Primitive Culture: A Star Trek History and Culture Podcast

Music in Star Trek

From Alexander Courage's "bright galactic beguine" in The Original Series to Jeff Russo's churning, Game of Thrones-style theme for Discovery, the music of Star Trek has always embodied the spirit of its time, as much as it looks to the future. Rick Berman famously sacked composer Ron Jones from The Next Generation because he felt his scores drew too much attention to themselves. In his mind, the underscore should be a kind of wallpaper, as unobtrusive as the soft pastel carpet stuck to the walls of the Enterprise-D. And yet the music of Star Trek—in particular the film scores by Jerry Goldsmith, James Horner, and others—has become an iconic part of the franchise's cultural legacy, and of popular culture more broadly.

In this episode of Primitive Culture, host Duncan Barrett is joined by musicologists Jessica Getman and Evan Ware. Together with Brooke McCorkle Okazaki, they are the editors of the recently published Music in Star Trek: Sound, Utopia, and the Future. Here, they share some key observations from the 15 essays collected in their book, as well as consider the future of the Star Trek franchise—in music and beyond.

Chapters Intro (00:00:00) Blue Skies Thinking (00:09:15) Beware the Borg Fugue (00:17:00) Losing Faith … (00:24:45) Course Correction (00:37:20) Scoring the Sausage (00:49:50)

Host Duncan Barrett

Guests Jessica Getman and Evan Ware

Production Duncan Barrett (Editor and Producer) C Bryan Jones (Executive Producer) Matthew Rushing (Executive Producer)

Half a Decade of Primitive Culture

Star Trek's original five-year mission was brought to a premature end in 1969. But over the ensuing half-century and more, the franchise has continued boldly going to new frontiers. By the 1980s, when a second generation of fans came to seek out fresh adventures, the voyage had become a continuing mission … with no end in sight.

In this episode of Primitive Culture, recorded earlier this year on our own five-year anniversary, host Duncan Barrett is joined by show co-founder Tony Black to look back on a half-decade of podcasting, and to consider how Star Trek has changed since the good ship Primitive Culture left spacedock in 2017. We also share some news about the future of the podcast. Because, as we know, all good things …

Host Duncan Barrett

Guest Tony Black

Production Tony Black (Editor) Duncan Barrett (Producer) C Bryan Jones (Executive Producer) Matthew Rushing (Executive Producer)

Cardassian war crimes and The Man in the Glass Booth

For many fans of Deep Space Nine, the penultimate installment of Season 1, "Duet," is also the show's first classic episode. A bleak exploration of guilt, responsibility, and forgiveness in the aftermath of war, it's a story that could scarcely have been told on any other Star Trek series. One of Trek's most popular bottle episodes, "Duet" is built on intense two-hander scenes between Nana Visitor and guest star Harris Yuelin, giving it the air of an intimate theater production. It's perhaps no surprise, then, that the episode's central conceit—a case of mistaken identity at the center of a potential war crimes trial—is lifted from a stage play, Robert Shaw's The Man in the Glass Booth, which was later adapted into an Oscar-winning movie.

In this episode of Primitive Culture, host Duncan Barrett is joined by Clara Cook to discuss the parallels between "Duet" and this enigmatic source material, which in turn borrows from the real-life trial of Adolf Eichmann, the original man in a (bullet-proof) glass booth. Broadening the conversation to include Star Trek's approach to war crimes more generally, we consider whether the Eichmann trial—as well as the Nuremberg trials immediately after the war—offer a valid precedent for Federation and Bajoran justice.

Host Duncan Barrett

Guest Clara Cook

Production Duncan Barrett (Editor and Producer) C Bryan Jones (Executive Producer) Matthew Rushing (Executive Producer)

Autistic representation in Star Trek

"Perhaps you're just different," Tam Elbrun tells Data in the Next Generation episode "Tin Man." "Not a sin, you know, though you may have heard otherwise." Both characters—the emotionally sensitive Betazoid and the supposedly emotionless android—have been seen by fans as allegories of a particular kind of difference, standing in for those on the broad spectrum of neurodiversity.

In this episode of Primitive Culture, host Duncan Barrett is joined by autistic Star Trek fan Thad Hait to discuss how Trek has encoded the experiences of neurodiverse people—often accidentally—over the course of its long history. Looking at characters such as Data, Seven of Nine, Reginald Barclay, and Sylvia Tilly, we consider how Starfleet's approach to difference both mirrors and differs from our own, and ask whether the time is ripe for Trek's first explicitly neurodiverse character.

Host Duncan Barrett

Guest Thad Hait

Production Duncan Barrett (Editor and Producer) C Bryan Jones (Executive Producer) Matthew Rushing (Executive Producer)

Star Trek's Double Troubles

Don't they say you die if you meet yourself? Our intrepid Starfleet officers had better hope the answer is no, since encounters with doubles, doppelgängers, and duplicates appear to be just part of the job. From the two Kirks in "The Enemy Within" to Lower Decks's twinned Boimlers, Star Trek has offered up a host of alt versions of our regular characters over the years.

In this episode of Primitive Culture, host Duncan Barrett is joined by Clara Cook for a look at Star Trek's doubles, setting them in the context of their literary and cultural forebears, all the way back to Dostoevsky. We consider Sigmund Freud's work on The Uncanny, Carl Jung's idea of the shadow projection, and the sinister interplay between doubles and death. We also ponder why some characters seem to get on with their other selves just fine while the very notion that they aren't entirely unique in the universe is enough to prompt an existential crisis for others.

Host Duncan Barrett

Guest Clara Cook

Production Duncan Barrett (Editor and Producer) C Bryan Jones (Executive Producer) Matthew Rushing (Executive Producer)