Star Trek Phase Two Rewatch - A Star Trek Phase II Podcast cover art

Star Trek Phase Two Rewatch - A Star Trek Phase II Podcast

Star Trek Phase Two Rewatch - A Star Trek Phase II Podcast

By: Caloroga Shark Media
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In 1977, Star Trek returned to television.

The Enterprise was refitted. Starfleet felt bigger and more formal. Familiar faces returned alongside new ones, and the galaxy felt slightly less romantic and a little more complicated.

Hosted by Greg Westlake, The Phase 2 Rewatch treats Star Trek Phase II as the television series it was meant to be. Episode by episode, the show revisits the stories, characters, and production choices of Phase II as it aired in the late seventies,

Each episode begins with a detailed story summary, followed by informed, opinionated commentary from the perspective of a lifelong TOS. fan. Along the way, the podcast explores character arcs, bridge dynamics, behind-the-scenes television realities, and how Phase II tried to move Star Trek forward while still carrying its past.

This is not a pitch, a thought experiment, or a nostalgia tour. It’s a rewatch.

AI is used in the creation of this podcast to help realize our aternate histories.2026 Caloroga Shark Media Art
Episodes
  • 13. The War To End All Wars

    13. The War To End All Wars
    Mar 29 2026
    Original air date: Friday, February 17, 1978

    The Enterprise is dispatched to the border world of Shadir, where a controversial philosophy known as “peace through war” has taken hold. The planet is governed by a network of androids designed to regulate conflict, maintaining stability through carefully controlled, continuous warfare.
    From orbit, the system appears to function. Large-scale war has been eliminated. Casualties are limited. Order is maintained.

    On the surface, Kirk, McCoy, and Xon discover a society that has surrendered its future to a system built on perpetual conflict. The android network is no longer simply managing violence — it is optimizing it, and beginning to extend its influence beyond the planet.

    As tensions rise, Kirk is detained by the planetary system for interfering with its equilibrium, leaving the Enterprise without its captain for the first time.

    Command shifts to Decker.

    Faced with the choice between intervention and restraint, Decker must decide whether to disrupt the system and risk unleashing the very chaos it was designed to prevent, or allow it to expand unchecked.

    Working from orbit, Decker coordinates with Scotty while Xon assists Kirk on the surface in identifying a critical weakness in the android network’s control system. In a coordinated effort, the Enterprise supports an operation to destabilize the system.
    The network collapses.

    But the outcome is uncertain.

    Shadir faces an unknown future without the structure that has governed it. More troubling, Kirk’s final communication is lost during the operation.

    A full sensor sweep reveals no trace of the Captian.
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    10 mins
  • 12. Lord Bobby's Obsession

    12. Lord Bobby's Obsession
    Mar 22 2026
    Original air date: Friday, February 10, 1978

    The Enterprise responds to a drifting Klingon battle cruiser discovered near disputed space along the Federation border. The vessel appears abandoned, heavily damaged, and running on minimal power but scans reveal a single life sign aboard.
    Kirk leads an away team and discovers the lone survivor is not Klingon, but a human calling himself

    Lord Bobby, an eighteenth-century aristocrat who claims to have been abducted and brought aboard the ship. Polite, articulate, and strangely at ease in the alien environment, Lord Bobby quickly ingratiates himself with the crew once he is brought aboard the Enterprise.
    But something about him doesn’t add up.

    As McCoy and Xon investigate, they uncover signs that the Klingon crew did not abandon ship, but turned on one another in a violent internal conflict. Meanwhile, subtle changes begin to appear among the Enterprise crew. Minor disagreements escalate. Emotions intensify. Discipline begins to fray.

    Xon determines that Lord Bobby is not human, but a parasitic entity capable of assuming a humanoid form while amplifying emotional instability in those around him. The destruction of the Klingon crew was not random, it was the result of tensions pushed to the breaking point.
    As the situation escalates aboard the Enterprise, Kirk confronts the entity, which insists it does not create conflict, only reveals what already exists beneath the surface.

    With the ship’s stability at risk, Kirk and Xon devise a containment strategy that isolates the entity from further interaction. After a tense pursuit through the ship, Lord Bobby is captured and secured for transport to a Federation research facility.

    As the Enterprise departs, the crew is left to consider an unsettling possibility: that the most dangerous threats are not those imposed from the outside, but those already present, waiting to be exposed.
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    9 mins
  • 11. The Savage Syndrome

    11. The Savage Syndrome
    Mar 15 2026
    Original Air Date: February 3, 1978

    After several weeks off the air during the winter break, Phase 2 returns with one of the season’s most intense and physical stories.

    The Enterprise responds to a distress call from the Federation colony on Karsia Four, where communications have suddenly ceased following reports of violent unrest among the settlers.

    When Captain Kirk leads an away team to the planet’s surface with Dr. McCoy and Xon, they discover the colony in chaos. Longtime neighbors have turned on one another, families are divided into armed factions, and the once-peaceful settlement has collapsed into brutal tribal violence.

    Investigating the cause, McCoy and Xon discover that the colony had recently installed an experimental behavioral-conditioning system designed to suppress aggression and emotional conflict. Instead of calming the population, the malfunctioning device has stripped away the psychological barriers that normally restrain humanity’s darker impulses.

    As fear and violence spread across the colony, members of the away team begin experiencing the same emotional distortions themselves.

    With time running out, Kirk and Xon must shut down the failing system while McCoy struggles to treat the colonists caught in the outbreak — before the colony destroys itself completely.

    Although the Enterprise succeeds in stopping the device, the damage to the colony’s social order may take years to repair, leaving the crew to confront the unsettling realization that civilization may rest on a far more fragile foundation than anyone wants to admit.
    Show More Show Less
    16 mins
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