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A bottle show saves money for a series, so how has Star Trek used them to great effect?
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00:00How's it going, my dudes? This video's brought to you by Squarespace today.
00:04We've all heard of bottle shows, but what exactly are they? Well, in a very simple way,
00:08it's a way to save money. You try and restrict the use of sets and other such expenses. Stick
00:13to what you already have standing there already. Now, that's not to say that every member of
00:18this list has strictly adhered to those rules, but if there's something Star Trek does very,
00:24very well, it's a bottle show. With that in mind, I'm Sean Ferrick for Trek Culture, and
00:28here are the 10 greatest Star Trek bottle episodes. Number 10, A Night in Sickbay.
00:35Full disclosure, I hate this episode. Okay, I realise that's strong words. The idea
00:41might have been cute, but the execution sets my teeth on edge. However, it's a perfect example of
00:47a bottle show, the one hailing from Enterprise. So I'm going to swallow that bile for a second.
00:51I'm going to carry on. Porthos is sick. That's enough to rally most Trekkies up in arms and save
00:55the best crewman on the ship. Dr. Phlox says that only time will tell if he'll make it,
00:59so his dutiful best friend, Captain Archer, vows to stay by his side through the night.
01:03The episode, in truth, should have been so much funnier than it ended up becoming.
01:08Archer is on edge throughout, Phlox is on full display, and we are treated to a plethora of exotic
01:15alien animal life. Though, of course, we get a happy ending. Seriously, like, can you imagine if Porthos
01:20didn't make it? Yeah, no, riots in the streets. Unfortunately, the episode falls a bit flat when
01:25all of its components come together. Still, no one can argue that it didn't save the show a bit of
01:30money. So, stuffed doggo or no, I've got to tip my cap to this episode. Number nine, Distant Voices.
01:36Distant Voices is a third season entry from Deep Space Nine. Oh, must have been trying to tighten the
01:41belt a bit that year. Though, when one considers episodes like Past Tense and The Dias Cast, it begins
01:46to make a bit more sense. This is an idea that the show would revisit several more times in its run.
01:50Empty the station, turn off all the lights, and hey presto, spooky scenery. Bashir, suffering from
01:55a Lethean psychic attack, wanders the corridors of his mind, represented by familiar locations,
02:00the standing sets. It was Ronald D. Moore's idea to set the action aboard the station, while the idea
02:05of not using regular actors was nixed early on. Andrew Robinson was delighted to play this version
02:10of Garrick, with Alexander Siddig commenting, pre-filming, that this story was a challenge,
02:14having to take the character and age him up so much, all within the confines of 44 minutes.
02:18The gamble paid off, as did the efforts of Michael Westmore. This episode won an Emmy Award for
02:23Outstanding Individual Achievement in Makeup for a Series, beating Voyager's faces to the punch.
02:28Number 8. One. One is a later episode in Voyager's fourth season, serving as an effective two-hander
02:35between Jerry Ryan and Robert Picardo. The episode's conceit sees the crew placed in stasis for a month
02:41long trip through a dangerous nebula, with only the Doctor and Seven immune to its effects. Cue hijinks!
02:46This was a heavy episode for Ryan to film, as she is effectively in every scene. As the episode
02:51progresses, her co-stars get fewer and fewer, until eventually it's just her. Director Kenneth
02:55Biller reflected that she was a pleasure to work with, was always present and ready,
02:59and managed the script despite its hyper-reliance on her. The status chamber set was a reuse of Seven's
03:05cargo bay, while the pods themselves had previously appeared in The Thaw and Resolutions,
03:09another cost-saving technique as the season prepared to ramp up for the finale, Hope and Fear. A fun
03:14production fact saw the filming for one run late one evening on the 26th of February 98,
03:19only to begin filming again in the morning, while production on the series finale had to patiently
03:23wait for the lead actors to get out of burn makeup from this episode. Number 7. The Doomsday Machine.
03:29The Doomsday Machine is a slight outlier on this list, as it featured new sets that debut,
03:35yet all of the action takes place, bar effects, on board the two ships Enterprise and Constellation,
03:40with a few key moments featuring a shuttlecraft as well. So much of the story revolves around
03:44Decker's fallout from the Planet Killer's consumption of his crew, as well as Kirk's
03:48attempts to retake his ship from afar, that it finds itself here. Saying that, the redesigned
03:52engineering set appears for the first time here, as does the antechamber where Kirk spends most of
03:57the episode. The Doomsday Machine is iconic for its depiction of the huge space sock sucking up
04:02planets and repelling phaser fire, but the core of the story centres on Decker's descent into madness,
04:07battling with Spock as he goes. Kirk displays his cam as he pilots the Constellation into the
04:11Maw of the Machine. All of this, of course, takes place on either the standing set of the Enterprise
04:16Bridge, or this new chamber. Number 6. Time Squared. The fun thing about Time Squared is how it
04:22handles time travel. In almost all cases before this episode, time travel was simply a means to an end,
04:28whales or no whales. Here, however, there is a tangible effect on Picard as he travels into the past,
04:33including nausea, dizziness and death. The last one may have come from the other Picard's phaser,
04:37it's not important. What's important here is that the central idea, Picard goes six hours back in time,
04:43is fascinating. Never before had such a short hop back in time been explored, thus adding a level
04:47of tension to events as the clock is an awful lot shorter than we'd been used to. There is a version
04:53of the story that would have seen this as a prequel to Q Who. Maurice Hurley felt that the episode was
04:58weaker for the removal of Q as the cause, feeling that the Enterprise simply flying into the
05:02Mobius was an anticlimactic ending. This, then, is one of the tantalising hints that the Q arc we
05:08would have seen through The Next Generation's second season. Number 5. Magic to make the sanest
05:14man go mad. This one, according to producer Aaron Harberts, was designed to save money,
05:18let there be no doubt about that. The time loop was a handy way of keeping all of the action in a
05:23set amount of spaces without having to consistently add new locales. This also allows the episode to
05:28play with the form. In a move similar to The Next Generation's cause and effect, this episode locks
05:33the characters into a time loop, gradually becoming aware, or at least having Stamets retain his
05:37knowledge, along with Rainn Wilson's returning Harry Mudd. The episode, for all of its cost saving,
05:42ends up being one of the more enjoyable and certainly one of the more silly episodes in
05:46Discovery's first season. Hindsight adds a slightly savage satisfaction in seeing Lorca bumped off the
05:51mortal coil again and again, but to expand there would venture into spoiler territory. Anthony Rapp
05:56commented that the episode was a frantic one to film, with many moving parts. The party scene alone
06:01took four days to complete, so even with the show setting firmly in the bottle show camp, it wasn't
06:06necessarily the quickest turnaround of a script in Star Trek history. Number 4. The Adversary. Closing
06:11out DS9's third season is the paranoid thriller The Adversary. While there have been other plans for
06:17the season's end that had to be put on hold, though would eventually surface as Homefront and Paradise Lost,
06:22this show, set almost exclusively aboard the Defiant, truly ratchets up the threat of the Changelings.
06:28Lawrence Pressman returned to Deep Space Nine, having previously appeared as to Kenny Gamore,
06:32as Ambassador Krajenski, at least to start with. The episode borrows from The Thing From Another World,
06:37the 1951 adaptation of John W. Campbell Jr.'s Who Goes There. The isolation, along with the very real
06:43threat that the co-opted Defiant poses, helps to build the tension throughout. The episode also builds on
06:49the premise that no changeling has ever harmed another, a phrase that had been repeated several
06:53times through the series' third season. Odo and Krajenski's final fight in engineering sets one of
06:58the largest plot threads in Star Trek history into motion, not least with the final warning,
07:03you are too late, we are everywhere. That the episode achieves its aims while barely leaving the
07:08Defiant's confines is a triumph. Number 3. Where Silence Has Lease. Where Silence Has Lease is an early
07:15episode of The Next Generation's second season, featuring a vocal performance from The Terminator's
07:20Earl Bowen as the ghostly apparition of Nagilam. Though the episode features Nebulae, Holes in Space
07:25and Romulan Warbirds, it never truly leaves the Enterprise's sets. Director Winrith Colby was
07:31introduced to Star Trek in this outing and would go on to direct such episodes as All Good Things.
07:36He found the restriction of having to film primarily on the bridge challenging. As he described it,
07:41visiting the bridge was exciting. Remaining on the bridge was dull. Tan walls, that carpet,
07:46and not much space to move. This pushed him into more choreography than had previously been seen
07:51on the ship, as well as playing with the effects to keep things interesting. When Riker and Worf board
07:56the Yamato, the background hum of the bridge noises is slightly off, signifying that all is not well on
08:02board the ship. Showrunner Morris Hurley was pleased with how the episode played out, enjoying that it pushed
08:07the scientific sides of these characters a little further than an encounter with the Ferengi or even
08:11the Borg may have done. Number 2, Lower Decks. Lower Decks is an episode that has such a strong legacy
08:18that it can sometimes be easy to forget it was a bottle show. The next generation's seventh season
08:22is dotted with gems, if perhaps the year overall meandered here and there. Lower Decks is a particular
08:28highlight and Shannon Phil's almost final turn as Cito Jaxa stands above all else. Though the action rarely
08:34leaves the Enterprise in this episode, switching the focus to these junior officers allowed audiences
08:39a fresh glance at the inner workings of the flagship. We were already familiar with Nurse Ogawa and of
08:44course Cito, but all five, let's not forget Ben, of these people stand out. The episode is of course
08:49most famous for its crushing finale, but stands as a perfect example of how to handle a cost saving
08:54exercise and still deliver on the promise of exploration and interpersonal relationships. Though the
09:00mean folk over on Star Trek Lower Decks seem to have confirmed Cito's death, we still cling to
09:05no body, no death. So here, for now, Cito still lives, perhaps having adventures in the shuttle with her
09:10new Cardassian friend. One can but dream. Number 1, Shuttlepod 1. Shuttlepod 1 has taken on a life of
09:18its own, with dramatic readings of the script to mark the episode's anniversary and an entire podcast
09:23featuring Conor Trenier and Dominic Keating, but the original episode was intended to be a small-scale
09:28event. Small-scale, that is, in that only six of the show's main cast members appear on screen. The
09:33bulk of the story takes place in the eponymous craft, with the audience watching Tripp and Reed
09:37grow their beards, wrap up in blankets and comment on their colleague's bums, while oxygen levels drop.
09:42The episode is perhaps best remembered for truly humanizing Reed, who until that point had been a
09:48little rigid in his role as tactical officer. Here, we learned that he was, in fact, a raging Lothario
09:53back on Earth. Tripp listens to him record his various goodbye letters to his various lovers,
09:57and both character and audience alike are a bit shocked. As often happens with bottle shows,
10:02this installment became a favorite of cast and fans alike. Manikoto wrote a reference to this story
10:07into the script for Similitude, the third season episode that broke hearts worldwide, with Keating
10:12in particular citing this episode as his favorite outing.
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10:58For all of you asking such questions as, Sean, where the hell is cause and effect? We've got to
11:02have a second list, don't we? So let us know what you would like to see in the comments below. And
11:06don't forget to get in touch with us over on Twitter at trekkulture. We're on Blue Sky and we're on
11:10TikTok as well at trekkulture. We're on Instagram at trekkultureyt. I am of course at Sean Ferrick
11:16on the various socials. And our lovely editor Tom is at Tom C Finn on the various socials too. You
11:20look after yourself until I'm talking to you again. And if you need to save a bit of money, you never
11:24know, might end up being one of the most favourite things people have ever seen you do. What a strange
11:30way to end this video. Live long and prosper folks. Thanks.
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