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Primitive Culture: A Star Trek History and Culture Podcast

May 28, 2021

How Nicholas Meyer’s other time-travel caper inspired The Voyage Home

When Nicholas Meyer was called in to write a new script for Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, just weeks before pre-production was due to begin, he must have been struck with a bad case of déjà vu. Leonard Nimoy explained that the story outline he...


May 30, 2020

Cold War Détente and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.

When Nicholas Meyer returned to the Star Trek cinematic universe with Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, he produced one of the franchise’s most flagrant—and successful—examples of “ripped from the headlines” storytelling, reimagining the...


Dec 10, 2019

Star Trek: The Motion Picture on the big screen.

Forty years ago, Star Trek boldly went where it had never gone before: the cinema. A commercial hit—thanks in large part to feverish anticipation by fans whose dedication to The Original Series that had grown steadily since the show left the airwaves 10 years...


Sep 26, 2019

Star Trek: Generations.

When the cast of the original Star Trek series returned to the screen in 1979’s Star Trek: The Motion Picture, it marked the culmination of 10 years of fan-ticipation that started with the untimely cancellation of the series. This was not the case when it came time for the cast of The Next...


Aug 28, 2019

The Rashomon Effect in Star Trek and Beyond.

Two podcasters meet on the internet. They watch a classic film that one has seen and the other hasn’t. They compare it to an episode of Star Trek—or maybe two, or even three or four. They consider the broader cultural implications of the film’s central themes of...