Star Trek The Next Conversation - a comedy Star Trek podcast currently about TV's Deep Space Nine DS9 (or TNG) · Matt Mira and Andrew Secunda

DS9 s4e12 "Paradise Lost"

·2 hr 14 min·5 clips

Matt and Andy open on Sisko. They spend plenty of time on his intensity, with one of them reading him as Hawk-level menacing and the other settling on theatrical, which is about as close as this show gets to neat taxonomy. The president ends up as the real target. They keep asking why a full emergency is not already underway when the power is off across Earth and the dialogue says the lights will stay out for days. Replicators come up quickly, and from there they turn the blackout into a practical nightmare, talking through food, water, redundancy, and why Starfleet should look a lot more like a national guard than a decorative club. The jokes widen out. Disney World, Disneyland, and the idea of public-domain fictional characters all get dragged into the same pile, which is exactly the kind of sideways logic the show likes to follow. Spencer for Hire enters next. Matt remembers Boston exteriors, his grandmother's Cambridge street, and the old courthouse that kept showing up in the background, and the whole thing turns into a little local-TV memory machine. They keep interrupting themselves, correcting each other, and treating those derailments as part of the fun instead of something to clean up. Even the score becomes a bit. They hand the episode a 10, then immediately joke about future grading, which feels exactly right for a show that treats bookkeeping like improv. The main feed signs off with holiday wishes, a reminder about Patreon episodes, and a cheerful promise that 2026 will somehow be everyone's year. The shape is loose. That looseness is the point, because the conversation keeps finding new ways to turn Trek seriousness into a hangout without ever pretending to be tidy.

As heard by us

A DS9 politics hangout that leans on banter, memory, and a planetwide emergency.

Matt and Andy have enough to chew on as they trace a planetwide blackout, the president's reluctance to call a state of emergency, and the plain practical problem of how Starfleet handles a world with no power.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

If you want Trek talk that turns a planet-wide blackout into a sideways comedy hangout, press play.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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