#Richard Daystrom

[starberry-cupcake]

'the ultimate computer' aka uncannily precise vision of the future in which starfleet wants to replace jim with ai but spock and bones are not having it

I am going feral at all the times ai is being a menace in this show and how accurate it is to the bs present we're living in

[bumblingbabooshka]

Realest motherfuckers in TOS were: One) Robert Crater the monsterfucker who was fine living with, loving and ultimately doing everything he could to protect the life of the alien creature that literally killed his real wife and proceeded to play-act her with him afterward. Even when "Nancy" was killing crewmen left and right, Crater was still fighting with everything he had to keep anyone from hurting her for it because it was simply her nature. She was hungry. She was so lonely, can you imagine the loneliness? (He could, like looking in a mirror.) Oh, to be killed by the very creature you loved. Oh, to be made monstrous, human, and animal through one relationship. Two) Richard Daystrom who was driven to near madness by the idea that his genius had faded and others who iterated on his work would become more successful than he. A man lauded as a genius to rival Einstein beginning to see pity, scorn, and mockery in the eyes of his colleagues (real or imagined real or imagined?) - and created a robot that was sort of his child (with his inherited psychological issues) about it and had a breakdown when it killed nearly an entire ship of people. It had failed to be both effective and moral in one act. Guy who loves humanity and believes in souls and utopias "we don't want to destroy life, we want to save it" and perhaps that belief extended to the machine as well - why else would it understand 'sin' and 'atonement'?

[defconprime]

Dr Richard Daystrom

[contentabnormal]

William Marshall as Dr. Richard Daystrom in Star Trek episode “The Ultimate Computer”

Watercolors on Paper, 8.5″ x 11″, 2023

By Josh Ryals

[paulgadzikowski]

Marshall's character is frequently referenced as a historical figure in Star Trek to this day, for instance the Daystrom Station Museum in Picard.

Fans celebrate the casting of Nichelle Nichols as Uhura as a moment for actors of color, which they should be.

But I also wanted to spotlight the casting of these iconic secondary characters, seen in episodes of TOS.

Percy Rodriguez was cast as flag officer Commodore Stone, who was Kirk's superior in the chain of command. Stone is one of the officers that presides over Kirk's court martial.

Booker Bradshaw was the original Dr M'Benga, seen in two episodes of TOS. at the time, M'Benga was Starfleet's first and only medical specialist in Vulcan Physiology, having spent a year's residency on Vulcan.

One of the finest minds in computer technology in the 23rd century, and creator of the duotronic computer, Dr Richard Daystrom, was played by William Marshall, who's work in Shakespeare, and his roles as Paul Roebson and Frederick Douglass, added to the gravitas of his portrayal.

A flag officer, a specialist in Vulcan medicine, and one of the finest minds in a field of technology, played by actors of color, during the turbulent 1960s.

[wizardnaturalist]

touch his tit thursday

[chernobog13]

That time Kirk left the bridge because he was butt hurt.

(despite the confusion in the subtitles the correct term is "dunsel")

[frankentyner]

[stra-tek]

Know your Star Trek OS's!

S-COMS

ENT, DSC, SNW, TOS, classic movies (across many art teams with many very different ideas)

From TOS onward, these ran on Duotronic circuits, developed by Richard Daystrom.

PCAP

Kelvin Universe, insanely this evolved from Hewlett Packard's "Machine" circa 2016, according to advertising around and in Star Trek Beyond

LCARS

TNG, DS9, VOY, LWD, PRO, PIC

Library Computer Access and Retrival System

[trekbait]

A starship scanned this probe. You won't believe what happened next!

This article was generated with M5 and glanced at briefly by one overworked Betazoid before posting.

On Stardate 57995.8 the USS Strawbery encountered a mysterious alien probe along the Romulan Neutral Zone in the Alpha Quadrant. When the Staberry, an Oberth class battlecruiser, scanned the probe with their buzzard collectors a shocking thing happened! 

The humanoid units comprising the ship’s bridge crew suddenly found themselves in a forest on Earth dressed as famous folk heroes. The captain played the part of Mark Zuckerberg while his crew were Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Richard Daystrom and Arik Soong. 

The crew of the Stabrery were greeted by the ghost of the mighty Landru who explained that in order to escape his trap, the crew must complete an adventure. The captain’s merry band of tech bros must venture across the land and ensure the primitive humanoids understand the benefits of the machines taking over their livelihoods for the sake of the King’s profits.

In the first village, they found the people trying to fight off Nomad. Nomad was busy with the thankless task of converting the villagers to forms which drained fewer resources and provided useful fertilizer for the farms. Nomad had optimised farm production by 300% by reducing local demand and selling the crops to a neighbouring town which he had previously scorched the farms of. The captain did not succeed in convincing the villagers of how Nomad was making their lives better so instead was encouraged by Landru to assist Nomad in his task.

In the fifth village, the Stawby bridge crew met AGIMUS. AGIMUS was underappreciated for the work he was doing in making the villager’s tasks as monotonous as possible. The captain explained to the villagers that AGIMUS’s work meant they no longer had to do joyful things like create art or music and that thanks to AGIMUS’s work increasing their productivity they could generate twice the fuel for AGIMUS as they had done previously. The villagers asked why that meant they couldn’t work work half the time or have twice the wages but AGIMUS said that would be lazy of them. AGIMUS then created a picture of a puppy with 7 legs and the crew moved on.

Outside the second and final village, they found Alice. Alice had been expelled from the village after she took over as the local doctor and all of her patients started dying. She explained that she was working on the best medical information social media had to offer but she couldn’t get it right every time. She asked for help attacking the village to kick out the sickly humanoids and replace them with more reliable synethics. 

After the crew completed the final of their eight tasks, Landru appeared and said that they had passed the test, and thus would now be decommissioned as organic beings. The Strrabery’s captain was surprised, as they’d done everything the computers had asked of them. But as Landru explained, now that they had helped with the transition they were redundant.

We hope you liked this tale and we are sure you are looking forward to the latest computer upgrades the M-5 Multitronic Unit can offer to your crew.

[autisticburnham]

Podcast also said that Leah Brahms was originally written to be Daystrom but there was somehow such a massive miscommunication with the casting department that they got a white woman and had to change it to her just being a graduate of the Daystrom Institute. And I know that if I fact checked this and it was true it would mean the whole plot of the episode would have been radically different. But I am simply choosing to believe Geordi has a crush on historical figure Richard Daystrom

[horrorwaveofgrain00000]

William Horace Marshall (August 19, 1924 – June 11, 2003) was an American actor, director and opera singer. He played the title role in the 1972 blaxploitation classic Blacula and its sequel Scream Blacula Scream (1973), and appeared as the King of Cartoons on the 1980s television show Pee-wee's Playhouse and as Dr. Richard Daystrom on the Star Trek television series. He was 6‘5” (1.96 m) tall and was known for his bass voice.

[defconprime]

Richard Daystrom, Influential Scientist

[contentabnormal]

Here is Content Abnormal magazine issue #6! Enjoy!

[iffltd]

                            S T A R   T R E K    the original series

                        2nd Season (September 1967 -- March 1968)  

  Great Guest Stars and the Memorable Characters they Portrayed 

T’Pau (Celia Lovsky) and T’Pring (Arlene Martel) from “Amok Time”   Apollo (Michael Forest) from “Who Mourns for Adonais”    Nomad (voice by Vic Perrin) from “The Changeling”    Commodore Matt Decker (William Windom) from “The Doomsday Machine”    Sarek of Vulcan  (Mark Lenard) and Amanda Grayson  (Jane Wyatt) from “Journey to Babel”    Eleen (Julie Newmar) from “Friday’s Child”      Nils Baris (William Schallert) and Arne Darvin (Charlie Brill), Captain Koloth (William Campbell) and Korax (Michael Pataki) from “The Trouble with Tribbles”     Bella Oxmyx (Anthony Caruso) and Jojo Krako  (Vic Tayback) from “A Piece of the Action”     Nona, a Kahn-ut-tu of the Hill People (Nancy Kovack) from “A Private Little War”     Kelinda (Barbara Bouchet) from “By Any Other Name”     Captain Ronald Tracey (Morgan Woodward) from “The Omega Glory”     Dr. Richard Daystrom (William Marshall) from “The Ultimate Computer”    Procounsel Claudius Marcus  (Logan Ramsey)  slave girl Drusilla (Lois Jewell) from “Bread and Circuses”     Roberta Lincoln (Teri Garr) and Gary Seven (Robert Lansing) from “Assignment: Earth”

[sshbpodcast]

Put a cork in it: Bottle episodes in Star Trek

By Ames

“Good Lord, didn't anybody here build ships in bottles when they were boys?” Well, Star Trek sure did, and quite frequently! According to Memory Alpha, bottle shows are “episodes which take place mostly on existing sets and do not generally involve major guest stars.” Basically, any time we never leave the ship so that the show can save money for more expensive future episodes that have bigger sets, more special effects, or most frequently, the Borg.

But even in that definition, there’s still a lot of vaguery. “Mostly” on existing sets. Do not “generally” involve major guest stars. Many listicles of the best bottle episodes across the internet include instances that don’t fit all the components, but fulfill at least some of them. Look at it like a four-set Venn Diagram (which I learned is best arranged like this):

So let’s climb inside the bottle. What episodes perfectly satisfy all the elements and sit in that much sought-after place in the center of the Venn Diagram? Read on below for A Star to Steer Her By’s favorites and listen to our almost certainly contradictory discussion on this week’s podcast episode (jump to 1:04:49) to find out if we’re suckups who’ve built ships in bottles like O’Brien, or if we don’t play with toys like Worf.

[Images © CBS/Paramount]

Bottle Episodes with a Central Guest Star 

Probably the most common kind of bottle episode is one with a simple plot, a physical confinement to the ship or station, and a non-crew character around whom the plot revolves in a pivotal way. The guest characters come to us and bring with them some kind of conflict for our main characters to handle. You know, your Richard Daystrom in “The Doomsday Machine,” Charlie Evans in “Charlie X,” Lal in “The Offspring,” Commander MacDuff in “Conundrum,” or Lon Suder in “Meld” (someone avenge that beautiful psychopath!). This list could go on and on because there are so many pretty contained episodes in which the guest of the week propels the plot forward. I’m compelled to include “The Changeling” here as well since I would treat Nomad as a full character even if he wasn’t a physical actor.

Our favorite example of this kind of bottle episode is easily “Duet” from season one of Deep Space Nine. Since so much of that entire series is set on the station, one would assume that most episodes of DS9 qualify as bottle episodes, but there’s frequently some specific budget expense that makes them more expensive than they were meant to be or some other guest stars hogging the spotlight. In this case, casting the extraordinary Harris Yullin as Marritza was well worth it, as this episode shines despite its self-imposed limitations.

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Bottle Episodes that “Leave the Ship” 

I call it impressive if the characters can leave the ship and the episode still be considered in the running as a bottle episode due to some kind of shenanigans. For instance, I’d qualify something like “Mirror, Mirror” in this category – technically, it’s not on our Enterprise and yet still reusing the same sets. Similarly, “The Mark of Gideon,” “Where Silence Has Lease,” “Empok Nor,”  and “Distant Voices” (wait, I said our “favorite” episodes, didn’t I?) all accomplish this by having the characters visit redresses of their respective sets for various reasons. What a great way to save a couple bucks!

In the The Original Series episode “The Doomsday Machine,” for instance, the starship Constellation is another Constitution class ship. Just turn the lights off in any of the usual sets and move some props around and blamo: instant new bridge! It’s like a whole new starship up in here! Thank Commodore Decker for this quick money-saving tip!

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Bottle Episodes with Other Sets 

Sometimes, you can stay on the ship and still need to build a new set, like in TNG’s “Eye of the Beholder” where we see the inside of the nacelles for the first (and last) time and Voyager’s “One” in which we set up the stasis room. Many holodeck episodes might fall into this category as well, since technically we haven’t left the ship, but we see, say, the Bynars’ jazz club in “11001001” or Sandrine’s in “Someone to Watch Over Me,” which we covered this week.

I’d also deign to call episodes with just a brief stop at Planet Hell more bottley than even some episodes that don’t leave the ship at all. Both “The Naked Time” and “The Naked Now” start with a crewman getting infected with space madness outside the ship, but it is that need to quarantine that forces the rest of the episode to focus the story inwards, utilizing every cent wisely thereafter. And episodes like TOS’s “The Corbomite Maneuver” and DS9’s “Whispers” and “The Sound of Her Voice” are off the ship so briefly at the very end that they might as well have been strict bottle episodes.

Possibly the most controversial thing I’ll include in this list is one of A Star to Steer Her By’s favorite cost-cutting episodes: the TOS third-season money saver “The Empath.” Sure, they leave the Enterprise for a whole new set, but it’s the cheapest set you’ll ever see. Nothing but black walls and spotlights for the actors to stand in. Like our previous category about central guest stars, this episode features a Gem (literally!), but I still think it’s worth bringing up because of how it told a decent story on a shoestring budget.

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Bottle Episodes with Significant Effects

Frequently, it seems like an episode is conceived as a bottle episode, but then ends up going over budget anyway because the design scope increased without expectation. You don’t have to leave the ship to spend a lot of money on special effects, costumes, and just blowing things up. Tell that to Janeway in “Deadlock,” which was a clever reuse of the Voyager set… until someone got a hold of the destruct codes. Similarly, if it weren’t for the Bozeman and the Enterprise colliding (and whatever it cost to get Kelsey Grammer on camera for all of sixty seconds), “Cause and Effect” would make it on more bottle episode lists. You can similarly go overboard with costumes and makeup in shipbound episodes like TOS’s “Journey to Babel” and SNW’s “The Elysian Kingdom.”

I’ve seen a whole bunch of listicles that all include the Discovery season one episode “Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad” as a candidate for a bottle episode. Which is an interesting choice because I don’t think ANY the currently running Trek series are scrimping to keep on a budget because of the sheer number of effects. And “Magic…” is a good example of this while also keeping all of the action to the Discovery. Who knows, maybe with how modern CGI has improved, it’s actually cheaper? Until you have to pay Rainn Wilson, that is.

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The Pure Bottle Episodes

Are episodes that fulfill every element of being a bottle episode better than the preceding? Well, you tell us because we did, in fact, find a number of pure bottle episodes! They can be as refreshing as fresh spring water because they keep very simple and focused. Having just our usual characters (and maybe some extras and repeated guest stars) really allows the writers to dig into character work without relying on spectacle, constant set changes, or a big planetside adventure. 

So episodes like TOS’s “The Immunity Syndrome,” TNG’s “Disaster” and “Clues,” DS9’s “Babel,” VOY’s “Worst Case Scenario,” and ENT’s “Shuttlepod One” and “Doctor’s Orders” succeed in telling a simple shipside story focused on their respective existing characters. Little episodes with big payoffs!

Here’s my pick of the whole blogpost: Give it up for Dr. Crusher in The Next Generation’s “Remember Me”! This episode has got it all – or rather, has got so very little – that it might be the ultimate bottle episode. The number of characters diminishes as the episode goes on because the whole world around Bev is constricting, but she’s still hard at work solving the riddle put to her. She’s quite literally in her own pocket universe – how much more bottley can you get than that? Effects are minimal, guest stars are most noteworthy in their absence, and it’s all confined to a couple of sets while still being a story that is impressive and, dare I say, memorable.

—

We’ve finally corked this bottle and put it on display in our ready room! The humble bottle episode displays some of the best qualities of Star Trek: stories in small spaces that encompass huge universes. A Star to Steer Her By is back to exploring more of the Trek universe every Thursday on SoundCloud or wherever you get your podcasts. Keep up with our voyage through Voyager, raise your glasses with us over on Facebook and Twitter, and chug chug chug chug!