The Greatest Generation - A Hat Under a Hat (S7E3)

Episode Date: July 17, 2017

When Geordi starts dabbling in virtual reality, his Batman costume makes it look a lot cooler than it should. But when what he experiences in the virtual world starts to have real-world consequences, he must choose between a dangerous mission and the acceptance of a difficult truth. Does Picard screen calls with a text message? What is honey mustard dressing made of? Is there a burn past the 3rd degree? It's the episode that doesn't waste a side on coleslaw.

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! You're the God of the U.S. And the God of the U.S. And the God of the U.S.

And the God of the U.S. And the God of the U.S. Welcome to the greatest generation. The Star Trek Podcast by two guys who are a little bit embarrassed. They have a Star Trek Podcast. I'm Adam Pryanaka. I'm Ben Harrison. How you doing, Adam?

Doing A. Okay. Ben, how about you? Couldn't be better. As close as we get to the end of next gen, a few people have written in to say what we're gonna do next. I think that's a fairly open secret. We're gonna do Deep Space 9 next. Yeah, we're gonna see Deep Space 9 next.

Man, I am sad to see TNG go. I have been feeling more and more like that. Reviewing Deep Space 9 is gonna be really interesting because it's like the one that everybody says. It's the front line of Star Trek. Yeah. Yeah, you've got to it before I could add them. It was a real race to the punchline there. Sure.

Uh, speaking of things that are coming to an end, I only have the, like, handful of packs of cards left, and I was kind of wondering if you wanted to open a few more cards with me. That sounds great. Let's do it. The game is five cards. The game is exceeding. It's simple. One of the suggested cards there. Time to block a pendulum. I have six left and I feel like these are gonna be special, special card dense because of that. But I've got 12 left. So I'm gonna have to really go without for a long time.

Which is a feeling I'm no stranger to. Oh man. This is a particular turn of a pack because it has not one but two, Deanna Troi's mom card. It's got half a life and Menagetroi. Menagetroi. I got relics. Do you have relics card number 130? It is just a really fun picture of Montgomery Scott.

Yeah. His face is the entire thing. It's great. It's great. I like it. Yeah. I also have one word, Tin Man. A classic, which has taken the strange approach

of just having a picture of the entrepreneur and a Romulan warbird and then a actual like tin robot man, which has nothing to do with the episode. Let's take all of these episode titles extremely literally. Oh boy, I have three packs in and nothing. Alright, I got a special on my second pack at him. Gah. What do you get? I have a comic book cover for a Star Trek the Next Generation comic book called Showdown. showdown winner takes all and it has what looks like Dr. Crusher and Chifo Brian in a

phasory firefight with some kind of lizard men. I'm on to pack number five really closing the gap Yeah, this is the episode that I've been meeting. Oh, no Another shut out Oh, I got ten man. You're right. That is a ridiculous card. I Mean you ask one or two is to design a hundred and seventy whatever cards. Yeah, I'll get a break on that You're not gonna You're not gonna knock every single one out of the park. And you know, for the most part, he does great. Yeah, I mean, his greatness is why we're doing this card bit. Super fun. Yeah.

Oh, shit, I think we're on pack seven now. Damn. Oh, I'm just covered in card wrappers now. Ha, ha, ha, ha, so disgusting. Oh, no. Shit. I'm just covered in card wrappers now. It's so disgusting. Oh no! Shit. Oh this is terrible. Now you know why I don't like gambling at him.

Alright, I got one. How many packs is that? And on the eighth package, I opened a special gold foil autographed card for suddenly human. It's not bad. One or T's in an embossment. Nice. Well, it's not bad. It's not bad at all, but at what cost, Ben?

At what cost? I have four packs left. Adam, I have four packs left. Oh boy. Well, we'll have to go to be continued on the cards. I see. This may be o-tray on my part, but I I say whenever we do the card bit next, we just blow our wads and open up the rest of what we've got.

Oh yeah, we'll do the final four next time on the greatest generation. Yeah, but not like the next episode, because that would be, come on. We still have like 20 something episodes of the greatest generation, right? We still have like 20 things of mail to open. Yeah, and there is like a big queue forming

in our email inbox for your PO box details. So, it's not gonna head in ourselves. Well, what do you say we get to know Jordy a little bit better as we experience the emptiness of season 7 episode 3 interface. This episode starts with a pretty cool sequence where Jordy is like crawling around in Jeffery's tubes and it's like one of those you kind of like don't notice it until you notice it that he doesn't have the visor on his eyes are in perfectly good working order and he's crawling through these jeffrey tubes through like poison gases and stuff.

And it is, it seems strange. And then he like walks into a room that is 2000 degrees and physically on fire. And he's like reaching through the fire and pulling levers levers and push in buttons until he puts the fire out. Seeing Levar Burton's eyes here made me think about what a sacrifice it is for an actor not only in terms of like handicapping himself as an actor because the eyes are the most expressive part of a face, but seeing his face again in its entirety was nice. He's a good looking man. And to go seven seasons without showing that on anything that would be on an acting resume, like it feels like it's asking a lot.

Yeah, I like what they did in first contact where they put some, what are those, they put some like techno contact lenses on him. Yeah. So it's like he's got replacement eyes that do what the Visor does a co-worker that I worked with like 10 years ago had those in her eyes and Settle is not what she was going for and it was massively distracting to interact with her When she had these things in and she had them in all the time. I had an RA in college.

I did a study abroad in Dublin, Ireland and our RA was a guy who had the weirdest accent. It was like German Irish accent. He was a very nice guy, but at one point it went around that somebody had gone to his room for something fairly late at night and he had entered the door in a leopard print bathrobe and had cat eye Conducts in oh no when he opened the door When you're an RA you need to be ready for anything at any time you can't have costume-based Fuck parties when you're an RA, you need to be ready for anything at any time. You can't have costume-based fuck parties when you're an RA. Yeah, I feel like they should screen for that.

Like, it's totally fine to be somebody that has costume-based fuck parties. Just, you can't be on call during one, you know? Yeah. So, was there like a furry costume in the room or something? I never said... I never said... This is a half measure. I never said foot in this guy's room, but I mean maybe it was something not furry, but

like furry adjacent, so he didn't need a full body costume. Maybe he could just act like a kiddie and that was enough. He would have to be enough when you're in RA. You can't come to a six-student storm in a horsey costume and get through the doorway. So it turns out that Jordi is experimenting with a deep, deep future technology known as VR. And just for the uninitiated,

that sense for virtual reality. I feel like I'm actually here. I mean, they're in the Jeffries too. Another device they're experimenting with in this lab is a portable communication and computing device called a cellular phone. Then every once in a while, a revolutionary product comes along. That changes everything.

This is just crazy science fiction. You mean it could make a call and there's no wires plugged into it at all? It's pretty neat to see Jordy in the Batman suit, like experiencing it. Like, no one looks cool doing VR. Like, today. But, Lavaer Burton looks cool doing VR in this lab. I think, mainly because he's wearing a Batman suit while doing it. Did you listen to the episode of Judge John Hodgman, or the guy I wanted to build a holodeck

in his house? Now, it may have been the first of the number of episodes that name checked our show on that show. And if you're listening to this show and you don't listen to Judge John Hodgman, like you have your priorities a little out of whack. Judge John Hodgman is great. like you have your priorities a little out of whack. Judge John Huffman is great.

But this guy, he wanted to get like a super, souped up gaming PC and all the VR stuff. And like, and then paint his bedroom black and put yellow stripes on the walls. And his wife or girlfriend who had taken him to court was like, no, And his wife or girlfriend who had taken him to court was like, no, we're not doing that to the master bedroom in our house. I'm sure that this guy would think if we were on the jury that we would vote in his favor, but I wouldn't know what that sounds like a terrible idea. Yeah. I could be conflating it, but I think that he had a, like, an unfinished basement in his

house that was a totally obvious place to do this in, but he was afraid to go down there because he was worried there might be millipedes or something in there. Oh, yeah, I did hear this episode. The bug thing. Yeah. The cent thing. Yeah. The centipedes will fuck you up, man. Well, I thought they just crawled around and did nothing. No, I think they bite you bad. Huh.

That's interesting. I've never seen one of those... Everyone wanted 100 legs, got you in their grasp and you can't break free. Cos centipedes are made of insects and insects are strong. Now everybody knows it's impossible to wedge a jaws joke into into any old joke, but what this podcast presupposes is, maybe it's not. Oh man, you just accepted that hat. I put a hat under the hat. Yeah, that's what you did.

Oh my god. I'm so scared for us right now. Yeah, I don't know how we get out of here. And so they're doing a fair amount of like explaining to a character in order to explain to a viewer what the rules of the episode are. Riker in this case plays the dome. It looks like this is going to work. Yeah, he's like, so what's Jordy wearing and what's he doing? And Beverly is like, well, here's the thing.

Yeah, Riker walks in and he's like, why is that nerd dressed like Batman? They're like, we can't just have them wear the goggles because we need him to be able to feel tactile sensations. Rekres like, great, can I borrow the suit and go in a holodeck for? I got my own experiments to run. tactile sensations, you see? So I'm wondering if part of the suit, there's like sort of a flashlight-looking sleeve

component. Special silicone part on the end that's molded to look like a wormhole or say... It's interesting that Riker is the dumb in this because he then winds up being guy who is in charge of the probe the entire time. What they're doing is, like, Jourity in this suit is being fed information from a remote probe that they can send down and do an away mission in a non-life-threatening way. It's like it's sort of the predator drone of Starfleet away mission technologies. Sure. He gets in the VR Batman suit and clamps this thing around his visor inputs and he sees, feels, smells, tastes, and touches everything that the probe can

can. And they're preparing it for a rescue mission. There's a ship that has gone missing in the atmosphere of a gas giant planet. And in this probe, they think they can send in it. And in this probe, they think they can send in without risking the lives of any of the crew, and see if they can salvage the ship and possibly even save the lives of the crew of the ship. If I were to tell you that we were going to make a Star Trek the Next Generation episode, generation episode, where in Jordy is the virtual operator of a probe. How much of that probe would you bet that we would show in that episode? Right, they never a fair amount at least, right? But in this episode, you only get a reflected look at it. You only get a look at it through a computer screen.

Yeah. Like there's always some obstruction to seeing it fully, and it made me wonder if they had an incomplete cop of it, or they hadn't finished the model, or maybe they just weren't proud of it. Yeah, well, it's interesting. What I wondered about is the last time we had a practical Effect of something floating in space. It was the it was an exocop It was the yeah exactly and it looked weird and bad and yeah, and I

Wonder if they kind of learned their lesson from that and said like let us Let us kind of play, and I think the decision they make here is the right one. The probe, when he looks at his reflection as probe, looks really cool and it's kind of tantalizing, but there's nothing about seeing it float down a hallway that will add to that, you know? Yeah, I completely agree. Obscuring it can only do it a favor because when they did not obscure the exocomp

It was to its detriment. Right. Almost everything is to an exocomp's detriment though. I wonder if they ever gave any thought to making the probe an exocomp It would let you'd like being John Malchovitch, Star Trek, TNG edition. Well, they're doing so many callbacks in season seven. Why not? Being John exo comp. Yeah. If you're playing the exo comp drinking game, you're now drunk. Adam, I'm drinking some mess now. So I will take a take a couple of exo comp drinks in honor of the drinking game So this has all been a practice run for the big game, right? right

Yeah, they're like pulling into orbit of this gas giant when we come back from title sequence and and they're getting ready to go and Picard gets called away. He gets called away to his ready room. He's got an admiral on the line. I love Marcus. Jean-Luc. This admiral calls without sending a text first,

and that would really annoy me. I don't like calls that I'm not expecting. Man. Maybe that's a fairly recent development for me, but geez. Adam, do you identify as a millennial or as a Gen X, or is there something in between those two? I identify myself as a Gen X. I don't believe I am a millennium. I am. I believe. I was born in 79, if that matters technically. Well, I think, yeah, I mean, our friend Jesse Thorne is the voice of the millennial generation, and he's a little bit older than me.

So I must fall within the millennium parameters, if that's the case. I totally associate the screening I call with a text move as a millennium move. I'm surprised to hear that coming from a gen X or like yourself. Yeah, that is one way where I maintain a very youthful carriage about myself. Yeah. It keeps me young, Ben. Yeah, it to young. You're very young, seeming at him. So hip. You're your life, you're vivacious. So knowledgeable about the trends. Nobody could mistake you for an old. Yeah.

You're so full of piss and vinegar. A delicious salad dressing of piss and vinegar. That's me. We were out of olive oil. Put that on my greens. I blew a friend's mind one day by making honey mustard dressing for him. I was like, oh yeah, let's just make some honey mustard for this. This will be awesome. These are the sort of friends that I hang out with. That'll make salads for them. He was under the impression that honey mustard could only be obtained in pre-mixed format. And I was like, you know what honey mustard dressing is, right? It's equal parts honey and mustard, and I could watch every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of life. He had no idea. Yeah, you want to blow someone's mind, make them some fresh, fresh honey mustard for those greens.

I put honey mustard on fried chicken. Oh, that's great. That's good eat. When you're at a restaurant and the server gives you the list of dressings, is that the one that you go for? I don't really order salads at restaurants, Adam. Whoa. I don't like to waste my money. Oh, geez.

Really? If the salad comes with the meal, I'm gonna eat it. I don't want to pay $12 for it. Seems like too much money. We're not enough. You're all about value. Yeah, like, if I go to a barbecue restaurant and they have a situation where it's like you get your meat and your two sides and coleslaw is not an automatic, it like, it pisses me off so much to have to burn one of my sides on coleslaw.

Like, I want to assume that the coleslaw is coming. There's a great barbecue restaurant in South Seattle that I've been going to called Jacks. I'll give him a free plug because that place is great. And me and my buddy Phil have been going there for like a year and we do that thing where we over order and overeat and we never get the salad. We always get meat appetizer and meat dessert. And until this most recent time we went there and saw that they had a meat salad, which was a spicy Caesar salad with brisket on top. And that unlocked the code for me to that restaurant because now I don't need

to go straight home and take a nap. Now I can go on with the rest of my day. Meet Salad was the answer, Ben. Yeah. I think you are wrong about a lot of life choices at him. I'm so glad that we're doing a show where little by little you can teach me all the ways that have been wrong We've got this admiral on the FaceTime and He's he's unloading some pretty rough news on Picard. The Starship Hara has gone missing and all souls aboard are presumed missing and or dead. What we should say is, Jordi's mom is the captain of the Starship Hara and all he could think of is how many times has an admiral had to call her up and say, and say, the entrepreneur has been missing for like six months.

We have no idea what's going on. Oh, man, that's such a great call. Like, Jordi's mom has gotten 30 of these messages over the last six years. Every time they go in a space butthole or a time loop or something, like, this has got to be such a routine part of life and if you're in Starfleet. Your personnel file is just a permanent stamp of missing and presumed dead if you stationed

on the entrepreneur. You're totally right. How it must cut both ways. Like this is the core of what's wrong with this episode for me is like, I can get down with a character feeling like their parent was taken away from them too soon, or, you know, like if she was not the captain of a Starfleet vessel and had, if there was some other explanation for why she's missing, it would, It would read a lot more for me, but like the whole

episode, Jordy's going like, there's probably some crazy space but whole explanation for where the hero went and everybody's like, what? What are you talking about? Proposterous. And he's like, that happens to us fucking every week. That's happened to us like a hundred times in the last seven years for real For us the answer is always but hole. Why don't we just write in pencil but hole? We can always correct it later And when Picard has to relay this news to Jordy, there is not the understanding that, you know, what is starfleet, if not a dangerous career where buttholes appear from nowhere and take your ship and crew from you, there is just a complete denial of this information

and the possible conclusions that could come from it. Nobody holds out any, like the people that met Nagilum hold out no hope for Jordi's mom. Yeah, but Jordi keeps the candle lit. The hair is missing, that's all. Until I hear something different, my mother just might as well have taken the crew on an unscheduled holiday. Yeah, so they get this mission going going and he's probing around the ship and it's like, it's getting,

it's more intense than the tests than the tests that they did with the probe. Like, he's kind of traveling around the ship and he, so he believes himself to be like physically walking around the ship and he's looking at you know dead bodies all over the place. There are all these all these like people in their Starfleet science pajamas all over. There's a fun iron man scene where he like conjures a phaser discharge out of his hand. Yeah, okay. Now like the game that they play

with Jordi in the VR as a probe with all of these tools is really interesting. It's great. I wish we'd gotten a better episode that used this. Yeah. Because it is really fun. For him to say, can you up the tractor beam from the probe and they make him able to lift a beam that he otherwise wouldn't be able to lift. Just by like turning the potentiometer on that part of the probe, everybody aboard the Ramon has bought the farm. This place is a tomb.

They all tried to hide themselves in the walk-in cooler in the restaurant section of the Ramon, thinking that would be the safest place, but they succumbed to the, they were like hull breaches and the shitty atmosphere from this gas giant got in. Gas giants are super radioactive, too, so makes sense that a whole breach would be a dead sentence. And so he's looking at all these dead bodies and he's like, holy shit, there's also a huge fire in here and he lifts his hands up. And we cut back to Jordy in Batman VR costume. And the doctor lifts his hands up to camera.

They're burned. Like if there is a burn past third degree, like, these are like seventh degree burns. This shit is nasty. Have you ever burned your hand cooking? Like, burned it badly? Yeah, I've burned myself a couple of times. God, that shit is so painful.

I usually get the back of the hand. Like, if I'm like putting something in the oven, and I get the back of the hand on like if I'm like putting something in the oven and I get the back of the hand on like the oven door or something. I've grabbed a panhandle out of the oven, like just not thinking. That big hand blister is the worst. It's so painful. I can't imagine, and looking at Jordy's hands here, he gives out like the the I'm in pain scream.

But I don't feel like he screams the way that he should if every nerve in his in both of his hands has been fried at once, which would be probably one of the worst pains you could feel. One of the most complicated memories I have from my childhood at him. Seeing your dad's dick. The second most complicated memory I have from my childhood is that my father took me out to a hamburger restaurant in the Bay Area. One thing I like to do when I was a kid,

when we went to a hamburger restaurant, is when we would sit down, I would shake up the bottle of Heinz to make a ketchup to get it going, because everybody knows that ketchup is a non-Newtonian fluid, and it can be a little bit challenging to get out of that glass bottle. And so I would...

Did you shake it like jerking off or did you twist shake it? Like jerking off. So I sent down at the table and we were like, I'm like eight, nine, 10 years old this memory. And I pick up the bottle and give it a very intense shake, not having checked to see if the lid was secure on it. And I sprayed ketchup all over like four people in the restaurant simultaneously with this. Out of the kitchen come totally blood boiling cries of pain.

One of the women working in the kitchen had dropped her wedding ring in the deep fryer and had like thoughtlessly reached in after it. And so we're in this restaurant where everybody in my vicinity is covered in dripping red liquid. in my vicinity is covered in dripping red liquid and this woman is being carried out by paramedics with this like unbelievable burn on her hand. And it's like, it's like this crazy memory where it's like, if one or the other had happened, it would have been kind of like, okay,

like I pulled a boner move at a restaurant and sprayed a bunch of people with ketchup, or I saw a woman get a very bad injury at a restaurant. But because it's both, it's this weird water and oil memory where there's kind of like too many feelings and images that kind of like don't resolve to any any like one thought, you know what I mean? Wow. Yeah. Yeah, that memory is all over the map. I think about it like once a month and I'm just like, what the fuck was that? That is so much worse than my wedding ring story.

Losing at boogie boarding in Hawaii. Just a little. Check your privilege at him. Ben, did you see those series of workplace safety videos that came out in Canada a couple years ago that were like horrifying? Oh, like the super graphic, like guy getting his foot run over by a forklift videos? The one that I was thinking was lady works in a kitchen. I'm a sous chef here. If any luck, I should be head chef by next year. And it's like talking to camera, saying how she's supposed to get married tomorrow, but she's not going to.

Because I'm about to be an eternal accident. And she's carrying a pot of boiling water and slips on oil, on fry oil, and dumps the water on herself. And it's like the last 10 seconds of the 30 second commercial is just her screaming and they throw to black and a title that says like, you know, work play safety isn't something to ignore. Like it's like a 30 second horror movie.

Yeah, the scene in Terminator 2, where he tosses the guy on the cooktop is very hard for me to watch. Oh man. This has been restaurant safety cast. This has been upset all the listeners cast. Everybody is just sitting in their car on their way to work going like, Oh God, why do I listen to these idiots? Right now there's someone sitting in a parked car outside of a restaurant. They're supposed to be working at and they just like throw the car in reverse. My love is a piece by glory and silver back, which long does that let me see. So there is a tension throughout the rest of this episode, the tension of Jordy believing

his mother is alive while everyone else believes her to be dead. And that is a tension that appears between Jordy and the rest of the crew primarily. Like, it's sort of like the crew not believing Kaelis is real and Wurf being the only one who rides for Kaelis. Jordy is riding for his mom and everyone else is sort of rolling their eyes every time Jordy brings her up. Yeah, we're jumping ahead a little bit,

but like one of the things that Jordy encounters in a probe mish is a, like his mom just like standing in the middle of a room on this ship going like, you've got to like take the ship lower. So take it lower, Jordi. I really need your help on this one. And Jordi's mom is like, I'm your mom, Jordi. You should listen to what I'm selling you.

Take the ship lower. Yeah. She's a little like hollow and robotic. She's a little bit like maybe she's been stranded on the ship for seven years and hasn't talked to anybody in a long time. She's like, Jordy, love me. They also say that she is the captain of a ship

that has a predominantly Vulcan crew, which is very interesting to imagine. And I wondered if that sort of factored in to how the actress portrayed this character. Like, don't you get a little stiffer if you hang with Vulcans mostly? Well, in the same way that you probably get a little looser if you're hanging with nozzincons.

Yeah. Like, you sort of become the personality of your crew in some way. Yeah, it's the sort of hair metal to British invasion, bell curve of behavioral traits. I'm looking forward to reading that scientific paper, Ben. I was just thinking, I want to see that series. The series about a crew of mostly Vulcans that get a captain from Earth who just doesn't act like them. She was captain of the USS Hera, ready for her first command.

I'm so excited for my first command, you guys! But her crew is... No fun! Welcome aboard, ma'am! 200 Vulcans on a ship commanded by a human captain. Good grief! Coming this fall, the USS Hera! a ship commanded by a human captain. Good grief. Ha ha ha. Coming this fall, the USS Hera.

Jordy has like a whole bunch of pretty intense conflicts in this episode, one of which is with Councillor Troy who is like, Jordy, like everybody thinks your mom is dead other than you. And so what I'm asking you to do is shut up about her being alive and listen to everybody else. Like you are coming up with totally insane Star Trek writer level plots about how she might still be alive. He's like, do you even watch this show?

Do you know how unlikely it is that she's actually dead? Like, they have a McLaughlin group where he's like going through it and date is like, it is highly unlikely. And he's like, yeah, but like, come on. Like, this is the show we're on, guys. And they're like, I don't know. Now I know Starfleet has told me that my mother is dead. But what my theory presupposes is, maybe she's not?

You know, you get 10 punches at that joke, you get a free one. At the end of the series, What I was gonna say is, uh, Jordy's mom's in the water. Space buttholes in the water, our space butthole. And when those space butthole eyes rolls back, they're like a doll's eyes. A brown eye. Ha ha ha ha ha.

Oh dear. We're talking about anything but the episode, aren't we? So they basically say, we're going to get the rassa nante back in a way that has nothing to do with going deeper and saving the hero, which you believe to be on the surface of this planet. And that's just tough tips for you, Jordy. Like, that's how it's going to go. Your theory is interesting, but nearly impossible, sir. This is like an interesting point of inflection here,

because I feel like there have been episodes where, like, for example, the episode where it's not the universe, it's the doctor, or it's not the doctor, it's the universe. She is telling them that people are disappearing from the ship, and they believe her for most of the episode absent any evidence. And Jordi does not get the same treatment here.

No. It's pretty unfair. Jordy gets pretty strange treatment from the crew throughout. Like, he gets a lot of hang time with Riker, W slash R slash T, his ability to do the mission, immediately after his mom's presupposed death. Yeah.

And it's strange how Riker treats him because it's clear that Riker cares about him professionally in the first scene and it takes that second scene for us to realize that like Riker cares about him personally, but only in the lens of his own grief and what he went through with his own mother. It is really one of those scenes where it is like, I mean, it's a very tempting thing, especially when you have a massive ego like I do, which is like you're listening to somebody tell you something about something they're struggling with and just compare it to something from your life. Yeah, exactly. Like, you don't do that, Riker. Like, that's a really dick move.

Like, oh yeah, I know what you're going through with your mom. My mom died when I was very young. And so, I've thought a lot about this. Like, it's not the right way to support somebody who is dealing with like a choice between grieving and trying to make a lastage effort to save his mother. Jordy's relationships with everyone in this episode are a little strange, even with

his own parents. I mean, he mentions that he had a chance to hang with his mom a couple weeks ago and didn't take it. And then he talks to his dad a little later, his dad played by the great Ben Verine. And his dad is like, yeah, so like we're gonna plan a funeral and stuff. And I guess we're gonna have it on Vulcan because all of her crew are Vulcans. And, you know, uh, your, your family and I are gonna have another personal service later. And Jordy's like, whoa, man, like, that is, uh, that's a little soon, don't you think? Maybe think like, how soon after you go missing

would you want a funeral been? Yeah, I mean, one thing I've come to learn in becoming a member of my wife's family is that in their tradition, it is like very pressing business to get the funeral did. Like, it's like, if somebody passes away, the funeral is like days from now, like, if not like the next day. Yeah, so like, which is very far on the other end of the spectrum from what I was used to from my family, which is like, hey, we'll have a celebration of life six months later.

It will scatter their ashes in the ocean and then like play some jazz music at a local church if we can rent it out or whatever. Which fate are you now obligated to? You mean like for my own? Yeah. The funeral. Gosh, I hadn't, I hadn't really thought about it.

Um, I mean, I'm clearly going to be involved somehow. Yeah. Um, you'll work for it. I just want to know what, what I can do. You'll work the door, right buddy. I want to be handing out those pamphlets like, uh like those guys in Vegas hand out porn flyers like tap tap lick them on your thumb. Where did they get that door guy? He seems familiar. He looks like Kyle McLaughlin a little bit. So Jordy goes on like a rogue mission to rescue Maduke.

And he goes down by himself to the cybernetics lab where he's been doing this. And Data catches him and is like, I'm going to help you do this rogue mission. You're my best but strange choice on Data's part, right? Like they both sort of discuss how much trouble they're gonna get into, but I think Data deep down knows that he's not gonna get in any trouble at all. Yeah, Data can talk his way out of this one.

Jordy may be less so. The thing that Data loves the most, life-threatening actions. Second most, disobeying orders and going rogue. Data has has a rich history of talking as way out of these types of things. Yeah. Um, so they do the the rogue mission. They are lowering the ship deeper and deeper into the atmosphere of this gas giant. And it starts to become clear from the bridge that things are not going the way they're supposed to.

Like they're trying to get the ship out. They're trying to save the starship, right? Like they're like, everybody died, but at least we can save the ship. And now the ship is going too deep for them to be able to do that. As they lower the ship more and more, the story of the mom character starts to kind

of crack. And what winds up becoming clear is that she is not, in fact, the like, like, she's been saying that she's on board the hero, which is on the surface of the planet, and they've like been broadcasting on subspace to get his attention in the probe. And it's in fact true that she is some kind of subspace life form that lives on this planet. And she and her compatriots got stuck on the Rosinante and they're,

you know, it's not good for them to be this high in the atmosphere. They want to be on the surface, I guess. Is there such a thing as a surface on a gas giant planet? Yeah, I think they have like rocky cores. Yeah, okay. Or are there like theorized to have them?

Maybe they don't, I don't know. Good enough for me. The like, save mom mission turns into a save these intelligent aliens that we just discovered exist mission. And like they, I guess sacrifice the ship to that end, right? Like they sacrifice the, this, the ship that they are trying to salvage. Yeah, in order for these aliens to live there. Yeah, and, and the mortal remains of all the crew on that chip,

which seems like, it's gonna be a tough sell for the family's back home, right? Oh yeah, we could have gotten them, but one guy was hallucinating, so we didn't. Do not reply to this email. This email box does not go anywhere. It's a tough end for all those people. They just got cut up and something they didn't understand. These aliens

hitched a ride and then pulled them down to the planet. Yeah. Bad news. So the button on the episode is Jordy getting reprimanded by Picard in the ready room. You disobeyed my direct order. You put yourself in grave danger. I am not happy. You're dismissed, oh by the way. Sorry about your mom.

I guess we don't see the part where data gets reprimanded because that doesn't happen, right? Yeah, I mean, he says I'll deal with data separately. Jordy's trying to cover for data. But yeah, we can only assume that data gets off Scott free, right? He always does. He's like both bow and Luke Duke. And his robot body is the general Lee.

You're not the first person to say it, Adam. Really? No, you are. Okay. Did you like this episode, Ben? I didn't. I think that this episode misses a bunch of levels. And I mean, like I said, I think that there's a lot of things that are really cool about it.

I love the suit that Jordi is in. I love the way they kind of, they kind of jaws with the probe where they never show it, you know, all on screen at once. I think it has, there's a lot of potential in a lot of the premises in this episode. And I think it just kind of stumbles in execution. For a story as emotional as it is on paper, it was interesting how cold it felt throughout. And I just want to read you this little snippet here, which I found fairly illuminating when

discussing matters of whether or not a show has heart. It was during the production of this episode that Ronald D. Moore felt TNG had gone as far as it could be taken. Quote, I think it was a point where we were in the room and we were talking about bringing Jordy's mother in and we all kind of looked at each other and we were like, this is sad. This is the best we can do. Is this the best we can do? Jordy's mother?

It was such a who cares idea that we were just sort of, oh man, this show has got to end. Isn't that fucking awful? That is awful. And it's especially awful because it shows how limited television was in this time. Like if you try to break episode three of season seven and you're already like well this shows fucked How do we how do we even do this?

Like can you think of a modern TV show that would despair at the idea of learning more about the Family life of the character like one of the main characters. Yeah, no not at all. It's ridiculous that that that that seemed like a pathetic Not at all. It's ridiculous that that that that seemed like a pathetic Losery, you know, this is the end kind of moment to them. I wonder how much of it has to do with deep space 9 spooling up across the street like oh It's spooled at this point like deep space 9 has probably been renewed for season two at this point. And... Yeah, I mean, but like the excitement that comes from writing a new show and creating for a new show versus a show in its seventh season. Yeah, that... You can't help but compare the excitement in both camps.

I mean, I was reading about how Star Trek Generations, Deep Space 9, TNG, and the pre-production of Voyager were all happening, like right at the same time. Which is like this crazy, like couple of months where like the most Star Trek ever was happening. I guess if you're locked to the TNG side of things, you've got to be feeling like, well, yeah, the most Star Trek ever is happening, but this is not where all of the excitement and action is. Like, that's all happening in the other rooms. I think this is the trap, though, in season seven. If you are of the mind that Star Trek is a person or a group of people, and you just feel like you're running out the clock telling people stories instead of pivoting into play style stories. I think that's where things can go stale and that's where things clearly have become

stale. At least to the people creating the show. It makes me nervous for what we're going to see for the rest of the season to be honest. I really like reading that made my skin crawl. Yeah. Well, one thing that never goes still for me at a Miss Priority One message is, do you want to see what's in our inbox? They so frequently make my skin crawl. Priority One message from Starfleet coming in on Secured Channel. Need a supplement? Priority one message from Starfleet coming in on secured channel

Then our first priority one message is of a personal nature just from Haley it is for Dan and it goes like this I Know this will be a little late. Thanks, Razz and Proveem. But happy 30th! Maybe all that trek in college and again in grad school wasn't a waste after all. Since I am not a card's person, I'll just say... Like a packlet, please. You are smart.

You are nice. You make us move to New York. Thank you for making us go. It is good Happy birthday Love Haley. I just want to be clear Haley that We've made we have made it very clear to the network that if any of our viewers wish to purchase a priority one message for a date in the future That has been camped on by Rasmplovim, they have the ability to kick Rasmplovim off of that date. So, do not think that all of the priority one slots are taken by them, because we have empowered them to move stuff around so that we can get actual non-raising plebeum messages. Yeah, I see.

Is that right, Ben? Yeah, any moving of a resin plebeum is pre-endorced, so. I mean, but we've been very lucky in moving as many jumbo-t priority one messages as we have and we really appreciate all of the efforts from our community and from resin plovium as well. We certainly don't look a razz and plovium horse in the mouth. Speaking of which Adam, our next priority one message is from Claudia and it's to Plevim. Hmm. As if on cue.

Yeah, I mean, how unlikely is it that there would be a Plevim related situation right around the corner? Here's the message. Thanks for the birthday wishes. Right back at you. The Barry White-esque musical accompaniment felt a little unnecessary. Thanks for the birthday wishes. Right back at you, the Berry White-esque musical accompaniment felt a little unnecessary and misleading for the viewers of this podcast. I have been and always will be on Team Razz.

Whoa! Go back to your patio of shame. PS, say hi to your smart, sexy, funny and amazing wife. And a Viva of whom you are questionably deserving. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha Yeah, that is a I feel like I feel like Plavim is trying to wage a war of attrition But when when Razz and now Claudia punch back they punch back so hard Yeah, it's like It's like oh wow the last like five Plavim P1s kind of got erased by that

Yeah, you think you got Razz down and then you got Claudia coming in with a steel chair. Yeah. Well, if you have a message of the priority nature, you can go to maximumfund.org slash jumbo-tron or personal messages are $100 and commercial messages are $200 and they are just a great, great way to help with the ongoing production of our show. Thanks, guys. Thank you.

Ben. What's that, Adam? Did you find yourself a drunk shmo- I did, Adam. One thing that we kind of glossed over it because we were too busy talking about burning ourselves and shit was that the Batman suit is dangerous to Jordy. Like the reason he gets burned is that the sensors can overload him and like cause a feedback

loop. And they, like they keep pulling him out of this thing when he gets overwhelmed by it. And the doctor is firmly stated her objection to him getting back in it ever. And that is the backdrop of data deciding to help Jordy go on this suicide mission. And so, and it really isn't suicide mission. Like, he could die. And I just really felt like data was kind of projecting his values onto Jordy in that moment. And for that data earned my drunk Shemota for the episode. That's a hell of a Shemota.

How about yourself, Adam? I am going to go with Jordy. So much of what Shemota did didn't make any sense. And Jordy has come close to dying over and over again in this VR experiment. He's been burned. And let's just say his mom is down there. Let's say for a moment that Jordy's right and she's alive. Like, would his mom want him to risk his life to go down and save just her? Like, they make the case that Joradi and his mom aren't that

close because if they were, he would have spent time with her when he had the chance to, but because of that, because he didn't choose to do that and they aren't that close, the whole idea of him risking his life for her, I guess, is supposed to come out of some sort of guilt. But that guilt just rings a super hollow for me. So, there's stuff about Joradi's character and the actions he chooses to take that just don't make sense in context of the episode or his character. And so, I guess for that whole cat basket of reasons, Joradi is my drunk Shimoda. How do you fill those reasons in there with your destructor, Adam? I know. Hardly enough room for those reasons and a destructor.

You've got to press the reasons down, really squish him in there. That's it, that basket is real big. It's super big. It's a picnic basket. 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. 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 Sherry Reembarishment 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 for dates and ticketing information for the Sherry Reembarishment 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 Balrog burger and some air-gorn fries? Thank you. And Kumail Non-Giani. 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 already open, just pull it out. Give Jordan Jesse Goatry. Being smart is hard. Be dumb instead. Oh, rats, hey, hey, oh, I'm about to count you in line. 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 have such short neck. But I'm hearing we need to get on this. We've got to get on the art. It is about terrain, about a spout to destroy 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 Kerry? 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 boat. We came to by two.

What do you think? Ono Ross and Carrie, available on MaximumFun.org. Ben, what do we have coming up on the next episode? Next episode is season 7 episode 4 Gambit. Part 1. Riker is shocked to find Picard who has been missing and presumed dead. Posing is a mercenary on an alien ship. Do you remember this episode, Adam?

If I remember this episode correctly, does Picard wear basically a vest and a vest only, like an open vest, as it's costume? I should hope I'm right about this, but I just think it's just vest-chest dick legs. Yeah, he's prubaring with a vest. Yeah, I recall seeing just a lot of beef stew here. That's the enduring memory. Oh, and isn't roe-layer in a big part of this stew? Is that, is that not that? I thought we had lost roe.

But now I think we're due for the Rove Double Cross episode, and I don't know if this is it, or maybe I'm thinking it's a different one. Man, that's exciting. Like, I was getting real bummed out about season seven with all that shit you were talking about at Adam. If we have some Rove episodes still on the mix, I'm excited and new.

When you have Rove, you have hope, Ben. That's the political bumper sticker that I'm putting on my car. Fuck yeah. Ben one thing that fills us with hope every episode are our Legion of Viewers, talking about the show, grading our jokes, criticizing our many failures. They do that over on Twitter using the hashtag greatest gen. I'm on there as at Cut for Time. Ben is on there as at Benjamin R, a HR. That's me. There's also Facebook pages and groups, Reddit, page all on a a tone and also the R-slash maximum fun. Red a pitch. We owe so much to Dark Materia who very kindly agreed to grant us permission to use the

Picard song as our theme music. Retro actively after we had already watched our podcast. It was a...what a bench. And we should also thank Adam Ragusia who has basically a million times now comes through in a pinch where we had some idea for a thing that needed music and just said like, Goose, give us music for free! And he did it. Yeah, he's done it. He's done it every time. He's done it every time and we really appreciate it. We should thank all of our viewers that support us at MaximumFund.org slash Donate and everybody that leaves a nice review for us on Apple Podcasts.

This is a big help, helps us get the show in front of more people. With that, we will be back at you next time with another great episode of Star Trek the Next Generation and an episode of the greatest generation that has a magical button pad on its belt that can hurt anybody that it needs to. Make it sound. Make it sound. Catch it, you'll know it's gotta be you. Catch it, you'll know it's gotta be you. Catch it, you'll know it's gotta be you. Catch it, you'll know it's gotta be you. Catch it, you'll know it's gotta be you.

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