The Greatest Generation - A Hat Big Enough For The Occasion (S4E10)

Episode Date: November 9, 2016

When Troi’s special power slips away from her, she wastes no time in throwing in the towel. It’s looking like the crew will need to get by with Guinan as the counselor. What’s up with communicator continuity in this episode? Is this the right bag to pack twelve iPads in? It’s the episode where we find out how pollination works, but also that Ben is kind of an idiot.

Priority 1 message from Starfleet coming in on Secured Channel. Hey friends of Disodo. Before today's episode, we just wanted to take a moment to talk about the historic labor actions being taken by writers and actors in the American Film and Television industry. If you're a fan of the work done by the people who make Star Trek, we hope you'll join us in standing in solidarity with the folks who actually bring these adventures to life. Over the past several years, the AMPTP, the organization that represents the American Film and Television Production Studios, have reduced the profit from movies and TV going to workers. And in so doing,

they've attempted to weaken the labor unions that represent those workers. They wouldn't even engage the unions on many issues in their negotiations. And so a strike was the only course of action to take. Adam, Wendy and I have been having a lot of internal discussions about how best to stand with the unions and we are continuing those conversations in a dynamic situation. We're doing our best to understand where the picket lines are in these digital spaces,

and we would never intentionally cross one. With the information we have, we feel like we can do more good talking about and supporting the strike and continuing our show as planned. We'll keep you informed about what all this means for greatest trek specifically. Today we're making a contribution to the Entertainment Community Fund. This fund exists to help all the people whose livelihoods have been put on hold because the AMPTP refuses to negotiate

in good faith with the unions. It provides financial support for writers, actors, and all the thousands of laborers who make the shows that we talk about here and without whom we wouldn't have Star Trek to cast pot about. Those folks are all out of work because billionaires, company shareholders, and the executives of these companies don't want to compromise on the length of their yachts. We hope you'll join us in supporting entertainment workers in a challenging time, especially after they've already endured several years of challenges brought on by the pandemic

and season two of Star Trek Picard. We've set up a page where you can also contribute. It's at friendsofdecotoforlabor.com. That's friendsofdececoto for Labor.com. That's FriendsOfDecoto for Labor.com. Link in the episode description. Okay, now let's get on with the show. Here's to the finest crew in Starfleet. Engage! Welcome to the greatest generation, a Star Trek podcast by a couple of guys who are a little bit embarrassed to have a Star Trek podcast. I'm Ben Harrison.

I'm Adam Pranaka. And we are your hosts. That's right. What you got here is a Star Trek podcast, embarrassed guys. It's all the ingredients. It's what it says on the tin. Now what we do is we're reviewing the entire series, right? It's true.

We are almost to the halfway mark. Yeah, a lot of people want to know what we're going to do when we're done with the series. What do you want to do, Ben? I'm proposing a seququest DSV podcast. You don't want to just go regular Sequest? No. No.

I have said this a couple of places. I think that there are kind of three paths that I see as, well, there's four paths. One is that we just stop. One is that we... For the good of the nation, we's four paths. One is that we just stop. One is that we... For the good of the nation, we just stop this. Yeah. One is that we go to the end and then go back to the beginning and start again, which I love from a craziness standpoint, but I worry would, you know, like this is too many layered

inside jokes as it is, and that could just be a problem. And then the other two options are either we do deep space nine and then Voyager or we start to do everything in order where it's like order of air date, deep space nine episodes, intermingled with TNG episodes. Co-mingling. Yeah, which I kind of like that idea from, I don't know, just it appeals to me in some ways. In other ways, it doesn't, but. Slamming it on an SD version of the show

made me really think about doing the other series where HD is not a possibility. Yeah. Kind of bummed me out. Oh, buddy. Are they ever going to, I mean, is that just off the table? Are they, are they ever going to up res? The other series? I am surprised that they up-resged TNG. I mean, it must have cost a fortune. We didn't deserve that. Go back into the archives and re-transfer all of the 35-millimeter film re-edit everything and then recreate all of the special effects.

If they had known that our podcast was going to exist, I think they would have made a different choice. Yeah, they wouldn't have wanted to show us that much detail on the knuck. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I'm not ready to make a decision about that now, but it is something I'm thinking about. And fortunately, we have another almost year

to come to a decision. That's true. This is gonna be season four, episode 10, The Lost. The first YouTube of every star, we officer, it's gonna come by and do the truth. Don't go through all that, don't go through. We start with a, uh, kind of like a low rent doctor crusher type in therapy. Ben, this is, this is some peak 90s mom hair on this person. If we've ever seen it, she, uh, I feel like they brought this, this wig to Gates McFadden and were like, eh, eh, eh, eh,

and she's like, no, I like the three wigs that I have. Thank you very much. You give that mom wig to somebody else. I feel like this woman went to the hairstylist and asked for the mom from home improvement cut. Yeah. And they gave it to her. They should, that's for sure.

I want to look like I pronounced it Volvo. So she is one of counselor choice patients and they are in counselor choice psychology room, right? Casa de Therapy. This therapist office looks like the area in a casino between the lobby and the buffet like oh, yeah, there's that big blue glass wall and and some fake plants Maybe they used to have Kino in here, but not anymore. They got that long wavy couch Yeah, they do have that long wavy couch. That looks like one of those things where it's really a bunch of couch segments, and you can kind of configure it

in whatever way if you want it. What do you think is the craziest couch you could get away with and still be a credible therapist? Like, could you rock Lipscouch in a therapy context and be taken seriously? What about giant couch like in the, uh, lamb chop universe? Oh man, all the great couch has been. This has been Star Trek couch cast. The hot on the heels of Star Trek Haircast.

Yeah. This woman is in therapy because her husband bought the farm about a year ago and she thinks she's hot shit, but she really has no defense for Troy's therapy skills. Like, she's sitting there trying to play it off. Like, I have no ongoing psychoemotional struggles. And Troy's like, she kind of morries her, you know? She's like, well, actually, after your husband died, you thought you got rid of all his belongings. But we have a special guest.

And a... Luxbridge music box. He comes out from backstage The woman is she's wrecked. Yeah, it turns out you are the mother of this music box Yeah, what is it with people that have lost a spouse that this music box thing is like they're only solace You've been therapy thing is like they're only solace. You've been therapyed. Troy just walks, gets up from the couch and walks out. Yeah, she knocks a, knocks a water base over, flips the table and leaves. Got another one. This is all happening and we cut to the bridge and Picard and Riker and Warf

Just doing some some your basic bridge business when they start to pick shit up on the sensors and they're like hmm Senses indicate a vast field of A watered out. It's gone. Oh, now they're gone. And they keep picking things up and pick cards like, all right, let's bring the ship to a stop and figure out, is this a problem with our sensors? Is there really something out there? What's going on?

It feels a little bit like a negulum trap. Because that was just a move. It does. Yeah. And it's a weird trap too, because like, from this point on, they don't have any censored glitches. Like they're not still talking about getting

like weird readings after this. But they cut back to Troy giving her client an add a girl as she heads out from the end of her. You know, she does that thing where she like looks at her wristwatch and she goes, oh, well, that's actually 45 minutes. So I'll be seeing you same time next week. She sees the light at the back of the club and she's like, oh, that's my time. Thanks a lot.

Yeah, drops the mic. She kind of like, she has a little petty mall seizure almost. Diana, are you alright? What? What? You faded out there for a second. Oh no, no, I'm fine. I'm just very tired, that's all. You know how you just spent 45 minutes telling you to face your problems and not try and brush it off? I'm not going to follow that advice myself. I'm a fucking professional here. I appear to have taken the Hippocratic Oaks. Lee.

Okay, headphones off, I'm going to take off. The studio audience was there for that one. I know. I don't know why when I do a joke like that. You can't predict the behavior of a studio audience, that's for sure. Yeah, they are, MIA, for my shit. You get the cricket audience, that's what sure. Yeah, they are, MIA, for my shit. You get the cricket audience, that's what you get. Yeah.

They're like, all right, well, this seems to have been a sensor glitch. Let's be feet, let's get out of here. We got ubers to do, we got a distress signals to respond to. Let's get out of here. We get a pick up a card's dry cleaning from that last mission, where his uniform got all fucked up. Yeah, so

They tell the the new Helmswomen. It was actually I think she was on Helm in the last episode too The same extra the give her a ton to do this episode Almost as if like she is to be a a viable Wesley replacement like right She does not get the one throwaway security random scene where she says something about being confused and then we never see her again. Like, she has a good dozen lines of dialogue in the show. Yeah, she's a, absolutely a featured player

in this episode. Yeah. But it doesn't make a big impression, I didn't think. Like, while they give her a lot to say, Yeah, but it doesn't make a big impression. I didn't I didn't think like They didn't like while they give her a lot to say they don't give her any character as such right, right? So they step on the gas and They're stuck stuck in the mud once again and they're baffled and as as they express their bafflement we cut back to the therapy office and Troy is like, is torment. She's like in up-spridge levels of pain and she's like...

She's almost fooling you, right? Yeah. She's stumbling around. She radios up the doctor and the doctor's like, yeah everybody's got a headache right now, like, cool your boots. That's what happens when a banger gets dropped. People get headaches. She did something that I've not really noticed up to this point in the show that I just wanted to call out because I saw it twice in this episode, which is she taps her communicator badge and says,

try to doctor, I got some business for you. And then she taps it again as though to like, switch it off. Hmm. And that made me wonder, has every time somebody has tapped a communicator badge before now and not tapped it again to switch it off, they just left the line open?

Boy, that's a fun way to rewatch the series. Like, what if everybody on the other end of that communication can hear what, you know, Riker is saying right now, or what he's up to on the holodeck? If someone were to keep track of all of those clicks, it turns out that like, when people think they're clicking it on, they're actually clicking it off and they're talking to no one. Yeah, yeah. I don't know. It's just something I thought. It's communicator continuity. It's what you're talking about here.

Right, you just need to let him in. They decided to add a new mechanic to the communicator that hasn't been there before. Like the communicator used to be smart enough to switch off presumably. I don't know. I don't know, I don't know. I don't know. All right, well, this has been the greatest generation.

Tune in next week. I almost feel like Marina Certis is like Certis. Oh, no, you're going to get in trouble. I almost feel like Marina Certis, like, knows she's getting an episode where she's the, she's at the top of the cast list and she's like, I gotta start making some decisions. Decisions with respect to continuity, especially. So I'm gonna start hitting my communicator all willy-nilly. Yeah. What's going on here, Adam? What is a foot? The enterprise has wandered into some quicksand.

Some space quicksand. Is the deal, right? Some two-dimensional space quicksand. Yeah, they got gotta grab a space fine to try and get out of this predicament. What you wanna do when you get into quicksand is life flat with your arms and legs out. Yeah, you don't wanna move around that much. The more you move, the deeper you go. But yeah, it's like, so there's this two-dimensional

lifeform or series of lifeforms that they're caught in the flow of and they like they send a probe out to look down from like a god shot on the enterprise and They like put a bunch of filters on the camera and they and they get a get a look at these particles and they're They're pushing them and there's just nothing they can do to extract the enterprise from this flow. Like they're straining the engines against this and they're just stuck. Yeah, every time they try to break free, it ends up coming close to destroying the ship. So they kill the engine and they just sort of like a car

going through a car wash. They sort of throw it in a neutral and they stop fighting it and they just sort of go with the flow. This coincides with Troy discovering that her headache is not just any She has lost her ability to empath with people. She's going around complaining about, I mean, it's like losing a sixth sense. She feels genuinely disabled in this episode. And I think that it was interesting to see a character go through that in a kind of an emotionally authentic way. You know, I think that we've had some interesting stuff from Jordy on the idea of a character in a super advanced future who has a, who nonetheless has a disability. Troy is like in this episode is,

it's all about her coping with the onset of disability and it's like she is having a full-blown freak out like the entire time and says a lot of things about like what it's like that I think, I don't know, rang true to me. I mean, I haven't ever gone through this before, but it seemed like it wasn't just written by people who have no idea what they're talking about. Yeah, her description of what it feels like for her doesn't, isn't a good look for her, I think, because how she describes it is everyone around her

has been reduced into two-dimensional movie theater standings of themselves. She's like, so the deal is, I can't sense any of your emotions and that makes you nothing to me. You're just caricatures, you're just like caricatures. You're just like a face. Yeah, she's like you know how most episodes I'm just a reasonably attractive woman who is obsessed with chocolate and that's all there is about me. That's how you are all now to me. Oh man, yeah, she really turns the table, doesn't she?

Yeah, and you know, that's a legitimate grievance that she's got there. It is. I thought the timing was really unique in how this episode plays out. So she loses her powers, she goes to Six Bay and talks to Beverly. We know up to now that Beverly and her best friends. Yeah. And, uh, and, and, and, and, and, and, and do sexy leotard workouts together. Yeah. And it feels like Beverly is not being her friend and instead being a, being a Polaski-like doctor with her in terms of her hopes for getting her powers back.

with her in terms of her hopes for getting her powers back. Troy is like, oh, like occasionally I'll get sick and my powers won't be like they should be and they come right back, right doc? These are gonna come back, right? And Beverly is like, well, I think you should probably prepare for the worst. Almost to make it any promises. Like, bedside manner leaves a little bit to be desired at this point, especially from

someone who's supposed to be your friend. Yeah, well, and they deal a lot with this, right? Like they talk about how doctors often make the worst patients and how, I mean, they definitely address the fact that she's kind of coming from a very hypocritical angle given the kind of work she does. Like she's not accepting anybody's offers of talking to a other qualified psychologist on board. Like there's other people that could help her through this journey.

Like the only person she ever really relents and accepts even some sympathy from is Riker. And... But that's after initially, rebuffing him. Right. Pretty strongly. And so like, she's melting down.

Like she goes to the captain and lets him know, like she can't do the gig anymore and he's like what are you talking about like you can do the gig just fine just because you don't have a superpower that makes you extra good at it doesn't mean you can't be the counselor. She goes into the captain's office and instead of putting a badge and a gun on the desk. I can't be your potted plant anymore, Captain. Do you think it's weird that it was basically a day, a day later, she quits her job? Yeah, well, I think that's really weird. And the other thing that's really weird is that almost no consideration is given to the idea that it has anything to do

with the environmental factors that have the ship trapped. Yeah. Like nobody raises that as a possibility. And it's like, that's strange, right? Like it's onset immediately coincided with them getting stuck in this mud. And, and you, you would think that they would have at least raised the potential of it, right? It's almost as if the doctor assumed that it happened during the fall, like during the banger. But at no point did

Deanna express that she had hit her head on a glass table or anything. Like that wasn't part of, that was not part of the symptoms that she presented to the doctor. Yeah, well this is a very inexpensive episode. Yeah, yeah, this is- When they don't even go so far as breaking a glass table, you know you get a cheeky. This is a cheap ass bottle episode. This is a plastic bottle episode. Ben, if you were to lose a skill of yours that had a reasonable chance of returning to you, do you think you would quit your profession like 24 hours later?

I mean, I think about it all the time. I feel like I would give it a week. I'd give it a week, you know? Okay, yeah, give it a week. And Diana's supposed to be the hopeful one. Yeah. I don't buy it. Also, word gets out that she has submitted her two weeks notice to the captain. When Gainon, they don't show this, but I'm sure that when Gainon catches wind of this,

she goes and puts on her extra big hat, because she is wearing, by far, the biggest Gainon hat we have seen yet. It's a hat big enough for the occasion. Yeah, so Troy is like chilling in 10 forward. There's a pretty funny scene where Guyden like walks up behind her and Troy is totally shocked because she has no bitey sense anymore. Like, uh. Do you mean you startle you? That's all right. I'm getting used to it. Guinin gives her like a fresh cup of coffee and sits down and goes like,

hey, like, uh, think I'm gonna, think I'm gonna take your job. I think I'm gonna go for it. And, you know, like everything Guinin does, it has like an ulterior motive of getting the person she's talking to to like get their thinking onto her level. Yeah.

And it really, it really, because Troy's reaction is like, you can't just, you can't just be a counselor, you gotta go to counseling school. You gotta get some years under your belt. You're a fucking bartender, Gainin. What the hell? And Gainin starts to like, therapist or intro. I see your little game. I know what you're trying to do. Gainin's like, you've been there. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And this ends basically with Troy being like pretty upset. Like annoyed that, you

know, like she's, she's on her high horse like getting out of this gig, but really annoyed at the idea that Gainin is going to be taking her place, you know. We've said it before, Gainin would make a great counselor. I think so. But yeah, I mean, it's like, maybe it's like that kind of thing where you don't want, you know, if you're bidding for a gig and some other production company that you are aware of, lands it, you're like, fuck,

like I know they're gonna do a great job. Yeah. And I'm never gonna hear from that client now because they're always gonna go to these guys. Yeah. There's an entertainment value to Gynon's therapy that I don't think DNA Troy can stand up to. Like, Gynon is sort of the doctor-fraiser crane of therapists.

Like, she could do it in public and entertain people. She's so good at it. And I think Troy's form of therapy is much more vanilla, I guess. Yeah. Despite her obsession with chocolate. I see what you did there. This is around when the stakes get raised, which is that the ship is, they're looking out the front of the ship and they discover that in the path that this two-dimensional flow is taking them on is...

What is it? Cosmic string segment? Is that what they call it? Yeah. A cosmic string? No wider than a proton, but with gravitational fields as powerful as a black hole. Two-dimensional beings seem to be caught in the gravitational pull of the string. Their course is taking them directly toward it and us right along with it. This cosmic string is not played by Idris Elba, though, unfortunately.

It's just as deadly, though. Yeah. We got an elastic product. You know what that means? That means when people can go elsewhere and get the print in and copy and done, they're going to do it. You act like we got an everlasting product and we don't. They start to get like panicky where they're like, uh, shoot some torpedoes at it. Which it feels like a totally natural reaction to me. Like, yeah. A lot of times

their actions during an emergency seem too sensible to read as realistic. Like they're very patient most of the time when disaster is looming. And at this point, what they're doing by shooting torpedoes at it feels like something I would do. Like shoot it and let's get out of here. Unfortunately, it doesn't work.

Yeah. So that doesn't work. Yeah. So that doesn't work and we cut back to Troy and she's like trying to pack up her office and this is when we learned that Troy has like 700 iPads. Is this really the right bag to be packing 12-I-Pads in? Yeah, it looks like it's gonna be a tight fit. I think that there's even a part where she attempts to close it and it doesn't get all the way closed. Somewhere between now and the 24th century,

something big happened in the world of luggage, where they just stopped caring about form or function or comfort. To me, we went out of business. Yeah. You got to hand sport went out of business. You got the roundee that we've seen a bunch of times, the roundee, plastic, duffel, and then you've got this halibut and metal suitcase that that choice carting around.

So she gets called into the ready room and Picard's like, I know that you're trying to quit, but I need you in data to work out a plan here. And she's like, fine, fuck. He's trying to leave in peace. And so she agrees to this and she goes into the observation and then starts talking to data. And she gets kind of struck with inspiration in talking to him and

She's like these are life forms. This is two-dimensional flow that we're caught in as a life form and we've been worried that oh like they're gonna get dragged into this cosmic string with us, but maybe Maybe they're not moving toward it because they're caught in its gravity. Maybe they're like a moth to the flame and we can, what if we could make a better flame for them to go to go be attracted to. So this is a pretty funny scene because she gets like on a roll and she's like, sorry do you want me to shut up and he's like, no, like this is great. Normally you don't say anything at all.

Yeah, please continue. What if they've chosen a course to the Cosmic String? A case of pure stimulus response, driven by instinct, just like the mouth to a flame. You should do this more often, you're not bad at it. Like, if data had to hack Troy's password, like he doesn't have enough vocal information to do an impression of her voice, she's spoken so little throughout the series.

Yeah, so the plan is they're gonna use the deflector dish to make a echo of the cosmic string. They turn the deflector dish into the speaker from the beginning of the back to the future. I thought it's a fun idea, right? Right. And they have Marty McFly down in deflector control. Drop a G on that electric guitar. And it works like there's enough turbulence

in the two-dimensional beings that they're able to break free and like just the second they break free, Troy is like, you know, all of her senses come flooding back to her and she's like, oh, this is great. It wasn't actually their certain doom that they were heading to at all. That's where they wanted to be. The cosmic string was never dangerous to them. It was the one place in the galaxy they most wanted to be. The end. Well, it's not quite the end. Not the end. There's like a hang where she and Riker and Gynon are kicking it on the at 10 forward. Oh, and I think

Beverly is probably there. Yeah, yeah, she is because there's sort of a, uh, you guys, I was a real jerk to all of you. I'm sorry. Yeah. And then, uh, I think Riker, uh, is looking to get some booty out of this situation. She's like, she was like, uh, no, you were, you were pretty hard on me there at the beginning. Yeah, Riker goes in for a kiss, which seems fairly strange, given their relationship. Right. Well, I mean, I think he was maybe more instrumental than Gynon in kind of getting her to I think he was like maybe more instrumental than Gainon in kind of getting her to stop, you know,

stop the feeling bad for herself, festival. Yeah. And the way he did it was being like, like, he's her closest friend on the ship and he was like, he was not sugarcoding the situation for, you know. Mm-hmm. And that's why he doesn't get any,issies at the end, but I think it... Get sugar, give sugar. Yeah, but I think it was the kind of like tough love that she needed in that moment, you know. Yeah. Do you feel like Troy's crankiness about her circumstance is a purely female trait on this show? I was thinking about that as I was watching it. Like, if

if a similar, well, this also coincides with another point that I want to make, which is like, this season seems definitely about lost to me. Like, Picard with the Borg, Warf's loss of honor, and the death of his girlfriend. Like, Ashara Yare, betraying, data's friendship, West leaving. Like these are examples of loss. And now Troy gets in that bat in the loss league. And her reaction to it is so different from anyone else's. Like she falls apart completely in a way that the male characters who have had to deal with it

haven't really. I mean I guess save for Picard in the vineyard, but yeah, but Troy plays it out professionally and in front of everyone in public in a way that Picard doesn't. Like it's one thing to fall apart in front of family. That's pretty much the safest place you can do it. But in a professional context, Troy is the one who cries at her desk. Right. This is, yeah, somebody sent us like a medium article on Twitter about the, the remember me episode where everybody's disappearing. Yeah. And how it was like a very interesting

perspective on the episode basically saying like despite the fact that everything that the doctor is saying sounds crazy, like everybody believes her like instinctively and that's actually a pretty radical thing from a like women in the workplace perspective like women's complaints often get kind of disregarded or downgraded. So and and and they're saying like you know Dr. Crusher essentially has Picard's complete trust that she what she's experiencing is real right up to the end of that episode, which is something we didn't notice, but somebody did and wrote this big article about it. I don't know where I was going with that, but I guess...

I think we did discuss a little bit, but just in the context of Beverly's relationship with Picard and less about its depiction of gender credibility. We didn't go quite that far into it. The other thing I wanted to talk about was just like, I mean, everybody keeps going like, maybe you should get into some therapy. I know it's like not your first instinct, but maybe that's the right thing. She is so resistant to it.

And I think that we've seen a bunch of that. Like the Lieutenant Barkley episode, like he's really freaked out about going to therapy too, which is weird because why would like one of the most highly ranked officers on the ship be a therapist if everybody in the future is terrified of talking about their feces. Like it's a it's a strange, I mean like they seem more resistant to it than the average person in my life. But then again, I live in New York. So

what everybody's in therapy. I mean, is the through line that they're not that they're telegraphing, but they're not talking about is that they're all Scientologists? Yeah, they never show them with the, uh, with the cans, but the can you can assume they're there. The cans are just out of frame. Did you like this episode Ben? I did. I think it's not a great episode but and I have some misgivings about the story arc for Troy but I thought Raina's services performance was really good, and she really like brought a lot to it,

and you know, they gave her a lot to do, and she more than, more than stepped up to the plate, and I feel like it's been a long time coming. It's asking a lot to get an actor to just fall apart the way she does in one scene in particular, where she is with with freaks. And there's a certain amount of, I think, vanity you have and you're asked to just like to ugly cry the way that she does.

And I admire her performance for that reason, you know. Like up until now, she's been the bridge officer in the body suit. And now I think she's more of a developed character than she's ever been. Totally. Welcome to the show, Councillor Troy. Four seasons, 10 episodes in. Feel like we know who you are now.

A greatest-gen live show is something you don't want to miss. Why? Well, it's a great opportunity to see me and Ben in person, but that's not all. FODs from all over gather at these shows to cosplay, to do pre and post show hangs, to make friends, and share their embarrassment. Hey, let's make a pretty great name for a tour. Let's do it! The Share Your Embarrassment Tour is coming in August 2023, and we've got a bunch of dates in a lot of great places. Go to GreatestGenTour.com to get more info.

That's GreatestGenTour.com to get more info. That's GreatestGenTour.com for dates and ticketing information for the Share Your Embarrassment Tour. I'm Jordan Morris. And I'm Jesse Thorne. On Jordan Jesse Go, we make pure, delightful nonsense. We were open awesome guests and bring them down to our level. We get stupid with Judy Greer. My friend Molly and I call it having the spaceweirds. Pat Noswald. Could I get a ball-rock burger and some air-gorn fries? Thank you.

And Camille Nangeani. I've come back with cat toothbrushes, which is impossible to use. Come get stupider with us at MaximumFun.org. Look, your podcast apps are open. Just pull it out. Give Jordan Jesse Goatry. Being smart is hard. Be dumb instead. Oh, rats, hey, hey, I'm about to count you in mine.

These clouds are really freaking me out. I hate having to stand in line and boy, what do I? These giraffes do not smell good. No, they do not, and they've such short nacks. But I'm hearing we need to get on this arc. We've got to get on the arc. It is about to rain about a story of humanity. Hey, oh, sorry, sorry, sorry.

Are you Noah? Yeah, I know we look like humans. We're actually, we're podcasters. We are podcasters, so it's different. Have you heard of Ono Ross and Carrie? We investigate spirituality, claims of the paranormal, stuff like that. And you have a boat and say the world's gonna end, so seem like something for us to check out.

We would love to be on the boats. We came two by two. What do you think? Oner Ross & Kerry, available on MaximumFun and Outorg. Hey Ben, you want to check to see if we have any priority one messages? I think that's a good idea. Priority one message from Starfleet coming in on Secured Channel. Need a supplemental uncle.

Supplement? Supplement. Supplement. Yes, extra. The interest alone could be enough to buy this ship. Adam, we have a first of a couple of priority 1 messages here. And this one is a personal message it is from Richard Dodson to Ben Conner and here's how it reads it says today is your B day and this

message is my gift you aren't going to see this on your B day so tonight at your party you'll think I'm a dick for not having gotten you anything Then you'll see this and you're going to feel bad I hope the excitement of seeing your name on a pod while riding your bike to work doesn't cause you to run to a car Wow very much come wait a second. Oh I guess because they're viewers right?'s how he wrote it all as C. Yeah. I'm not quite as smart as Richard. Richard gets our references better than we do.

Yeah. I like this form of friendship. I feel like this is very similar to how I treat my friends, with a bunch of teasing and a bunch of manipulation about expectations. Yeah, fun. Well, happy birthday Ben. That sounds like you got good people in your life. Richard says that he thinks Ben's gonna think he's a dick, but he is most definitely a Richard. That was terrible and I'm sorry.

Well, the studio audience liked it. Oh yeah, they're behind me, 100%. We have another one Adam, do we not? We do. So we have a message here for my Peruvian princess from her incredibly attractive husband. There are no character limits on from and for I've noticed Here's the message to the naked Peruvian princess doing her hair and pretending to ignore this nerdy podcast Yes, Jesse. This is for you. Happy 40th birthday. I hope to experience many more with you

Yes, Papa is giving you butt sex tonight, so prepare for it. Who is that gift for? Really? I don't know. It really sounds much more like it's from an incredibly attractive husband. Yeah. Oh, Jesse, I'm sorry. Well, to me, this sounds like a lady who is excited about getting butt sex from Papa. Yeah. Either that or a woman who is trapped in a marriage with a man who does not understand her at all.

Yeah. Mr. Attractive Husband, make sure you have consent for that butt sex leader. Yeah, I want riker levels of butt sex consent before any of this goes down, but assuming that that is all in place, happy birthday Jesse. A little bit behind the curtain of this one. This is our first priority one message where we were asked, are you comfortable reading this one? And emphatically we both were like, yes, obviously. Good times. If you would like to leave a priority one message and test our limits, you can go to MaximumFund.org slash JemboTronon. It's $100 for a personal and $200 for a commercial message. Sorry to the birthday boy and the birthday girl

for just revealing the price tag of your gift. Ha ha ha ha. Oh, is that all it costs? I was made to believe that that sort of activity was far more expensive. Ha ha ha ha. Well, it amortizes Adam. Once you've used the butt plug a few times, the price really starts to go down. Hey, Pan.

What's that, Adam? Did you find yourself a drunk Shimoda? Drunk Shimoda! I'd be curious to hear yours first, Adam. I haven't done that to you in a while, but... Yeah, Shimoto Tableturn. That is, Drunk Shimoto is the character, actor or moment in the episode that we find as being the most incongruent or strange or amusing to us. We call these moments out as a way of honoring our favorite bit part in the series, Jim

Shumoto from episode 2. I think I didn't really struggle to come up with one for this episode, and it was a toss up to me between 90s mom and Wes's replacement, because to me, they gave Wes's replacement so much to do, and I felt, I kept feeling like it was going somewhere, like, okay, like, eventually we are going to get something out of her character that we'll be able to latch onto. We never get that. I have expected her to be killed somehow too, because they also do that as an effective way to set something up. That never happened. And so it just felt like an empty character, and I'm wondering if she's going to be in episodes coming up. Like, yeah, I don't know.

So I guess my Shimoda is the wasted opportunity of maybe developing something here with the new Helmsman. Like, why not? Yeah, I mean, presumably you have space in the budget to have there be a character, right? Yeah, and again, like, Column Meanie is in the corner of like drumming his fingers on the transporter pad. Like, Jesus Christ guys like

I haven't been in I haven't been in the last eight episodes like and you're giving you're giving this new person like 20 lines of dialogue come on Good point you so far all you've given me in season four is some weird kayaking backstory Is this a break? Yeah, you managed to have right, right, a scene where I had to get into a wetsuit and then take part of it off. Do you know how difficult it is to get into a wet, wet suit? I think I'm going to give my drunk shimota to the deceased husband of 90s mom. Why that weird music box? Why does that last personal effect left on the ship?

Were those his ashes? Do we ever see what was in the box? No, but it made music when she opened it. So I'm assuming that there's a mechanism in there of some kind. You'd imagine the up-spridge PTSD for Troy is going to be pretty heavy at that moment. Like even having a music box around is going to be terrifying. For like a year, she said, like she, she like, specially took this and kept it in her office for a year.

That's gonna be like a telltale heart. Like, every time she's in her office alone, she's just knows that there's a music box in that cupboard. Waiting to, waiting to be turned on and poison her mind. I think it's pretty strange that she took it upon herself to basically steal someone's personal possession and store it for a year. Yeah. We don't have a problem with that. I don't know. The lady seemed really appreciative, though. If this were a contemporary doctor and you were in therapy and suddenly your doctor produced from behind the lips couch, one of the possessions that you thought that you threw away, like, like some bagged garbage that you thought you'd gotten rid of.

I think that was pretty fucked up. There's some bank receipts. Oh, here's a credit card that came in the mail that you didn't open. I've noticed that you haven't sorted your recycling as well as you should be. I've taken the liberty of doing that for you. You should get a shredder, or take that stuff into the office and shred it there.

Yeah, I'd be here. Ben, what do we have coming up on the next episode? Does it get any better than this? Sure does. This episode coming up is season four, episode 11, data's day. A friend's impending wedding compounds data's confusion about the nuances of human feelings. I love that as a description, because it just really brings into sharp relief

how different this show is from all other shows. Like that's the line that you're putting in like the TV guide hoping that people will tune in on the basis of being compelled by it. I don't think that there's anything stronger than a friend's wedding to confuse anyone about the nuances of human feelings, right? Okay, fair enough. Do you remember this one? I don't, not at all. I kind of do. I think it's like it's like one of the few that's a it's like a letter that he's writing to it it's an epistemological episode where he's writing a letter to the flower, right? That's the epistemel. Yeah.

That's the thing that the bee pollinates. Yeah, it's that part that the bee fucks. He's writing a letter to Commander Maddox actually and he's like he's trying to give Maddox some insight into what it's like to be data. Maddox is like that is not how Polynesian works. I need to disabuse you of this right now. Well, we don't have any vetoes, so we're going to be watching it. I got a soldier on through.

If you approve of the way that we describe science, one way to show us is by going to MaximumFun.org slash Donate, where you can be one of the many to help support the production of this show. Yes, you can also go there to get more information about our tour. I wanted to say one thing about the Oakland stop, which is that we are going to be doing, it's not going to be a podcast as such, but it will be a us in conversation

with Saroos Farovar, the journalist from ARS Technica, who I think in a lot of ways kind of broke our show, like he wrote the first article about it, that kind of put us on a lot of people's radar. And- If you can blame one person for this show's existence more than me and Ben it's definitely Saruce. Yeah, Saruce is a really fascinating guy, really really smart dude and we're gonna be doing this thing where we'll do kind of like a greatest gen in conversation with ours Technica and then we'll do like a Q&A

and it's a free event technically speaking but we would suggest a $15 donation and we're doing it to raise funds for the National Center for Science Education which is a great nonprofit that works really hard to make sure that science education is of high quality and not full of bullshit like bees fucking epistoms. So I think it's a great cause and it should be a really fun event. It's at this place called Elias Mile High Club in Oakland.

I highly recommend you check out Elias website. It's a lot of fun. I think they intentionally designed it to look like it came from 1996. Cool. And yeah, and it'll just be kind of like, you know, probably an hour of programming and then just a hang and a meetup afterwards.

And it supports science education. Who wouldn't want to be behind that. So come to the San Francisco show and then come to the Oakland show the next night. Yeah, it'll be great. We'll be in town a couple days. Yeah. You should also buy our merch, go to maxfunstore.com

and leave us a review on iTunes or wherever you download your podcasts. Every review helps raise our visibility and that's how we grow the show and helps us make this thing a success. Yeah, you know what else? You know what else helps is talking about us on Reddit? Yeah. Uh, we're close to a thousand people signed up for our subreddit. Yeah. Yeah, the greatest gen subreddit. That's right. Uh, people started posting on our slash Star Trek too, which is, which is big.

Yeah. Which is big. I think there are a ton of readers over there that would like to know more about us. Yeah. That would, there's like a hundred thousand people on that subreddit. If a tenth of them came over to our show, that would be a big deal about us. Yeah. That would, there's like 100,000 people on that subreddit. If a tenth of them came over to our show, that would be a big deal for us. Yeah.

So go do that. We've got a Facebook group that's all also super active. The Facebook group and the Reddit are always kind of like neck and neck for how many people have joined each one. And they're both really fun places to hang out. We should thank Dark Materia for our music and Adam Rgucia for our other music. Adam Rgucia made like a new piece of music that I'm obsessed with, by the way. So thanks to him for that.

And you should check out his podcast the Publum current public media and with that we will be back at you next time with another great episode star trek the next generation and an epistemological episode of the greatest generation generation. I'm gonna look up a pistomology and make sure I'm using it right. That would be the best part is if it were- Oh fuck, I'm totally not. Wait, is it a pistological? Fuck.

Oh man, we're gonna get letters, Ben. Which is fine. Just tell people to send their letters to Jesse Thorn. Alright. Fuck, what was I thinking of? Maximumfund.org Comedy and Culture, Artistone Listener Supported