Description

Content Warnings: mention of motion sickness and vomiting

Consider this your personal Kobayashi Maru. Gregory brings Star Trek: Voyager - Elite Force, a video game released in 2000 by Raven Software. Like "In a Mirror, Darkly," this episode involves the denizens of the Mirror Universe. We discuss first contact, video games, military orders, courtesy, romance, and canonicity. We also chat about Jefferies tubes, stealth, and technobabble.

If you don't want to play the game yourself, you can watch the same video Lucy did on Youtube.

(The transcript for this episode is in progress and will be added to this post when it’s ready.)

For images discussed in this episode, visit the episode page on our website.

Please let us know what you think about the show! Hail us at onscreen@beforethefuture.space, contact us on social media, or comment on our website at beforethefuture.space.

Connections:

• The Etherians do not appear in any other Star Trek works.
• Nick Locarno is the rude, hotshot leader of Nova Squadron in The Next Generation S05E19, "The First Duty."
• The Infinity Modulator, or "I-MOD," only appears in the Elite Force games and Star Trek Online. The Borg's personal shielding, which adapts to phaser frequencies, is first introduced in The Next Generation S02E16, "Q Who."
• The Hirogen are introduced in Voyager S04E14, "Message in a Bottle."
• The Malon are introduced in Voyager S05E01, "Night."
• Jefferies tubes first appear in The Original Series S01E06, "The Naked Time."

Works Cited:

• Connel, R. (1924, January 19). The most dangerous game. Collier's.
• Half-life [Video game]. (1998). Valve.
• Hocking, C. (2007, October 7). Ludonarrative dissonance in Bioshock: The problem of what the game is about. Click Nothing.
• McTiernan, J. (Director). (1987). Predator [Film]. 20th Century Fox, Davis Entertainment.
• The operative: No one lives forever [Video game]. (2000). Monolith Productions.
• Wilmot works it out [Video game]. (2024). Hollow Ponds & Richard Hogg

For our next episode, we'll watch Deep Space Nine S06E18, "Inquisition," written by Bradley Thompson and David Weddle and directed by Michael Dorn.

Before the Future Came is edited by Lucy Arnold, transcribed by Melissa Avery-Weir, and webmavened by Gregory Avery-Weir.

Our theme is “Let’s Pretend” by Josh Woodward, available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.