica: Door Closes that made me, like, second guess myself. I was like, wait, did this come out after that?

Jessika: No, I had to think about it too.

Monte: I told them, like, over and over. Professor X has been drawn as Patrick Stewart for a very long time. Patrick Stewart was a perfect cast because I don't know this for sure. I am just saying this because it's what I believe, but I swear to God, Marvel wanted Patrick Stewart to play Professor X, and they conspired to make this happen by drawing him that way and putting that energy out into the universe.

Melissa: So that was 1998 energy being pushed, uh, cast Sir Patrick Stewart.

Monte: He, uh, might have been cast by that point because the X Men movie came out in 2000. So he might have actually been cast at this point.

Mike: But I mean, that's also similar to how, like, Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Bagley specifically modeled Nick Fury off of Samuel L. Jackson. And like, I think they got permission from him for that. And then that led to Samuel Jackson playing Nick Fury in the movies.

Melissa: So make the change you want in the world. That's what they mean when they say that.

Monte: They approached Patrick Stewart to play Professor X in 97. So he was already in talks to play the part at this point.

Melissa: Nice.

Monte: So it's even more powerful.

Veronica: Make it happen.

Mike: Maybe Friedman actually knew about that and, like, noted it in the book because of that.

Monte: Possibly, yeah. I think that's what made it so cute for me was the references to how they look the same. I thought it was hilarious.

Veronica: It makes me happy when it was happening.

Monte: And also just it was so dumb. There's one thing that we know. If current trends hold, I can guarantee you that in the future, you do not have a right to privacy over your data points that can be used to make porn, robots and Holodex mhm.

Jessika: We're already seeing that trend. We're pretty legally honest. Yeah.

Mike: I did also really enjoy how on Wharf's Away Team when he's, like, invading the Draconian ship, they have two security members named Kirby and Ditko. Yeah, it was like, well played. All right, I'll allow it.

Veronica: Yeah, of course they would.

Melissa: Um, way more red shirts in this book than I thought was going to have. There were quite a few randoms that died. And that does happen. It just doesn't happen that often, but it happened quite a bit. It was really funny. I felt like one of the things I love about Star Trek is that it's kind of dumb. But another thing is they just love inserting, like, very human moments that are kind of cute into stories that can be kind of heavy or are just not about that at all. And they I don't know, I just find a way that especially Deusface Nine, they just have a way of making people very charming, really interesting interactions with different people. But I felt like this book had that sometimes where they'd randomly highlight a character and you're like, why do we care about this person? And then I do something interesting. Another thing. There was so much subtle, uh, horniness, which is also very, uh, like all.

Jessika: The women salivating over Archangel. What?

Mike: He's unconscious. And also the card. And Storm. Man, I dug it.

Melissa: Hated it, too.

Veronica: Real creepy.

Mike: Yeah, I thought it was funny.

Veronica: It was funny.

Monte: It was funny. But I don't like that. That's like, Storm's thing is that everybody wants her and she's just like constantly objectified by these white male authors and it pisses me off.

Mike: Well, and her outfit at the time, too, was like it was a 90s women's outfit. It was like spandex with a lot of, like bare midriff, if I remember right.

Veronica: Yeah, it should be the same thing she was wearing in the second comic, which yeah, I think was like which.

Mike: Is what I'm going off of.

Veronica: Yeah, the Emma Frost Crop top whiskey.

Monte: Yes.

Veronica: Sleeve cape.

Mike: But she also had kind of like a short almost like a bob cut, but then these, like, long pigtails, I think, right?

Jessika: Yeah, it was these long, like, front is pieces of hair. Do you guys remember when people had random bits of hair that were like.

Melissa: Longer in the front?

Mike: M. Yes.

Melissa: Love that.

Monte: I think it was similar to her Age of Apocalypse hair. Like Storm's. Age of Apocalypse hair is like a short bob with strands. They're not bangs, but you know what I mean? What they were in the fucking comic.

Mike: Yeah. After Age of Apocalypse, there was a lot of influence because that was such a hit for the brand. Yeah.

Monte: The one exception to my I hate the 90s, especially at Marvel Rule, is Age of Apocalypse. Age of Apocalypse is fucking great. And anybody who says otherwise can kick rocks.

Mike: Yeah, I mean, that was early Chris Bachelor art, too, was when he did a lot of Asia apocalypse art.

Monte: Chris Bachelor is my favorite artist. Or one of them, I guess.

Mike: Yeah. No, I adore him. Okay, so what was your favorite of these crossovers?

Veronica: The book. The novel.

Mike: The novel.

Veronica: I had to think about the name for a second because they're also generically named Planet X. Yeah, like Melissa said, I think everyone got really good moments to be insight into them. And little character moments for them, except richer. For some reason, I feel like Michael Yon Friedman doesn't like Riker and just ignored him the whole time.

Mike: I mean, honestly, I don't think many people really like Riker. I think Riker is just kind of there. He's not as interesting as Spock.

Veronica: He's just, like, around.

Melissa: Yeah, he's very tall. He's got that going.

Mike: He sits and chairs.

Jessika: Weird. Visually. I was just going to say visually, he has the chair thing going for him.

Veronica: But yeah, I think narrative has the best ability to give you insight into people's thoughts and stuff. So I really enjoy being in everyone's heads.

Mike: Yeah, I'll agree with that. I think, honestly, the story is the best in the novel. And I think that's because we were given some time to kind of breathe and get to know all the characters if we weren't familiar with any of them. I mean, it's a random hodgepodge of X Men characters, too, where I'm like because they always have that rotating cast. I'm like, oh, banshees in this one. Okay, talk about characters that I don't give a shit about. Okay, so last question is what was your favorite moment from all of these books? Just pick one moment that was your favorite. I can go first because I've got mine ready.

Jessika: Go first.

Mike: It's when Wolverine goes into Ten Forward and he's talking with Guinan in the novel. And he's like, oh, yeah, your synth alcohol sucks. Like, I want something that's, like, stronger than that. And she's like, oh, well, I can give you some of Wharf's private reserve. And she gives him, like, a tanker to prune juice because that's what Wharf drinks. Wolverine will not back down off of this. And he's like, it's delicious. He's like, it's a warrior drink. It felt like a real Roy Kent moment where he's drinking tea with Ted Lasso.

Monte: Yes, that was very fun.

Mike: Also, I liked that Guinan had a moment. I thought that was great. Yeah, it was way better than Guinan in the second season of Picard.

Melissa: So I'm telling you about these things that didn't work out with Picard Two. I'm going to put off push off watching it even longer.

Mike: Come from John Delancy chewing scenery as Silver Fox Q. Because, like, I'm sorry. I would absolutely make out with Silver Fox Q. He's hot.

Melissa: Okay, if I've got that going for me, then yeah. Watch.

Veronica: It was anyone's favorite moment when Q and the Watcher show up at the end of the novel.

Melissa: That ruined it for me. But so, um.

Veronica: To sass everyone else with their knowing things more than everyone.

Monte: Else, I was going to say, Melissa, we got a Q cameo. Exactly what you wanted.

Melissa: I almost ripped it out of the book if it wasn't a library book.

Veronica: Those are my library books.

Melissa: Uh, I respect libraries more than I respect that epilogue. So I get one out in the end. I have a very controversial opinion about how much I dislike the character queue. So the fact that he showed up enraged me so much, I blacked out and then came to and forgot that it existed until Veronica just now mentioned it. So thank you for that.

Mike: Good.

Monte: I think my favorite moment was also in the book, and it was when Shadowcat I think it was when they first the X Men beamed on to some place or something like that, and there was some security officer or something that found them, and Shadowcat just dips out and she like, pieces out. Uh, and I thought, being familiar with the character, I was like, oh, she's going off to like, they've got a plan. She's going off to do something. But no, she was just fucking hiding. And I was like, Catherine, you can't just abandon your friends. And then I think it's Colossus, who is like, no, you could come out now. And she's just like, what the fuck, Catherine? You can't do that.

Mike: In her department, it was very fun. 15 at the time in the canon X Men mythology, she was like, real young. Yes, yes.

Veronica: She was assassin real good in this. I think mine also in the book. I just really liked how they utilized all the X Men's powers in a, uh, Star Trek story. And I think a good example of that is when they used Nightcrawler's short range teleportation to get into the ship and the first through the shields. And then that kind of like, kicked off the ending action sequence. Well, while it did have a bunch of fights that became a little bit repetitive, it started off with a bunch of utility interactions where they were making use of each of the X Men's powers in different scifi situations.

Melissa: Yeah, which was fun. I did enjoy the whole Storm just easily beating down the what was his name? Radaton or something like that. M the Earth Bender Salvian guy, uh, who kind of leaded the transformed. And he was a psychopath, which very m Storm. That was a pretty satisfying battle. I'm having Riker just be like so I guess I'll just like, get out of the way, and just carry neatly my trombone. Completely owning this guy, and I'm just recording it for history. You're welcome, everybody. Uh, I liked that scene. That was a very interesting scene. It was also very satisfying seeing Storm have a chance to do something than being diplomatic.

Mike: All right, Jessica, you're up.

Jessika: I really liked the part specifically when Shadowcat went so there's this part in the hollow deck where I think Wharf and Wolverine were in the hollow I actually can't remember who was there. I think it was wharf.

Mike: It was Wolf and Wolverine. Yeah.

Veronica: Wait, wasn't it?

Jessika: Yeah, it wasn't error.

Veronica: Sovar's brother and his friend Robinson, if you're talking about the scene that I'm thinking of, but go on.

Jessika: Maybe that we know. So Shadow got, like, morphs into the hollow deck and basically shorts out a bunch of, like, the hollow deck panels. And she's like, oh, sorry. Is this stuff electronic? I didn't realize I was going through electronic things. I kind of tend to short things out by and, like, just dips out again.

Monte: The whole room explodes. Did I do that?

Mike: Yeah.

Monte: Imagine that. There's circuitry in this spaceship. The walls of this spaceship have circuitry in them. Jesus.

Jessika: I was literally thinking that I'm like, you should not be morphing anywhere right now. Where should you be morphing?

Monte: Just the whole ship starts to fall out of orbit just because she phases through the wrong thing, shakes into two pieces.

Veronica: She got yelled at for invading privacy in that scene, though, I think.

Melissa: So.

Veronica: Privacy does exist sometimes in the future.

Monte: The Star Trek future, but not for corporations. If she had been, uh, Shadowcat LLC, they would have just had to deal with it.

Jessika: Excuse me. I was just installing some cameras and microphones. Don't mind me. Then she morphs out.

Mike: Yeah. Oh, man. Okay. Well, as we have often discussed, nothing could lasts. So Marvel was really struggling in the mid to late 90s. Thanks to perlman's moves. The publisher emerged from bankruptcy in 97, but it was still struggling in 98, thanks in large part to the ongoing slump in the comics market. And apparently the Star Trek books weren't selling too well. So it didn't make a lot of sense for them to keep paying licensing fees to Paramount in order to put out money losing comics. As a result, the series were all canceled, and most of them were able to work in conclusions to in progress stories. And since then, the Marvel books have been republished. There was a digital collection on CDROM that you can still buy for, like, $60, but I don't know who has a CD drive anymore. And there was also a recent graphic novel series that reprinted every comic across 140 volumes. But neither of these collections actually have the X Men issues in them. And as a result, the Star Trek Xmen comics have actually become kind of pricey collectors items. And I think they're going to get more so because the second one has Kang the Conqueror, and he is now going to be the big driving villain of the next MCU phase because I think they've announced that it's like the Kang dynasty, and he's going to show up real heavily in the new Antman movie. The novel itself is still very easy to find from used booksellers or on the Web, and it's still sold for Ereaders, like, I originally snagged it and a couple of other novels for $0.99 when there was a sale. And then after that, the rights bounced back to DC under the Wild Storm imprint for a couple of years in the 2000s. It laid dormant for a little while before Tokyo Pop did some manga stuff for about three years. And then IDW began publishing new Star Trek comics right around the same time. And that brings us to today, where we are arguably in another Star Trek renaissance. We currently have four exclusive Star Trek shows on Paramount. We have the card Discovery. Brave new worlds and lower decks. And there's this high profile game that's coming out this year, I think, and it's being developed by some pretty, uh, high level veterans from Telltale games who were known for their Walking Dead and Batman and a couple of other fairly big name IP adaptations they did before they shut down. And you can find a ton of Star Trek comics from IDW on Hoopla these days. And that's where we're going to end our discussion about these crossovers. So before we move on to brain wrinkles, does anybody have any final thoughts?

Monte: I still hate the 90s.

Mike: Yeah, I mean, that's fair.

Melissa: Yeah, that's fair.

Mike: That's it.

Melissa: I will say that I really enjoyed how well Star Trek and X Men as two separate media even kind of stories, uh, and properties and characters. Uh, but I think they just blend together so well because they can both be fun and campy for a minute and then serious and deep of, uh, a sociological or a societal issue or whatever. And I think that's just why they blend together. And honestly, we should have more crossovers. I can definitely see how all you got to do is just say something weird as shit happened. You don't really need a real reason. It's just something weird happened. Let's not really worry about it and then have a story with more X Men and Star Trek characters and, like, easy, like, 5 seconds. I've already written an episode for you. You just say something like a balloon and something bad happens or whatever. You know what I mean? Yes, whatever. M.

Mike: Anyone else?

Jessika: My final thoughts are, ah, that, uh, I felt like this was a pretty good mashup, as far as mashups go. I felt like they made sense. They don't always make sense, but I feel like these two properties combined, like, time wise. Absolutely. They were both popular during that same period of time as far as their general genres working really well together, as well as their different combined kind of specialties and powers went really well together. And I thought that the characters all meshed really well, too. And I did like the different dynamics, and I think especially in the novel where there was a lot more room to play with that they were really able to dig into, like, oh, I thought I didn't like this person, but I actually do like this person. I actually respect them because they did this thing that I didn't think they were capable of. And that was something that I have to get past as a person of not assuming that people aren't capable of doing things. So I think that there were some really good messages on top of. Everything else on top of them all kind of working well together.

Mike: Yeah, I'll second that. I was very pleasantly surprised at how well these all work together, and before I started reading these for this episode, I did not know how good they were going to be. And I mean, even the first crossover, it's fine. It's my least favorite of three, but it's fine. It's serviceable.

Veronica: I have no final all right.

Mike: No note.

Veronica: I said all I need to say.

Mike: Let's move on to the Star Trek themed version of Brain Wrinkles. We are now at the point of the show known as Brain Wrinkles, and we are doing a Star Trek version of that. Brain wrinkles are one thing that is just stuck in our head that has been living there rent free for a couple of days. And as I've noted, this is dropping on Star Trek day, so we wanted to make it Star Trek adjacent. So who would like to go first?

Veronica: I can. Mine is probably the least related to Star Trek, but from reading this novel, Planet X, the other story happening here with the transformed and, uh, them being imprisoned, which is like a violation of the planet's ethics, but they did it anyway. I think that was built up, like, really super good. It did not end in a way that really carried out the story, which I think is what you can expect from Star Trek if you, after listening to this, read the book and feel the same. I'm just going to throw a couple of novels that maybe they're not like the same story, but that I think deal with messy issues in a more carrying out the promise of the story kind of way. So I'll just do a couple.

Mike: Oh, yeah, do it. Lay it on us.

Veronica: Probably most people who are super into Sci-Fi already know these, but The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Kayliguyn jumped into my head also has to do with a space society and their different sociological makeup. I don't want to try to summarize it because it's very complex. The other one that I thought of is called where Late the Sweet Bird sang by Kate Wilhelm. And that one is not about space, but it's about, like, a post apocalyptic society that consists entirely of clones of the people who came together to be like, we're going to keep living. The only way we can continue to procreate is to be clones and how that happens generation after generation, and eventually one natural child is born into this society and the messy situations that that leads to and then just branch off from those two.

Melissa: This hasn't been a recent brain Wrinkle, but this is something that has in the past lived rent free in my brain. You guys haven't seen it. I would recommend searching on YouTube, star Trek employee training and a video called taxpayer Funded IRS Conference Video. Star Trek Spoof will come up, and it is an employee training video that is written like a Star Trek episode and ignore all the hate in the comments, uh, because it is, in its own essence, pure and innocent. And they had an idea. These people had a chance to make an employee video, and they understood the assignment, and they made it a Star Trek episode. And as pure as it can be a Star Trek episode and also be an IRS training video for new hire employees. I highly recommend watching it. It is so funny and also engaging for six minutes, but only if you like Star Trek. You probably will be with, uh, most people in the comments. If you don't like Star Trek, they do not like it.

Jessika: The next time anybody makes any comments about not liking the government spending money on people, I feel like I'm just going to send them. I don't know what the government is actually spending money on. We could be giving a child a dentist appointment right now. But you know what we are spending our money on? Let me show you.

Mike: I was going to say Jessica, and my eyebrows went up very high while Melissa was telling us about this. For those of you who don't have access to the video feed.

Melissa: It is, like, ten years ago. It doesn't matter that this happened. Um, and I don't think they spent that much money on it. It is mostly green screen.

Jessika: You have the money to buy a green screen. You have the money to send a disabled vet to an appointment. Jesus Christ. Come on. This is not hard math. I don't feel like but it's so difficult. Oh, yeah. Did you know that corporate profits are up and cost of living is skyrocketing? Uh, unrelated. I know if I aggressively sip my coffee.

Melissa: But imagine in, let's say, I don't know, 300 years, this is just what training videos will be. So they're just prepping us for see.

Monte: I thought you were going to say, imagine in 300 years when our descendants are looking back on this time, and that's like, one of the artifacts that they find. And they're like, oh, this is what they did to train employees.

Jessika: That's the only training video they find.

Mike: God, I hope it is.

Veronica: They have to also find that, like, wendy's hot beverage service. Wrap video from the yeah, that's a good one, right?

Mike: So Montana or Jessica? Uh, who wants to take it?

Jessika: I would love to go. Maybe last okay.

Monte: So I'm going to be totally honest. I don't really think about Star Trek that much.

Mike: It's fine. There's always one. Yeah.

Monte: So I don't have much. No, it's still a Star Trek thing. I'm just saying it's not very good. Okay. That's all. I'm just preparing you for it not to be very good.

Mike: Um.

Monte: So there's an episode of Discovery where Michael Burnham I think she's, like, in the future or something like that. I don't know. Melissa showed it to me.

Melissa: Yeah, it's like the first episode of season three when she is it's the story of how she meets Book.

Monte: Yeah. And there's a scene where she gets sprayed with some kind of hallucinate stuff that's supposed to knock her out, and then she leans back, and then she leans forward really far, and she goes, Damn. And that is stuck in my brain all the time. So I don't think about Star Trek very much, m. But I do think about Michael Burnham a lot. And I do often times randomly, just like, if I take a drink of something or if something surprises me, I'll just go, Damn. It's very cringy, and I hate myself.

Jessika: I mean, would we be human if we didn't have at least one cringey thing to our name?

Veronica: Just the one?

Monte: Yeah, just the one.

Mike: Otherwise, you get shot out the nearest airlock.

Melissa: Beamed into space.

Mike: All right, well, okay.

Monte: Honestly, it would be a mercy. But anyways all right, so Jessica is.

Mike: Going to go last, so I'm going to step in. And there has been, like, a lot of people getting mad about how Star Trek has woke lately, and they are all outing themselves as people who clearly are not familiar with the fucking source material comprehension. Well, yeah, one of my favorites was he was like, when did Star Trek get so woke? And the response was, cheaty from The Good Place going, you were there. You did it.

Melissa: Yeah, exactly.

Mike: But for the most part tell me you never watch Star Trek without telling me. I mean, Star Trek gave us the first interracial kiss on television with fucking William Shatner in Michelle Nichols.

Jessika: I know. I was literally forget that.

Veronica: Sabotaged all the takes where that didn't happen so that it would be aired.

Mike: Martin Luther King personally begged Michelle Nichols to stay on the show because she was such a positive role model for black women.

Veronica: Best in peace.

Mike: That same series had, like, allegory episodes dealing with both Vietnam and the Cold War. The Next Generation had episodes all about gender and sexuality. Deep Space Nine was all about social justice, and has an entire fucking episode showing how a near future America was descending into fascism and oppression, and Voyager had a female captain, and, like, I got to be honest, kate Mulgrew played her in a way that I feel makes her the most hardcore commanding officer of the franchise.

Melissa: She does it to Janeway, not anyone else's. Way.

Monte: Big thumbs down.

Mike: We'll die on the show. It's fine.

Melissa: I didn't invent that.

Monte: Okay, well, whoever did, big thumbs down.

Mike: But, uh, yeah, I've been thinking about why I love Star Trek so much, and I think it's because it's not only generally pretty good Sci-Fi, but it's always focused on a dream of a better tomorrow. And if you're mad about that, there's the door. Get out.

Melissa: Oh, yeah. Star Trek is very woke when discovery. There's a bunch of well reasoned arguments on Reddit about how Discovery is being too woke with gender fluidity and stuff like that. Um, I was going to say, how.

Mike: Bad are they going to make us?

Melissa: We will take screenshots and send them to your friends. And your friends will be like, just stop reading them and you won't get mad. But how else can they feel alive.

Mike: Without that white hot spike of rage? Just needling you behind the eyes.

Jessika: I just need to feel something.

Melissa: Yeah. I had to see a black woman cry on TV. And it just didn't feel like Star Trek to me. Okay, just go cry in a corner. Reddit, whatever.

Mike: Go back to watching Spike TV, buddy.

Melissa: Can you?

Mike: It is. He looked it up. We had to look it up. It's not really here in the States. It's like in Australia and like the Netherlands or something. But also the next generation was on Spike. I don't know. Whatever.

Veronica: How?

Mike: Anyway, let's end this on a positive note. Jessica, I know what you're going to be showing us, and I am, um, 100% here for it.

Jessika: So I would just like to tell everybody about Rachel Lark and her amazing song Picard. And if you are a Star Trek fan, especially Next Gen, or a funny song fan, you will love this one. And if you love funny, smutty music, just generally, which, hello, of course I do. Check out her stuff. Rachellark.com, this is not sponsored. I just freaking love her. She's actually from around in, uh, our area. She's hilarious. I've got a few of her CDs. I've seen her live a bunch of times. She does these fun, like, Brunches where if you're part of her patreon, you can get an invitation to a secret location where she's doing, like, a Brunch like concert. It's pretty cool. One was in an old church that had been converted into a different space. It was really neat. Yeah. So she's amazing. She's fantastic. She has an amazing voice. But I wanted to just alert you guys that this song exists. So check it out. So essentially, Rachel Luck is a gym. She's a fucking treasure. Uh, go look up everything she does.

Mike: Yeah. No, that was very good.

Melissa: Yeah, that song is so good. Why did that have to be the chorus?

Jessika: Why did the chorus have to it's so good. Well, she has everybody sing, like, because she does this live, right? It's so fucking funny when it's live too. Because everybody if they haven't anybody anybody who has seen any of Star Trek is just rolling when she sings this. And especially people who haven't heard it before, they're just like, on the floor. So it's so good. But she has everybody saying, I want to fuck pee card, fuck p card. And then she does the other stuff in the background. It's so funny. It's total audience participation time.

Mike: Amazing. Like, absolutely amazing. Well, I don't think any of us can top that, so maybe we should wrap things up. Monte, Veronica, Melissa, thank you so, so much for coming on the show. We were so excited to have you on and it's just been so nice to hang out with you all again. So hopefully we can do it for too much time passes.

Melissa: Yes.

Veronica: Thanks for having us.

Melissa: Absolutely.

Mike: Yeah. All right. So we will, as always, be back in two weeks with another full length episode. Next Thursday, we will be doing another of our new series, dollar Bin Discoveries, and until then, we will see you in the stacks.

Jessika: Thanks for listening to Ten Cent Takes. Accessibility is important to us, so text transcriptions of each of our published episodes can be found on our website.

Mike: This episode was hosted by Jessica Fraser and Mike Thompson as well as Monte, Melissa and Veronica of SJW Comic Book Club. It was written by Mike Thompson and edited by Jessica Fraser. Our intro theme was written and performed by Jared Emerson Johnson of Bay Area sound our credits in transition music is Pursuit of Life by Evan McDonald and was purchased with a standard license from Premium Bead. Our banner graphics were designed by Sarah Frank, who you can find@lookmomdraws.com.

Jessika: If you'd like to get in touch with us, ask us questions or tell us about how we got something wrong, please head over to tencentakes.com or shoot an email to tencent takes at uh@gmail.com. You can also find us on Twitter. The official podcast account is tencent takes. Jessica is Jessica with us and Mike is Van Sao VA. You you can.

Veronica: Find the SJW ComicBook Club on Twitter and Instagram at SJW comics cast or email us directly at SJW comicspodcast@gmail.com.

Mike: If you'd like to support us, be sure to download, rate and review wherever you listen. Stay safe out there and support your local comic shop.