Tag Archives: star trek discovery

Fun Size Episode 81 – Sadness and Anxiety Being Poured on Your Naked Brain

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Though conflicting schedules this month have made a regular episode impossible, we’re back in the studio to chat about the stuff we’ve been reading and watching, and of course… we’re talking about Star Trek. Plus, Mike talks about trying out some new manga series, including one that he didn’t really care for, and another that may be one of his new favorites. Including one manga in particular that may be one of the most traumatizing and artistically impressive things he’s ever read.

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Fun Size Episode 76 – Make It Work.

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This month, we’re going boldly with Michael Warbington into the deep, inconsistent, and often-confusing world of Star Trek uniform design! Why did Starfleet have the exact same red naval uniform for nearly 70 years before they started to update their uniforms every few years in the 24th Century? Why do they keep designing great uniforms for flashback scenes that we’ll never see again? Why do people keep changing their clothes in Star Trek: The Motion Picture? Why do the crews of the U.S.S. Titan and the U.S.S. Ceritos have completely different uniforms? And don’t get us started on the constantly changing Admiral uniforms.

We’ll need positronic brains to sort this all out!

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Fun Size Episode 51 – Existential Dread and Animal Puns

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It’s a Captain Picard Day miracle!

After a five-month hiatus, we’re back….ish. We’re broadcasting remotely with KTQA Radio‘s Sam Mulvey and trying to shake some of the cobwebs out.

Casey meets a wild Keanu and we wonder ponder again the magical unicorn nature of his celebrity namesake. And on the opposite end of the moral spectrum, we predict the inevitable airlock assassination of future space-despot Elon Musk.

We try to unpack media Copaganda, our changing relationship with police-centric media and lament how a lot of the progress made in this year’s uprisings against police violence have slowly rolled back.

Sam fills us in on the radio station he’s been building, and we talk about all the media we’ve been watching and reading from our protective bunkers, trapped in a world we never made.

Also! We have a Discord server now! Join us!

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Fun Size Episode 44 – Walking With Dom

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We sit down with the notoriously Trek-skeptical Sam Mulvey to give our first reactions to the first episode of Star Trek: Picard. Is it what we wanted, and have modern iterations of Trek changed so much — or have become so rigid — that they’re just not for us anymore?

We talk about fake click-bait pop culture new sites, the trend that the lead-ups to movie releases are now even longer than the Presidential election, and wonder why so many fans are seemingly unable or unwilling to see the humanity of robotic and android fictional characters.

Also, Mike makes a desperate attempt to convince Sam that the Fast and the Furious franchise is something he might enjoy.

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Fun Size Episode 43 – Get in a Booth and Pretend to Be Poop

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In an episode calling back to us from the near past, we get a little nervous, excited and curious about the then-upcoming Star Trek: Picard. We dig a bit into Trek‘s enduring franchise, both its evolutions and how after almost two decades, is finally moving its timeline forward.

We try to figure out how Wonder Woman and Star Trek Beyond could have gone from very good to great, with the same third act change. We wonder which members of the “Next Generation” crew have the best managerial skills. And finally, we look at how modern audiences — and studios — don’t want to admit that they love inspirational movie heroes.

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Black Ops Episode 18 – An Inspiring Racist

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In our new Christmas Eve episode, we get both deadly serious and a little bit frivolous.

First, we glance at a brief history of famous pieces of shit who’ve done awful things –  from Michael Jackson and Bill Cosby, to Harvey Weinstein and George Zimmerman – and the people who refuse to believe their accusers.

Then, we delve into what the James Bond franchise loosely calls “series continuity.” We explore the popular fan theory that “Bond” is just a codename and that the different actors who played 007 are different people altogether.

Plus, we think Dave Bautista is really, really great.

*editorial note* – Mike gets the name wrong. It’s Jimmy Saville, not Jeremy.

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Fun Size Episode 39 – How Could We Forget Odo?

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In the aftermath of our Deep Space Nine panel, we rejoin Michael Warbington and Siskoid to talk a little about the stuff we wish we had gotten a chance to mention.

We talk holographic club owner, Vic Fontaine. Is he the greatest creation of artificial intelligence in the Trek universe, topping even Data? How did the show tackle thorny topics like racism? And has the show been excluded from the recent wave of 1990s nostalgia?

Plus, we look ahead with a pair of Trek fans at the fact that both Star Trek: Discovery and Star Trek: Picard are going somewhere that excites us: The future. Well, their future.

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Black Ops Episode 14 – More Stuff in the Basement

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In our new episode, there’s some more stuff to clean out the basement.

Casey loves science fiction, but has grown tired of the ubiquity of sci-fi that treats dystopia, calamity and apocalypse as inevitability.  What happened to looking for positive alternatives and aspirational worlds in our genre media?

Is it a symptom of our inability to imagine that we can overcome the things that make the modern world a scary place, and instead just imagine futures where our problems are exactly the same, or  just amplified?

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Fun Size Episode 29 – Fighting the Adam West Fight

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We jump back into the fray with Greg Hatcher, to talk debate the merits of Star Trek Discovery, the future of the franchise and what we want from a Trek property.

We also look at the trailer for the new streaming Titans series, and wonder why such a fun property would want to be dour and overserious. Why do so many fans –and even creators — just miss the point?

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Fun Size Episode 21 – The Nadir of Peak TV

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Wherein Mike and Casey discuss the weird evolution of HBO’s Game of Thrones from an almost obsessively grounded fantasy show to a fist-pumping, crowd-pleasing action fantasy.

We react to what we’ve seen, read and heard of the upcoming Star Trek Discovery and Seth MacFarlane’s Trek spoof/homage, the Orville. And we talk about how many studios – mainly Marvel Studios – don’t take advantage of the format of Netflix and often saddle their seasons with too many episodes.

And Mike prays for death as his lungs are full of yuck and his voice sounds terrible. Ugh.

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Fun Size Episode 12 – I’m Just Here for Ka-Ching!

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We continue our talk with Matt Goodman and Matthew Amster-Burton, and get into topics ranging from advertising characters transitioning into movie characters, and why the ultimate thing an actor can do is be photographed holding a skull.

We also get into weird meta-fiction in everything from Batman to Kurt Vonnegut to Will Ferrell movies, where the author themselves become characters directing the action.

Plus, we look at the renewed optimism — both in and about — Star Trek. Not only the return of the utopian aspirational science fiction future, but also how Justin Lin may have course-corrected a second movie franchise with Star Trek Beyond.

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