This week, I am honored to host Babs Olusanmokun,
who plays Dr. M'Benga, and Melissa Navia,
who plays Erica Ortegas for a pair of interviews;
we go behind the lines of the Klingon War;
and we get an inside look
at how this season's stunts came to be.
I'll see you in The Ready Room, for all that and more.
Hey, nerds, I'm Wil Wheaton, and this is The Ready Room,
your official behind-the-scenes hub
for all things Star Trek universe.
This week, the Enterprise crew welcomes
a controversial Klingon diplomat aboard.
But if that's unwelcome news for you,
I am calling for a [saying "red alert!" in Klingon].
Secrets are revealed in this week's episode
of Strange New Worlds,
and I'm going to be revealing spoilers
in this edition of The Ready Room as well.
So if you haven't seen this week's episode,
titled "Under The Cloak of War,"
take some time for self-care, stream it,
and then rejoin me back here for all the top-secret intel.
Today, I have the tremendous opportunity
to interview not one, but two,
of Strange New Worlds' brilliant cast members,
Babs Olusanmokun,
who plays the Enterprise's Chief Medical Officer,
Joseph M'Benga, and Melissa Navia,
who plays my fellow Enterprise pilot, Erica Ortegas.
We'll go in depth on their emotional performances
in this week's episode
as their characters confront the long-term effects of war.
In Star Trek: Strange New Worlds,
the Enterprise crew has seen its fair share of action,
requiring a lot of stunt work
to make it look incredible on screen.
Well, later, we'll take a peek behind the scenes
to see how this season's epic stunts all came together.
But first, in this week's episode,
Dr. M'Benga and Nurse Chapel relive their time
serving together on the front lines of the Klingon War.
Here is a look at their unique relationship
forged in the trenches of a war zone hospital.
Control room, engage.
Episode 8, which goes through the backstory
of M'Benga and Chapel,
like, it just felt very strong immediately
when I read it
and I appreciated the work the writers had done.
But it was really lovely to see how it was put together
and it felt credible and, you know, lived in.
It gave us a good window into what he's been through.
In Episode 8,
we wanted to wrestle with the thorny issue
of the legacies of war.
Klingons claim to have honored the truce,
but there've been incidents, raids on our outpost.
No proof that the Klingons committed it.
What proof do we need?
You know what a Klingon is.
Can you ever atone for doing something terrible?
And we see different sides of it
through M'Benga and also through General Rah
who is trying desperately to reform for his past.
You were on J'Gal.
I was, in the final conflict.
And the massacre of Colony Athos.
From the first moment that I read it,
I love what they've written for Chapel this season.
It was very complex, you know,
like, the themes we were dealing with.
Everyone really had their hearts in it.
There was a real sense of care about doing it right,
which I think is important with material like that.
We got this.
I prepared by watching a lot of documentaries
and reading and just trying
to get familiar with the experiences of people
that had been through war,
their experience of loss, and you know,
just the PTSD that these guys have to deal with
when they come back and function in society.
I did a lot of research
into medevac and PTSD more broadly.
He's in cardiac arrest.
We're losing him.
Manual stimulation.
What?
Grab his heart and start pumping.
There was one character who had like shrapnel
in his chest,
and not only did we have,
we had a very thin layover with kind of a relief
of his heart that could beat,
so he could lay there on the table
while this was on him.
Then for maybe other scenes where Nurse Chapel reaches in,
she picks up the heart and manually stimulates the heart
to get it to beat.
He's back!
When I first booked the role of Ortegas,
it was in the breakdown
that she was not only like this fantastic pilot,
but also a combat veteran.
That was fully layered into what I brought to the character.
A former enemy speaking on our behalf?
It's incredible.
Or it's a long con to gain access to Federation secrets.
Just because he's Klingon,
Trust me, I know Klingons.
This guy with the peace treaties, that's not Klingons.
I joke with Celia
that we like layer in these micro-beats
and I'm like, nobody's gonna know this,
but at least we know it and it's a story for us.
And it, you know,
it plays into everything else we do on screen.
So the battlefield
on the moon of J'Gal turned out really, really well.
We started very wide,
the surface of the planet.
I was working on it being a volcanic planet,
so it's like black, angry rock,
and it's a young planet,
so new rocks are being pushed out
of the landscape the whole time.
It's got this very jagged quality.
Then we had to build a Klingon city
where the battle would be focused.
Our next challenge was
to build the Federation kind of tent/pod city.
For the medical transporter area,
it was kind of away from the battlefield,
so, we were looking out into the general landscape,
and then when it came to doing the dormitory,
we turned the asset again
and we had all the individual dormitory tents
all spread out,
and then we turned the asset one more time
for the command area
and that was facing the battlefield.
By the time we shot the battlefield sequence,
the asset had been fine tuned
and looked utterly spectacular.
I think, when you do war sets,
you bring in a texture and a tonality.
So you bring in, you know, worn elements.
We have, we bring in cases,
we bring in technology that we build.
We kind of brought down everything from the Enterprise,
but we made it more compact.
So, you know, we have like the,
you know, if we were going to the transporter room,
we would see the sliders.
Well, we built little cases that had the sliders
that actually functioned
to make them look portable and tactical.
I told myself, I don't want to go home different.
My family deserves better.
And I see, now, that's impossible.
The goal here was to do what great classic Trek does,
which is to, you know,
struggle with some big issues
and not necessarily to come to a conclusion,
but to fight through it.
Just the act of fighting through it
and wrestling with it shows the humanity
of our characters, you know?
It shows experience of being a human being is to experience,
sometimes, things that are terrible.
And how do you live and move forward from that?
It is a great honor and privilege
to chat with Babs Olusanmokun
who plays Dr. Joseph M'Benga, today.
Babs, welcome to The Ready Room.
This week's episode was kind of a heavy one.
Are you okay?
I am coming around.
After some R and R, I'm doing better.
Good to know.
Babs, war has been an issue Star Trek has confronted
in various ways since Star Trek began in the 1960s.
This episode, though,
it really seems to take a deeper perspective
on the personal horrors of war
and its traumatic aftermath.
Would you talk about this episode's nuanced look at war
and the effect that war has on survivors?
Absolutely, Wil.
As you frame this episode within the era of the '60s,
you're talking about the Vietnam War,
you're talking about the Cold War.
Most of us in the West are now exiting this era
of peace and prosperity.
There's a war in Ukraine that everybody's aware of,
but there've been wars going on in other parts of the world
for quite a long time,
and this war that seems to be closer to others now,
or to more of us now, gives us the opportunity
to revisit our relationship with this human phenomenon,
nonstop war, and nuance,
that word that you used is a perfect way
to describe this episode.
Joseph,
we got this.
We got this.
Dermal team!
This episode fleshes out M'Benga,
Chapel and Ortegas's back stories
as they were all in this war together.
How was it to further develop your characters
and their relationships through this episode?
Well, Wil, I'd say,
because of the shared traumas of these three characters
and the trust they developed because of it,
the violence and vulnerability that they all carry,
it forms this dynamic that was very moving for us actors
in bringing this story forward.
I had an acting teacher who once talked
about keeping those unspoken emotions alive
during the scene,
and we do it with our body language and our looks,
and I really felt that.
I really believed
that these three people had been through something horrible
that will bond them together for the rest of their lives.
Did that weight follow you off the set?
Absolutely, in its own way.
As actors, we want to lead with empathy,
or at least I try to lead with empathy,
and as a human being in the world,
with conflict, we also search for empathy.
And this piece,
this episode asked a lot of us
and we tried to give
or we endeavored to give what it was asking of us.
It wasn't easy,
because you're trying to bring truth,
as much truth as possible
with as much sincerity
and honor is really what I think I wanna say.
- Yeah. - Being honorable
to the piece, so yeah,
that was the challenge.
And so it's not something that disappeared,
as we have it going on in the world around us.
So, we step into it if we keep our eyes open.
Speaking of honor, the Klingons in this episode,
it's a very important part of the story
that we tell this week.
When I was on the Enterprise,
the Klingons are our allies and, for my character,
Wesley Crusher, Worf is one of Wesley's best friends.
So we know that, in the future,
the Klingon Empire and the Federation become allies,
but your characters don't know that.
And I was wondering how that lack of knowledge
in your time period
affected your preparation and performance.
Well, you don't know.
You don't know what you're dealing with.
You don't know what you're facing.
You've simply been told
that these are the people doing these things
to you and your people,
and therefore you respond to what you've been told
and you end up facing an individual
that you actually would be friends with.
Yeah.
If it wasn't for this bigger conflict. Right?
And you know, in the last number of months,
I've met a number of Russians,
you know, that have fled Russia and say,
"We don't want a part of this."
So it's happening now, you know?
We don't know,
but we have this commonality,
if we give ourselves a chance to see it.
One are the things I love
about science fiction is it gives us the opportunity
to have this conversation
that you and I are having right now
about something that is affecting everyone in the world,
whether you're in Ukraine or you're in Somalia
or you're in Ethiopia or Yemen or Central America.
- Absolutely. - Like, I mean,
this is something that very much affects humanity.
When I have had the opportunity and the privilege to perform
within that kind of big idea storytelling,
I think of it as a privilege and a responsibility
and I have to work to stay outta my head
and not get overwhelmed
by all of everything that's going on.
You did a ton of preparation
to really understand Dr. M'Benga
and the way that he is in the war.
In all of that work
and all of that preparation that you did,
did you find commonality that kind of transcends conflict
that maybe inspired some character choices?
I'd say, yeah.
I'd say, yes.
You know, at the end of the day,
people want food, right?
Water to drink, a home, a roof over their heads,
food for their children.
So, really, I approached it with my humanity
as I always try and do with every character,
and within a big idea, such as war,
that was, I think that's the most important tool, empathy,
and what if I was this other person?
And why is this other person fighting?
Why am I going to face them?
Why am I being told I have to face them
on the field of combat?
And it's important that we stay in touch with that,
you know, and have that empathy.
As artists, as human beings, we should have that empathy.
But as artists,
that's the only way we're gonna get anywhere,
the only way we can reveal any kind of truth.
And what we're doing with this piece is simply trying
to contribute to that legacy, the legacy of Sophocles,
you know, and the Greek classics to Guernica, you know?
- Yeah. - The painting,
to Apocalypse Now, the film,
it's a subject that some of the greatest works
of art have always tried to tackle.
And I think this episode, you know,
and this show contributes to this legacy
by addressing this big ideas with sincerity.
I think maybe the highest compliment
I can pay this episode is I very much look forward
to it being banned by authoritarians in the future
because they don't like the truths
that it tells.
- Let's talk a little bit, - I love it.
about some of your physicality in this episode.
I did not know until just a few days ago
that you have a background in Brazilian jiu-jitsu,
which my neck hurts just saying that.
Talk to me about getting to show off some of your skills
throughout the season.
When M'Benga and Rah are having their fight,
I watched you and I was like, oh wait,
he really knows what he's doing.
Well, the last thing on my mind is, you know,
trying to show off or, you know,
putting anything on display in terms of skill.
Jiu-jitsu, for me, has been always about the discipline
of centering myself and it's, you know,
it's something that I've given life blood to
for quite a while, for quite a long time,
and it was very exciting to finally bring that duality
to the work, to this episode.
We are rapidly approaching the end of this season,
and it seems like a great time to talk about this.
This year, we have seen just so much variety
in the types of stories being told.
Last week, it was full on comedy.
This week, really, really heavy.
Talk about how you adjust your performance
to fit the tone of each episode.
And what goes into that?
I would say that the genre bending spectrum
of storytelling that our show dances with really forces me
to just think as expansively as possible.
I don't know about yours, every day,
maybe even every hour in my life,
genre bends pretty radically.
That's amazing.
Babs, thank you so much
for your work on the show and thanks a lot
for making time to join us in The Ready Room today.
I'm looking forward to being in the same place
with you soon.
Thank you so, so much, Wil.
Thank you so, so much for your time.
I am so excited to talk to my fellow Enterprise pilot,
Melissa Navia, who plays Erica Ortegas.
Melissa, welcome back to The Ready Room.
Wil, how is it going?
I'm so happy to be back.
I really wanted to be in the room with you this season,
but this still works.
It's still wonderful.
Ah, I'm so happy to talk about Season 2.
I wasn't sure if I was going to admit this to you,
but I've decided I'm going to ahead and,
I'm going to go ahead and do this.
Over all the episodes of Strange New Worlds I've watched,
I've really come to just really love Ortegas.
I think she's so...
- Oh, yay. - She's so unbelievably cool.
She's so super grounded.
I know that I'm not the only person who has had that type
of reaction to your character, and I'm just,
I wonder, like, have you had those interactions,
those direct interactions with fans who are just like,
"Oh my God, she's so cool, I want to be her!"?
Absolutely.
And I remind everyone that I am not anywhere near
as cool as Ortegas.
Like, that is thanks to our incredible writing, for sure,
and a little bit of my ability to act,
but she is,
I mean, I wanna be Ortegas, you know?
Like, what does future me look like?
I'm like, it would be Ortegas, I hope.
70%.
Copy. That is the last time they dent our paint job.
One of the very cool things has been,
you know, meeting actual pilots, meeting astronauts,
meeting Air Force members, meeting soldiers,
meeting people who do this for a living,
and they're like, "When we see you,
we feel like you are flying the Enterprise."
And that right there,
I'm like, "Okay, I've done something right."
This week, we found out a great deal
about Erica's backstory
and the way that she deals with this Klingon ambassador.
And, you know, the instant he beams onto the Enterprise,
just as a member of the audience, I was like,
"I don't like this guy.
I don't trust this guy.
He's a bad dude.
He's a bad person pretending to be good."
But I responded very, very strongly
to all of you being forced to sit
and have dinner with this guy.
And the way that Ortegas, I thought,
conducted herself with extraordinary honor.
Like, you know, Klingons always talk about honor.
What she did was so honorable,
standing up for the people that that guy slaughtered.
Talk to me about her backstory.
Is there anything you wanna share that you thought of
that sort of came up in this episode?
I felt like there was something in her
that I have not seen before.
Absolutely, and I think, with the writing too, I mean,
right from the top,
when she's on the bridge and she's talking with Uhura and,
you know, she's so frazzled almost,
and it's not in her nature to be,
especially when she's in the captain's chair,
which is a chair she loves to be in,
and she's, you know,
kind of listing off the things that have happened.
I didn't mean to hit a nerve.
It's okay, you're right.
I don't really know what he's about.
All I know is the stories,
like that he killed his own men to cover his retreat.
There's a reason other Klingons call him
"The Butcher of J'Gal."
Captain on the bridge.
How do you welcome, you know,
a person like this onto the ship?
And how do we,
how are we supposed to sit down and have dinner
with somebody who has done these things?
And so, right from the get go,
you got this impression that you're seeing a side of her
where she is standing up for what she believes is right.
And you see that that has a backstory,
that she was a soldier and she was in the war
and she has a loyalty
to people that she fought with and that she fought for.
You have played similar characters in your career.
Did any of your previous experience come in
and help you in building her for this episode?
When I've realized, you know,
oh, I do play a lot of soldiers,
that's something that's been very special to me,
because I'm not a soldier in real life
and I want to do my absolute best
to portray it in a way that is real, accurate,
and that honors the role of what soldiers have been through.
And so hearing, you know, originally when I was cast,
that her backstory was as a soldier, in addition to a pilot,
I was like, "Cool, awesome.
We're gonna do this."
And hearing from soldiers that they feel
that they are accurately presented by Ortegas on screen,
for me is, again, is everything hearing, you know,
hearing that people think, you know,
she looks like she's actually flying the Enterprise,
again, that's, I have one job and that is it.
And so, yeah,
I do think that all of that has lent itself
to what I have brought to Ortegas
and just really always kind of going back
to there are people out there
who have actually lived this life and have been in battle
and have, you know, have comrades who have fallen.
And so I'm just always trying to honor that,
respect that, and also then bring the life of the story
that I'm presenting and infuse that.
And that's, you know, that's what we do as actors, right?
We bring a story together
and then we make it so that the audience,
you know, feels like they, that they can relate.
In my research and homework for talking to you today,
I learned that, in fandom,
that a lot of people say that Ortegas
and Ortegas's experience,
her experience with grief and loss has very much helped them
in their personal experience with grief and loss.
I want to touch on this
as respectfully and gently as I possibly can.
I know that you have experienced grief and loss
and that you have been willing to speak about that
in a way that has been deeply meaningful
and helpful to a lot of people.
When you hear someone tell you, "Listen,
your character means this series of things to me,"
how does that make you feel?
Oh, it's everything, right?
Because, you know,
the reason we're here is to make a difference, right?
Is to leave this world with something
that nobody else could do in the way we could do it, right?
So I remember,
well, I mean, we could be here a while, Wil,
but essentially, you know,
what you're speaking of is I lost my partner
at the end of 2021,
which was right before, you know,
pretty much right before Season 1 premiered.
And it was, you know, grief became,
I became grief, grief became me,
and his name was Brian,
and he was an absolute force of nature.
And I just, everything, and still, you know,
much of what I wanna talk about is Brian, you know,
he was my rock, he was my other half.
And then what started happening was, suddenly, all,
you know, fans and people were telling me that,
you know, me speaking about Brian allowed them
to speak about people in their lives
who they've lost, and especially too,
like people who were Star Trek fans
who they used to love watching Star Trek with.
And so, it's so interesting
because I didn't really even think about that.
Like my goal, when what happened happened,
was not to let people know that I had lost Brian,
but, like, to let them know that I'd had Brian, do you know?
- Yeah. - Like, that I have Brian.
Yeah.
Because he was everything.
And during Season 1, you know,
he came out to Canada, with me to Toronto,
and stayed with me the full six months, you know?
And we were there and we had the quarantine rules
and the regulations, the border restrictions.
So I told fans, I said, you know, "Season 1,
everything you see of me was truly made possible by him,
you know, by my other half."
That why we have other halves
in this life is to make things like that possible.
And so as I'm talking to fans, right?
I've had fans reach out to me and say, you know,
that in the, when Season 1 came out,
before Season 2 came out,
that they just lost somebody
or they used to always watch, you know,
this Star Trek or that Star Trek
with this person in their lives who's no longer there.
And so it became almost this thing of, you know,
I want people to see Season 1 and see, you know,
that's a season where Melissa had her ride-or-die,
her person physically right next to her.
Season 2, he is very much still there.
And the reason that I think, you know,
Season 2 for me is I'm incredibly proud of it
for all of us,
for everything that the whole cast did.
But me in particular, like I seldom like, you know,
I'm like, "Oh, I'm super proud of this thing I did,"
but pretty much every day, I was crying at some point.
That's the truth.
And it's a testament to Brian for sure
'cause I kept saying,
I'd be on set and I'd be like,
"Brian would not be impressed if I fell apart right now.
I just can't. I cannot."
But also, to everybody on that set,
like particularly speaking about 208,
I remember Jeff Byrd, our director, like, you know,
at one point,
like we had a group scene, and sometimes I'd be fine,
you know, again, I was super professional at all times,
but sometimes there'd be like a group scene
and I would just need a moment and I'd just need to not be,
but I wouldn't wanna make a thing.
And I remember one time Jeff just like poking his head out
and being like, "Are you cool?"
And I was just like, "Yes."
And that, and knowing that, at all times, the directors,
producers, cast, writers had my back was just beautiful.
And that kept me going.
And so I see scenes where I'm just like,
I know that like five minutes earlier, like I was,
you know, I was really having a tough time
and then I would pull it together,
and I'd say too, for people who are watching,
you know, Season 2, like the,
something that I had to kind of,
that I had to figure out as we started filming was,
it almost like, I was like, how am I supposed to be,
you know, that like cocky, fun loving, life is great,
you know, crap happens, but we get over it Ortegas,
when right now I just, do you know?
- I don't feel that. - Yeah.
Of course, I'm acting,
but then it like, but then beyond that,
I was thinking about what Star Trek is for so many people.
You know, that Star Trek is not about being hopeful
when everything is just great, do you know?
- Yeah, yeah. - It's not about, you know,
everything is always just, you know, sunshine.
No, the whole thing is that bad things happen.
Things that you didn't want to happen, happen.
Adversity happens.
And so it's that hopefulness in the face of adversity,
which I think is what keeps us coming back to Star Trek.
It is inspiring to me,
first of all, may his memory be a blessing.
And it is inspiring to me,
so inspiring to me, that you are living by example
of living with grief and living through grief
and not allowing it to completely define you.
Absolutely.
Thank you so much for making time.
It is such a pleasure to talk to you.
I really look forward to being in the same place
as you again.
Very, very soon. The pleasure's all mine, Wil.
Until we see each other again in person.
Whether it's something as deceptively simple
as doing the famous Star Trek shake
or as complicated as engaging in a grueling fight scene,
Strange New Worlds has a lot of stunts,
and this week's episode was no exception.
So we here in The Ready Room thought you might like
to see what goes into creating
these action-packed sequences.
Check it out.
Oh, we had a lot of cool stunts this year.
Right from the first episode, we had a massive fight scene.
We had a car chase.
We had people come through a time portal
and crash into our world.
Guess we're doing this.
No point being scared.
Let's go.
One of the most exciting things we got
to do this year was a car chase,
which is not something you would expect you'd get to do
on Star Trek.
So, that was exciting in itself.
We found the characters involved were James Kirk,
whom we didn't know, you know, story-wise,
whether to expect he'd ever driven a car before.
There it is.
He's got the guts and the wherewithal
to pull off anything like this.
And he didn't disappoint.
Absolutely, we used a stunt double for a lot of the driving
and then we were able to put Paul
into the driver's seat up on the AR wall.
Oh man, it's been nothing short of exciting,
daunting, fun, challenging.
I mean, you sort of go
through this roller coaster of emotions,
[La'An] Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
That was a person.
All right, well, actually keep holding on.
So when we composed a fight scene for Chapel and M'Benga
against these couple dozen of Klingons,
it was an amazing fight scene.
We had to do a whole intricate choreography.
[Director] All right, guys. Here we go.
It takes time and creativity
and I've got a great team with me
of fighters and stunt guys.
And Babs, who plays M'Benga,
has a real strong background in jiu-jitsu.
So we were really excited to get a chance to play with him.
Babs is physically very proficient
and he has a bunch of training
that allows him to use his body extremely formidably.
Are you sure you're up for full impact?
I have done jiu-jitsu for many, many years,
and I was teaching it for quite a bit of time,
but I always had it separate from acting.
So it's been interesting piecing those together
and trying to work with stunt choreographers
and fight choreographers
and really just trying to adjust things the way I feel
they could manifest in M'Benga.
Whenever possible, we will put Babs
in a spot where he can kick some ass.
There's a real art to not hurting anybody
while you're doing this.
But you have to sell it.
So you have to do it at full force,
but you have to be really careful
not to actually hit anyone.
So 207, we had a crossover episode, which was exciting.
We had to find out how we would move somebody
from an animated world into our world.
There was a portal involved, and like any good portal,
you don't come through it gently.
You come through it flying and crashing into our world.
The stunt work going through the portal,
I wish I could take credit for that.
It is not me.
It is my amazing stunt double Bauston Camilleri.
He did an amazing job, as he always does.
We built a ramp for the stunt performer to run on,
and at the one spot in the portal where it transitioned
from animated world into our world,
he just launches himself and flies through the air
and crashes to the ground.
And then we pick it up with just me doing a,
I think we coined the term a "comedy straddle,"
because Jack's laying flat on the ground and then cut.
All right now, comedy straddle,
and I get on top of my friend
and be like, ah, you know, just a classic, platonic,
not-at-all-sensual comedy straddle.
Hell yeah, I did it!
[Jonathan Frakes] Cut. Print.
I'm very into stunts.
The rehearsal and preparation for that was so much fun.
It was fantastic, really.
We collaborate.
It's a lot of rehearsing and a lot of,
I have to admit, very fun collaboration.
After this week's intense episode of Star Trek: Strange New
Worlds, I think we could all use something
just a little bit lighter.
And I have just the thing,
an exclusive clip from next week's episode.
That's our 12th attempt at sending a message
through the seven space mold.
Thirteen.
That's not exactly what I would call a lucky number.
What makes you think that this particular fold will lead
to faster communication?
Frequencies propagate through it
three times faster than normal.
With our current relay network,
it takes weeks to send a message across the quadrant.
Imagine being able to do it in moments
and getting a near instant reply.
Real time communication across thousands of light years.
Only, so far, no one's heard us.
Have you tried sending music through?
We have not.
Do you believe music may yield a different result?
Well, you are trying to communicate through a medium
with different laws of physics,
so perhaps fundamental harmonics are the answer, hm?
You know, was just a thought.
But perhaps an excellent one.
You pick the song, Nyota.
Well, let's see if subspace is a fan
of the Great American Songbook, huh?
♪ In olden days ♪
♪ A glimpse of stocking was ♪
♪ looked on as something shocking ♪
♪ But now, God knows ♪
♪ Anything goes ♪
Y'all, I have seen next week's episode,
and I'm not allowed to talk about it,
but I will tell you,
it is truly a strange new world in the very best way.
You will be talking about it for years.
I am so excited for you to see it.
Thank you to Babs Olusanmokun and Melissa Navia
for a pair of remarkable conversations.
And thank you for being here
in The Ready Room with me today.
Talking about the Star Trek universe
with all y'all is one of my favorite things
to do in any timeline.
Next week, I visit with Christina Chong
about everything that goes on
in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 2,
Episode 9, "Subspace Rhapsody."
Until then, I'm Wil Wheaton.
Live long and prosper.