The Greatest Generation - Alt Biosphere (S5E13)

Episode Date: February 20, 2017

When the Enterprise crew tracks the path of some interstellar star trash, they discover a biosphere built inside an outlet mall. But when their genetically engineered population thinks about hitching a ride out of the way, Captain Picard has to decide how long to delay their decision. Why is everyone okay with eugenics all of a sudden? Who is at the top of the Moab IV food chain? Could we talk about John Hurt for a minute? It's the episode that's really a "Ron Canada Drinking Game."

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

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

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

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

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

I'm Ben Harrison. Ben we got through it last week. We got through the first joke-free episode of the show. Very serious episode of the greatest generation. And I was trying Adam. Our viewers unsurprisingly also showed up to their game in a very considerate and thoughtful manner. Let's not pretend. Let's not pretend that we know the future, Adam.

Really hoping so, Ben. Maybe if we wish this into existence, it will be the case. Yeah, that's what I'm trying to do. Well, thanks for yes-ending me so well on that bit, Ben. Hey, I got, uh, yes, ending me so well. On that pit, Ben. Hey, I got your back, Adam. You know, like, uh, where the smothers brothers, except you're actually smothering me. Hey, hey, hey. That might be the worst dead joke we've ever had on the show, Adam.

Yeah. Because it was both a super old reference and a terrible pun. You know what, I can drop a Smothers Brothers reference, but I can't play in that Max Headroom game at all. Can't do it. Well, Adam, I know you're still in the battle bridge. Can we see the battle bridge?

No, I'm afraid not. So this may be shot down before it gets off the tarmac, but I was gonna suggest that you go ahead and splurge on the last of your Star Trek cards as well. Oh, well, do you want to wait for me to go get those cards? Yeah, you got to run up to the main bridge. Yeah, I got to, what I have to, is get into some jeffries tubes. It's the fastest way to get there from here.

Use that little pumping lever to open up the doors and the power's out. The game is five cards stuffed. The game is exceeding for several. What are the suggestions to start there? Time to block a pendulum. Alright, I have five packs of cards in my hand. You have five? Yeah, here's what I'm going to do.

I'm going to tear through them and I'm going to give you the greatest hits. Okay, that's awesome. I'm going to tell you if we've got some awesome shit happening. Here's what we got. Well, I got data's day. That's a card I don't have. Here's what we got. I got data's day. That's a card I don't have. It looks kind of Irish.

It looks Irish the way the space Irish cards should be. What does that mean? It's green and green and orange and white. Green and swoopie. These all look like totally new cards to me. It's a great! That's awesome. Fill in out all the holes. I got disaster like Riker. The episode where data comes a broom. The outcast which is coming up, excited to do that episode. Yeah. Is that the one where Riker and an asexual alien get down? Yeah.

Riker considers impregnating a husk as their people do. Oh yeah, I forgot about those husks. Arsenal of Freedom. It's a pu-pu-pu. Shishms. And the drumhead. That's a good pack. We got birthright. Part 2.

Redemption Part 2. The battle first contact and pen pals. Down on my last pack. Been really hoping for something special. Looking forward to it. Something that really blows you away. Oh boy. We do have something special. It's a ship to the line card. Oh boy! We do have something special. It's a ship's in the line card.

Oh! This was like my second to last pack also. Yeah. Got some real cool ships doing some shoot-em-ups. On the front side and on the back it looks like a piece of a puzzle. Yeah. What piece do you have? Puzzle piece SL5.

I have SL11. Oh wow, so this is a pretty sizable poster. We're gonna make out of these puzzle pieces. We're just gonna have to keep buying these boxes. It looks like there's one ships of the line card per box. Wow, well, that could be a costly endeavor as these boxes have not become cheaper since we started doing this gig.

I wonder if the Series 2 has ships of the line cards in it. I don't know. I know that's so that like these were the Series 1 of the portfolio print trading cards for the odd episodes and then Series 2 has the even episodes and also autograph cards but there were some unexpected special cards in there also like the you know the clip out of the comic book and the comic book cover yeah the one that just says tenant warf. The one that just says door. Hahaha. Yeah, well, that concludes...

Star Trek, the next generation portfolio, Prince Trading Card Series 1. Yeah. For both of us. That's really exciting, Adam. Yeah. Will we do series two? Who knows? Yeah, I think that sounds like fun.

That's something we should try. Alright. If for no other reason then, it's become sort of a contest between us. Let's see what the viewers say. What do you think about that? They can... I am all about putting it up for...

not a vote, but just to see what the viewers think. Yeah, it's advice and consent, not the... Look, it's not like we're gonna be putting our whistles around any viewer and having them take a big ship. This is our fucking ship. Yeah, exactly. Now shut the fuck up.

Um... Yeah, so use the hashtag GreatestGen or say what's up in the Facebook and let it say say whether you think we keep going with this inane card bit or punch out. Fair enough. Well Ben, what do you say we get to do in what we came here to do, which is to do season 5 episode 13 Masterpiece Society. So the entrepreneur is on an escort mission, they're hanging out with the core fragment of a disintegrated star. And they're just kind of like flying alongside this massive stellar fragment as it courses through the galaxy. And they're realizing that it's going to pass within the gravitational influence of a planet that they thought was uninhabited.

But it turns out there's some life signs evident on this planet. And even more puzzling, they seem to be human. How do I know? Oh, I don't eat it. I don't eat it. Yeah. So these are kind of cagey at first. I'm like, what are you doing? Yeah, so these are kind of cagey at first. They call them up on FaceTime and they decline the call

and they try and like friend them on Facebook and they don't like, you know, nothing happens. Which is sort of a weird thing to do because I think what they're trying to do is set up the idea that these are These are humans these are future humans, but not quite as advanced as as As contemporary sci fi humans that we've gotten on this show Yeah, it's a because they're super blown away by beaming technology, right?

They they're they're they're just fairly impressed by technology in general Yeah, I think they're like a society that embraces technology, but is incredibly insular so I think Picard like gets on gets on the on a bullhorn eventually and it over the fence. Like, hey, you guys are in big trouble if you don't talk to us on the phone. And so they pick up the phone and they're like, hey, listen, we don't want to talk to anybody. But you said we were in big trouble. What's the deal? And the captain starts to explain to them that... Your planet is about to experience massive seismic disruptions due to an approaching stellar core fragment. No structure will be able to withstand them.

Like, they live in like the polyshore bio-dom, essentially, and it's going to like punch little holes all through the outside of it if this core fragment gets passed and otherwise this planet is uninhabitable. So this is a colony that is doomed if they don't follow the enterprise's instructions. Yeah, if the Polly Shore movie was a eugenics metaphor, that's the story that we're telling here. We've got sort of an alt biosphere situation going on. Yeah. And there's no purple sticky punch, Adam. Now.

The tone that is set here is so crucial for how we are to treat these people for the rest of the episode. And I was really surprised with how they introduced this culture. They sent a dustbuster club down there to visit with Aaron Conner. Aaron Conner is the Jason Schwartzman administrative leader of yeah, but like cleaned up the Jason Schwartzman not not Neckbeard Jason Schwartzman. No, yeah, he's like, uh, well, post rush more pre he's been he's been beauty for a long time now.

Yeah, all right. Well, prebeards Jason Schwartzman is the is the planetary administrator who Yeah, all right well pre-beards Jason Schwartzman Is the is the planetary administrator who gets them and begins by just being utterly blown away by Transporter technology. Yeah, and then he starts telling them about their Labansborne project that they're running down there and No one on the crew is disturbed by this at all. They're like, yeah, we basically genetically engineer everyone on the planet, we tell you who to fuck. We destroy all the children who have any sort of

congenital defect. It's great, everyone does what they're supposed to do. We've got a perfectly functioning society. It's basically a dream world, it's great. everyone does what they're supposed to do. We've got a perfectly functioning society. It's basically a dream world. It's great. And instead of, and it's also, this is boiling in horror. They're like, oh, that sounds reasonable. But we got to get you out of the way of this core fragment.

Yeah. I mean, this is a universe in which the, like, eugenics and genetic engineering of humans is like a notorious conflict of the past. Yeah. I mean, they mentioned consing in the same breath as Hitler in an episode not that long ago. And consing is like the engineered superhuman that curk fights in wrath, right? Right. So like, the fact that they're just kind of like accepting

the validity of this society by knee jerk is, I wonder if it's an artifact of the time they live in? Like maybe Kirk and Spock would have been like more, more inherently adversarial toward it. And because the 24th century is so far removed from the memory of that stuff, these guys are like, oh, like, well, I guess you have a right to do whatever you want. Because they're human, it seems more sinister.

And because they totally gloss over that potential for conflict, I feel like the rest of the story is totally defanged. Like, this could have made a really nice B story to weave throughout the rest of the episode, but it's not a huge deal. Yeah, so the deal with this society is it is a homeostatic group of humans where everybody is engineered to serve the function that they serve and they like, I mean it's a little bit like the artist planet that stole the kids all those years ago. I got those vibes too. You know, everybody has a place and there's a place for everybody like the Aaron Conner, the leader, like what knew when he was born that he would be the leader

and like has all the genetics to be the leader. There's another. He's like the grown up dolphin polishing kid. Yeah. Yeah. It's a shame he never polishes a dolphin on screen. Yeah. Just to provide some continuity.

Um, Ron Canada is in this episode as, um, as Martin, who's like the kind of justice Scalia of the planet, like he's like interprets the founders wishes and he's there to like scold Aaron every time a breach of their homeostasis is affected. Because, and just by beaming into the biosphere, the Enterprise crew is upsetting what they consider the perfect balance of their society. And it's like a utopian closed society where they have no interaction with the outside world at all, because for all they know, they are perfectly sealed inside this bio-dom.

I love the casting of Ron Canada here. Like what we need is a is a dissenting opinion who can scowl and not disapprovingly. Yeah. Who do we got for that? Your list is only one name. It's Ron Canada. Ron Canada can do that. Ron Canada built a career on that. He really did. He's the greatest. Yeah, really, and a solid job in this instance. So, yeah, but so the enterprise is like, well, listen, why don't you listen to your buddy Ron over there? Like, that's all well and good, but if we don't do something about this core fragment, whether or not Ron Canada approves of it, you're all gonna die. So, think about what we're telling you.

And Aaron Conner is like, all right, I see the sense in that. So, I'm gonna pair Jordi up with our hottest and most advanced scientist, and they're gonna work on this problem together. I guess one of the advantages of all biosphere is that when you're genetically engineered to be the leader of a planet, you don't have to have a quorum on any decision. Yeah. And Connor just makes the decision and that's what goes. Yeah, he is like the sovereign of biosphere.

Yeah. So they put Jordi, they team Jordi up with Hannah Bates who is like one of the brightest scientists in their society. And she like, like she's really blown away by some of the stuff that Jordi is able to wield, but she is, she shows that she's like, she's no joke. She's like every bit the brilliant scientist that she has been sold to them as.

Like, Hannah's genetically flawless, except in one crucial way. She's not creeped out by Jordy. Yeah, I mean, like they kind of have likei Liyah kind of working relationship, right? Yeah. Like, the way Jordi worked with Leah Brahms minus the creepy sexual predator stuff is kind of their vibe here, which I thought was cool. Did you recognize the actress that plays Hannah?

Vagely. She seemed super familiar to me, and then I realized it's because she is the amorous waitress at the diner that they go to in space balls. I'll have the cleavage. They're special. Oh. Oh, so you're saying she's got some sci-fi cred.

Yeah, she sure does. That's like the most hardcore sci-fi cred you can get. Yeah, even the Lovar Burton's like, whoa, you were in space balls? Awesome. Yeah, I mean, Bill Pullman's in that scene. John Candy's in that scene. Oh, God, Candy. Look, it's got a mind of a tall sweet all sweet art I can't do a thing with it. Do you think there are space balls cons? Man I wish. This should be if there aren't. Can we just talk about the fact that John Hurt was like like like Mel Brooks called up John Hurt was like, like, like, Mel Brooks called up John Hurt and was like,

hey, I got a really funny joke in my movie. It kind of only works if you're, if you play the part. And we got to put some, some gross jelly on, on the front of your shirt. Are you in? I think when Mel Brooks calls, you pick up the fucking phone. Yeah, man, he's a fucking E-GOT. Yeah. He's one of the greatest of all time. Oh, so good. So, the plan that Jordy and Hannah come up with is they're going to use some... They're going to use the enterprises tractor beam,

modified in a way that Hannah came up with to push the stellar fragment enough out of the way that they can shore up the biodome enough that it will survive. Like they're really confident in biodomes, earthquake safety. There's a lot of structural improvements that they've done over the years. They think they could do they can do up to an eight point whatever on the Richter, but the enterprise is pretty sure that without moving the core fragment, they're looking at bangers that are much worse than eight pointers on the Richter. So they're going to try and do two things at once. They're gonna do even more structural improvements

to the bio-dome. And also they're gonna do some cool tractor beam tricks on the corp fragment. And this is only possible because Hannah and Jordi come up with a visor-based hack of the tractor beam. Oh, that's perfect. They're gonna use some algorithm

that the visor uses to send pulses to Jordi's brain to modify the tractor beam. They're gonna get four times as much power out of the thing and move this core fragment because it's much too massive otherwise. And after this mission, they're going to return the tractor being back to normal because this is a one-time only use technology. I wonder, right? I mean, the tractor beam is one of many technologies on this show

where its capabilities are like conveniently squishy. You know, like the writers can always write something that's too tough to tractor or too far away to tractor. It's not good enough to do what it's supposed to do. Yeah, or it just works, you know, if the story needs them to be able to tractor something, it just works. And Jordy's not being creepy at all. No, he's just, he's, he's, he's putting his nose to the grindstone. Wait a reign it in, Jordy. Yeah, Jordy's learned a lot of valuable lessons, I would say. Like, like maybe, maybe he's going to start to think

about tearing up his MRA club membership card. Do you think if one of the Ulians got into Jordy's mind, like it would be the Ulian that went into a coma? Hahaha. See, that's a joke we should have used last episode. Oh, well. We were really broken it up nicely. That was low hanging fruit.

Oh man. Jordy just like wakes up like normal. What's going on guys? What happened people people are gonna be like Like you know if I if I want to get into greatest Jen what's a good episode to start with? Well not the one about rape Yeah, I would save that for About a hundred episodes in actually.

So while Jordy and Hannah are doing their science up on the ship, Troy has stayed down in the bio-dome and she is cruising in for an intimate encounter with Aaron Conner. It is at this moment that it's become ultra-clear, Ben. Season 5 is the season of Dianna Troy, isn't it? It really is. Yeah. So she's down sort of instigating a Meek you yeah with our with our Aaron Conner guy and it's working They're getting along great, but but I have no idea what they see in each other at all like there's no there there Well, maybe it's just purely physical. Maybe she just likes guys who look like Jason Schwartzman. That's a beautiful girl in the world. I like you. It's it's animal attraction, man. Yeah, it's lust, isn't it? I mean, you know, you know, like in her mind, she knows that this is this is a cheap interaction, right? Like she's gonna... And it's forbidden too. She wants to muddy the DNA water, says she.

She's gonna be gone really soon. Like, and because of the way the society that Aaron Conner represents is set up, she's never gonna have to see him again. Like this is playing with house money as far as she's concerned. Maybe she's the only one that sees all biosphere for what it is. And she's she wants to fuck it up literally. Yeah. You think she's gonna get pregnant and come

back and demand child support? She's gonna stick the, at all bio dome. Right through the dome. Yeah. Take one to the dome. We talked last episode a little bit about guy who thinks he's on a date, but is not. I feel like Troy and Aaron kind of don't realize they're on a date until they both realize they are. Yeah, they just actually figure that out. That's a fun kind of date, right? Yeah, yeah, those are great.

I've gone on a couple of those where I didn't realize I was on a date and then I realized I was, and I was like, oh, I don't wanna be on a date. But this isn't what I was trying to do. And then your dick's out. Yeah, let's be honest, Adam, my dick is never out. Nope. Always in. Yeah, let's be honest Adam my dick is never out. Nope Always in your pants that is yeah

Let's paint the picture a little bit of what it's like on Alt-Bio dome. Yeah, it is it's a little bit of the outdoor mall cafeteria vibe that we got, I want to say like 15 episodes ago where that bomb exploded. Yeah, but it's also like that scene in Gatica where they go see the guy playing piano and then you realize it's a piano piece that only he can play because he's the only pianist in the world with 12 fingers. It's weird how depictions of eugenic society are dependent on a certain aesthetic that has to do with things being very angular and monochromatic.

I would say that for all of this society's achievements in terms of utopia. One thing that they have really gone far wide of the mark on is fashion. Yeah. Everybody is in the worst, most heinous cross-colors, Star Trek, alien fashion of all time. They've bred the style right out of these people. It sucks. Yeah.

Yeah. Everything is like, I mean, their whole, their whole biodeum is like the mall. Everything is, you know, kind of fake silk plants and crappy concrete furniture in public spaces. And their fucking clothes are, are that but for clothes? Ben is the only reason this episode Ben is the only reason this episode is not totally wreaking of Nazi because Ron Canada is in it. Like if if the Martin character is white, then all of a sudden this is a this is a white society. This is a white biode. Yeah, this is and then it becomes totally sinister. This is the Edo planet. Right. Yeah. How close did they get to that?

This is what separates season five from season two. Ron Canada is the firewall between innocent eugenics and totally sinister Hitler vibes. Right? Yeah, man. It's Ron Canada all the way down. Ron Canada is the Dutch boy with his finger in the back. He's holding back the sea of Nazism.

When they came for Ron Canada, I said nothing. That is a dumbest joke of all time. I think that's one of my favorites. My love is a piece by floor and chill by battle, which long deners at the sea. Tell me more, you're not the boy there. So Patrari is having like a real dilemma about whether to bone down with Aaron Conner, and she really starts to kind of put it in these like wrong right terms. This is wrong. Serimely wrong. She's not having second thoughts because she's attached to someone else or doesn't have

true feelings for him. No. Like, she's painting it in her professional light that she's down there to do counseling, not second. Right. But I thought that the sort of, like, served to normalize his world, which I wouldn't think that she would do. His world should not be normalized.

Yeah, you gotta resist at all times and in all places. Yeah. And I think that that sort of cuts to the crux of this, which is, like this is the small Midwestern town that is emptying out, where like it loses a critical mass to sustain its own economy and is therefore a non-viable place to live. It's It succumbs to the ravages of people leaving. And this fragile design society starts to become threatened, because they save the day, they push the stellar fragment out of the way. Everything is fine, but because people have been exposed to the idea of the enterprise and the federation,

they, there is a small but vocal minority that are saying, like, hey, we want to get the fuck out of here. This sucks. And that, like, any number of people leaving is a blow to the, to the project, right? It can't, It can't stay. It can't stay. It's so interdependent that removing parts of it crashes the whole. Right.

Here's what I don't get, though, Ben. Because we are made aware that this is a society that is not as technologically advanced as the enterprise society. I mean, that leads me to believe that there are a bunch of shit jobs on this planet that the guy pushing a broom has to do, who has been genetically created to do that job.

So, like, what is it like that for? There's like, that's all I'm talking about here. If those that leave the biosphere are the fucking guys making sandwiches in the deli, and the planet's gonna be sure a sandwich maker. Like, who fucking cares? Like, I want those people to leave and make better lives for themselves. And the Ron Canada's of the world want to keep the house of cards together because they made the construction worker guy from scratch and they can't do without him.

Yeah, Ron Canada has this cushy life as like guy who walks around in a teal vest telling everybody what to do. Yeah, good for Ron Canada. My point in sort of putting their technological ability in that sort of box is that like when they talk about suffering from the removal of certain elements of their society, it's hard for me to grasp how they would suffer because they are a more primitive version of what we're seeing on the enterprise. Like, they don't make that explicit in a way that I think is necessary to truly feel the

gravity of both sides of the argument, because all we're seeing is the right side of the argument. All we're seeing is the justice side, and it would have been nice to see a little bit of the counterpoint. I think that you have to assume that replicator doesn't exist without transporter. So if these people don't have transporter, they don't have replicators. So everything to some extent has to be produced through human labor in their society. And yeah, like if it's brave new world type situation

where there's epsilons who are like bred to be demos that only know how to do hard, menial labor, then Picard should be horrified by its existence. But instead, he has this like, this is like an edge case of the prime directive where these are humans that have chosen to live in this horrible way, but in trying to manage that, he kind of validates this, this awful social engineering project that they have embarked on. It seems like you could only ever create a eugenics culture wherein some people get the cool administrative jobs and some people push the fucking broom.

And they don't refer to the broom guy. Yeah, you never even see the broom guy. I thought Star Trek was gonna be better at addressing serious issues after the last episode, but this feels like a return to superficiality, you know? Well, different writing team, so. Yeah, yeah, that's true. I mean, you're not getting the same crew for all of these.

Also, how could they have engendered a comedy podcast 25 years later if they wrote all episodes as serious and complicated as the last episode? Boy, isn't that right, Ben? You and I would be out of a job. Yeah. How would we pay our rent? Troy and Aaron bone down. Mm-hmm.

Big time. It would have been fun to like, we follow Troy and Aaron into the bedroom, and then we do a slow pan off of them to the window where Ron Canada is just like shaking his head. Yeah. Discargigingly. Yeah. Grinding a fist into a palm. I was bred for disapproval. In the aftermath, Troy has some pretty serious regrets about it. Yeah. regrets about it. Yeah. So some morning after vibes that make her feel as though it was a huge mistake and she's not coming back to the planet anymore. Morning after she meets Aaron by the piano she's like hey that was fun and everything

but I'm going back to the ship. I'm not going to see you again. And this sort of breaks his heart. Yeah, he's, it's weird. I mean, he seems to be the administrator of this colony and yet a kind of sexless guy, otherwise, like, he doesn't have a wife or a girlfriend or like, there's no implication that he has like a sex life outside of meeting Troy. I am a cute and sublime. There are full lights.

This episode ends at a big confrontation where Picard lines up in the most non-routing town square of all time. Yeah, it's like the town square that's got the factory stores in it. Yeah, a lot of designer fashions at discount prices in this town square. Yep. Yeah, you got your, you got your Haynes factory. Yeah, big dog factory outlet, which is like, really is that still a thing?

God, if you can't afford big dog. And you're buying your big dog in bulk. Yeah. You're probably just buying them for rags, right? Yeah. Shivers and rags, that's big dog factory outlet for you. Yep, this is a lot like the scene where he beams down to talk to them in tokens at the end. Yeah, a lot of them in token fives this episode. I definitely

feel that. He's like trying to make nice with Aaron Conner mainly as the leader of this society because you know like a number of people have expressed their interest in leaving and Picard is like, well, let's see if we can kind of talk some sense into them or whatever. But I legally am not really in a position to deny people a safe passage out of here if they want it because that's just the rules, man.

And yeah, it's the human element that's complicating all of this, right? If they weren't human, they would be a different sort of rule. Right, like this is another example of why I don't think the prime directive is a great rule. But it's also, like, it also undercuts the premise

of this perfect society. Like if it is so fragile that 22 people leaving is a major fucking problem, Like, don't design a society like that. Yeah, then the core plan was flawed from the start. And what you need is to genetically design a eugenics planner to design the eugenics plan. That's what they failed to do. Somebody that's smart enough to see problems like this before they arise and correct for them. Right.

It's weird that they don't treat this as a first contact that it is either. And it's because they're human. Like, this is Picard's first interaction with Aaron, and it's in the last five minutes of the show. Yeah. I mean, I think that this sort of speaks to like the like there like this is the miscalculation of all closed societies, you know? Everybody that sneaks out of North Korea and talks about what it's like there is essentially the people that are leaving this culture, you know? It's like

it is it is it's such a shitshow, that if anybody outside of it, like got the real truth, it would be exposed for the shit show that it is. It's the lesson that overbearing parents fail to learn and overreaching religions fail to understand. It's like when you rule under an iron fist, you're doing nothing, but driving the people that you hope to conquer away from you, right? Like, they're not going to want to stick around if you treat people like that. The moral of the story is if Ron Canada is hanging around, you need to examine what mistakes led you to this situation.

Aaron meets with Picard and comes away thinking that, all right, well, the option is open for these people to get asylum on the enterprise. I'm going to go down back to the planet, meet up with Ron Canada in the town square, and we're going to lay this out there. And what they agree on is that they're gonna take a six month break to just think about it. Like that's the plan. Yeah, they suggest that to the defectors.

And the defectors are like, fuck that. Just wait six months before you leave. What will that accomplish? We're not in, we're leaving now. Rightfully, like they see right through that pile of garbage plan. Yeah. As if they've been genetically engineered to see through garbage. Don't you see Aaron, it's over. Well this is a very unpeach hard like plan. Like it it like is obviously obfuscation and the second he suggests it

gets shot down and he's like, well, I tried Aaron. Yeah, and the button on the episode is Picard and Riker are sort of downloading what just happened to each other at the very end of the episode and he's like, you know, man, you ever think about maybe the enterprise was just as dangerous to this culture as that planetary fragment really makes you think, huh? planetary fragment really makes you think huh so so the card basically and then then he lifts a doobie up from out of frame the cards basically I am become core fragment destroyer of worlds yeah and that's. Did you like that episode, Ben?

Despite its multitudinous flaws, Adam, I did kind of enjoy it. I thought it was fun to see Troy get thrown some fun scenes to get into. It was a nice redemption for Jordy to not be a total scuzz bucket. Right. You know. You get a total scuzz bucket. Right. You know. You get some Ron Canada in there.

Yeah, anytime you throw Ron Canada into something, I'm in. I'm in, baby. This episode to me came as close to being unlikable as possible without actually being unlikable. It was razor thin. It bounced around on the rim many, many times before going through the...

It's the basketball that gets wedged between the rim and the backboard, and it's like sticks. That's this episode for me. That's fair Adam. I mean, I wouldn't say it's a good episode. It's just more good than bad. You know what is more good than bad? Unequivocally Ben. Are the paid messages from our viewers? You want to go check those out? Check them out we show. Priority one message from Starfleet coming in on Secured Channel. You need a supplement on that. supplement on that?

supplement. supplement. Yeah, it's extra. The interest alone could be enough to buy this ship. Hey Ben, our first priority one message is of a personal nature. It is from Captain Picardo, and it's four nerds. I stuck the Y in that word nerds.

Captain Picardo says nerds, I say nirids. The message goes like this, I can't handle another sad Ben announcement of no priority one message. So this message is for Adam and Ben. If I'll dedicate it to the nerds who are members of the captain, to the Uxbridge fleet members of the captain to the Uxbridge Fleet in Star Trek Timelines.

What? But I'll dedicate it to the nerds who are members of the captain to the Uxbridge Fleet in Star Trek Timelines. I read it again, and that's what it says, which is terrible. It is a terrible stupid game that you should all be embarrassed about. I know I am. Okay, so there's this game, Star Trek Timelines. I think that's it. And there's an, there's an upsprage fleet in that game. I think that's an information phone app that you

play on. I don't really know much about it, but I know some of our viewers play Star Trek Online. Yeah, I'm thinking a lot about that, Ben. Yeah, I don't really know too much about it. I tend to not love games that are played online, but I would give it a try. I'll give anything Star Trek a try. Come on. Right. Stick it in anything Star Trek once. But it sounds like Star Trek Timelines has like a... a...

subculture of... greatest gen viewers, potentially. Hmm. Might be something to give a try. Uh, if you're out there looking for a fun time-waster, it sounds like the Star Trek Timelines. Is a advertisement hidden inside a P1 band? This is buzz marketing! Yeah, this is not a compensated endorsement.

Do we have another message, Ben? We do, and I think it's a lot less suspicious than that one. This is from David and it's to Laura. If there's one thing that I've learned in our years of marriage, it's how much you appreciate the frugality of combining gifts for your birthday and Valentine's Day, since they're just one day apart. That, how much you appreciate this pod for helping us through the commute every day. Happy birthday slash Valentine's, Laura. That's really sweet.

Our viewers really know the heart of romance and that's purchasing advertisements on our show. It's interesting, Adam, because my wife is also a February birthday, but she's the opposite. It's interesting at him because my wife is also a February birthday, but she's the opposite So she's a real she's a real advocate of brown V board of education when it comes to holidays and birthdays, huh She's pro segregation I probably shouldn't say that she She works for a politician. She's a legal professional. Yeah, and she works for a politician. She is a legal professional. And she works for a politician, so it could be not great. Oh boy.

Well, not the first time we have been a negative impact on our wife's careers. If you would like to positively impact our show, Ben, you were, you can go to Maximumfund.org slash Jombo Tron, where messages of a personal nature cost exactly $100. And... That's $50 for the birthday and $50 for Valentine's Day. That's not bad. Explicitly commercial messages,

unlike the one we just made for Star Trek Timeline, is $200. So Captain Picardo got a tremendous value there. Yeah. And as always they help support the production of our show. Thanks, guys. Hey Ben. What's that Adam? Did you find yourself a drunk Shimodo?

I did. You know I often when we're reviewing these episodes, I have a window open on my computer with the closed captioned episode open. Oh really? And I scrub around and I, that's fun. I did not have a Drunk Shimoda written down. And the spot in the app that I happened to leave the play head on when last I scrubbed it,

I just looked overhead it and I realized, this is a perfect Drunk Shemota. And it is Hannah, the scientist. And the line in the closed caption is, would you ever choose to live a board of ship in a bottle, Captain? This is the scene where they're begging for asylum aboard the Enterprise. And you got to imagine that living a board of ship in a bottle has got to hold certain appeal for Captain Picard. Yeah, he's all about ships and bottles. Yeah, he fucking loves that ship. That is like either a masterstroke of rhetoric

or like the biggest misfire you can possibly imagine from Hannah. Yeah. He. Something very attractive about that, I'm sure. Yeah, that's my Shemota. How about yourself? So Troy and Aaron are out on the balcony,

falling into each other's eyes. And I couldn't help but notice Ben, a piece of Meezons' son, where the cricket is wrong. Huh? It This is wrong. Huh. It's terribly wrong. The almost deafening sound of crickets in their pure, alt biosphere society. Someone has engineered perfect sounding crickets out there.

One thing I would have left out of the biosphere. Right. Because if you make crickets you need to make something that eats the crickets been and then something that eats that and on and on until you're at the tip of the of the food chain where Ron Canada lives so my Shimoda is the cricket very nice it. Very nice. 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 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. On Jordan Jesse Go we make pure, delightful nonsense. We were open awesome guests and bring them down to our level. We get stupid with Judy Greer.

My friend Molly and I call it having the spaceweirds. Pat Noswald. Could I get a ball rock burger and some air-gorn fries? Thank you. And 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 open.

Just pull it out. Give Jordan Jesse Goatry. Being smart is hard. Be dumb instead. Whoa, Ross. Hey, hey. Oh, I'm about to count you in line. These clouds are really freaking me out.

I hate having to stand in line and boy, what do I? These giraffes do not smell good. No, they do not, and they've such short nacks. But I'm hearing we need to get on this off. 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. but 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 two by two. What do you think? Oa Ross & Carrie, available on MaximumFun and Outorg. kind of drum while suffering an unexplained case of amnesia, the crew find themselves fighting a war. They do not remember or understand. Do you remember this episode Adam? I have a story about this episode Ben that I hope we have time for.

Yeah, well, I remember this episode so clearly. Wow. I don't know if you ever grew up in a house where you had the analog radio, like the emergency radio that also picked up television bands. Did you ever have one of those? Like it got AM FM and then for some reason UHF. Yeah. I never experimented with that, but we definitely had like a radio where you could like crank it up and get it going Yeah, so we had one of those in the house and the reason that I'm setting the scene with that is because I don't remember what I did and I would totally cop to it if I if I remembered this but I got grounded for something

Maybe it was grades. Maybe it was like for hitting my brother It could have been anything, but I got grounded and confined to my room. And I was such a Star Trek fan that my parents found it cruel to prevent me from enjoying the episode at all. So what they did is they let me grab this TV radio and listen to the episode in my room while I was grounded. Wow. The first time I experienced this episode was like audio book only style. And then I had to catch it on reruns and watch it for real. So this episode is extremely memorable for me and if you consider what the story is here, not being able to see it, it's crazy because there's a new crewman that

I can't see that's acting like he's in charge of things. Totally. Totally fuck me up. Amazing. That's a cool story. I love this episode, mostly because I experienced it like that the first time through. So you're saying you wouldn't veto it? I would issue it with the sort of veto that made you listen to it on a radio, sort of a half veto, the yellow card of vetoes. Wow. That's really interesting. Well, I will say that I wouldn't veto it either. I

remember really enjoying this episode, though my story with it is much less interesting than yours. So we're gonna watch it and that will be the next one we review. Deal. Adam, people support us all the time by going to iTunes, leaving a nice favorable review. It helps us rise in the ranks on iTunes, exposes the show to more people. That's how we grow this thing. It drives the bad reviews to the bottom where they belong. I also really love it when people post about us in public on Facebook and Twitter and Reddit. Go to the Star Trek sub, Reddit, or just say that they like the show on their Facebook

timeline. That's a great ways to grow the show. Go to the Ron Canada sub, our slash Ron Canada. Sure, they'd love to talk about this episode. Yeah. If you write for the Ron Canada trade quarterly, I would love to see an article about this episode in there, maybe. Uh, and you know what?

This might be good idea to bring up the opportunity to maybe do a combined episode with the official Ron Canada podcast, Roncast. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I do a lot. Um, yeah. combine episode with the official Ron Canada podcast, Roncast. Yeah. Yeah. Those guys are doing great work over there. Yeah.

I think we've admired them for a long time. Yeah. I mean, if any show is an inspiration for this show, it's Roncast. Star Trek, Roncast. If you'd like to talk to us on Twitter, you can use the hashtag greatest chin. Adam is at Cut for Time. I'm at Benjamin R. A. H. R. And go to the Max Fun Start.

Get yourself some swag. Consider going to Max Fun Con. If there are still tickets available, I think there still might be. Yeah. We should thank Adam Ragusia and Dark Materia for our music and our music. And their friendship. Yeah. With that, we will be back at you next time with another great episode.

Start track the next generation. An episode of the greatest generation that has a third co-host that you've never heard of before. That's how we should do the show, Ben. That would be fun. Just do a show with a third and pretend like we've been doing the show with them the whole time. Yeah. It's basically the one opportunity we'll ever have.

Do you think we should do that? Well, we'd have to make that happen like tomorrow. Yeah, we would. That would be fucking great. That would be great. And the third hasn't seen the episode. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha Artists' own. Listen or supported.