The Greatest Generation - A Very Pronounced Headmouth (S7E9)

Episode Date: August 7, 2017

When the Entrepreneur goes on a search an rescue mission in a part of space with strange properties w/r/t fields, the situation gets hot in a global sort of way. A strangely loafed pair of siblings have gone Greenpeace on all local spaceships, and it’s up to Picard to deal with their inconvenient truth. When are the Ferengi going to get back to their Vegas residency? Can you Jake your own ship? Does Leonard Maltin review adult films? It’s the episode that’s a hyperbaric chamber preparing us for our trip to rock bottom.

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 gonna be the best at the world, you're gonna be the best at the world. Welcome to the greatest generation. Star Trek Podcast by two guys who are a little bit embarrassed.

To have a Star Trek Podcast, I'm Adam Pranica. I'm Ben Harrison. How you doing, Adam? Are you okay? Doing swell. How about you? I'm good. You know, we talked last time, last time we were marining. Last time in this little marin. We talked about the idea of opening the main line Star Trek the next generation card packs that listener and sent us in our bummer boxes. Oh yeah, I remember that. Do you wanna do that?

Okay. The game is five cards, the game is exceeding. It's simple. What are the suggestions that aren't there? I have to pluck a picture. I hold in my hands five packs of Star Trek the Next Generation in Noggaro Edition cards. These are, uh, ten to a pack.

A little bit richer than the Portfolio print series. Let's dig in and see what we get. Oh, I got a big rod right off the top. Really? Gene Roddenberry card. There's a Gene Roddenberry card? I would have guessed it would be number one, but it is card number three. Oh boy. These cards. I got a Gainon. Really? Oh, but I also got an Alexander. So that sort of negates that.

I got a Keko and a Riker and a the Borg and the food replicator Among my first pack Oh man! What are the weirds that you got? Because I got a number of weirds Here's a weird This is probably a season 3 cast photo Including Wesley the Boy Wesley the Boy The Boy

Young Wesley Krusha My son Wessly the boy The boy Young westerly crusher My son Looking very like made up to conceal acne And there's a quote across the front Which is French that I think you'll probably be able to translate Adam It is I don't know what that means I think that translate says where no one has gone before. Oh, I have no idea why there would be a French card in here. It is

weird. I have a card for personal access displayed vice. I have a card for photon torpedoes. Hey, I got an Alexander also. That does not appear to be a card depicting him in the middle of a performance. That just looks like him hanging out by a trailer. Yeah, give us your war face. Get one for Dustbuster Faser. Faser type 2. Oh, I got Dr. Polasky.

Yeah, that's a good one. What do you guess is card number 1? Hmm. Because I just got the Enterprise D. It's card number 43. My hunch is that there's not not gonna be any yeagers in here Card number one is just a pile of cocaine on Jean Roddenberry's desk. I Got one for Ambassador LaWox on a Troy. Oh

I got one for Wardrobe and it's just a picture of Picard and data in Dixon Hill get-ups. Oh I got one for Shuttlecraft classifications. I got maybe the most valuable card there is, which is Sergei and Helena Rochenko. Hey is Jeet and Roddenberry card number three? Yeah. Because I have a card here that's checklist one and it actually lists what the first series it with the first card is which is series introduction Card number two is unaccountably fifth season con men What You know how when you record an album like sequencing is something they think a lot about the sequence of the songs?

Yeah, that is not a thought they gave to these cards. Oh, I've got the same photo with where no one has gone before in English this time. These cards are so weird. I have external and internal coordinate systems. You got to get that external and internal coordinate systems card, Ben. You gotta get it signed. I hope external and internal coordinate system is at the next Las Vegas Comic-Con because I tried to get a signature last year and I couldn't get one. Hell yeah, Ben. I got Role Aaron. Ha ha ha ha ha.

Top of the list. I got Tasha Yarr. Hey, I've got Miles and Keko. You should get a frame for that card and put it with the frame photographs of your family. This is a... As a warning. I've got the cue. Alright, I'm into my last pack, Adam.

So, my... Starfleet emblem. Alright, guys. We need 700 cards. Just start naming shit. Go! Makeup! Which is an actual card I have. Wesley Crusher.

Klingon, Katinka, class battle cruiser. Hyposprae. Starfleet uniforms. You ever go to an Indian restaurant and get that chicken... Katinka class dinner? Shhh. No? Go with the butter chicken at him. Oh yeah, you can't miss with that butter chicken.

I kind of did the thing of sex on ecstasy with butter chicken though. I ordered it in India and it was like a million times better than I've ever had it here. Yeah. And now it's like... It's just a shadow of what I want it to be. Ugh. Yeah. Oh man.

The butter is different there. The chicken's different there. Everything's different. I can, I can, I'm just chasing that chicken. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha Well, our thanks to Ann for sending us the bummer box that included these card packs. Yeah, and my beloved VHS copy of Flying Solo from the Riker collection. Yeah. Well, speaking of GIFs, Ben, a term that has nothing to do with the episode we're about to watch. What do you say we get started with season 7 episode 9, Force of Nature? I concur. The entrepreneur is on the hunt for a missing ship, but before we get to the excitement,

we're going to need to spend an entire cold open with Data and Jordy looking under the bed for Data's cat. I hate cats. Data's cat. Spot. I love cats. Jordi, who has for some reason volunteered to cat sit. Yeah, data wasn't like a way at a conference or anything. Jordi was just exploring the idea of taking a feline companion

and wanted to like kick the tires and take one out for a spin around the neighborhood before he committed to it. and take one out for a spin around the neighborhood before he committed to it. In the same way that Biffie Ager got bag after bag of mail, telling the studio how much the fans loved the character of Argyle, got to believe that that spot mail was pretty massive because season seven is most definitely the season of spot. Seriously, have you ever met the owner slash wrangler of a star animal, like a like a screen animal? No.

They're, they're a, they're a strange group of people. Yeah, it's a bit of a stage parent vibe. Sure. It's a bit of a stage parent vibe, but also the like, antisocialness of dumping that kind of energy into an animal. Only the waste. I'm just trying to picture. I'm just trying to picture.

I'm just trying to picture a life around that. Yeah, I'm trying to picture spots owner, the person who is prosecuting this attempt to make spot a star by sending fraudulent fan mail in to the studio. They used a couple of different cats as spot, and this is the spot that ends up being in the movie later. Oh.

This is Star Trek Generation Spot. This is the Mary Caden Ashley of Spots. Yeah. So, Jordy and Dator are talking about what a shit this cat is. Why a spot under the bed? Probably because she knows if I catch her. I'm gonna kill her. And how it doesn't respond to instructions, how it's a destructive being in Jordy's condo. The spot been misbehaving. The cat finally runs out of the room to the sound of pots and pans crashing in Jordy's living room. And a replicator designed future,

what does one need with pots and pans? In worst apartment, that would have made sense because there's lots of metal things hanging from the wall that could crash and make those noises Right specifically knives Yeah, have we ever seen what the rest of Jordi's apartment looks like or have we only seen the bed? It looks like Jordi's gotten better better pillow game going at the very least

It should he the Jordi's blind and so they don't give him a cabin with a window It shouldy that Joradi is blind and so they don't give him a cabin with a window. Like, I get it, but it still seems unbefitting of his rank. You would think- He's chief engineer. Yeah. You know, he does actually have that weird square pillow up there. It's just that he's added a couple of normal pillows to his bed. Yeah.

Yeah. Sorry, I'm not trying to get off track the fact that he doesn't have any windows. Oh, are you apologizing for getting off track of a spot hard B story? He's cramming the spot story down our throats. I literally have the phrase strong B plot in my notes as what we are talking about with spot. Wow. Yeah. in my notes as what we are talking about with Spot. Wow, yeah. Yeah, you may think that this is a bottle open,

but no. No, Doug. Learning all about that Spot Life. We get out of it with Riker, like, radying down to them, essentially going, hey, Jordy and Data, quit fucking around with that cat there's business to attend to. Please report to the observation lounge mission briefing in 10 minutes. That's a great dun dun dun into show open. Saved by the theme.

They make it so. We come out of it and they are entering a dangerous part of space. It's not dangerous, but a part of space where there is a lot of strange activity with regard to fields. So there's only one little corridor that you can warp through. It's called the Hakeris corridor. And it's sort of like, um, hunt for red October when they go past Thor's twins into the canyon there. Yeah, I thought the same thing. Like seeing a map of the corridor really evoked an underwater seamount map. Remember the dispatch we got about Russian subskippers running the retainer's ridge at high speeds because they had hyper-activity surveys of the underwater

canyon? Your ship will work outside of this, but it's not going to be able to warp and they're missing a USS Fleming, a medical transport ship. The Federation has dispatched the entrepreneur out to look for. The Hackerys corridor was named for the planet Hackerys, and a few of its inhabitants be mounted to the ship. This is a brethren sister team, Rebal and Sarovah. We're trying to make you listen. You're killing us. That happens at like minute 20 Adam.

We still have like, we have a lot of show to get through before that happens. Fuck, let's hit rewind. So the art's sure what happened to the ship, so they go in looking for it. They're going in looking for it. We spend a lot of time in this episode with Jordy and Data kind of talking about cat stuff and then also Jordy's got this scheme to Squeeze a couple more percentage points of efficiency out of some aspect of the engine

Turns out he's got kind of a rivalry with another chief engineer on another starship I just like to make sure that our power conversion levels are a little bit higher than theirs I Understand you're in competition with mr. Cap a lot of, the beginning part of this episode is just spent on data and Jordy being good time buddies. Yeah, they're really small-talking. Crawling around and Jeffries tubes, they're, you know, they're doing, they're doing work, but they're, I like it, you know, it's like, it's that day at work vibe where, you know, they're getting their work done,

but they're having their water cooler chat also. They have to talk about the cat because the cat was in the cold open, but I wish their small talk was about anything else. At one point, Jordy makes the appeal that maybe you can train a cat by shooting it with a phaser. This is an idea I can get behind. Data. a cat by shooting it with a phaser. This is an idea I can get behind. Data, data pretty unequivocally says, I cannot stone my cat. I have one of those, those fly swatters that you put

a couple of batteries in and it looks like a tennis racket. And it zaps the fly. Uh-huh. My dog is outraged whenever this thing comes out. Like he is totally on the fly's side when I pull this thing out. He like, if he hears it coming out of a cabinet, he'll like run from the other side of the apartment and look at me, accuse it, accuser Torrelli. Really? Yeah, he's not into zapping things. So yeah, I thought the direction that story was going was that you used the

that as the training tool for Darwin. No way, dude. You cannot stone Darwin. No, can't do it. They're poking around for this USS Fleming and they come across a disabled for Rrangi vessel and this forrangi vessel is really in bad shape. It's got no warp drive, it can't communicate on the normal radio, no subspace anything is coming out of this deal. Which makes their job really difficult because they can't really tell what's happening with

it. Yeah, and it turns out it's kind of a trap, right? Like they figure out a way to communicate, but they get in close enough to do it, and the Frenghis start shooting at them. They're locking weapons. Sheld up! [♪ Music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in the Franky weapon system and get this diamond on the radio. They're like, what the fuck is your problem?

And he's like, what the fuck is my problem? What the fuck is your problem? You guys have mined the corridor. The federation established this corridor. We have nothing to gain by mining it. It's weird to see a forangi in a position of shooting at a federation ship. Like that seems like a departure from the mindless hooting and hollars that we've come to know and laugh at.

Yeah, aren't they just beaming girls out of their clothes and yeah, they're basically like biggest magicians. They get this diamond on board and his take is that they've mined the corridor and Picard is like, dude, we have no, there's no upside for the federation in mining the corridor. We, you know, maintain this as a trade route. We would never do that. I feel like this is maybe the first time I've heard a Ferengy say human in an intentionally mispronounced insulting way. He kind of ten man's that word doesn't it? Ten man. It does. He says human. I remember in the in deep space nine they say human a lot. But this guy says, human. Human. Well, they're really doing some world building there with that pronunciation. It's bad as much as they're willing to do for the Farenci.

Look, now what the show Bible says is that the Farenci are supposed to be totally one dimensional. What my human pronunciation presupposes is, maybe they're not? Or maybe they are. Alright Adam, let's talk about it. Another scene with data and Jordy and spot fucking around. This is when we're data is trying to teach spot to not be with data and Jordy and Spot fucking around.

This is one where data is trying to teach Spot to not be on the table. This is down. Down is good. This is up. Up is no. As a person who owns and operates a cat, I could have told you that you can't tell a cat to do anything. A cat is going to do what it wants to do. I don't believe it is possible to train a cat.

And it's another reason why I think cat Wrangler as a film and TV job is like a consultant. What exactly are you paying for? Yeah. Man, they spend so much time fucking around in this episode. They really do. Because it's, you know, the program is 42, 43 minutes long, not counting title sequence credits, right? Yeah.

It's really like 41 minutes, really. Yeah. We've burned through 20 minutes of this episode before anything happens. And the anything that happens is that the ship pulls up to one of these buoys that are supposed to be like the thing that help them navigate the corridor. And it as blowed and it knocks out their warp drive and all their propulsion shit just like the Ferengues. Not a great look. It's not a great look and it's especially bad because a ship pulls up and they don't have enough

power to raise shields to prevent two college professors from beaming over. We have intruders in being engineering. These aliens have like loaf mouths in the middle of their foreheads. Like, have you seen that picture of Trump where his mouth is photoshopped over his eyes and he looks exactly the same? Yeah. I was wondering what a picture of these aliens

would look like if you just flip their faces upside down. Because they have a very pronounced head mouth. I do have a pronounced head mouth. Do you think that thing is meant to open canonically? I don't know. I wonder if you have to put chapstick on it. There was a scene in the script where one of them popped a piece of cake into their upper mouth and then they had to cut it because they didn't have the budget for a prosthetic

that involved. They burn that CG mouth on Jordy's neck a few episodes ago. We used up all the budget on the Frakes episode. They beam directly to engineering and this is apt because they're here to talk about warp engines. They're response to being boarded is so strange Like it's amazing to me. It's surprising to me that Jordy doesn't draw on them. Did it surprise you? I mean they didn't draw on the borgs when the borgs came aboard that first time either. Yeah.

I think that their default assumption that people are there with positive intentions has been proven wrong so many times. And especially in the context of a mind just blew out their engines. And then these two people beamed on board directly thereafter unannounced and uninvited. Assume those are bad people and shoot them. Like, sort out what they're there for when they're in the brig. How many times do you need to get your pants pulled down before you start double nodding your drawstring. How can you trust a man who wears both a belt and suspenders? Man can't even trust his own pants. How many times does Lucy pull the football away before you don't give it your full kick? Yeah. Yeah. These aliens also have like loaf

combed into their temples. Yeah, it's weird. It's like their loaf turns into hair. Yeah, and I was thinking like, how do you care for that? I don't know. How do you dry your hair after a shower and then comb it? Also just like the idea of hair in meatloaf is so gross.

Yeah, yeah. Somehow grosser in meatloaf than almost any other food. Because it's like baked in. Yeah, gross. Yeah, you get a really, you get a really polled to get it out, don't you? They have a McLaughlin group. Is your want? And these college professors explain that they are doing some kind of like green piece

direct action to get the attention of the federation that warp drives are destroying the fabric of space. And I guess the Hacarans are members of the Federation. The alien species these guys come from. Right. They're on a planet that is like totally isolated from the rest of the Federation except for this Hacarus corridor. So they have kind of a lot to lose if warp drive stops being usable, but they are insisting that no more warp drive

is the way to go. Right, because it's destroying their planet. It's making it uninhabitable. It's not bueno. Picard is really pissed. He's like, there's proper ways to do this. You can go file your data with the Federation Science Council. And I think that like some of the earlier research that they have presented has already been sort of discredited.

And it's early too, right? Like they've stated the hypothesis and they're using the scientific method to prove or disprove it, but it's not happening fast enough. Right. And Dr. Sarova, the lady, is the one that's kind of leading the research. And she's just dead certain. She's got a better understanding of this than anyone and is so freaked out that she has taken the grave step

of radicalizing her brother and then planting all these minds in the corridor. The way they treat Sarovah, which is the sister character, is so, is so discouraging. Like, she's clearly smart and articulate and like, she's found a cause. And this is it. But the way her brother talks about her is like, chicks man. Like, I don't get it. My sister and I do not wish to impede your rescue process. I'm all don't. Probes are the only leverage we have. It's a rubble. That's my sister. They never, ever treat her seriously or as an equal. I don't think. Yeah, no, I agree. I mean, I think that like they kind of reflect on that toward the end,

like Jourdie talking about the kind of hubris that clouded his judgment of her. But it's hard to ignore that fact when this show has like done so much good work in the other direction. Yeah. Of like female scientists being given the benefit of the doubt. Yeah. So they come away from this meeting though with Picard going, well, like I understand that there's a bureaucracy to go through and that's slow. And look, I'll commit to, you know, redoubling our effort to helping you figure out the issue of warp engines totally destroying

your planet. But we're here on a rescue mission, so that's got to be top of mind right now. Yeah, so Dr. Sarov agrees to use what she knows about the mines to help them get their engines back online, which is like, you know, they're talking about like a day and a half of around the clockwork and she's like, with my help, your ship could be operational in 10 hours. And so this gives Jordy an opportunity to kind of scold them, like say like, hey, listen guys,

like I'm all for exploring this as a scientific premise, but what if that medical ship that we're looking for it had perishable medical supplies on it or like people who are dying? You can't kill people because you believe what you believe and they're like, listen, bro, if our planet is destroyed, that's worse than losing one medical frigate. Yeah, they're really making the case for the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the less many. And so, Sarovah does something pretty rash.

Have I skipped ahead again? No, I don't think you have. I think they like find a debris field but it turns out not to be the ship they're looking for. And, uh, yeah, Sarova hops on her ship and like flies out in between the entrepreneur and the Fleming and she sets her warp reactor to go critical and it blows a fucking huge space butthole into space. I am the cutest of all. You will assist us. I am the cutest of all. You are all. It is just a great big purple butthole, man.

She's stamped a mud hole into that fucker. Ben, I have a question. Can you jake your own ship? Like, what's the, what are the rules of quote unquote, jaking a shuttle? I think the main rule is that it can't belong to you, right? So I don't think in the rulebook this counts. But in my notes, I definitely wrote down,

she jaked back her ship. She did. I mean, you can't assume that she filed a flight plan or anything, and I'm sure that that's part of the policy. Yeah, she goes out real big, though. Yeah, and her brother is totally gobsmacked by this. He was not expecting her to kill herself because of her beliefs. Is this one of the most epic deaths we've ever seen, as far as how a person dies. 6 million years to die. Choose one.

They wanted proof. I'm going to give it to them. Shielded maximum. Fall reverse. It's pretty epic. Like a single person I guess I should say versus a whole starship. It's pretty epic man. I mean it's pretty much like, I mean like what are causes that people kill themselves over? Like really big shit, you know? Yeah. She's like dumping a can of gas all over herself and lighting herself on fire in the town square.

Yeah. Essentially. Only that monk didn't turn into a butthole after. That might be one more notch closer to bottom at them. Don't want to get the bins. I gotta go down real slow. Yeah we'll just hang out here and get our systems used to the pressure. So they got a problem. There's a very massive ass crack opened in space. And it's like totally degraded in terms of its being, it's sort of subspace and sort of normal space.

So they won't be able to form a warp bubble to move the ship through it. And the Fleming is in there. And the clock is ticking, like the Fleming is not gonna be able to hang in the butthole forever. Yeah, I mean, that's the most difficult thing of being proximal to the butthole.

You're liable to just lose it at any moment. Yeah, and I mean, this is not a well-maintained butthole. It has not been Brazilian, it at any moment. Yeah, and I mean this is not a well maintained butthole. It has not been Brazilian, it's not, you know, it's not getting... The rim forest. Yeah, the rim forest is... You whack. ...fully intact.

And this thing is like throwing out waves every once in a while too. The enterprise isn't super close to it, but it's still getting rocked by a wave every couple of minutes. By butthole bangers. Yeah. I have, you know, I've not seen the original butthole bangers. And I've only seen butthole bangers 37. That's when I discovered the series.

It's an amazing series because it's, you know, it was originally shot on 16mm then videotape for a long time. They've totally made the transition to digital. Really stood the test of time. I mean, it says right there on the box art, a rich legacy of banging buttholes. Ha ha ha ha. Leonard Malton.

Ha ha ha ha ha. Ha ha ha ha. Wouldn't be great if Leonard Malton had to review porn. Like, like, as his self-imposed movie review rule? Like, well, if it's ever been put on tape, I've got to review it. If they show it in a theater, Leonard Malton will be there. They come up with this little plan where they're going to go to warp and then coast through the crack.

And as they coast past the butthole, they'll pass the Fleming and they'll trend beam everybody out and then they'll come out the other side. I love this idea. Just the blip in coast. Yeah, the idea of conservation of motion is often not really a part of the physics of Star Trek. Yeah. But it's a question I always wonder, like if you go to warp speed and then turn off your warp engines, are you still going faster than

the speed of light or do you not keep going faster than the speed of light? That's what the idea of the coast is sort of disputing. It sure seems like when they come out of warp, they are doing something tantamount to hitting reverse thrusters to stop their forward motion. Yeah, I don't understand, I don't feel like this shed any light on it, to be honest. Because they say, we'll still have enough momentum to make it out the other side of the butthole, but that means there's something slowing them down. Is that just the skein of real space?

I don't know, I mean, in this case, it is the butthole waves that are emanating from its core like so much flatulence. The engines are going to need a while to charge it up for this little adventure. So, Jordy's tells data like, hey, let me know when the engines are charged up. I got to go sort out some feces. And he goes and talks to Dr. Rabal, the surviving member of the Hacarid scientific community. The dude is having like a classic 10-forward bum out. Yeah, like a season 4 era 10-forward bum out.

Yeah. It's nice when they play the hits. That's what it's there for. Yeah, like a like a season four era 10 forward bum out. Yeah It's nice when they play the hits That's what it's there for when you want to be bummed, but you want to be bummed in public go to 10 forward If you would like another character to walk up to you and ask you what you're thinking about Go to 10 forward Yeah, and Rebaul makes the case that he was look, I was a non-believer in my sister for a long time. I'm an idiot. Like, I don't know anything about this.

It took me years to get on her level. And then she finally made a believer out of me. So yeah, of course I'm sad. Like, she worked extremely hard to make her case, and I was one of the people that she was closest to. It sucks. It's an interesting problem, right? Like the entrepreneur crew has been saying, well, let's study this phenomenon.

Like if you feel like there's good research here, like other people should be able to reproduce it, we should spend some time looking into it. And he's like, man, like they've been, their case has always been, we don't have time for that shit, we gotta stop using warps now. And that was the urgency that drove his sister to us blow to herself. And that like, that really hits Jordy Hart, because he's a warp dude. Yeah, he's definitely pro warp. I wonder what the traveler would think about this situation.

I don't believe that the actor who played the traveler was too expensive to bring back. Probably could have probably could have had him if they wanted him. You work for slightly less than scale. Yes, yes, yes. Yeah, Jordy's very much a warp baby warp kind of guy. Mostly because he's built a life around this. Yeah. And he's pretty frank about that. He's saying like, hey listen, like I make my living warping. You're trying to take food off my family's plate? I can't hand it. And you're working

hard to put food on your family. Look, my father was a warp miner. My grandfather was a warp miner. It's how I put dinner on the table. So what if there's a ton of mercury in the rivers? Tell me, make our living. So what if I have a terrible case of warp lung that's gonna kill me early? So they decide to coast, Ben. They do all the math on the coasting. Yeah, they make it so.

They turn the key and they hit the three wheel motion. They do that thing where you run out of gas. If you run out of gas, you can sort of like turn your key and use your starter to move your car to the side of the road. Yeah. Yeah, if it steers it clears, it's the Enterprise motto. And they... They are traversing the butthole when the wise guys on the Fleming get the great idea

of starting their warp reactor back up. And it has a bad effect on the butthole. You didn't think this butthole could get any bigger, but it can. The Fleming's like, we are covered in gasoline over here. I'm just gonna have a smoke. Just one second. I'm gonna have a smoke and then we'll figure out

what to do about all this gas. Yeah, it's not a great scene because they can't tell them not to. Yeah, they have no communications with the Fleming. All they can do is beam people out as they coast by. And they manage to beam everybody out of the Fleming, but they have run out of momentum and the space butthole has gotten too big. They're still stuck in it. Yeah.

It has grown because of how the Fleming Head started its engines. Now their math doesn't work. Now their math doesn't work. And so what proceeds after this is a like one and a half minute fourth act, which is them coming up with the idea of surfing on the fart waves out of the space but hold. All right, Mr. Levoge, get us out of here. And they like come up with this idea,

they do it and they're clear. It is such a fun idea that requires so many special effects. And to give it 90 seconds, I thought it was a really interesting choice. Especially when you spend like literally, there are 8 minutes of app dedicated to fucking around with the cat. You know, there's two rules of film. It's, it's don't work with animals or buttholes. And they broke both of those rules here. Yeah.

They would prefer to work with animals. They vastly over-saved to the cat. Yeah. Yeah. So the last scene in the episode is Dr. Rabal showing them the epidemic spread map of the subspace rifts. He's like, this is where the buttholes are now.

In 40 years, this is where the buttholes will be. They spread out to cover the entire screen of space. Yeah, it's not a great look. It's sort of the hockey stick equivalent of buttholes. Yeah. It just goes from like showing a cat's butt to showing goatsy on the screen. I was wondering if we were ever going to throw to goatsy this episode. Sure enough, it took about 40 minutes. Well, this is the worst episode we've ever done. See I thought we were resting here before going further down.

We are. I didn't notice our diving bell had lowered even further. The reaction here is that like the Federation is like okay, we're gonna limit emissions We are going to sign on to the Paris climate agreement of warp travel It's not fake news. We're gonna do it and like we're pretty sure the Klingons are gonna do it we're gonna hope that the Romulans and the Cardiacians and the Franky do the right thing and they all kind of just sit there and like reflect on it and and

Everybody leaves and Jordi had Picard talk about how how much their identities are wrapped up and the idea of warping around and the They had this kind of knee jerk reaction against a Situation that would cause them not to warp around all the time. Which I think is a fairly good metaphor. I think that people that drive around a lot don't want to have that taken away from them. And that's why the climate change debate has been so hard for a lot of people.

As long as what you do is so entwined with how you view yourself and who you are, this conflict will always be there. When people self-actualize as their job, it's hard to even fathom any other way of living. And that's what these guys have come face to face with. Like if we can't warp, are we a space-faring race? Right. Yeah, and they don't resolve that. They don't resolve to answer that question either.

It's just sort of ended with a stare off into the distance. Yeah, I mean, they're better than us though. Like they, you know, like the Federation as a whole is not just had the childish knee jerk reaction that our society has had to the climate change thing. I've like, well, we don't want the climate, you know, we don't want man-made climate change to be real, so we're not gonna take it seriously, you know? Like the federation is more advanced and they're saying like, this is a problem and we need to take it really seriously.

Yeah, the math on the benefits here is inverted, compared to what we're experiencing. Like the benefit of warp travel benefits so many in this world that the consequence also impacts so many. But I feel like in modern times the idea of sacrificing fossil fuels would hurt a few people and benefit so many more. Yeah. It's really mainly just going to hurt Rex Tillerson. Rex Tillerson, whose face you see on the internet and know that he has never smiled genuinely in his life.

Did you like this episode Adam? I was expecting a lot of Iroly prostitutizing to be done here and I felt like their portrayal of the issue and its quote-unquote solution was pretty fair and pretty alright like The stakes were as high as they could be. I mean you can't just This is not a praxis explodes and the greenhouse gases on the Klingon home world are are you know Starting global warming like this isn't that on the nose. This is like This is a little more subtle because

it's a way of life thing versus an existential threat thing. Right. So I liked that the stakes were dialed back, you know, a little bit off of existential. So I thought it was good. It was thought provoking. Yeah. I think that the structure of this episode is a fucking mess. Yeah, absolutely. They had all of the parts of a good episode and they made this weird, funky, bouleabase with catgags. That like, don't really... It would be one thing if that cat gag had any anything to say about what the

episode is about but it didn't. We've seen so many episodes that attempt to connect the B story to the A story and they these were totally independent. Yeah. I mean I don't have a problem with that being. Nothing about the butthole was affecting the cat. Right. I don't have a problem with everything. Nothing about the butthole was affecting the cat. Right. I don't have a problem with the B story, a nice story, not being connected, but when one is so clearly like interesting and compelling and well thought through, and the other is just like insane jokes written by people that don't have cats. Like just, I don't know, man. I mean, were they trying to draw a flimsy connection of like, you can't train a cat just like,

you can't train a butthole. Like, is that what they're trying to do or was there never any attempt to draw a parallel there? I think that would be far too charitable. Okay. And it just doesn't like, it doesn't read as an authentic data character thing, you know? Like data does all the research before he starts a project.

Randomly like trying to explain in causal sentences to a cat that up is no and down is good, is not something the data would do. I would love to have seen the scene where Jordy walks into the holodeck and Data's got his cat by the throat and he's like throwing it against the wall. Trying to trade it not to get up onto his desk. Stop it. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. DATA! Why do you keep doing this? Ben, do we have any priority one messages you want to throw up against the wall? I don't want to throw them against the wall because I love priority one message

is Adam. But we do have some. Fair enough. Priority one message from Starfleet coming in on Secured Channel. Need a supplement on top. supplement on top? supplement. supplement.

Yes, extra. How do you interest alone? Could be enough to buy this ship. Ben, our first priority one message is of a personal nature it is from Megan It is for Tristan It's like this Not the robot anime girl video game was your only birthday present guess again

Lovey bunches and can't wait to see the greatest gen live in Minneapolis with you. It'll be a real first contact meet queue. Oh. Hey, that's great. People are talking about going to our tour dates, Ben. I wonder what that robot anime girl video game is. The imagination goes in a number of places. Yeah. That's an adventurous couple.

Megan and Tristan come say hi to us after the show. That'll be really fun. I can't wait for Megan to correct my pronunciation of her first name. Adam, we have a second priority one message here. It is from the douche bros and it is for Old Yanny boy. And it goes like this. West Seattle represent! Did you make those tertiary indices yet? Ha! You're gonna! End of communication? I'm to point out the douche bros is spelled D-O-O-S-H. Which is a creative spelling and maybe means something different from what I think of when I think douche bro. Maybe that's a that's a question we can answer on Urban Dictionary. I tend to blanch it going to that side.

Yeah, you mean both. Well, if you don't blanch about spending $100 on a priority one message, you can go to Maximumfund.org slash Jumbo Tronon where personal messages are that $100 and commercial messages are $200. It's a great way to reach a lot of people and also help support the production of the greatest generation at the same time. Thanks guys! 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.

FOD is 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 Arrambarism

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 spaceweards. 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 Jessie Goatry.

Being smart is hard. Be dumb instead. Oh, rats. Hey, they're gone. 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 neck. But I'm here and we need to get on this. So, gotta get on the arc. 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 boats. We came to by two.

What do you think? Ono Ross and Carrie, available on MaximumFun and Outdoor. Ben? Adam. Do you have a drunk Shmota? I do. I'm going to give it to the writers of this episode and you're breaking the fourth wall, Ben. I'm breaking the fourth Shmota wall. I mean, I've talked a little bit already about how I think the structure of this is bad, but I also just wanted to twang on them a bit for the line that they insert in the final McGlofflin group when Dr. Rebal says our climate is changing. It's just such a herder, guess what this episode's about moment. And I don't think that it strengthens the case

that the episode makes. I think it kind of hurts it. It weakens it to point right at what you're talking about. Because the issue with the climate deniers is that they are letting intellectual dishonesty and emotional immaturity conflate with each other to form an unwillingness to deal with a looming catastrophe. And that's not like a phenomenon that is isolated to climate change. Like people do that with all kinds of situations.

Yeah. So kudos to the writers for writing a episode that has a lot of really good and interesting points about climate change and her dear to the writers for sneaking that line in which doesn't actually make their like advance their cause at all. Yeah, they hit the target most of the time, but at, but in this example, like they threw the dart and hit the wall. Yeah. Yeah. You're going to get one of those from time to time. It's like the house we rented for my bachelor weekend that had a dart board and we were all so inebriated so much of the time that we just left the wall with trillions of new

dart holes in it. Oh, no. And then decided to leave a very fancy bottle of whiskey as an apology when we were leaving. Did that make it right? Yeah, the guy who presented it was you. You got a good review. Yeah. That's good. So do you take a trowel and spread the whiskey

into those holes? I guess I'm not putting together how that exactly fixes the problem. I think you just get drunk while repairing those holes. You get drunk enough that your vision blurs enough that you don't see the holes. Good call. Did you have a drunk Shimoda? I did.

And I'm going to give it to Sarova who in the chicks man scene between Revol and Jordy, Revol's like kicked back in an office chair. They're talking about Sarovah across the room. And they cut to Sarovah who has clearly been given the direction, look like you're thinking about math. She looks like a stock photo of someone like thinking. You know, and you've seen that stock photo before of like, when you type in the search term smart person or thinking or whatever, like it's someone like putting their pointer finger on their chin and like looking up. She does not look like she's thinking. She looks like she's thinking about looking like she's thinking. And so she's my Shimoda. She couldn't quite act her way out of that. Ben, what do we have

coming up for the next episode? The next episode is season 7 episode 10, inheritance, a routine mission to save an endangered planet brings data face to face with a woman who claims to be his mother. Do you remember this episode Adam? Didn't data just say not too long ago that he didn't have a mother? I thought that just came up recently. Maybe. I don't remember data having a mom. How hurt do you have to be if your doctor sings wife and doctor soon is in the basement

for decades, making a robot and the robot he's making looks exactly like him and not his wife. Like he's ostensibly making their child. Yeah. That's some vanity right there. Damn, super hurtful. That's some cold shit.

That's like some Rick and Morty shit. You say that as if you have started watching Rick and Morty. Yeah, I watched a couple of that shows. Awesome. That is a great program. Took me like five episodes to get into it. It is really stupid smart. Yeah.

It's a great combo. I'll give it that. Yeah. That's a great combo. I'll give it that. Yeah. Unlike Arshto, which is just stupid fart. Well, one way you can tell us how we're doing is on Twitter using the hashtag greatest gen. I'm on there's that cover time business. There's that Benjamin R. A. H. R. We're also on Facebook and Reddit. Shout out to the rest of the viewers over there, won't you? And we should thank Dark Materia for our theme music and Adam Magusia for our other music. I wanna give a shout out to Sarah Archer,

who wrote a great article about us in Slate. And we've talked about the great article that Sarousse wrote about us, but I don't feel like we give Sarah Archer her due. We really appreciate that she wrote that article about us. Yeah, thanks so much. It was awesome. A lot of people found us through that. Yeah.

And with that, we will be back at you next week. Another great episode of Star Trek, the Next Generation. And episode of the greatest generation that I really hope is not an edible story where we see a horrible potential of data's fully full functionality brought to reality. Make it sound. Maximumfund.org Comedy and Culture, Art and Stone Listener Supported