Al Beck Talks ‘Star Trek’ With Hosts Of ‘Keeping Up With The Cardassians’ Podcast
Al Beck joins the ‘Keeping Up With the Cardassians’ podcast this week as a guest to talk about his radio career, pizza and – of course – ‘Star Trek’!
‘Keeping Up With the ‘Cardassians’ is a Detroit based podcast, where hosts Nick, Rob and Joe get together each week to talk about some of the latest happenings in the nerd and pop culture world. The show’s primary focus is the ‘Star Trek’ franchise, as indicated by the show’s title (the Cardassians are a fictional alien race featured in ‘Star Trek’). Each week, they take a look at some of the latest pop culture headlines and review 2 episodes of ‘Star Trek’.
Being from the Detroit area, the hosts of ‘Keeping Up With the Cardassians’ are well acquainted with Dave & Chuck “The Freak” and Al’s well documented love of ‘Star Trek’, so they asked him to join them for this week’s episode. The talked to Al about how he got his start in radio, his career in the Detroit market and his time with the Dave & Chuck “The Freak” show. They cover the whole ‘Star Trek’ franchise with a broad stroke, talk about some of Al’s favorite episodes and the highs and lows in the franchise.
Eventually in the episode, the conversation gets around to reviewing the 2 episodes for the week. ‘Keeping Up With the Cardassians’ has already covered all of ‘Star Trek: Deep Space Nine” and now they are working their way through “Star Trek: The Next Generation’, which comes as both good and bad news to Al. Good, because TNG is his favorite of the ‘Star Trek’ series, but bad because they are still on season 1 of the show, which isn’t the best of the bunch.
On this week’s episode of ‘Keeping Up With the Cardassians’, the hosts and Al review “Coming of Age” (S01E18) and “Heart of Glory” (S01E19), one of which is definitely better than the other. Check out the episode to find out which one and to hear everything they had to say about these early episodes of ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’.
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‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’ 5 Must Watch Episodes
The Dave & Chuck “The Freak” show has no shortage of nerds, from Chuck and Andy’s obsessions with Star Wars and Bigfoot, to Al’s Star Trek and comic books, it has been well documented throughout the history of the show!
Al Beck loves Star Trek. Believe it or not, he has seen every single episode of Star Trek that has ever aired on TV or streaming services. This is a bigger accomplishment (or, much more sad) than you may realize! Since the original Star Trek first aired in 1966, there have been a total of 11 different series (Star Trek, Star Trek: The Animated Series, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Voyager, Enterprise, Star Trek: Discovery, Picard, Star Trek: Prodigy, Star Trek: Lower Decks and Strange New Worlds), which have produce a combined 44 seasons of televising. In addition to the collection on TV series, the Star Trek franchise also includes 13 feature length films. Needless to say, there is a lot of Trek in the world (and Al, clearly, has not life).
So, where to start if you’re new to Star Trek? You can never go wrong with the original crew. The exploits of Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock and Dr. McCoy are legendary. But, for Al’s money, the best of all of the Star Trek series is Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG).
The original Star Trek series (TOS) was actually a failure when it first aired in the late 1960s, and was cancelled after its 3nd season. TOS acquired a dedicated fan base when reruns started to air in syndication and eventually achieved a cult status. The franchise attempted a reboot by gathering the original cast together again to create and animated version of the series, but that also proved to be a flop. It seemed that Star Trek was destined to be a 3-season flash in the pan show.
A new life was given to the franchise, much to the chagrin of many Trek fans, thanks to the massive success of the hit space opera Star Wars in the late 1970s. Star Wars did so well, that studios were scrambling to put out any sort of show or film set in ouster space to hopefully ride the wave of success created by Star Wars. Paramount realized that the owned something “kind of like that” in their archive and it already had an established fandom. Enter, for the third time, Star Trek. This time, the original cast would reunite once again, but rather than simply voicing animated versions of themselves, they would suit up in redesigned Starfleet uniforms and man their stations in a U.S.S. Enterprise refit model and star in a full-length, live-action feature film, Start Trek: The Motion Picture.
This time, revisiting the world Of Captain James T. Kirk and company was a smash success and lead to 5 more subsequent films featuring the TOS cast, This would also set the table for a return to broadcast television in the 1980s. Welcoming now to the scene, TNG.
TOS is a great TV show and Al’s love for the show and cast that started it all is undeniable. That being said, in his opinion TNG is where the creators and show runners really hit their stride and made the best product under the Star Trek banner. After 2 decades of trial and error – mixed success and failure – they finally figured out what Star Trek truly was all about.
This is Al Beck’s personal list of 5 must-see episodes of his favorite Star Trek series: The Next Generation. They aren’t necessarily “the best” and there are certainly more than just 5 episodes worthy of this list, but here is a good starting point for those new to Star Trek. Or, if you’re already a fan, here is some ammo to tear Al apart online with.
