The Greatest Generation - Achilles’ Ear (DS9 S1E6)

Episode Date: November 20, 2017

When Vash returns from the Gamma Quadrant with a sack full of toys, she brings back with her a person who knows when she’s asleep and when she’s awake. But when an auction for the quadrant’s hottest item starts causing bangers all over DS9, it’ll take more than a six finger discount to end the bidding. What kinds of holosuite programs does O’brien use to unwind after work? Have we seen ear diddling before? Is Vash more of a “cowboy” or “medium single” type? It’s an episode that was written for the wrong series!

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,

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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 friendsofdecotoforlabor.com. That's friendsofdisotoforlabor.com. Link in the episode description. Okay, now let's get on with the show. Here's to the finest crew in Space Nine, a Star Trek podcast by a couple of guys who are a little bit embarrassed to have a Star Trek podcast. I'm Ben Harrison.

I'm Adam Pryanaka, still a little bit hung over from the previous step, Ben. Adam, the cat is kind of out of the bag on our new show. Oh, yeah, that cat. Wow, Catten was written in a kind of obsolete vernacular. Thanks, John. Yeah, we got the, I mean, I think this is gonna come out well after John Roderick blabbed to Dan Benjamin on road work about it. I think one thing we've learned about John is that he wouldn't hold up under harsh interrogation. Yeah, I mean, the other thing is that like like I don't think we actually ever had an

Agreement to keep it mom or anything. It just sort of had had been my assumption Yeah, there was no embargo on on the news though In our way, I think our plan was to do a ton of work behind the scenes and then launch the thing in a fully developed and and great way. Yeah. An intentional way. Right. Well that's gone out the window. So let's do it this way instead. Yeah. I am I'm really excited about this new show. And tell the people what it's called. It's called friendly fire. It is a war movie podcast and and it has three hosts and not two I'm one of them you're one of them and the third is John Roderick John Roderick of course Maybe best known for his work as a musician he was

The frontman sort of still is the frontman of the long winters and has played with a lot of great bands. But he also is a veteran podcaster. He's been casting pod for a longer than either of us. Yeah, he's a veteran of the pod wars. He has an amazingly strong belief in the existence of podcasts, given the fact that he's never listened to a podcaster, which is an amazing fact. Would you ever put so much work into so many projects and never experienced their realization that is such a bizarre thing?

Yeah, he's a real weirdo. Why are we working with this guy? God, I don't know. Well, John, the main reason we're working with him is he's really funny and has a very deep and broad knowledge of world history and can like culturally contextualize old war movies in a way that I don't think either of us would be as good at. Right. And so we make a to make a deferred joke and he you, says smart and funny things about the movies also,

but from a very different perspective. I think it's a good mix of both. The dick and fart jokes that you enjoy from a greatest-gen branded property and maybe a little world history knowledge sprinkled in. Yeah, it might be sort of like, like if Greatest Jen is oops, all berries, then friendly fire is like cap and crunch with crunch berries. If a Ken Burns documentary had like a fart track, that's what friendly fire is.

Yeah, never forget how much I loved you. Nor that when my last breath escapes me on the battlefield, it will whisper your name. So that's coming early in 2018 and if everything goes great, it's going to be a new Max Fun podcast and we're really excited about it. Yeah, we hope it's a great big hit. So, look out for that. And do you want to get into the episode we came here to talk about today? Yeah, much like news of a podcast appearing from nowhere. So too does Q arrive on our fair station. It's season one episode six. Q less. And it's the return of Vash, Ben. The return.

The inevitable return of Vash. Didn't know how much I missed her. I saw her again. The episode opens with Bashir putting the moves on a lovely young Bajurian girl. And what's going on here seems pretty pervy, doesn't it? Well, Chief O'Brien creepily sits at the next table. I guess like, I mean like Bashir and O'Brien

go on to have a friendship, but at this point, I think O'Brien just thinks Bashir is a total ass wipe. This scene gets a whole lot darker if you consider that the whole reason O'Brien is there is to protect the Bejoren from something fucked up from happening. Or what if the Bejoren is like really excited and nervous to talk to Bashir and she has O'Brien whispering things to say to him in her ear? Like in a Roxanne kind of way? Yeah, that's the thing that invented that idea. You always reject my Roxanne references, man. I'm just saying, don't forget that Cyrano de Bergerac is canonical track. We saw Barclay

dressed up as him. You know what, with every scene that we get in the deep space 9 lunch room, the more I'm convinced that there's maybe 14 people that live on the station. That lunch room seems too small. Why are people sitting so close together? Yeah. I think I've read that the station has like a 4,000 person capacity. Like it's way bigger than the entrepreneur. You know, if the entrepreneur can dock at it

and they can also have a bunch of other starships decked also. There must be whole parts of it that are just a ghost town. And I wish this show explored those parts of it a little more. Right, like do they have like sections of the habitat ring that are off limits because there aren't people there and it'd be too dangerous to like, do they ever catch Jake like sneaking into the No Man's Land and getting in trouble for going through

like junk that the Kardashians left behind? If I were a kid, that is the first place I would go. Have you ever been to an airport with a totally closed down terminal? No. It's creepy as hell because there's so much life teaming around it and then there's like most airport terminals, a super, super long hallway that you can't even see the end of. That's just empty and roped off. And I would love to see a little bit of that on the

station just to get a sense of its size because most of the Exterior's we're seeing we're seeing of the station right now Don't have ships docked outside and so our sense of its scale. I think is diminished. Yeah, well O'Brien and Bashir both get called away Dr. Bashir chief O'Brien report to landing pad five which is a huge relief to O'Brien, probably the Bajoran girl, but crushing to Bishir. Bishir is just in a constant state of hypospring the blue out of his balls. We get to an airlock where a runabout has docked and they can't get the door open. In this episode, Adam,

transporters don't exist, so this is a big problem. And also the whole manual latch system, like, I guess that's a thing that exists on the station, but does not exist on a runabout. Yeah. It feels like there should be a latch from the inside because it's not like they've lost consciousness Inside the runabout. They're just sort of waiting and running out of air They're definitely not like in great shape in there But it takes O'Brien like strapping a car battery to the to the door mechanism to get them out and the doors open and they run in and Dax is there and some other doctors there and then And then Vash is there and

O'Brien immediately recognizes her. I guess he kept up on the like local gossip When he was stationed on the enterprise Yeah, how could you not everyone had a subscription to the Smaggazine of the entrepreneur....Smagazine of the entrepreneur. Yeah, the page 6 of the entrepreneur. Captain Picard, he's just like us. He goes out on dates. He gets tea.

Captain Picard spotted eating a chocolate croissant. Pretty saucy cap. So, that's our...that's our dramatic reveal, but not dramatic enough because they all walk off the ship. And there's a star fleet there looking at the battery that O'Brien plugged in. The camera pans down to the star fleet and he turns around and it is cute. Yeah, and it seems like they walk away without noticing that he's there. And I would say that perhaps John Delancey's performance

in this is a perfect encapsulation of his presence in the episode and the episode's existence entirely, which is the look on his face is kind of like, why am I here? Oh, how dare you. This episode is an opportunity for John Delancie to take over this brand new Star Trek show. And I think he does, capably. I feel like Nana Visitors looking at John Delancie and she's going, finally, someone who is my equal.

Finally. So, someone who is my equal. Yeah, certainly Cisco never acts big. So Vash is sort of an instant celebrity. As someone who has been in the Gamma Quadrant for years, it turns out, she's come back with like a dirty male sack full of trinkets that she's gotten there. And this is the beginning of a development that I don't quite understand, which is if the federation is so excited

about the things in the Gamma Quadrant, why aren't they doing more than sending a runabout every once in a while through the wormhole to explore it? They're like, oh, Vash, your adventures must be so amazing. You've got to submit to an interview. You got to write a book that we can read. You got to tell us all about it because clearly we don't care enough about what's inside the wormhole to send in like an exploratory vessel ourselves.

The wormhole has been open for six weeks now. Yeah. And the Bajorans were at great pains to lay claim to the to the wormhole. The federation is all about shoring up the Bajorans claim to the wormhole. Nobody seems to have actually ventured through at least from what we've seen. I don't understand it at all. For a federation whose founding principle is exploration, the idea of just sitting there next to the wormhole, not really doing much, about going in, is insane to me. Listen, we've got three conversion

vans. We'll send them through for like a few hours at a time every couple of weeks. Vash doesn't seem to be super interested in the idea of her own celebrity. She is downplaying, if not completely obfuscating her adventures there. She seems mainly interested in the protection of the trinkets that she's got. And she does that by sort of going into the station's safe deposit box room and talking to the banker there. This is sort of like an interesting world within the world to me. I love this banker scene.

I love the banker scene too because they're doing like an audit of all of her things, except like the very last item is some kind of Promethean quartz inside a box the banker has been great about cataloging every item But he does not catalog this one. He's like I've never seen anything quite like it and he sort of shrugs the shoulders and then Bank helper sticks the thing in the safe deposit box box without accounting for it at all. Yeah What the hell, Vash? And inventory. It seems like she should be more protective of this thing that is obviously the McGuffin.

Right. It's fun to catch up with her though, right? Because the last time we saw her, she was like, cutting a deal with Q to go steal artifacts all over the universe. And it's fun to see that paid off. Like, oh yeah, like here she is with a bunch of cool artifacts that she would never have gotten.

Had it not been for Q? Intermittently, Q just sort of pops into her periphery and is like, clearly they've had a falling out. She doesn't want to be around him or go adventuring with him anymore. And he, for some reason, is very interested in maintaining the relationship. There's something about her that is interesting to queue in a way that can't be satiated in any other way.

I find it interesting that O'Brien is aware of Vash, but not aware of her relationship with Q. Is it Cisco that asks O'Brien what Vash's deal was? Yeah, yeah, I mean, like Cisco is immediately suspicious of her, because as far as anybody else knew, this wormhole opened up six weeks ago and she's claiming to have been in the in the Gamma Quadrant for two years and so he's like let's look into this because I don't you know I don't want to be told I'm Christopher Columbus and she's fucking leaf Ericsson or whatever. Cisco has got to be incredibly frustrated because don't email me that Christopher Columbus was a monster. I'm aware of that. Cisco knows that there's no chance that they'll ever do the amount of research that Vash has been able to do. So he's fairly irritated that Vash has made plans to leave the next day.

Yeah, and he's very interested in stalling her. And further, he's interested in getting her to go do Dacerman's to-t with her artifacts so that they can be studied properly. He kind of has a similar motive to Picard in this way. There's a bunch of scientific interest in the stuff that he knows and has brought back. He'd like to see that stuff hit the museum before it hits the gray market. Cisco has to know that Vash is also in a pariah in the scientific community. I mean, he does. Yeah, he talks about the fact that she's been selling, she's got a bad rep.

Well, when it comes to choosing between science and profit, I'll choose profit every time. The Daystrom Institute basically wants to use her for her trinkets. Yeah. It seems like. Yeah, I mean, I think the Daystrom instruments would rather not have a relationship with her, but it was between that and everything showing up on electronic bay. Yeah, I mean, clearly the Dastram Institute

doesn't have the resources to send any ships into the Gamma Quadrant. So they'll take what they can get. I mean, they're no Vulcan Expeditionary Force, right? This is becoming a speech. Where the cat comes to, very entitled. And they're no Vulcan Expeditionary Force, right? Along the way, we get little breadcrumbs about how much O'Brien seems to know about Vash and her relationship with Captain Picard were friends. Close friends if you follow my meaning.

Like Vash asks O'Brien how Picard is, just in a, you know, in that way where when you run into the friend of an ex, you sort of politely, you know, make conversation about the ex, well, clearly not really caring about the answer to the question. I feel like that's what Vash is doing by asking about Picard. I feel like she gives no shit to about him. Yeah, I mean, they don't have like a sports team in common, so this is all they have to talk about. O'Brien says something about Vash and the captain. The captain likes a good challenger, sir.

As if he has any idea of what sort of woman the captain likes. I thought that was way talking out of his ass. Yeah. Um, I mean, O'Brien didn't even have a relationship enough with the captain to say goodbye to him before he left the ship. Yeah, the captain had to had to be the one to do that. So, right. Weird, weird that he would go out on that limb. I guess there was that scene before Picard beamed him over to Deep Space 9 where he told O'Brien all about what sort of women he likes. In case this comes up in conversation miles.

Can I call you miles? Speaking of challenges, Adam, O'Brien has a big one on his hands. There have been these gravitan surges that keep causing power outages. They experienced one on the runabout, which is why the door was stuck. But now they're happening on the station. Like over the course of the episode, more and more, they'll be like up in ops and all the computer screens will blink out. And I think my favorite part is Kira,

like really laying into O'Brien. Like, you know, if we have one of these outages during a docking procedure, we could lose an entire pile on. You need to get this shit fixed. This has really become a show about how far everyone is inside O'Brien's ass about every single problem on the station.

I've double-checked every system. For the first time in a month, there's nothing wrong with any of them. And he's really stumped by this, because like every time, everything is in place and it's not broken, so he can't. Can you imagine what kind of sick shit O'Brien's into on the hollus sweets given What is work life is like and what is home like life is like yeah, what is his escape? Just choking things

Choking everything His his programs are way more violent than They're more violent than Worf and more violent than... They're more violent than Worf and more sexual than Riker. He's just fucking next. Oh god. The other character that's real interested in Vash is Quirk. And I think Vash had like a, had like a forangi buddy when we first met her.

So she kind of, she's kind of the human that is, she's like kind of a forangi and a human body in a lot of ways. And so Quirk sees a kindred spirit in her and proposes a business transaction where he will broker an auction of all of her valuable crap all that she's brought back from the other side of the wormhole and he'll take a cut. 50-50. Mr. Cork, I believe you are trying to take advantage of me. And they have a very gross erotic scene where she massages his ears while she works him down on the percentage split.

Have we seen your dittling before? I feel like they maybe did it with Lwaxana at some point. Right. Yeah, do you remember that this feels like Like this feels way more masterpertory It feels like that and also feels like they have made a very emphatic choice to make that a canonical Ferengy thing Which it could have just been left on the trash heap of TNT She like basically takes him to the ground by his ears.

I wonder if they work in the same way as, like, if she were to twist them, would that be, like, the most painful thing to visit upon a Ferengy? Yeah, I don't know. Like, it's like taking one in the balls. Have we ever seen a Ferengy with one ear? It seems like if you were to get into a fight with a Ferengy, ripping off one of its ears would be the most rugged thing to do to him. Give me that one eared Ferengy.

You don't want to get in a fight with Mike Tyson if you're a Ferengy. Now, that's a lot of good meat there. Q kind of wins me over once her business dealings with Quarker up and running. He really resents this and he even goes so far as to call Quark a little troll. I was like, yeah, right on cue. That's what it took to win you over. Finally.

Finally, I'm pro cue. That's great. Cue is definitely the jealous boyfriend in this, right? Like, he's doing everything he can to get other men away from his lady. And the way he deals with Dr. Bashir is by making him very sleepy. Bashir seems to be a sexual weapon without a target. He's taking on all comers.

He sets a sights on Vash immediately. And hits honor in that way that is generally frowned upon in the medical community during an examination. No sign of disease or malnutrition or parasitic infections. You sound disappointed. I am. Now I have no reason to keep you here.

Not great. Yeah. Like the way Bashir talks to women is unacceptable, right? I mean, the thing about the complaint against Quark is that it was like stipulated in a contract that is tangible. But we are six episodes into this show and the evidence is mounting against Bashir in a fairly negative way. Yeah, not good, not great Bashir. Well, as Bashir gets sent off with a bad case of the sleepy's,

the camera pans back and we reveal O'Brien noticing the presence of Q, but Q, not noticing the presence of O'Brien, despite the fact that he's kind of looking right at him. So O'Brien radios up to Cisco and says that Q is on the station. And I guess as a commander, Cisco has been made aware of the existence of Q. I love this story within the story. Like I like I wanted to know more though about how the Federation shares news about stuff like this. Yeah, he describes a briefing which sounds really interesting like a like there's a PowerPoint with with different like speculative stats on cue Can change the gravitational gravitational constant of the universe at a thought Can turn boys into full grown men

mischievous Who gives that PowerPoint? It's got to be Picard, right? Maybe. I mean, I feel like if the sense that he's a slide reader, which is good. Right. He's not saying the thing that's on the slide. He's saying something that augments the information on the slide. Except we've seen Picard give presentations presentations like that one presentation he had to give about

archaeology and he was, remember when he was just fucking boring as hell? Yeah. So maybe he's not the right guy for this. That was also a cue episode. That was the one where Vash came back. That's right. It turns out boring PowerPoint presentations are a main through line to the Q stories. It's in the show Bible. Yeah, there must be a show Bible for DS9. I've never seen one before. Is there a show Bible entry for Q? In the TNG one. Yeah, I mean, I imagine there have to be rules that govern his usage even though like he is all powerful and all knowing like how do you put a fence around a character like that? I imagine they there has to be a chapter. Pages on the borgs the klingons the Romulans. No, no queue entry as far as I can tell.

Yeah, why would they? He's only the Deus Ex Machina incarnate. Yeah. So Cisco is now aware of cue and goes down to Quark's bar to try and you know shake the trees. He's like asking, where is and what's going on. Q reveals himself and they get in a little old timey boxing match where Cisco punches Q in the face a bunch of times. Come on! Isn't this all wonderfully bum parry? Come on, take a poke at me! I know that's what you really want to do! And, um, I feel like this is just a scene that is like, what would Picard not do?

Picard never hit me. I'm not Picard. So, let's do that. Yeah, it's a scene that exists to underscore Cisco and Picard's differences. Because it's not like Punching Q is gonna hurt him, you know? scene that exists to underscore Cisco and Picard's differences? Because it's not like Punching Q is gonna hurt him, you know? If there are no stakes to the fight other than the proof that Cisco and Picard are different people, then you don't need to have the fight to prove that. Like, what would have happened if Q broke Cisco's neck?

And then once the scene was over, like fixed him back in a normal. Like, to me, Q chooses not to be the threat to Cisco that he proves himself to be to Picard. And I don't understand the reason for that choice. Like, Q's essential dangerousness is not really pronounced here. Yeah. By throwing the fight especially.

Right. And TNG Q is letting like, thrown spears go through Wesley's belly and shit, you know. Yeah. Yeah, there seem to be real stakes. And maybe it's because there's, because Q is fighting for a relationship versus the idea of proving some point. Like, what is Q, I feel like they never really establish what Q gets out of the relationship, though. There's no way Q's crushing that push, right? I mean, maybe but like why, you know, if he's a being of pure energy that's all powerful

and all knowing, like... What does he need with joys of the flesh? Right. I mean, I feel like he's made fun of joys of the flesh before. You know what, that's the core of the problem of this episode is because we are left wondering what the attachment is between them. And not in a way that makes you wanting more, not in a like Ross and Rachel, will they want they or like Picard and Beverly, when are they ever going to kind of way, just in a, no, we're just not going to tell you what their possible

connection might be. Right. Even though any sort of connection would have been more interesting than the lack of one that we get here, what if Q's interest in Vash was purely motivated by getting at Picard, like in a way that he has not been able to rattle him before. Like, that seems interesting to me. Yeah. If the idea of winning Vash's heart is doing it at Picard, that's fascinating to me. Totally. Like, because what's the one way Q has not been able to hurt Picard?

It's like on that kind of emotional level. So you're saying that this episode was written for the wrong series? Yeah, I kind of think so. I don't know that I disagree. I think that this would have been much more interesting set on the Enterprise like, you know, a year and a half after we lost last saw of Ash. Like, she comes back and is like, Picard, please get me out of this deal with this with this being Yeah, I mean instead instead we got sure would forest or whatever Which was

Which I was shocked to hear was a callback Brian drops Even though Brian was nowhere near that situation like that must have been in us magazine again right I read all about it in near that situation, like that must have been an us magazine again. Right. I read all about it in a, on Starfleet Tumblr. Vash is like walking to her big auction and Q is like, Do you remember that tiny little insect bite you had on Aaron's prime? And he like lets her succumb to a bug bite.

She got one time that he prevented from affecting her. And like she flashes a bunch of time and she's like losing her hair and getting boils all over her skin and going all gray. I don't feel like they gave Jennifer a head trick like a great sense of what this was supposed to evoke. Or maybe they didn't know what it was supposed to evoke, because she's doing like, like,

like when she goes all like old and crone-looking, it's like, it's insane how big she gets with the wobbling and hooking up her hands and stuff. The damage seems to be to her vanity. You're so ugly, yes, so ugly. You know, versus her fears of her mortality here. Yeah. Like, and there's something about her physicality here that made it seem that way to me.

Did you feel that way? The way she played it could have looked good if the camera had been framed a little differently. But one thing I wanted to talk about with this episode is that almost 80% of the shots in this episode are like somewhere between a cowboy and a medium single. Like there are very few shots even that have two people on screen and when they do it's because it's just a dirty single of somebody. And they are all, it is relentlessly the same framing every single time.

And it's so relentless that cutting between scenes is jumpy a lot of the time. And I feel like you really leave an actress out in the cold when you just frame them up like a cowboy shot and say like act old. You know, like it's bad. Like if the camera had been tighter, the way she was moving would have been much more jarring and upsetting. Or if it had been wider, you know, your imagination would have had to do more of the filling in about like what exactly is going on with her Skin and stuff, but like it's like the perfect wrong framing for the kind of movement that They went with in the take and I think that it's bad directing

What I really could have gone for is sort of like the thriller close up right like show me the nails grow and then the the ECU of like the hair falling out or something, like jump around a little bit. You're totally right about this. And so this scene that should have like a real impact, like really be upsetting, it winds up being kind of corny and dumb and making Q look more like an asshole than an existential, magical threat.

Right. So they have this action, and the station is getting worse and worse, everything is really falling apart, and they can't even figure out what is causing the problem. They think it's something on board the station, but they can't pinpoint it. So they're trying all this different shit of like flooding the station with poison gas and using the internal sensors to ill effect. Now when you're trying to figure out what's

wrong with the station, the first thing you're going to want to do is flood it with poison gas. I like to use a one-parts per million mixture. Any high-adensity of the gas, and you'll all be dead in three weeks. Make sure to plug up any sewer lines before you flood the station with gas. You don't want those gases interacting with sewage backflow. It's so dumb. This is their first idea. It's their first idea. It finally works. Like, it is just barely in time. Do they discover that the McEuffin crystal that Fash brought on board is the source of the Graviton problems. They, like Cisco slaps a communicator on it and beams it off the station.

Quark has been promised 1 million bars of gold press latinum by Q for this thing. And is very upset when he loses control over it and it goes off the edge of the station into space and turns into a magical manter ray, which is a like far pointy feeling idea. Sure is. And it flies away into the wormhole. It was a space flounder the whole time. Ben, I want to talk about the auction scene just a little bit. We get a variety of aliens here that I'm not sure we've seen before. Yeah. We get a little a little birdman. Yeah, like that birdman.

I like those blue, blue gauze face guys. Yeah, the embarrassed New York Giants fans with the blue bags over their heads. Really fun variety here. I thought that was cool. I thought this scene would have been 10 times better though if Cork had like whipped out some some like Southern auctioneer skills. I think dendtally uh D. Ferringi makes that a linguistic hurdle that that he could not get over. Yeah.

that he could not get over. Yeah. Gold to cotton, the cotton, gold to cotton. So... We get... And we're like two in a row here, Ben, I feel like. We get another slide whistle ending. In which it's made clear that Dr. Bashir has slept through the entire emergency

in a Chris Farley in the Hynal sketch on snl kind of way You can't buy stronger medication in this country like what's all the commotion about guys? I Honestly like did not even notice that he was not in the episode Yeah That's a big problem I think yeah did not miss him Like he relieved that he was gone. Yeah.

I mean, the other character that's not much in the episode is Odo. And I think Odo interacting with Q would be really interesting because Odo has some kind of, some kind of supernaturalness about him and is also a character at this point that is shrouded in mystery and Q is all knowing and all powerful. I feel like they are much more interesting two characters to go up against each other.

And also like Q is so silly and Odo is so serious, you know? I completely agree. And who is more of a security threat than Q? Right. Odo should be all over his ass. He should be frantic to figure out something to get rid of him. He should be all over him in a totally different way too.

If Odo's entire deal is figuring out if he's alone in the universe, where he came from, et cetera, et cetera, like who better to ask about his origins than Q? Like, I would be, I would jump over my table to go talk to Q about where I might have come from if he's a guy who might know. Exactly. But he's totally absent. One other thing that I think is weird about this episode in particular is they've kind of weird about this episode in particular is they've kind of

canonized a few things about the Ferangies and one is that the Ferangies are like hopelessly weak on business if there's any sex on the line and I think that that makes them such less interesting of a force in the galaxy like the second somebody is stroking the Quarks earlobes. And it happens a couple times in the episode. He's just like, he's just out to lunch. And I think that it would be so much more interesting if they, you know, like, business is this thing

that is like almost, almost totally alien to the Federation, but it's something that is like almost totally alien to the Federation, but is something that is accommodated and a part of the life of this station. And so like if he was actually like a really talented at business, like that would be, I feel like there'd be more compelling to watch too. I agree, it would make him more of a threat in a couple of different ways too.

Yeah. In a way that I feel like he should be. Yeah. I mean, we've talked about the scene where he and Riker debate a bunch of money that he owes Riker. And it's like, I feel like the federation should have people that grow up in a moneyless utopia should be worse at dealing with Frankies. Is it more important to have comedy or to make Farengy a viable serious alien race? I feel like it really is a decision that's that simple and I feel like the show has made that decision. Like in matters having to do with the Ferengi, we will, we will veer toward comedy. Like we just can't abide the idea of serious Ferengi business or politics. I don't know why that is because

I think there's room for both. Like, like, Quark is a hilarious and interesting character, but fully developed characters contain multitudes. And, and the intention of making him more simple in this way, I think just limits the possibilities of what you can do with him. Because, you know, from now on, you could never take him seriously in any business dealing with a woman. Like, because there will always be that Achilles ear. Oh, I'm glad we got to Achilles ear, Adam. Did you like this episode?

No, I didn't. But, you know what I did like about talking about it is talking about all the ways that it could have been improved. Like it's one of those EPS. And I feel like we don't get these very often where we wrote in the margins of this story and we punched it up quite a bit. Like I think this is so close to being a really good episode with just a little bit of tinkering. And it's not the sort of tinkering

that would require a lot of budget. Like you could solve a lot of these problems with dialogue. Sure. I think I think you could solve a lot of the problems with just having more interesting camera framing even. Yeah, really fairly disappointing, especially when I feel like if you're a new Star Trek show, you wanna fire your cue gun at your show, you know, to make a count, right? Like you want cues arrival to your Star Trek show to be like a big thing. And like by the time this episode ended, I was like, what was it for?

What did we learn? Where did that shined up? Where did cue end up? They just sort of went their separate ways. Yeah. where did Q end up? They just sort of went their separate ways. The resolution was fairly unsatisfying. And it wasn't like by the end Q raised his fist to the sky and was like, I will get you, Vash. There was not even a threat of his return ever. It was like, well, Cisco, I may see you again. You'll see a white flash when I return. Be on the lookout for that. They couldn't even do the threat of a return in any heavy way.

I mean, the existence of the Q character is this like impossibly powerful judge of humanity. Like that's how he was introduced. And like this sort of like loses the nerve of him being that, which like I don't necessarily mind, but it doesn't take him in a more interesting direction. In matters having to do with story, I am never about the defanging of a character, especially a character like you. I want more fangs.

Give me all the fangs. Fang it up. you. I want more fangs. You mean all the fangs? Fangu? Especially. And fang it out. Yeah, like make him dangerous. He's totally dangerous, but he's not in this episode. Yeah, like he's specifically not the thing that is dangerous in this episode.

It's bizarre. Well Adam, do you want to see if we have any priority one messages? That's one thing that's never dangerous. Priority one message from Starfleet coming in on Secured Channel. Need a supplement on? supplement on? supplement

supplement Yes, extra. The interest alone could be enough to buy this ship! Adam our first priority one message is from Patrick. It's for the greatest generation. Hey, that's us Goes like this. Thanks for an amazing run fellas That's it Hey, you're welcome Patrick. Thanks Patrick. We had a lot of fun doing it. We'll go now. I hope Patrick's still around. Ha ha ha.

Yeah, I don't know. Man, I really wonder, we don't really have any way of knowing what people we shed because we moved on to Deep Space Nine and what people we added because we moved on to Deep Space Nine. One thing that totally blows me away is that our download numbers have not really dropped on a monthly basis since we've went to one a week. Like they dropped like a tiny tiny bit but not

let's at all. I mean that makes me think that a lot of people came on board for deep space 9 but I don't know. Or they're still working through the backlog. Yeah. I don't know. It always amazes me when somebody says, All right, I'm all caught up. I found your show six weeks ago. That is a hundred and eighty episodes.

Yeah. In six weeks, like, that is a rate of podcast consumption that I personally find impossible. As somebody who is constantly innovating ways to get out of my own head, it's amazing that anybody wants to spend that amount of time with me. Yeah, spend that amount of time getting in. Ben, our second priority one message is from the Razzgoles. It is for plevim.

Okay. It's like this. Anybody. Has anybody heard from team plevim? Is it really a team if they don't even buy a P1? The dream is empty. Wake up and join the team that hates Plavim hashtag Rascals. Yeah. Trigger, Razz, Brittany, Jason, Josh, Kimberly, Lave the Gooch, AJ, Amy, CJ, Ella, Eric, James, Jesse, Michael, and Sam.

Man. That's the end of the message. It appears as though, uh, rascals as a roster has grown. Yeah, that's a longer list than I remember. Unclear if Team Plavime has grown in equal measure. I guess we'll never know. We're not going to know that until they buy a P1 bin. Yeah, I guess, uh, we'll just have to wait and see, Adam. If you'd like to purchase a priority one message, you don't have to wait and see.

You can go to maximumfund.org slash jumbo-chon. Personal messages are $100 and commercial messages are $200. They're one of the finest ways to ensure the ongoing production of our program, Ben. Thanks guys. Hey Adam. What's that, Ben? Did you find yourself a drunk Shimoda? Drunk Shimoda! Sure did. My drunk Shimoda was a laugh out loud moment.

It was a... It maybe was one of the only interesting camera frame decisions of the entire episode. It occurred during the auction. Of the entire episode it occurred during the auction Quark is is surveying the room for an increase in bidding and a six finger hand shoots up into frame Fun just a a hastily putty-don sixth finger with a new high bid and a sixth finger handraiser is my drunk Shimoda Ben. Very nice. I also laughed out loud at my drunk Shimoda. Also a character with no name or anything we know about them. Let's just a few, scrub your player to 28 minutes and 26 seconds.

This is the scene right after Vash leaves the safety deposit box and is on her way to the auction. Q is kind of holding her up in the hallway. And this extra is walking behind her that is like trying to get past, but he's also just got like the biggest grin on his face. And I kind of interpret this as just like, this guy is so fucking excited to be on Star Trek right now. I noticed that guy too, right away.

He really stuck out. He really is. One of those guys that didn't know how to walk too. Like some people walk on camera without being noticed He really stuck out. He really is. He's one of those guys that didn't know how to walk too. Like, some people walk on camera without being noticed and he seems so self-aware. So self-aware, like, annoyed that he can't get by them. Like, yeah.

Like, he doesn't know. It's almost like his face knows that the shot is blown. Like, there's no way that they're gonna keep this one. Yeah, like, like the last, like the the most of the time while he's on screen, he is very joyful. The last like instant you see him, he looks embarrassed and like guilty. Like he blew the shot, you know. I love that guy. Yeah, good guy. A Greatest Gen Live Show is something you don't want to miss. Why? Well it's a great opportunity to see me and Ben in person, but that's not all.

FODs from all over gather at these shows to cosplay, to do pre and post show hangs, to make friends, and share their embarrassment. Hey, let's make a pretty great name for a tour. Let's do it. The Share Your Embarrassment Tour is coming in August 2023, and we've got a bunch of dates in a lot of great places. Go to GreatestGenTour.com to get more info. That's GreatestGenTour.com for dates and ticketing information for the Share Your Embarrassment

Tour. I'm Jordan Morris. And I'm Jesse Thorne. www.jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj Noswald. Can I get a Balrog burger and some air-gorn fries? Thank you. And Kumail Nanjiani. 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 Goat try. Being smart is hard.

Be dumb instead. Oh, Russ. Hey, hey, hey, oh, 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 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 Carrie? We investigate spirituality, claims of the paranormal, stuff like that.

And you have a boat and say the world's gonna end, so seem like something for us to check out. We would love to be on the boats. We came to by two. What do you think? Ono Ross and Carrie, available on MaximumFun.org. What do we have coming up on the next episode, Ben? Next episode is season one, episode seven, Dax. Lieutenant Dax's former self is accused of murder.

What do you think about this episode, Adam? We're just playing all the hits in season one, Ben. We got to get a courtroom episode out in the first half of this one, and here we are. Sure. Okay, I'm going to go to the random number generator and find out if we will be doing this episode drunk or not drunk, Adam. I forgot about our sort of dame clues over every episode now.

Adam, the number generated is 13, so we are in the clear. Okay, I'm relieved and disappointed. I'm relieved and disappointed. Yeah, I think that that's sort of the That's sort of that's sort of where we were always gonna be when we wind up not doing a drunk one Relieved and disappointed also my resting state route college Well, Adam our resting state is hanging out online with our Legion of Viewers who are just a real swell group of people who we feel really lucky to get to interact with on a regular basis.

It's a compilation, Ben. We do this on Facebook. There's a Greatest Gen Facebook group. There's also a Greatest Discovery Facebook group And I believe there's now even a greatest Orville group, which is an unsanctioned Orville podcast that doesn't have a podcast just a group, I guess. I'm excited for them to actually start a podcast with that name. They'll be hearing from our lawyers. They'll be hearing from our lawyers. There's a GraysGen subreddit, which is also a tremendous amount of fun.

And the GraysGen hashtag on Twitter, our Adam is at Cut for Time and I'm at BenjaminRAHR. Support for the show is appreciated at maximumfund.org slash donate. We also have merch items from our years of doing the greatest generation available. Ben strikes me that we need to come up with a deep space 9 specific piece of merch. And I wonder what that's going to be. I think the next thing that we're going to try and is an Oxbridge Shimoda T-shirt, which I'm really excited about, because the great folks at the Hofler Company designed a logo for Oxbridge Shimoda, that is great.

So that'll be a T-shirt once we finally get our acts together. And then we gotta come up with something good for Deep Space Nine. Who knows what it will be? Who knows what it will be? The X-Bride Shimoda logo? Absolutely. Yeah, that's like a... that's one that I feel like I should have. Yeah, agreed. Well, we should thank Dark Materia for our theme music and Adam Riggusia, who is assimilating our theme

music resistance being very futile. And with that, we'll be back at you next time with another great episode of Star Trek, Deep Space Nine. And another episode of the greatest generation, Deep Space Nine, that is swapped Gavils for balls. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha or comedy and culture, artist owned. Listen or supported.