The Greatest Generation - Cuck Quest (TNG S1E15)

Episode Date: August 3, 2026

When the Entrepreneur goes into spacedock for a tune-up and some enhancements, the Bynars take things too far by forcing an evacuation and stealing the ship. But after Picard and Riker get distracted on the holodeck, their willingness to die becomes as important as their willingness to help. When is being bald like driving a Jeep? What is Worf willing to do to win? How is setting auto-destruct like making popcorn? It’s the episode that made the ship a main character.Support the production of our shows Members get benefits including bonus episodes and an ad-free experienceSign up for our mailing list!Get a thing at podshop.biz!The Greatest Generation is hosted by Adam Pranica and Benjamin Ahr Harrison The show is produced by Wynde PriddySocial media is managed by Rob Adler and Bill TilleyMusic by Adam Ragusea & Dark MateriaDiscuss the show using the hashtag #GreatestGen and find us on social media:YouTube | Instagram | BlueskyAnd check out these online communities run by FODs: Reddit | USS Hood Discord | Facebook group | Wikia | FriendsOfDeSoto.socialSupport the production of The Greatest Generation Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Want to hear an ad-free version of this show? Go to greatest.supercast.com. Here's to the finest crew in Starfleet. Engage. Welcome to the greatest generation, the next generation. It's 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 Pranika.

As we record this, I did get to hear your bodice Ripper, your horny story that you're out. What a delight. I had some regrets about that almost immediately. I mean, and not for the obvious reasons. I was thinking about if we were sufficient with the explicit nature of it before it just dropped into the bonus feed. But then I was thinking, like, I think people sort of understand that our show is explicit and not mostly for kids who might be horrified by it.

Like, do you think we did enough to, to, protect the kids from what we do. Wrong of the children! I don't think kids can get memberships to our show. I think it's like one of those websites where you have to take a picture of your ID, right? Yeah. At least in the UK.

So I should feel fine. Yeah. And you know what? If they're precocious enough to get around the parental controls, they're probably mature enough to, you know, to dip their toe into the horny waters of what Mr. Hamm was truly capable of.

It was a great big production week the week I wrote that and I told Wendy I was like, yeah, I can totally do everything we have scheduled and also write slash fiction and also take an extra edit or whatever. And like, as soon as I started writing,

I was like, oh no, this is actually really time-consuming. And like getting this just so took me almost an entire day. Like that was a 10-minute thing I read that took hours to write. Right, because you can't go, like, just out of a sense of personal safety,

you shouldn't work on it for more than four hours at a stretch. Yeah, I had to take many breaks. What was your favorite part, Ben? Uh... I mean, you had to take it into a separate room, right? I did. I listened to it facing the door so that if somebody came in,

uh, they wouldn't see what I was listening to. Right. My biggest laugh was the, you worked in Ice Desk. I knew it was going to be in there somewhere and I loved it as a subtle nod. I think that that was the perfect choice. There was a little bit of a head fake there because I started with the idea of our main character on a table that felt cold and I made the reader or the listener think that that was going to be the reference, but it wasn't. That wasn't it.

Fun stuff. If you don't know what we're talking about, I lost a bet on the mainline show, and the punishment went into the bonus feed. If you have not subscribed to the bonus feed by virtue of your support of this show, there's always time. I'm going to call my shot now, Adam, when you lose today's game. I'm not making you put it in the bonus feed. It's going to be in mainline. I don't make games intending for my friend and co-host to lose.

What's going on over there? That seems pretty aggressive. I mean, I'm not trying to hurt you. I'm trying to create the conditions that inspire great art, such as Hamdong. Is that what the title was? Or was it Dong Hom? You know what? That's a good note. Ham Dong is pretty fun. Ham Dom was what I ended up naming the slash fic. Yeah. Well, speaking of pieces of art, today's TNG episode, one of my favorites of all times. I love this episode. What do you say we get into it? Let's do it, Adam. It's season one episode 15-1100-1-1-0-1-0. Our cold open makes me feel like a starbase entry is so good. It's kind of shocking that we don't see this more often, right? This is the shot that we went into to like pull the comparison clip when we toured a live show where we showed a live show where we showed.

what the movie refit Enterprise A looked like going into this space station compared to the Enterprise D. And we've always talked about Star Trek being the most cost-efficient sci-fi franchise out there. I don't mind reusing this clip over and over again. I'll say this. Here we are 15 episodes into the first season. This is the first time I felt like this show got cinematic. and it took this moment to do it. It's always felt like a TV show until right now. They've got these plates, you know,

like they've got the assets to use because they also made movies. So go ahead and use them, guys. It is very clear that Captain Picard is suffering from some sort of mental breakdown because in his log, when he describes the ship as having performed magnificently without any issues at all,

All I could do is replay them many times. The flagship of the Federation has frustrated him, confounded him, irritated him, and gotten a guy shot in the Holladec episode last time. Yeah. Some pretty upsetting stuff has been elided in this captain's log, and I love the proximity of that statement that the ship has been magnificent

to Jordy pulling into the station and this incredibly noisy banging, docking procedure. Docking complete. Any docking procedure you walk away from is a good one, right? I don't know if Jordy really perfected his parallel parking skills. Is this big, my kid is an honor student energy from the captain about his ship here, like, where he's not really seeing the faults in the ship the way he probably should?

Like, his kid is biting other kids in class. And he's like, oh, Enterprise is on the honor roll. He's incorrigible. He really sees the Enterprise the way these people on the station see it looking out the window. Magnificent! I love seeing the way other people see this ship. It feels really good. Riker and Picard go to greet the

Star Base maintenance crew at the airlock. And I loved all these like new passageways that they created for this. Like they show the maintenance crew from way further back in the station than they need to like a bunch of different phases of the walk onto the ship. And we meet Commander Conteros, who is not just the commander of this Starbase. He was in charge of putting this puppy together. Like this has basically been a shakedown cruise up until now, and he's very proud of his work, happy to see it back in one piece. And they're going to tighten some bolts and see how things look after putting it into the field for a little while. First time I've ever seen a bald guy greeting on a Star Trek show. Like they Picard and Canteros like bend forward and rub the tops of their heads together.

Really bizarre. It might have been a little more excited if they'd done bald guy greeting parenthetically aggressive, such as Pachycephalosaurus used to do in the late Cretaceous. You said it. I mean, it's the way two Jeep drivers flash each other when they pass going in the opposite direction. Like when you're two baldsmen, you are aware of their secret greeting. It was a little bit harder to carry all. of your rubber duckeys around when you don't have a dashboard to put them on.

We also meet the binars. Kind of uncomfortable that Riker calls them gentlemen and then is corrected. They're not gentlemen. Stop putting the binars in your arbitrary gender binary, Riker. Yeah.

You said it. Here's the question that I had in this moment. These two are given names. their names are one zero and zero one. Ben, does that mean that these are the first binars? Because that would suggest that in binary code, like, there are not no duplicates. There are not other one zero or zero ones, right?

Like do you go to three digits now? Do you go to more than that with each one that you meet? I wonder if these are just like first names, you know, and then they've got like a string of hexamines. Exodicimal after that or something? I don't know. What are the most common names? This is Matt and Josh. Yeah, this is Smith and Jones of Planet Binus. And they are a little bit stressed when they hear that the ship is only going to be in space dock for 48 hours because in 48 plus six, important mission. I thought we'd have more time. I'm sorry, this mission can't be delayed. And they're like, well, it ain't going to be easy, but we work fast and we're going to do it. So having met the binars, Picard and Riker make their way back to the bridge and they compare what they're going to be doing for the next 48 hours.

Picard is going to read, which is code for the record. And Riker doesn't really know. He's just going to be open to adventure. It's like, I mean, yeah, any given day I might go for the record. I don't really plan ahead on things like that. No. Yeah. How could you?

I mean, Picard recently set a personal best. So it's kind of fun to turn around like the next week and see if you can beat that, right? On the bridge, Wesley watches these binars do their work like a child in a restaurant, just like staring at the next table for no reason at all. These binars aren't troubled by this, though. I think it's more like a child in a restaurant where there's like a piece of glass and you can look into the kitchen, and see how the cheesecake is made. Picard makes a big show about thanking Riker in this scene.

And my question for you is, for what? For what? I paused it here, and I started really thinking about what the fuck he was talking about. And I think it was for manually guiding the ship into the star base, which I think is related to separating

and connecting the two pieces of this ship. Something that we know Riker is great at. Or is it just that he's like also staying aboard, like almost the entire rest of the ship's compliment are going for a spot of shore leave or something? It felt like something in the script referring to a scene that was cut for some reason. I read that this was supposed to come before the Holodeck episode and that the, like, initially they were planning on the Holodeck episode, excitement being explained by some like residual fuckery that the binars inflicted on the computer.

Oh, interesting. So like the Dixon Hill episode being after this one would mean that like the reason that program is so good is because of what the biners did here. Right. Okay. I think that they initially planned it out like that but then rewrote and reorganized the episode order. But Yeah, maybe there's some like residue of that original order in this. Anyways, the binars have multiplied. There's now four of them. You're really leaning into that hard R with binars, aren't you? Ooh.

Some people call them binars. I personally call them linars because they do not seem to be entirely forthcoming with the truth. Yeah. A number of people describe the binars as. acting strangely, but like, wouldn't they? Compared to you? This is a different species. A real different species. Yeah. They're very different. I've got a question why Wesley is sort of made into the guard dog here as a like, keep an eye on these binars. Let me know if they do anything weird. They've noticed that he has very little in the way of inhibition getting into

the nooks of strange aliens working on their computers. Why is Wes? not taking the opportunity to take shore leave. Oh, I remember he almost died last time he did that. Yeah, you stay on the bridge, Wesley Crusher, where it's safe. Let's just say he's scared of meeting girls that want to play with his balls. Yeah. There's a real AI corollary here when we talk about the binars and their abilities, I think, because it is very uncomfortable when you delegate a task to someone or in the case of AI something that can do it at machine-like speeds. And this is a discomfort that everyone has being around the binars when they watch them work. They're like bippin and booping to each other and into the computer. And it seemed like maybe they sped the footage up a little bit some of the time. I read that they were originally subtitled in the script. And I wonder if they were just like, it is more fun to not know and weirder to speed it up so fast

that you couldn't even possibly guess at what they might be saying to each other. After the theme, Riker takes a walk. And we get a fun series of vignettes of the places he goes, starting with in the corridor when he runs into Yaron Wharf. And they are dressed for a match of Parisi squares. against the Star Base Maintenance Crew, which I thought was hilarious, because the maintenance crew just showed up on ship.

So they're taking a break right away. They've only got 48 hours, but, you know, they work hard and they play hard. And Worf is ready to kick someone in half. He takes this very seriously. How much darker does this scene feel knowing that Worf has? Very recently, compared to his time on DS9,

kicked someone's head off during a friendly soccer game. It's fun because I think initially, Riker is, like, gassing him up. And he's like, he says that thing about, like, the pride of the enterprise goes with you. And then he kind of sees what is glinting in Worf's eyes. And he's like, hey, man, just a game. Actually, let's take it down like 10 notches. It turns out Warf is the fucking most obnoxious.

Noxious flopper in Parisi's squares. I think he's pulling your leg. Just the worst. It's a red card. Player says he's innocent. It works. It's a guiding principle on with our feet his face. You can't find it within yourself.

You don't deserve to wear that uniform. They move on and the power dims. And this is explained as having to do with the computer upgrades by the computer. And so Riker now walking through a much darker ship finds Jordan Data in the observation lounge having an art session where they're trying to get pure creativity out of data. This is basically a social drive-by shooting that Riker does here. He doesn't even have to break his walk when he rolls through. He's like, oh, huh, painting, right? it's funny that a blind guy is

coaching up our robot man on the arts all right see you walking term paper alert yeah it's got to be worth a couple of pages in somebody's book I felt really bad for Gates McFadden in her little vignette

because she is both dunked on for not knowing how to pack light and also given some absolutely horrific dialogue about how excited she is to meet a cybernetics expert who works at the Star Base. Like Maurice Hurley is the person who fired Gates McFadden for being an actor. And he also wrote a lot of absolutely dog shit dialogue for her. So it's a bit of a chicken and egg thing here, I think.

I feel like she did a lot with something that was a hot mess. I had a slightly different take on this scene. I felt like she was super duper excited to meet up with a favorite professor of hers and was just doing that motor mouth excitement speaking that one tends to do. And the thing that that made me believe this ultimately was at the end when she apologizes to Riker for not being able to chat, even though all she's done is machine gun him with all of her dialogue. That's what I'm saying.

It's like the dialogue is bad. and she does a great job with it, but like, there's only so much polish you can put on a turd. And I think this was really unfair of Murray's Hurley. Finally, Riker finds a group of biners outside the holodeck, and after asking what they've been working on, he learns that an enhancement has been made. Would you like to try the enhancement? All right. They put the game genie in, and he is invited to try it out, not really having any other plans. he's persuaded to give it a go and he programs up a late 50s New Orleans Jazz Club.

And when the doors open revealing what the holodeck has come up with, he pronounces it very good indeed. He wants to play. Like he is not here to be a consumer. He is here to get up on the stage and play with the band. So first he puts in like a combo and an audience, but the audience is a little bit. two jam packed for Bourbon Street, you know, like famously a sleepy little side street in New Orleans. Yeah, the choice to go from jazz bar at 2 a.m. filled with people to jazz bar at 2 a.m. with one person in it is a real mood. It's a mood.

Piano bass and drums and a boner for me. This is where I'd get hung up if I played Holladeck. I would just be doing the character creation screen as the game. and I would never get anywhere. This is why, like, you, you never got any further in Baldur's Gate than, than penis-sized selection. I, I just did this in, uh, in a golf video game on the PlayStation. I'm like, nose, down, down, down, down, down, down, eyes, like, wider, rotate, wider, rotate, like, like, like, trying to, like, granularly get the facial stuff in just the right spot so

that I look sort of like myself. I have found it absolutely bedeviling trying to get something that looks like me or like a real person if I mess with that stuff for too long. There was an era, I feel like, where you could upload a picture of yourself

and the computer would do it for you? What happened to that? I don't know. Maybe people were like taking a picture of their butthole and then like going into online play with butthole face or something. The buttholes ruin it for everyone, don't they? They too.

Blons and jazz seldom go together. Can I interest you in a redhead, Commander Riker? Not a chance. He dials the babe up just the way he likes him and keeps calling the Bynars gentlemen. Come on, Will. This is not that hard. His selection finally is agreeable to him and she introduces herself to him as Minuet. And boy, do they hit it off?

Fast. fast in a way that should be suspicious to anyone who's ever been to Las Vegas. You can't be serious. Oh, yes, Will. I've never been more serious in my life. He is putting the moves on really thick, and it's very funny how his energy is entirely like,

I am going to work every bit of game I have to make this woman like me, when it is a computer babe that is programmed to like you, no matter what. But this is how skilled Riker is in the romantic arts, because he's stepping into the batting cage and just like taken cut to stay sharp. Yeah. She is really giving first act in a porno,

and the Bynar's satisfied that this will be sufficiently distracting, exit the holodeck. And we cut up to the bridge where Wes is just so dang curious, he starts peppering the binars with questions. They explain that they've augmented themselves with information buffers. Like a child, he asks an adult. Why do you talk weird? I wanted them to be more annoyed.

Like, we have 48 hours, dude. Like, time is of the essence. Can I touch your hair that's sticking up out of your collar? What's that about? It would be so efficient if we were all computer. Like, wouldn't it, Wes? Yeah. Mm.

Picard is wondering where Riker is and Wesley offers to summon him from the holodeck. And Picard's like, no, no rush. I'll go down there. This is absolutely savage as a choice. You should always call the holodeck first before going down there to find a person, right? That's not what Picard does here. Especially when it's Riker. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, you just hope he doesn't get there and the doors open and it's. not like a spinning mobile of pelvices. Maravioso. Whoa. Too many. Like there is kind of an amount of time that has passed where it could be anything at this point. Picard has learned the lesson of being careful when the doors of the holodeck opened, what things could fly out at you.

Yeah. Yeah. Earthquake at a sex toy factory amounts of like rubber holes spills. spelling out onto you. The early warning system did not go off and the foundation of my factory cracked. I keep trying to warn everybody by text about the tsunami, but Shiri keeps misspelling it.

Riker is instead, he's playing with a different bone when we cut back down there. he's playing on stage and in between riffs, the bassist leans over and he's like, hey man, I think the babe is into you. I think you got a shot. This proves to me that all the enhancements to the holodeck aren't evenly distributed.

You think so? Base player, the one person out at the bar might be interested in what's going on on stage. Huh. I love that the pianist dunks on his trompon skills, though. Yeah. A little salt to bring out the suite in this holodeck program. It's not going to gas him all the way up.

He steps offstage and talks to Minuet for a beat. What he thinks is going to be a beat, because he's got to go back to work. Minuet's like, nah, one dance before you go, that won't hurt anyone, right? Ooh. And they dance, like, middle schoolers, because what they are doing is, Mostly talking. Mostly talking and mostly getting in trouble with the chaperones for not being able to shine a flashlight in between them. Yeah, the bass player holds out the neck of his upright bass and, like, works it up and down between them.

All right, you two, no freaking. He feels very fortunate to be where he is in life. Yeah, every man wants to talk about work when they've got a romantic interest near them. Right. Thought a lot about the choice not to have Troy in this episode at all. Yeah. And not even mentioned, you know, the situation with young Mr. Miller being not too far in the rear view. I'm a little unclear about where they stand as Imzadis.

Yeah. But I would have thought that this would be a moment to give us a little bit of a sense of that. But she is not on his mind, man. Instead, what we get is a lot of talking about her in front of her that Riker does, but that Picard also does too when he walks in. They're making out when Picard enters. Oh, I'm sorry, number one. I didn't mean to interrupt.

No, it's all right. Come on in. Riker has to put his bone away. And they all go sit down. She learns that Picard is a Frenchman and does the party trick of accessing the linguistic database to address him in his native tongue. Very impressive. The energy of this scene feels extremely science fictiony because I don't know any two people interested in each other who ever want to third around at a moment like this. And when Minuet invites Picard to like

drink wine with her and there's no wine for Riker, that would be really upsetting if I'm Riker. the couple of times in my life where I have been in a space with a girl in whom I'm interested and there's also another guy there who is also interested in that girl and that is known to me or or I just suspect it like one of the most uncomfortable dismaying experiences when that guy is your boss oh I mean points for Will Riker here at being extraming dreamly comfortable with everything that's happening in front of him, given how we've described it. Boy, you said it. I mean, I guess the fact that it's a program make the stakes a little bit lower, like the second Picard leaves, I guess he could just say computer rewind 15 minutes and reset.

And yet, wouldn't you be possessive about your special program and your special lady in the special program and so forth? Yeah, I don't want to get to my sex fantasy having that in my, in my, in my, my, memory. You're like, man, I bet if Picard had stuck around, she would have gone with him. You look down and her back is already blown out. Like, what? I just got here. What's the point of a video game if it's going to be like this?

You turn over the box art for the holiday game you're playing and it's Cuck Quest. Man. Why is the box sticky? Oh, it's used. Data's awaiting inspiration when Wes radio's up to him and is like, hey, I'm here on the bridge, and we're hearing that there's some trouble in engineering. Data says, can you be more specific?

And he says, no, I cannot be more specific. it's just that there's a problem with the antimatter containment field. And I can't leave this spot because if I leave the bridge during a shore leave exercise, I could die. So you need to go check on this data. Data's like, it's an awkward time because, you know, this is gouache and it could, you know, if it dries, like I'm not going to be able to work with it anymore. But I guess I'll go down there.

and he and Jordy arrive in a vacant engineering section where nobody is on duty. And they start looking at screens and are pretty worried about what they see. One of my favorite parts of this episode is how they work with the pace. And everything up until now is so relaxed. Everyone's doing what they want to do when they want to do it. There's no urgency whatsoever. But we start to gain speed in engineering. here when it quickly becomes a red alert situation that could destroy the ship in four minutes.

Like the blood is pumping, containment is failing, Picard is not picking up the phone. Jordy's like, how serious could it be? The door hasn't even dropped. He just starts rolling out of engineering. That's all he knows. Data's like, Jordi, this is no time to vogue. They have to assume some things based on. incomplete information. And one of those assumptions is probably Picard isn't on board if he's not answering the phone. So we're going to have to abandon ship and get the ship out of the star base because it is about to go nuclear and it will take out like thousands of people if it blows up inside this thing.

And Data does not hesitate at all. This is Lieutenant Commander Data speaking for the captain. Abandon ship. This is not a drill. All personnel. Get the fuck out! It is really interesting to me that a place like engineering could be deserted, and yet so many parts of the civilian areas of the ship are populated

because you see all these areas get evacuated ahead of the ship possibly exploding. And it made me wonder, like, if you're on a Federation starship and you're a civilian, you're not entitled to star base visits just because you put. pull up in one, right? Like, that's a military facility. Is it not? I don't know. I mean, I was on a website looking at the scale of the star base relative to the size of the ship. And I mean, you see it in that opening shot. Like, this thing probably has hundreds of thousands of people living on it. So I can't imagine that it is entirely a hardened military site. It's like going on a cruise ship and

never leaving your cabin. Like, why wouldn't you, why wouldn't you go if you had the chance? It's crazy. Yeah, but also, like, if you live on the cruise ship, sometimes you don't want to go to fucking NASA or whatever,

you know, it's like, I've seen it. Yeah. Star Base 7-4? Yeah, I mean, miss me with that shit. There are enough people still on the ship to necessitate an evacuation that includes the airlocks and the transporter rooms.

There are, at least 20 transporter rooms on this ship. And still, there are like people pushing to get to the head of the line to get on those transporter pads. I was trying to lead the way. Wesley could not have been one of those pushers. He has got to be terrified

to be leaving the ship right now. Women and children and very immature ensigns burst. He gets on the pad and one of the little girls has a ball and he just fucking spikes it out of her hands. You're not bringing that way. We're going. Speaking of very efficient sci-fi franchise, a lot of these are shots that were clearly shot for encounter at PowerPoint that they reused. But I thought they did a good job with this.

I love Yarr and Wharf in the control room on the station coming in with like, what is going on? Like we were trying to kill the maintenance team in Parisi Squares, and we're hearing the ship is going to explode? What the fuck? In my mind, they should have never taken off the blue Parisi Squares uniforms for the entire episode. Because in an emergency situation, when would you have the time to do that? They should have been drenched in sweat, like blood dripping from their foreheads. Like, Parisi Squares is a famously violent, occasionally lethal game. I think you're absolutely right. They should not have had time to change.

Jordian Data are on the bridge representing the last two to leave the ship and they comment to each other like it's usually the captain that is the last, right? If he's not here, he must have left already. They beam directly to the control room and learn from Wharf that the captain and Riker

are not in fact accounted for. They seemed not to be on the ship but nobody ever saw them come off of it either. And the second the ship is out of space dock, the containment starts to regenerate. But at that point, it's already on autopilot. So there's not really anything they can do. And they're like, weird. What the fuck just happened?

It's got to be like watching your car get carjacked and then drive away. Like, damn. What can't run after it It's gone I love the just kind of spooky handheld shots of the empty hallways And I love that a couple of them are like from a weirdly low angle Yeah That feels very uncanny in just the right way

It's the visual and also the sound of that red alert claxon blaring to On an empty ship it's spooky Ah Claxon It really is Is this the moment when the ship becomes the main character in the show or one of the main characters? I feel like to be in danger of losing it is sort of a way to manipulate that feeling, right? Like how close we came to losing the hero ship of the show, I think, is a big moment.

It is, and it's something you can't really earn in an eight episodes per season paradigm. Yeah. In the way that they did in a, like this is the 15th episode, and like, this has become a place that we feel very much at home. Yeah. We feel so at home here. We don't want to leave when we have a chance to take short leave and go to the Starbase. Yeah.

For example, Reiker and Picard, who are still just kibitzing away with Minuet in their New Orleans jazz bar, they continue to do this thing where they are like hitting on Minuet and then talking about what an impressive program she is as though she's not there. and then going back to hitting on her. And, you know, she can pick up the ball and run with it when they do this in a way. But it's also just like, we've gone over this, guys. Like we have already had this conversation. You can stop. Picard finally recognizes that he's the third wheel in this situation.

And what I don't understand is why Riker wants him to stay as much as Minuet does here. Like we cut from Minuet to Picard to Riker back to Minuet, back to Riker, and his com badge is upside down all of a sudden. Oh, that's why. We cut back to Picard and he puts a wedge of pineapple on the rim of his wine glass. What's binary code for three-way, Ben? Do we know that? I'd really like it if you would stay. Yes, Captain's stay.

The one thought I had about this is that this is kind of the first time Picard has let his hair down a little bit around Riker. And after the way they met and, you know, like they have had an extremely formal relationship up until now. And I think that with Lwaxana showing up, maybe the ice started to crack a little bit. And maybe Riker is like, yeah, I can. jack off whenever I want to, this is a chance to have like a human connection with my captain and like to do an Eiffel Tower with a Frenchman. God, it's almost too perfect. Put your cigarette out on my penis, Will. Now do it again.

But he's got to go and this is when Minuite kind of tips her hand that she is trying to keep them there. She is not able to keep up the pretense that she is just a sultry dame who is so damn interesting. She actually needs them to not leave the holodeck. And that makes both of their spidey senses tingle. And when they open the doors and it's red alert, it's like, Oh, buddy. Jordi rolls by like a tumbleweed. Look at him go.

I'm picturing that this is feeling like the way I have felt the dozen times I have been like halfway down the terminal and realized I left my rollerboard bag on the plane like fuck fuck there's fucking red alert are you kidding me and I didn't know so when we were together that one time on tour that had happened many times. to you? That's happened a bunch of times to be. Oh my God. Oh, no. There are key things about my brain that are not good. You should always check your bag if that's going to be a thing. Yeah, I'd probably be smart. Anyways, yeah, they don't get a lot of great answers from the computer about what is going on. But isn't it great to get a story summary from the computer? Like, pretty comprehensive about what's happened. And they ask smart. questions. Like the questions they ask are smart and don't feel like they have, I think that sometimes you can get to a point like this in a script and the characters start asking the questions that

they need to ask to get the answers that they need to know where to go in the plot. And their questions feel general and then going toward the specific as they learn more about the situation. And doesn't the computer feel better at communicating and conveying things to them by virtue of those questions. This also feels like the episode where the computer feels fully formed and sophisticated enough to have a normal conversation with in order to get these answers instead of like the way you talk at a Siri right now, which is like not conversational. It's like you're speaking to a computer and computer speak, you know? Is that signaled by the change in voice? Like I noticed that there were a couple of different voices coming out of the computer in this

episode, maybe more than, I don't, I don't clock how many, but like when they get there, you know, and the computer's like, you know, like airlock 10 opening or whatever, it's like a man's voice and then. Well, yeah, when the computer describes man's stuff, it's going to be the man voice. Right. Stand clear of the closing doors, please. And it's going to be Major Major Barrett when it's like, uh, holodeck florist shop simulation. Prepare to enter. Like, that's her job. The next stop is Starbase 740. I am look cute as a bore. You will respond to my questions.

I am lecutus aboard. You are bored. The very last bit of information to get from the computer is that the ship is heading to the Biner home world. And Minuet admits that all of this was part of the Binar's plan, but she's not programmed to disclose

the end game of this whole thing or why Riker was such a big part of that. I really liked the way she felt preloaded with some of the information and intentionally not preloaded with some of the other information and the way she expressed that as almost like, like I can't parse the sentence you just said. It doesn't feel hostile.

It feels like she's unable actually to do this. Right. So back on the star base, data is like, are there nearby vessels? Like we are at a huge star base? Surely something is close by or here. that can go catch up with the enterprise. Nope.

Nothing even remotely close. The stuff that there is is days away. And that is really dismaying. They realize that the binars are still aboard. And so data is like, maybe we can assume that if the binars are there and like based on their trajectory, they might be going to the binar system. Could we have somebody like fly their starship there and get there at the same time as the Enterprise to meet them.

I really love how clear, how fast they all recognize that the cavalry is not coming for Enterprise. When we cut to Enterprise and realize Picard and Riker are the cavalry by going to their own weapons room, and they need those weapons because they're shut out of the bridge. Like, not being able to get there means that they've clearly been taken by some unknown force that they will need to fight. And this, I feel like there are a ton of force. first for TNG for me in this episode. This feels to me like the first time Picard became

like decisive and efficient and correct with the way he tells Riker what is going down and what they need to do about that. And this is that scene for me. Like we got to go to engineering first to set auto-destruct and here's why. Our ship has been commandeered by a force of unknown size and intent. We're here alone. We must have been the worst. So much is made of contemplative Picard, the Picard that weighs the tricky moral calculation, the King Solomon Picard. The Picard taken over by an alien species. But we also have this Picard that is like in a crisis situation, extremely self-assured, action-oriented, and smart as fuck, despite the stress of the situation. He's like leading Riker to these things.

like they now have to go to engineering to set auto-destruct, and they talk along the way, like, the reason this has to happen, Riker, is if this ship falls into hostile hands, and we don't even know who that could be at this point, like, that is an untenable situation. So we set auto-distruct first, and then we see if we can get the initiative here. Those qualities you describe in Picard are why it feels like such malpractice. this to take a character we grew up loving and respecting and looking toward as a leader and turning him into someone who questions himself so much who is so frail and so powerless, you know, for much of New Star Trek. Yeah. Yeah, I famously think they stuck the shit out of the

landing on that, but I do have big, big problems with the way he was set up in, especially in those first two seasons. And man, it is, it is really tight when they set self-destruct because it's five minutes. That is like the amount of time auto-destruct is, and that's all you get. I feel like they question how long it should be, and no one says it to the computer, the computer presumes that what you want is five minutes. That's the standard. It's like the setting for popcorn on your microwave. Like, it's got it from here, you guys.

We don't have a lot of time. So, Riker, if you could stop, like, staring at the Winamp visualizer on the screen right now, and let's get to the bridge, that would be great. Yeah, it's something they don't understand, but it's something they understand to be biners-related. There's this whole conversation about the strategy of beaming onto the bridge, because if they, if one of them materializes, it's going to take several seconds and whatever hostile forces up there will just kill them before they're able to react. so they decide to both beam onto the bridge sacrificing one of them so that the other can attempt to take over.

I love how for several scenes in a row, it is clear that they are both willing to die rather than let this ship fall into the hands of someone else. Willing to die? And like, it seems more likely than not that's probably what's going to happen to them. And it's such a surprise when they both materialize on the bridge

and nothing is going on up there. It's just a heap of binars. Nothing's really going on on Star Base 74 except for Data going totally Benjamin R. Harrison here by blaming himself for the actions of someone else. Yeah. Data, it's okay to have painted at a time when your ship got taken over.

He's like, guys, no, seriously, this one's on me. I do kind of feel like, Maybe we should spend some time talking about how much I am to blame for all of this. I was negligent. I wanted to be Wesley when I was a kid. I identified with data as a kid. Yeah, you're more of a data, aren't you? Yeah.

Bynars are barely alive. They beg for help and we turn off auto-destruct. Did you think that was premature? I kind of did. Yeah, I mean, like, so. much forbearance for the binars starting way before they deserve it, way before enough information has been gotten about this. Yeah. But yeah, they've arrived at Bynus and the main computer on the planet with which all binars are deeply interconnected has had to be turned off due to an

EMP from a supernova nearby. And so what they did is they got the enterprise moving toward their planet downloaded everything from their main computer onto the enterprise, which is the only mobile computer big enough to do the job. And now what it seems like they are hoping is somebody will run the program of starting their computer up again, but they didn't like leave a handwritten note on a piece of legal pad paper like my dad uses to log into his email, you know, like this is a bit of a, well, um, how. would we go about doing that? Do we have to go down there or can we do it from up here? The biners did not have a backup hard drive, did they? No. Kind of a bad choice by them, I think.

Yeah, one is none binars and I would think that binars would understand that. Yeah. They need to transfer all of this data back to the binary computer, but they don't really know how to do that. It's protected by some sort of password or code or something. And Picard blows in a call to Starbase 74 to talk to data to get like his advice on the matter. Data's a computer man. Maybe he knows something about this. And all data says is, yeah, it's a password or a code or something. Try to look for something obvious as to what it could be.

File names can be anything, sir. Do you think Minuet would have more of this information also? Because she's like, I mean, all I know is you don't have a lot of time. They're all going to die if you can't figure it out, but, you know. It doesn't seem as though this is the big obstacle that is presented here, because when Riker sits down at the computer and Picard sits down next to them, the computer kind of brute forces its way into the code. And once they start working together, it seems like things move pretty fast from here

and their ability to transfer the data back to the computer on the surface of this planet. Yeah, they crack the code really quickly. The binars start to wake up. The screen says boobless on it. And it's like, well, that's weird. These are supposed to be ones and zeros. What is the binary for that, I ask you? And also check out minuettes, big naturals, right?

Definitely not boobless over there in the holodeck. But those binars are pretty jealous. Yeah. They are very pleased when they start to come to. And they explain the calculation, the black and white thinking they engaged in was no tolerance for the risk of Starfleet declining to help if they had asked for it. So they had to take matters into their own hands. And Picard's like, hey, you know what? I completely understand that.

Like, you guys did what you had to do. Nobody got hurt. Let's head home. Let's just take the positive for action. I get to fly the ship a little bit. I don't get to do that a lot. So thank you, honestly. The moment that's missing from this scene is the Biner's realization that they will not be beaming to the service of their planet.

They are being taken back to Star Base 74. Yeah. With the suggestion that they won't be going unpunished for this, we're going to find out what punishment is awaiting them once they get there. A hearing. Yeah. is what it's going to be. A healing. And the binders are like, what?

Did you say healing? Healing. Healing. Yeah, we do feel a lot better since you fixed our computer. So thank you. Riker stomps back to the bridge after meeting Not Minuet. Yeah. A very beautiful woman.

But, man, what a thing to be cast for, not Minuet. I was just thinking about that. Like, when you're, when you're described. as disappointing disappointing holiday character on the call sheet that's rough right?

Yeah. Hey, I'm here to read for disappointing not beautiful enough holodeck character. What people will say about the one I am not is difficult

to forget implying heavily that I am forgettable. Yeah. Yeh. Absolutely savage. Yeah, she's gone for good.

And we will never see Minuet again. a speech. You're the captains, sir. You're entitled. I'm entitled to ramble on about something everyone knows. We're watching these

as we watch some episodes of Strange New Worlds, Adam. And last week, we had an episode where some pretty fucked up shit happened with his security chief that I think many would consider to be

an inexcusable lapse in judgment. And Captain Pike was, like, shockingly forbearing with La'an in last week's Strange New Worlds. And this week, I feel like Picard had very similar energy with the binars. I mean, it's like out of his hands and the circumstances are different, and there will be a hearing. Did you say healing?

Something like that. I can't help but wonder with these two episodes in unnatural proximity to each other for us, how you feel about the assumption of positive intent that these two Starfleet captains have engaged in. Well, I think for Star Trek the next generation's part, you know, we have less of a runway here to understand what Picard is like and what he is liable to do and how he is liable to treat people in situations like this.

There are three times more episodes of Strange New Worlds, I think, at this moment in time, like to compare them to Star Trek the next generation. And so I think that ratio is a part of it. I think if you're Pike, you need

to not presume good intent as often as you do because you do not have a century of Starfleet's history to use as your guide, the way Picard does. I think you've got to

to be a little bit more, not pessimistic even, but you've got to be a little more guarded in just about every situation, which I think is why in early seasons of Strange New Worlds, everyone, myself included, was super jazzed on Pike because he seemed to embody the qualities of a Picard and an Archer, like a hard ass when he had to be, softy when he could be, and that felt really good, but now it feels like Pike is just all soft all the time in a way that I am now getting what I need from my Starfleet captains from Captain Picard in season one of Star Trek the next generation. And that's an interesting kind of flip-flop and experiences we're getting here, I think. I totally agree. Like the Captain Picard that we are starting to see, and, you know,

in this episode we see a great example of is one who is like deeply morally self-assured. And sometimes there is a moral puzzle that needs a lot more input. But when they get onto the bridge, he sees what this is for what it is so quickly. And when the binars get up after they fix the computer, like, they're not even worried about them walking over and getting back on the enterprise computer. Like there's no, no, no, no, stay away from the science station. It's just like, yeah, you know, like I don't agree with why you did it, but I understand why you thought you had to. I think the superhero's origin story is to put that character in a moment of

great danger and see them like rise above it. And to have Riker be the reason the ship is saved, I think would be another example of Picard character malpractice here. Like Picard must save the ship. Yeah. He must ascend to the character that we know him to be after this. And this is, I think, where that story begins for him. Well, Adam, we're going to play a little game in a moment that will potentially have implications for a future episode. But

before we get to that, why don't we head to the Priority One inbox, see what we got in there. Sounds great. Priority one message from Starfleet coming in on Secured Channel. You need a supplemental. Supplemental. Supplement. Yeah, it's extra.

The interest alone could be enough to buy this ship. This first one is from David, and it's to Uxbridge Shimoda Corp. Ten years. That means I've been listening to you for half my 20 years working for Big Corp right out of college. Half of my adult life. You've been serving up dick and fart jokes, cheering me up and making me laugh week and week out. The first time through TNG inspired me to make a supercut of every time you said, Dick, fart, knuck, balls, etc.

We'll see what this time around the series inspires. My drop request is for either some of that two minutes 39 second supercut or a machine gun photon torpedo drop. Oh, this is from a longtime FOD David Yannesek. Yeah, that's wild to think about. Half of David's adult life? Impossible. David, I'm really glad you're using your skills for good because Wendy continues to hold us hostage with the 40 entire days of ums, us, and likes supercut that she has over her years of editing our show.

We thought about uploading that as like a bonus feed thing and the server wouldn't allow it. So we dodged a bullet there. Thanks for this, David. You're one of the best and longest friends of DeSoto. Ben, we got a priority one message here to you and me from Ryan from Sacktown. Wow. Here's that message. Had to try out my subscriber discount.

You've made it so cheap to buy a P1, you guys. Are you going to get tired of me? Seriously, though. If you're listening to this for free, if you have the $6, why not give it to the guys? It is up to us to decide if this thing we like keeps going or goes away, so please join me in supporting the Uxbridge. Shimoda team. I really appreciate that message, Ryan, from Sacktown. Another FOD who has been with us for a really, really long time. I do have a quibble. I think this should have been a promotional P1.

I think maybe you owe us a little bit more cash on the barrelhead there, Ryan. Jesus. But if you can persuade a few people to join up, maybe that makes it even. Ryan, you've done enough. Thank you. Our last P-1 is from your loyal fan in Noah, Taylor. It's to Ben and Adam. 20% off. 20% off. 2% off.

Hey, Taylor. Think about you all the time. Another, like, OG fan who we're big fans of. Kind of amazing that three of them appeared in the same episode. Amazing. This feels like a real hat trick. Extraordinary. Well, if you'd like to get a great big discount on your P1s, you can become a member by going to

Greatestrek.com. Or if you prefer to pay full freight, you can do that too. Greatestrek.com to book your P1 today. Get yourself the Greatest Gen Bump. Or just say something you want to say here on the show. We appreciate it because it helps us keep the lights on around here. for supporting what we do. All right, Adam, we are normal men.

We're innocent men. We do not speak in binary, the language of machines, but the binars do. So this is a game I'm calling one, one, oh. Their reason is part of the binary thinking. For them, there are only two choices, one or zero. Yes or no. So your challenge in today's game will be to assign a value of true or false. to six statements about the production of this episode.

And since 50-50 odds aren't that interesting, you also get to place some binary bets today. If you have a wholehearted confidence in your answer, you may add a one, and if you're unsure, you can add zero. Correct answers are worth one point plus your confidence, so you can get up to two points for a correct answer, but if you're wrong,

you get zero points minus your confidence, meaning you can subtract from your total on a wrong answer you make you with your full chest. You've got as many confidence bets as you want. So if I answered zero to every answer I give, we could play this game forever? How about no! Here's where it gets interesting, Adam.

Okay. Today's game also has stakes. Next week we'll be discussing too short a season. The story about an Admiral who starts the episode as a chopped unk and becomes a total alpha. Clayton Roner, the actor who portrayed Admiral Mark Jameson in that episode, most recently has credits in three feature films that released in 2019. Your task, should you fail to rack up six points across six statements in today's game or 110 points in binary, is to watch one of those films and prepare a brief report on it

to read in next week's Marin. The film will be determined by a dice roll at the end of the game if you have to watch one. Ben, I'm going to imagine these movies are all great, right? Like, I'm really going to enjoy watching them, and they're all not long either. Like, I'm going to enjoy the experience. None of these are particularly long,

and they all have actors you will recognize They're only available on physical media only, so like I gotta pay $40 to get a disc in the mail. I checked they're all on tuby, Adam. Well, I don't have that. It's free. You don't have to have it. Okay. All right. Statement one. True, false. This is the first episode of Star Trek The Next Generation in which Majel Barrett provided the voice of the computer.

The first? I could have swore that she was a part of... of the first episode. Like, I don't remember hearing it up until now, but, okay, I'm not confident in this. Okay. But I'm not not confident enough to put a zero, which would negate any points at all for this question, right? No, if you get it right and you put a zero, you get one point. Okay.

I'm not going to assign any of the points. I'm just going to answer the question. And I think because you asked it the way that you did, it feels a little tricky. It feels like a trick question. Oh. I think this is the first episode that she, is the computer voice. So let's lock that answer in.

Okay, so true and no wager. Yeah. You are correct. You got one point on the board, Adam. Statement two, true or false, Commander Cantaros, played by Gene Dynarski, is possibly the descendant of Lieutenant Cantaros played by the same actor

in the TOS episodes Mudd's Women and the Mark of Gideon. I'm also not confident in this clear. that would be... Here's the thing. I feel like new Star Trek would make this true. New Star Trek would be like, oh, this person has a last name of some familiarity. Of course they are related somehow.

But this is Star Trek the next generation. And I don't think they were doing that like that here. I'm going to say again, not confident. Okay. And so I'm going to put a zero confidence on the idea that Canteros is not related to these other Kintere K-U-I-N-T-E-R-E-A

E-A-E? I believe that is correct And you are correct. Oh! He was in those two episodes, but he played Ben Childress in Mudd's Women, one of the minors that

they were bringing the women to. And he played Krodak in the Mark of Gideon. God, I didn't believe how close I was to screwing that up. So the actor was in it, But the character was not. Okay.

Yeah. You have two points on the board, Adam. Statement three, true or false Michael Westmore, won the series an Emmy for the Bynar makeup in this episode. Biner makeup pretty good. Definitely appreciated the hair coming out of the collar. Very unique, that hair coming out of the collar.

And yet, it just threw a bunch of pink paint on some short folks. It's a great question. I'm not confident in the answer. I'm going to say no again. I'm going to say this is not award-winning work in the area of makeup. You have another point, Adam. This is false.

The episode did win an Emmy for the series in the area of sound design. These questions are so hard, Ben. This is like betting red or black on roulette. I'm totally just guessing here. You have as good a chance as you did at the beginning of getting by with six points. I'm halfway there. You might not have to watch. one of these fucking movies.

Amazing. Okay. Statement four, true or false in 1996, for the 30th anniversary of Star Trek, TV Guide ranked this as the seventh best episode of Trek in a top ten list. Seventh best? A lot of episodes of TNG. I feel like this is more of a personal favorite

than it is a favorite throughout the fandom, especially to those at TV Guide. Yeah. And you said eighth? Seven. Oh. Oh, if it's seventh, then yeah. I'm going to say this is absolutely the seventh best episode ever in TNG.

Not confident, but that's my answer. Okay, you have not added a point to your score, Adam. It was actually the sixth best episode on the TV guide list. Wow. You were really trying to fuck me with this game. but that's good game design making every answer plausible. There's something interesting to it. Yeah.

Statement 5, true or false, Jack Sheldon played the piano player in Riker's computer-generated jazz combo. He was also Merv Griffin's TV sidekick on the Merv Griffin Show. That is, that's so fucking specific. And it's so plausible. It's so plausible, and yet this guy. guy doesn't look that old. I'm trying to remember what this guy looks like and he looks like he's in his 40s. How could he be involved in the Merv Griffin show, which is like a show from the 70s? I don't have to answer that question. I'm going to say no. I think this guy's too young,

Jack Scheld. Too young? But I need to assign a, I need to sign a confidence level. I'm very confident in this. I'm looking at this guy's face. He doesn't even look like he's had kids, Ben. He looks that's dressed for. free and dark-haired. Wow. Adam, I'm sad to say, this is true. You have subtracted a point from your total. Wow. You're down to two points, and I believe that means you're mathematically eliminated from winning. So I can't answer the last two questions correctly with additional juice?

There's one question left. I could give you two more questions if you want to try and do a saving throw. I'm down to add a bonus question to the Jack Sheldon question. I don't know how she got in on this feed, but I'm hearing how about no pretty loud in my inner monitor. Get on with it. Yes, get home with it. I'm going to give you a 5A. See if you can save it.

Hit me. Jack Sheldon, a celebrated jazz musician, did not in fact play piano, but trombone. I got a bunch of questions early correctly. by saying false. And I think I need to be doing that here because you're doing that thing as the quiz master that's like making the answers close to the thing to make them seem plausible

when that's actually a trick. I should have said false for every single one of these, which is why I'm saying false here. Okay, how confident? All the way. All the way confident? I'm going all in. Two points back on the board.

You're back in it, baby. I'm going to say the last question is false, blind. Wait until you hear it. Question six. The stunning Carolyn McCormick played across from Avery Brooks as a lead actor in the second season of Spencer for Hire just a few years before taking the role of Minuet. Spencer for, I feel like the way you've tripped me up here is with the Spencer for Hire happening before this show. but Spencer for Hire feels like a very old show. Yeah.

I'm going to give you a couple of hints here. I believe a man named Hawk was a spinoff based on his character from Spencer for Hire. I think there's three seasons of that show. He's in all three. And you're saying Carolyn McCormick was in Spencer for Hire or the other show you referred to? She was in Spencer for Hire. The second season is the statement. Oh.

Just to level set here, Adam, if you can get both. The correct answer, and you win the confidence point. I must be fully confident. You don't have to watch one of these movies. I think she's in it, and I must be confident. I can't be not confident because then I don't have a chance of winning the game. We're going all in on yes. Woo!

You did it, Adam. You landed the plane. You got to six. Well done. You do not have to watch the Eric Roberts film Stocked by My Doctor. colon, a sleepwalkers nightmare, about the devious doctor, Albert Beck, finding his latest stalking victim after changing his identity and beginning work at a sleep clinic. You don't have to watch Mope, the tragic true story of best friend Steve Driver and Tom Dong,

two low-end porn actors who sought fame but gained infamy. Oh, I cannot believe I missed out on that. featuring such luminaries as David Arquette and Brian Husky. And you also don't have to watch We Are Boats. Lives intertwine and connect when Francesca navigates through the living world by encountering strangers at the exact moment she needs to, all while she secretly searches for a loved one that she never had the chance to say goodbye to,

starring Angela Sarfian, Luke Hemsworth, Graham Green, Amanda Plummer, so many luminaries. Wow, I really missed out there, Ben. Really dodged a couple of movie bullets, sir. Getting Tubey on your TV. Yeah. Thankfully, still not a tuby man. I gave you that extra question, and now I regret it. Yeah.

That's what you get. Oh, well, it's time for us. go, Adam. Got to get out of here. We got to get on with our week. You guys got to get on with your week. Go listen to these credits. Find out what's coming up from us and what you can look forward to. Bye, bye.

The Greatest Generation is an Uxbridge Shimoda podcast. It's hosted by Ben Harrison and Adam Pranica. And it's produced and edited by Wendy Pretty. Next week, we'll be back with another episode of Star Trek The Next Generation, so get ready to reflect on humanity's futile quest for youth because it's season one episode 16 to short a season. Until then,

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