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Podcast Enterprise: S1E17 Squire of Gothos

Space, the final frontier. These are the podcasts of the Podcast Enterprise. Its only mission: to explore story structures, to analyze our favorite characters and plotlines, to boldly talk what everyone has seen before

We will analyze all episodes of Star Trek: The Original Series or TOS for short using the following guiding structure:

1. Synopsis or summary of the episode
2. Story structure
3. Character analysis
4. Our likes and dislikes

The synopsis:

When this episode opens, the Enterprise is on route to the beta six colony and they have to deliver some supplies there. However, the way between where the Enterprise is and where beta six is a big, huge star desert. It’s a void. There’s nothing there. And approximately, I think it’s about 900 years from Earth and in a place where there shouldn’t be anything, the Enterprise runs into a very peculiar planet and this peculiar planet. It’s not supposed to be there. They know it’s not supposed to be there.

And Kirk, the captain decides not to go there at this time. He decides to go to beta six first and then come back. However, the navigator Sulu is not allowed to. Make those course corrections and he disappears from the bridge. Kirk tries to find out what happens. Kirk also disappears from the bridge forcing Spock to take temporary command of the Enterprise.

And while they’re figuring out what to do, because this planet, they can’t really penetrate it because their sensors have all gone haywire. They get peculiar messages on one screen. Stuff like Tali-ho and hip-hip hurrah and all sorts of weird things on the communication screen. And they also find that there’s a small patch of land on that planet, which is otherwise quite fatal For humans.

They find a small patch of land, which is almost exactly like Earth and Spock decides to teleport some people down there, they find both Sulu and Captain Kirk down there. They’ve been frozen and there’s a peculiar alien in human form, dressed in something like 18th century fashions playing the harpsichord.

And this guy is fascinating because he has recreated the entire room to look like an 18th or 19th century European sitting room. And Kirk and Sulu, they’re brought back to life. They don’t know what to do. Kirk somehow outwits him and destroys a machine that this alien has been using. And the alien who’s an absolute nightmare to deal with, somehow, let’s him go for a few minutes and then he brings them all back to the planet again and eventually, he’s somehow outwitted to the point where everybody gets back to the ship. And then this is where the episode really gets a bit scary because they’re not able to outrun the planet, it seems to be pursuing them.

The alien is after them. He’ll not let them go. And you. We’ll discuss it in detail, but however, what happens basically is that Kirk is supposed to go back and stand the farce of a trial. It’s all very strange. He has to face a trial, the alien wants to kill him. Kirk outwits him, and then it comes to be that this alien is not really an adult.

He’s a child and his parents take him over.

That brings us to the end of this episode. Thank you for listening to the Podcast Enterprise. Please do share your reviews with us and please share this podcast with any of your writing friends or trekkies. Live long and prosper!

Stay tuned in for our next episode! Enjoy!

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Books n Stuff Podcast: S2 Episode 03 - Scarecrow Chronicles-Written and read by Pathik Mitra

Welcome to the Books n Stuff Podcast.

Imagine you have 48 hours in a day and 14 days in a week. What all would you be able to achieve? Without changing your achievements, change the number of hours in a day and days in a week to the usual 24 and 7. Look through your list, you can achieve a lot more than what you think, correct?

This is the kind of thinking that Pathik Mitra seems to have taught himself. He holds an engineering degree and an MBA. He works in a company, has the same duties and responsibilities that each of us has, yet, he’s managed to generate those extra 24 hours in a day and 7 days in a week to publish his book and direct several plays.

His secret sauce - he argues with himself using a 1 member WhatsApp group and irons out his ideas when he has to wait in line or wait for boarding a flight. His other succesful idea is to sacrifice sleep.

I spoke to him about his book “Scarecrow chronicles”, in particular and how to nurture your creative life, in general.

He spoke about some of the stories in his anthology, particularly “Roots” and “A1 Jaggery”

Enjoy the Books and Stuff Podcast!

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Podcast Enterprise: S1E16: Galileo Seven

Space, the final frontier. These are the podcasts of the Podcast Enterprise. Its only mission: to explore story structures, to analyze our favorite characters and plotlines, to boldly talk what everyone has seen before

We will analyze all episodes of Star Trek: The Original Series or TOS for short using the following guiding structure:

1. Synopsis or summary of the episode
2. Story structure
3. Character analysis
4. Our likes and dislikes

The synopsis: Here in the Galileo Seven we find the Enterprise en route to Makus III. They have a cargo of medical supplies that they need to give there, deliver there, and their course leads them past Murasaki 312, which is quasar like formation and onboard the Enterprise, there is also high Commissioner Ferris, who’s overseeing the delivery of the medicines to Makus III. So what happens is essentially Captain Kirk decides to investigate that quasar like formation, Murasaki 312. And high Commissioner Ferris is very annoyed with this, but there’s not much we he can do at this point because there’s still a little bit of time between the delivery of those medical supplies and their rendezvous on Makus III.

So Kirk has a little bit of time to do his investigations and as part of those investigations. He dispatches the Galileo with Spock in command. There they find a planet called Taurus two.

This is where we see Spock assuming leadership of the shuttle craft and the other people on it. The other members on this shuttle craft include Scotty and Dr. McCoy and this episode essentially follows Spock as he attempts to attain leadership with his logic and only his logic, and that leads to all sorts of disastrous consequences. Basically, that’s what this episode is. It also reveals a very strange and violent race on Taurus II, that attacks their shuttlecraft.

And again, Spock is supposed to take logical decisions. It lands him in deeper and deeper and deeper trouble, and eventually he has to rely on emotion. And he is really, really, really upset with that.

That brings us to the end of this episode. Thank you for listening to the Podcast Enterprise. Please do share your reviews with us and please share this podcast with any of your writing friends or trekkies. Live long and prosper!

Stay tuned in for our next episode! Enjoy!

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Podcast Enterprise: S1E15: Shore leave

Space, the final frontier. These are the podcasts of the Podcast Enterprise. Its only mission: to explore story structures, to analyze our favorite characters and plotlines, to boldly talk what everyone has seen before

We will analyze all episodes of Star Trek: The Original Series or TOS for short using the following guiding structure:

1. Synopsis or summary of the episode
2. Story structure
3. Character analysis
4. Our likes and dislikes

The synopsis:

when this episode begins, you find that the Enterprise orbiting an uninhabited planet in the Omicron Delta region. This planet has no animal life, no insects, no birds. There’s only a lot of plant life. In a lot of ways it reminds them of the earth of old, completely pure and green and park like, and the captain decides that they’ll take their shore leave, but the captain won’t go. Everybody else is ordered to go.

When they get down there, things start going awry almost at once because McCoy finds himself thinking and talking about Alice in wonderland. And then he sees a big rabbit, followed by a little blonde girl.

Sulu, who’s very interested in shooting, finds a gun. There are tigers and Samurais, and then Kirk is tricked into going down by Spock, and when he gets down, he sees people from his academy days, a certain bully called Finnegan. He also sees another woman from his past, whom we don’t know if she’s alive, but she’s definitely not supposed to be there. McCoy is involved in a little romance with the yeoman Barrows. She finds a dress that allows her to dress and appear as a princess, and then there’s Don Juan, who attacks her, and then it goes on like this. You find all sorts of strange things happening.

This planet does not have animal or insect life. And then tigers appear. There are no people. You find all these people from the crew members past here like Finnegan, and then there’s a Ruth and all these people are not supposed to be there. And you also find fictitious characters like Alice in Wonderland and Don Juan appearing, and there’s a Black Knight.

Things go out of control. That Black Night with his lance on horseback manages to kill Dr. McCoy or kill is in quotations because nobody really dies as you find out in the ending. That’s when things start going out of control. Everybody’s frightened. And then a certain alien in a long dress appears and says that this is actually an amusement planet that scans your thoughts and recreates stuff according to what you think about.

And if you’re a little careful, things can be very nice here on this planet. The crew comes down for their shore leave and has a nice time.

That brings us to the end of this episode. Thank you for listening to the Podcast Enterprise. Please do share your reviews with us and please share this podcast with any of your writing friends or trekkies. Live long and prosper!

Stay tuned in for our next episode! Enjoy!

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Books n Stuff Podcast: S2 Episode 02 - Legends and Lattes: Discussion with Parvathi and Medhavi

Welcome to the Books n Stuff Podcast.

In the second episode of the Books n Stuff podcast, Parvathi Ramkumar and Medhavi Dhyani discuss the book “Legends and Lattes” by Travis Baldree. Bala Ramadurai quizzes the two readers and finds more about the book.

The summary:

This book is called Legends and Lattes. It’s by Travis Baldree. It’s also published by Tor, which is an imprint of MacMillan in the US. This book is about a certain adventurer called Viv. She’s tired of adventuring. She’s seen her share of battles and all that. So she decides to come to a very large city called Thune, and there she decides that she wants to open a coffee shop there. And basically that’s all the plot is. She comes to the city, she opens a coffee shop, she adds more things to the menu. She has a nice time, she makes friends.

And the twist here is that she has a certain artifact with her that she got on her last adventuring mission. And some people know that she has this artifact and that causes her a bit of trouble with a former adventuring partner and the local crime lord.

All’s well that ends well.

That’s basically it. It’s simple.

Wow. It’s very simple. This is the shortest summary we’ve had in this entire podcast.

Enjoy the Books and Stuff Podcast!

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Podcast Enterprise: S1E14: Balance of terror

Space, the final frontier. These are the podcasts of the Podcast Enterprise. Its only mission: to explore story structures, to analyze our favorite characters and plotlines, to boldly talk what everyone has seen before

We will analyze all episodes of Star Trek: The Original Series or TOS for short using the following guiding structure:

1. Synopsis or summary of the episode
2. Story structure
3. Character analysis
4. Our likes and dislikes

The synopsis:

In this episode, when it opens, you have Captain Kirk, he’s officiating a wedding aboard the Enterprise between Angela Martin and Robert Tomlinson, who are both crew members of the Enterprise.

And while he’s officiating this wedding, there’s a red alert. Earth outpost four is under attack and everyone has to report to battle stations and the Enterprise is on alert. Earth outpost four is actually one of a series of outposts that border something called the Romulan neutral zone. This is an area that separates the earth from alien races, they’re actually called the Romulans. And a long time ago, there was a war between the humans and the Romulans and they device this neutral zone, so that there’s no further fighting.

However, it does seem that some Romulans have crossed the neutral zone into the earth side, and they’re destroying these Earth outposts one by one. Finally, the Enterprise is able to contact one person from Earth outpost four, who tells him that they’re being decimated by this strange ship that has fantastic power, as he says, it attacks them. While he’s talking, the ship makes an appearance, it destroys the earth outpost and it disappears. And so investigations reveal that this actually is a Romulan ship.

They have developed beyond anything that earth has imagined, and they have a practical invisibility shield. Kirk has to take certain decisions regarding this because the Romulans have crossed the neutral zone, which constitutes an act of war.

Kirk must decide whether he actually wants that war or, whether he should keep things peaceful and he decides to trail that ship. He realizes that the commander of that Romulan ship is probably very similar to him. And then there’s a battle of wits things go this way and that they would fly into comets. they try to outwit each other and eventually they get the Romulan ship. And that is the first time that Captain Kirk actually meets the commander of the Romulan ship. And then there’s a very poignant moment there.

That brings us to the end of this episode. Thank you for listening to the Podcast Enterprise. Please do share your reviews with us and please share this podcast with any of your writing friends or trekkies. Live long and prosper!

Stay tuned in for our next episode! Enjoy!

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Podcast Enterprise: S1E13: The conscience of the king

Space, the final frontier. These are the podcasts of the Podcast Enterprise. Its only mission: to explore story structures, to analyze our favorite characters and plotlines, to boldly talk what everyone has seen before

We will analyze all episodes of Star Trek: The Original Series or TOS for short using the following guiding structure:

1. Synopsis or summary of the episode
2. Story structure
3. Character analysis
4. Our likes and dislikes

The synopsis:

Welcome to our discussion of the conscience of the king today.

Oh, I thought it was Shakespeare in love. Okay.

All right, so let’s have it. The summary of conscience of the king.

The plot of this episode is actually pretty straightforward and rather short given the time this episode takes, however, to put it very briefly, the USS Enterprise, when this episode begins, it is diverted off its regular course, and it finds itself on its way to Planet Q. They are lured by word of some synthetic food items. However, when they get. They get in touch with Dr. Thomas Layton and confesses that he brought Kirk there because he has suspicions about a traveling Shakespearean troop. And here the leader of that troop, he believes is a mass murderer by the name of Kodos, the Executioner.

His current name is Anton Karidian, and this is all a very mysterious setup that this episode brings in. And Kirk finds himself drawn to Lenore, who’s the daughter of this Karidian. And there’s a lot of dramatics in this episode. There’s a lot of Shakespeare. And as things go by, you don’t really know whether this Karidian is Kodos, the Executioner who is responsible for executing half the population of earth colony Tarsus four. And that is about 4,000 people out of 8,000 and only a few people survived. And as this episode goes on, you don’t really know, like I said, whether he’s responsible for this or whether he’s putting up a facade, however, Lenore, she’s another thing altogether. She has been covering up her father’s past and Kirk discovers this and eventually Lenore loses her mind. And that’s how the episode ends.

That brings us to the end of this episode. Thank you for listening to the Podcast Enterprise. Please do share your reviews with us and please share this podcast with any of your writing friends or trekkies. Live long and prosper!

Stay tuned in for our next episode! Enjoy!

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Books n Stuff Podcast: S2 Episode 01 - Foundation by Asimov - Read by Parvathi

Books and Stuff - The BS Podcast

Welcome to the Books n Stuff Podcast.

Foundation is the first book in the Foundation series of books. There is a prequel to this book, but we’re not gonna talk about that. We’re just gonna focus on Foundation. So what we have here, the plot basically is that the 12,000 years there’s been a galactic empire.

Imagine that a 12,000 year old galactic empire, and this empire is dying, and one person called Hari Seldon, he’s a psychohistorian. And he’s basically a doomsayer who’s predicting that this empire will fall. Of course, the empire hates that this guy is predicting their fall, and he has a lot of followers and a lot of people who are working with him, mathematician, scientists, and not many psychologists for reasons I’ll tell you about later.

However, the empire does not like this, and he and his followers are exiled to a far flung planet. Far away in the galaxy, right at the wings of the galaxy, somewhere really, really far away. And there they have to continue working on an encyclopedia that this guy wants. He cannot travel with them because he’s too old.

However, he knows exactly what will happen. And basically what he says will happen is that the empire will fall after 12,000 years and then there’ll be 30,000 years of darkness. He knows a way to kind of forestall that darkness and bring about a new age of enlightenment because 30,000 years is a very long time to remain in the dark.

According to him, if he and his followers work on an encyclopedia, they’ll be able to bring back a second empire. So basically that’s what the plot is about. However, as his followers discover over a long span of time, nothing this man says can be taken at face value. And he has his own agenda.

The Foundation, the novel, is split into five little novelettes and each are interconnected, each deals with a different period of time. And only the first section actually has this man, Hari Seldon alive. And each time he makes an appearance as a hologram, he guides this planet called Terminus. It’s got absolutely nothing, and he guides this new civilization towards this intended goal.

So each time there’s a crisis on the Terminus, this man makes an appearance right on cue and they’ve come to expect it. And it’s almost like clockwork that he makes an appearance, everything that happens to this planet Terminus, he’s able to guess. And because of psychohistory, which is basically a mix of mathematics, science, and psychology. And anything the human race does, this man is able to predict because apparently we are not as free as we thought.

And everything can be predicted. Everything is set into a pattern. So that’s what this book is about.

Enjoy the Books and Stuff Podcast!

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Podcast Enterprise: S1E19 Tomorrow is Yesterday

Space, the final frontier. These are the podcasts of the Podcast Enterprise. Its only mission: to explore story structures, to analyze our favorite characters and plotlines, to boldly talk what everyone has seen before

We will analyze all episodes of Star Trek: The Original Series or TOS for short using the following guiding structure:

1. Synopsis or summary of the episode
2. Story structure
3. Character analysis
4. Our likes and dislikes

The synopsis:

Welcome to the podcast and today’s discussion of tomorrow is yesterday.

Wow. Very confusing title. And tomorrow is yesterday. Yesterday is day after . Okay. Alright. So what do we have as a summary?

So here what we have is the Enterprise on the way to Star Base nine, pulled into the gravitational field of a black star, and then something happens.

They somehow use all their engine power to break away from that gravitational pull and they are cast back in time. And because they were going in the general direction of Earth, the Enterprise enters the Earth’s atmosphere. And they find themselves in 1969 and their craft is registered as a U F O on the air base radar.

And a fighter jet is sent up there to investigate what the Enterprise is because it is a U F O technically, and they’re back in time. So in short, what happens is that the Enterprise is forced to take aboard, one character from the past. A certain Captain John Christopher. A lot of things happen this way and that they’re afraid of breaking time because if anything happens to John Christopher and apparently his son is going to be someone of importance.

The future will also be changed, and all of these characters aboard the Enterprise will seize to exist. So there’s a lot of confusion about they’re stuck with the passenger they don’t want, in Kirk’s words. And they have to figure out how to get back to the future while keeping the past intact and the past has already been tampered with because this guy is aboard the Enterprise and with a little bit of help from Spock, they discovered that they can actually keep the past the way it is.

They have to go back to the air base. They have to destroy the records of this U F O that the 1969 airbase has kept, they have to get those records. They have to come back to the Enterprise, and then they have to go to the sun.

They have to make use of the sun’s gravitational pull, initiate a slingshot effect, go back into the future. Teleport Christopher back to a point slightly behind in time. It’s a pretty elaborate plot that way. And what happens is that they come back to their own time and the past and the future is intact.

That brings us to the end of this episode. Thank you for listening to the Podcast Enterprise. Please do share your reviews with us and please share this podcast with any of your writing friends or trekkies. Live long and prosper!

Stay tuned in for our next episode! Enjoy!

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Podcast Enterprise: S1E11: Corbomite Maneuver

Space, the final frontier. These are the podcasts of the Podcast Enterprise. Its only mission: to explore story structures, to analyze our favorite characters and plotlines, to boldly talk what everyone has seen before

We will analyze all episodes of Star Trek: The Original Series or TOS for short using the following guiding structure:

1. Synopsis or summary of the episode
2. Story structure
3. Character analysis
4. Our likes and dislikes

The synopsis:

We find the Enterprise being stopped by a strange cubical glowing object. It is actually Spock in command because Kirk is in the medical bay, undergoing routine physical test. The cube that is blocking the Enterprise is just not getting out of the way.

It turns dangerous. Kirk has to come back to the bridge. They try the evasive maneuvers don’t work. The deflectors are ineffective and they cannot get rid of the cube. They can’t outrun the cube, even though the Enterprise tries to reverse and get out of the cube’s way, the cube follows them.

And then there’s radiation. And finally Kirk orders the phasors to be fired. Then the cube is destroyed completely. However, brings with it major issue because this huge spherical golden, glowing ship appears on the horizon and it stops the Enterprise again. The inhabitant of that ship, you only hear one voice throughout, so you don’t know how many people are there in that ship in the beginning. This ship is called the Fesarius and the captain of the Fesarius threatens the Enterprise with complete and utter annihilation in 10 minutes for destroying that cube, which is apparently some sort of buoy, a warning which prevents ships from crossing that point.

The Enterprise had no idea about that. However, they have 10 minutes to try and talk themselves out of this one. They cannot fight the Fesarius. It’s too big, advanced for the Enterprise to do anything and Balok the commander of the Fesarius is completely unreasonable. They’re running out of time and Kirk, as there’s only a few minutes remaining decides to try and bluff his way out of this one.

He tells Balok that the Enterprise has a powerful device that will detonate if anybody tries to destroy the Enterprise, it’ll destroy the Enterprise and the attacker. The bluff works. However, Balok then decides to send a pilot ship to ferry The Enterprise to another planet.

And somehow or the other risking complete engine explosion, the Enterprise breaks free causing problems for the pilot ship. And then they finally get to meet Balok and he’s completely, and utterly unpredictable.

It’s totally surprising.

That brings us to the end of this episode. Thank you for listening to the Podcast Enterprise. Please do share your reviews with us and please share this podcast with any of your writing friends or trekkies. Live long and prosper!

Stay tuned in for our next episode! Enjoy!

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