He's Aidan...She's Lindsay
Together we are The Bicks, and we're here to take you through all our pop culture favourites. Join us as we train our literary lenses on the stories that shape us.
Together we are The Bicks, and we're here to take you through all our pop culture favourites. Join us as we train our literary lenses on the stories that shape us.
Tuesday Jun 27, 2023
Tuesday Jun 27, 2023
Tuesday Jun 27, 2023
Note: We will be taking a summer break for the next 4-5 weeks to coincide with some vacation plans, but will be returning in the second half of summer with Season 5.
For this week, join us as we revisit the episode that had the largest divergence of opinions in our Season 4 breakdown, "First Contact" complete with Riker sex innuendo and reactionary martyrs. It may not be the perfect episode, but it did provide some fodder for banter with The Bicks.
Tuesday Jun 20, 2023
Tuesday Jun 20, 2023
Tuesday Jun 20, 2023
Season 4 -- the first full 90s season, as Lindsay says -- doesn't feature a whole bunch of changes on screen or behind the camera, but did bring a lot of depth to the characters and the world they inhabit. Join us as we talk about family, friends, drama, and First Contact, one of the greatest episodes of the show! (Yes, Aidan wrote this intro...)
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Bicks Log: What does it say about genetic families in Star Trek that they're so secondary to the one found on board the Enterprise?
Notes:
Once again, it was time for a tier ranking of Season 4 episodes, so be prepared for Aidan to defend how great (almost) every episode is, while Lindsay tries to knock them all down a few pegs.
Recognitions:
Intro Music: Chasing Stars by AG Music
Outro Music: Idle Hands by The Impossibulls
Tuesday Jun 13, 2023
Tuesday Jun 13, 2023
Another season, another watchalong of TNG, this time the season 3's classic exploration of Star Trek's greatest philosophical topics, the Prime Directive. Join us as we chat and joke our way through "Who Watches the Watchers".
Tuesday Jun 06, 2023
Tuesday Jun 06, 2023
Tuesday Jun 06, 2023
Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 3 is widely considered the start of "good Trek" in the TNG era. Whether you agree with that or not, this season definitely ups the ante in terms of storytelling, characterization, thematic links, and philosophical import. This week, Aidan and Lindsay deep dive into the production history, some of the changes behind and in front of the camera, and explore the larger story arcs that are going to take us into the second half of the series' run.
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Bicks Log: How useful is the Prime Directive?
Notes and Recognitions:
The intro music is different between Season 1 (strings high in the mix) and Season 2 (strings lower) and again to Season 3 (strings seem to not be there at all in some places) so Lindsay is kinda right but also kinda full of shit...
OrangeRiver has a great Season 3 breakdown video we watched in preparation for this podcast as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smEzxaVfTAw&ab_channel=OrangeRiver
Intro Music: Chasing Stars by AG Music
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Outro Music: Idle Hands by The Impossibulls
Tuesday May 30, 2023
Tuesday May 30, 2023
Tuesday May 30, 2023
Join us for another watchalong episode of TNG, this time the season 2 dark horse favourite "The Royale".
One note: Fermat's Last Theorem had a first proof published in 1995, only a few years after this episode.
Tuesday May 23, 2023
Tuesday May 23, 2023
Tuesday May 23, 2023
The arrival of Riker's Beard heralded the start of the shift towards a more updated, distinct Star Trek, ready for the Next Generation of fans. While many will tell new explorers of Trek to skip over season 2, we love it for its inconsistency and the truly high highs that you only get by introducing the Borg, or debating the nature of sentience (should be sapience but we'll let it slide) on behalf of our beloved Data. Join us as we discuss those highs (and some of the lows), as well as give a bit of a history of what was going on behind the scenes.
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Bicks Log: Does artificial intelligence require sentience to be considered intelligent? Do AIs as we understand them now deserve rights? What will happen when computer systems are given – or acquire – consciousness?
Notes:
As a reminder, this was recorded before Picard Season 3 aired, so there may be some odd references.
If, for some reason you haven't seen the greatest short film of the 21st century so far, please do check out Too Many Cooks.
Lindsay deeply regrets her comments about the 1988 WGA Strike. At least Aidan assumes so, since she's been happy to see the 2023 version.
The novel that Lindsay mentions involving the Trill's connection to the Conspiracy bugs is called Trill: Unjoined, which you can read about on Memory Beta.
Aidan's Tier Ranking of Season 2 Episodes:
S-Tier: Measure of a Man (9), Q Who (16)
A-Tier: Elementary Dear Data (3), A Matter of Honour (8), The Royale (12), The Emissary (20)
B-Tier: Peak Performance (21), Pen Pals (15)
C-Tier: The Child (1), Outrageous Okona (4), Loud as a Whisper (5), The Dauphin (10), Time Squared (13), Samaritan Snare (17), Manhunt (19)
D-Tier: Schizoid Man (6), The Icarus Factor (14), Up The Long Ladder (18)
F-Tier: Shades of Gray (22), Where Silence Has Lease (2)
Lindsay's Tier Ranking:
S-Tier: Measure of a Man (9), Q Who (16), Elementary Dear Data (3)
A-Tier: Pen Pals (15), The Royale (12), The Emissary (20)
B-Tier: Peak Performance (21), Manhunt (19), A Matter of Honour (8)
C-Tier: Outrageous Okona (4), Loud as a Whisper (5), Time Squared (13), Samaritan Snare (17), Schizoid Man (6)
D-Tier: The Icarus Factor (14), Up The Long Ladder (18), The Dauphin (10)
F-Tier: Shades of Gray (22), Where Silence Has Lease (2), The Child (1)
Twin Peaks actors appearing this season:
David L. Lander
Madchen Amick (Who we forgot to mention in the episode somehow!!!)
Intro Music: Chasing Stars by AG Music
Outro Music: Idle Hands by The Impossibulls
Tuesday May 16, 2023
Tuesday May 16, 2023
Tuesday May 16, 2023
Watchalong episodes are back baby! Today we're watching Season 1 Episode 15 of Star Trek: The Next Generation "11001001" (the one with the Bynars).
Tuesday May 09, 2023
Tuesday May 09, 2023
Tuesday May 09, 2023
Boldly going where no one in 1987 was really sure they wanted to go - 100 years into the future - Paramount greenlit Star Trek: The Next Generation. And a seed was planted. Join us as we talk about the behind the scenes work that eventually led to one of the most iconic of Star Trek series' and heralded the rebirth of Gene Rodenberry's vision of the future - ready to go for a new generation (your hosts' generation, as it turned out). We also discuss the characters, episodes, and issues that cropped up repeatedly in the first season, as well as the bones of the show that we grew to love and idolize.
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Bicks Log: What are the things in Season 1 that the show messed up the worst, but was corrected over the course of the show?
Notes:
As a reminder, this was recorded before Picard Season 3, so there may be some odd references
Sadly "Crusher is a mom" has remained extremely true
Aidan had this large (for a child) version of the mini phaser used frequently in the first few seasons
He also had the rounded tip version of the fuller handheld phaser, though he can't find any photos so he might be imagining that
Lindsay had the more ubiquitous and cool-looking pointed-tip phaser
Chaos on the Bridge is the Shatner-hosted documentary that provides a great insight into the crazy ship that was TNG Seasons 1 & 2
For clarity's sake around syndication: the local station would sell 5 minutes of local advertising per episode, and Paramount got the money from 7 minutes of national advertisements
The UK didn't receive any TNG until September 26, 1990, three years after "Encounter at Farpoint" first aired in the United States
"You'll have to speak up, I'm wearing a towel."
Other videos to learn more about Season 1 include:
Rowan J. Coleman's Retrospective Part 8: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LB08m-d1hhc&ab_channel=RowanJColeman
Was TNG Season 1 Really That Bad?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPGSKOIu1dI&ab_channel=OrangeRiver
Twin Peaks actors appearing this season:
Brenda Strong
Carel Struycken
Robert Knepper
Lindsay is a writer and junior high school English teacher based in Edmonton, Alberta. In addition to loving Twin Peaks and Shakespeare, she is a big fan of her husband, Aidan, her three cats (Neko, Cooper, and Audrey), teaching, reading and writing, and traveling.
And coffee...you can't forget coffee.
Aidan is a writer and communications professional also based in Edmonton, Alberta. His work has been featured in several different publications, periodicals, and books. When he isn't writing or podcasting, he can usually be found attending to his second love: gaming, with a cat or two at his side.
We met when we were 18. We supported each other through university. We moved in together at and then we got married. We live in the coolest neighbourhood in Edmonton. And we record our podcast in our home office overlooking the North Saskatchewan River Valley.
Our podcast came to life in late 2016 as Bickering Peaks: A Twin Peaks Podcast. In those early days, we spent our time rewatching Twin Peaks and analysing the series in Season One of the podcast.
In Season Two of our show, we applied that same rigour to Twin Peaks: The Return.
Season Three saw us tackle the larger question of series co-creators' David Lynch's and Mark Frost's creative oeuvre.
We decided to take our podcast into vastly different territory for Season Four when we dove headfirst into the works of William Shakespeare.
Our upcoming Season Five will premiere...soon. All we can say about it for now is that we'll be boldly going where no Bicks have gone before...and we hope you'll join us!
You can contact us at thebickspod[at]gmail[dot]com.