Primitive Culture 7: Were I Human / by Trek fm

Star Trek and Shakespeare, Part II.

Running Time: 1 hour 14 minutes 57 seconds
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Star Trek and Shakespeare, Part II.

Once more unto the breach! Part II of our look at Shakespeare in Star Trek focuses on the Next Generation era. What does it mean for a Starfleet captain to have a copy of the Complete Works in his ready room? Can an android truly understand what it means to be a fifteenth-century monarch? And at what point does the line begin to blur between heavyweight classical actor Patrick Stewart and bookish Shakespearean fanboy Captain Picard?

In this episode of Primitive Culture, hosts Duncan Barrett and Tony Black trace echoes of Shakespeare’s plays through The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager, looking at the ways in which characters, plots, and themes from these five-hundred-year-old works are borrowed and repurposed in a science fiction context. Ultimately, we discover, Shakespeare and Star Trek have at least one thing in common: an inclusive humanism that celebrates the rich complexity of life—in other words, infinite diversity in infinite combinations.

Chapters

Introduction and The Ultimate Voyage (00:00:00)
The Continuing Mission of The Tempest (00:08:10)
Hamlet’s Evolved Sensibility (00:19:33)
Heightened Text and Renaissance Bridge Design (00:27:38)
Spoofing and Bad Acting (00:32:42)
Allusions and Echoes in Deep Space Nine (00:38:56) Dahar Master Falstaff (00:44:50) Shakespearean Antiheroes (00:51:00) Voyager and the Eclipse of High Culture (00:57:42) Final Thoughts (01:04:00)

Hosts

Duncan Barrett and Tony Black

Production

Tony Black (Editor) C Bryan Jones (Executive Producer) Matthew Rushing (Executive Producer) Ken Tripp (Executive Producer) Norman C. Lao (Associate Producer) Amy Nelson (Associate Producer) Richard Marquez (Production Manager) Brandon-Shea Mutala (Patreon Manager)

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